The stranger half-straightened up, shaded his eyes and glanced toward the eastern skies, yet rosy with the sunset, and bent low again.
Then he turned toward the other direction, unshaded his eyes, and seemed to regard the darkened skies as though he could read there omens of good or evil.
In silence he passed on toward the distant camps of the hostiles.
In the same bent posture he entered the village of tepees, making his way along toward the medicine lodge of the Brules.[7]
The medicine chief of the Brules was a cunning old fox, very infirm, however, from his years, and yet one who could mold his people to his will.
Suddenly the strange medicine chief, wearing the white beaver robe[8] of honor, entered the sacred precincts of the medicine tepee, and said in a low voice:
"The Moon Eyes has come to see by night what the Sun Gazer cannot behold in the darkness. The Moon Eyes has come from the foes of our people, and he wears the ghost shirt to kill, and the red tomahawk."
The Sun Gazer, for such was the name of the Brule medicine chief, at once welcomed the stranger to the tepee, and the two talked long and earnestly together.
At last the Moon Eyes arose and glided from the tepee, making his way about the Indian village, and gradually edging toward the pass nearest the Cheyenne River.
He passed the guards in silence, held on down the winding trail, and thus on for a mile or more, constantly turning and glancing back in the moonlight to see that he was not tracked.