“I knew my praying had been heard and I would see. The power was mighty in me as I prayed around the hoop and back to the most sacred place at the center.
“I was standing in the hole with my face and hands and pipe raised to the Great Mysterious One, and I was crying hard while I prayed, but I was happy and my heart sang. I was saying, ‘All over the world the faces of living ones are alike.’ But all at once I was not saying; I was seeing!
“I was standing on the highest hill in the center of the world. There was no sun, but so clear was the light that what was far was near. The circle of the world was a great hoop with the two roads crossing where I stood, the black one and the red. And all around the hoop more peoples than I could count were sitting together in a sacred manner. The smokes of all the peoples’ little fires stood tall and straight and still around the circle; and by the murmur of the voices of the peoples, they were happy. And while I looked and wondered, there was a tree that sprang at my feet from where the two roads crossed. It grew so fast that, while I watched, it reached the sky and spread, filling the heavens with blooms and singing leaves.
“Then I felt dizzy, and all at once I was sitting in the hole with my head on the grassy edge of it. When I looked about me, the circle of the world was empty and the sun was high above. While I sat there looking around me at the empty world, I felt homesick for what I had seen without my eyes, and there was an aching in my breast.
“Afterwhile I knew I was very hungry and thirsty. So I filled myself with water from the skin; and when I looked around me again, far off down a valley I could see the friends returning with the horse.”
The old man fell into one of his prolonged silences which I finally broke with a question: “And the wakon? What did he say when you told him?”
“I was alone with him in his tepee,” Eagle Voice replied, “and a little fire made the light. He looked hard at me for a long time when I had spoken, then he said: ‘You have seen in a sacred manner and your praying has come alive. By the lightning and the thunder and the rain that fell about you, the power to make live and to destroy will protect you to the end of the black road, and the road will be long. You shall breathe the dust of battles, counting many coups, and shall not be hurt. You shall travel far and see strange peoples; but the sacred hoop of all the peoples under the flowering tree, you shall not see by the light of the sun. It was your father talking through the eagle. Hold fast to the vision Wakon Tonka has sent you, and pray for the strength to understand it. Hetchetu aloh!’
“Then he waved his hand, and I went out into the low day. I was very hungry.”
IX
The Old Bull’s Last Fight
Dry snow had fallen in the night, and it was scurrying drearily under a dull sky when I reached the old man’s tepee the next morning. He sat smoking serenely with his blanket tucked about his waist and legs. “I thought you might not come, Grandson,” he said; “but you are here, and it is good.” When we had smoked awhile together, he began: