They were all there––so the prayer had been a good prayer.
From some of them would come the medicine dreams!
The sun stood straight above,––then little by little reached towards the mountain. It made shadows, and as the shadow of the sacred rock touched the blinded dancer, he sank to the earth.
As he fell he strove to echo the prayer thought:––
|
“I find the light I––master of spells!” |
But he did not speak it. Only the eagle of his dream repeated it over and over as it lifted him from the place where he had fallen, and bore him swiftly to the highest point of the mountain of Tse-c[=o]me-u-piñ. It has been the Sacred Mountain since men first 128 spoke words in the land. When a man has climbed to the shrine of the summit there, it is as if all the world is very far below.
And that makes it lonely for the dweller there.
The stars were again alight in the heavens when the devotee awoke from his sleep of exhaustion. To his entranced senses the stars were as the eyes of the gods who watched the shrine where few men had ever danced and lived. The wind touched the pines––and he thought their whispered movement was the rustle of the wings of the eagle who had come in his vision.
For the eagle was now his medicine, and the place where the eagle had carried him in the dream was the best of all good places for medicine that was strong.