“There was a creek hollow with brush in it, and some stray bison were standing there behind the brush with their heads down. We ran right into them and they did not move. They seemed asleep, and we killed three with arrows. It was easy to drive the arrows back of the forelegs, and we were hungry. While we butchered, the others moved away and disappeared in the flying snow. The hot blood froze on our fingers, but we got them skinned, and in the brush we made a shelter of the fresh hides before they were too stiff with the cold. We could light a fire in there, and when we had feasted on raw liver, Kicking Bear told us to sleep awhile and he would watch the fire. I was dreaming about Charging Cat when Kicking Bear ’wakened me. Then he slept, and afterwhile I ’wakened High Horse and slept again.
“When night was coming, we were all awake and very hungry. So we feasted. It was hard to cut the ribs apart before we broke them off. The frozen meat was like wood. While we roasted the ribs and ate, we talked about the others back yonder and how many would get home. Would Big Mouth get away? We wished him dead. But most we talked about Charging Cat. Was our prayer heard on the dark hill and our offering accepted? Were we not feasting, safe and warm? Would the power protect him too? Or would it pass him by because we did not take him with us to the dark hill? We wondered about this.
“Next day the wind was dead. The sun came pale between two cold fires. The air was like a knife.
“The next day after that we started home with all the meat we could carry through the snow. We blackened our faces against snow blindness with charred sticks from the fire.
“It was a long road, and the cold did not soften. When we came to our village on the Powder, Big Mouth and another were there. They were telling brave stories of the fight and were mourning for so many comrades dead. They told of horses taken in battle from the Shoshonis, and when the fight was over, they had ridden until the horses died. We did not speak to them, and people wondered. Maybe they did not fight at all. Maybe they caught loose horses straying yonder in the snow, while we were killing riders, and started home. They could have found our second camp back before the night. I do not know. It was a good place to camp.
“People waited for their sons and brothers, and some for their fathers. Two would come, and three, and four, with frozen feet and hands, and some snow-blind. There were no songs of victory and no feasts with brave stories. We were beaten and ashamed. People waited and waited, and when a moon had passed, there was mourning in some tepees. And when another moon had died, there was more mourning. He Crow did not come back, nor his four brothers. Only the youngest brother, Running Wolf, came back. The young grass appeared, and there were thirty who never came. We did not see Charging Cat again.”
XXI
The Cleansing of a Kills-Home
“I have been thinking of Last Dog, the big-mouthed one,” Eagle Voice began. Having attended to the fire, I had waited over long, while the old man sat with closed eyes and drooping head, blowing softly now and then upon his thumb-polished eagle-bone whistle. “Also I have been thinking of He Crow and his brothers—of Running Wolf, the youngest, most of all.
“Running Wolf was sick that winter and people said that he would die. There was mourning for his brothers in his old father’s tepee where he lay. He was hot all over with a fire that burned inside, and he would cry out to his brothers in the battle. He would cry out, ‘Wait for me! I am coming! Look back, for I am coming!’ and try to get up. No wichasha wakon could help him. The bad spirit would not go away, and people said that soon he would go to his brothers.
“But he did not die. When the young grasses were appearing [April], he got up and walked again. His face was sharp, and he was thin and feeble, like an old man who has come at last to where the cane is. Also he was like a ghost that comes and goes and will not talk to anybody. People said he was witko, and tried not to notice him.