"Three days," said the Dog Chief, "the preparation lasted. Wolf Face and Tall Bull were sent off to keep in touch with the enemy, and the women and children dropped behind while the men unwrapped their Medicine bundles and began the Mysteries of theIssiwun, the Buffalo Hat, and Mahuts, the Arrows. It was a long ceremony, and we three, Red Morning, the Suh-tai boy, and I, were on fire with the love of fighting. You may believe that we made the other boys treat us handsomely because we had been with the scouts, but after a while even that grew tame and we wandered off toward the river. Who cared what three half-grown boys did, while the elders were busy with their Mysteries.
"By and by, though we knew very well that no one should move toward the enemy while the Arrows were uncovered, it came into our heads what a fine thing it would be if we could go out after Wolf Face and Tall Bull, and perhaps count coup on the Pawnees before our men came up with them. I do not think we thought of any harm, and perhaps we thought the Medicine of the Arrows was only for the members of the societies. But we saw afterward that it was for the Tribe, and for our wrong the Tribe suffered.
"For a while we followed the trail of Tall Bull, toward the camp of Pawnees. But we took to playing that the buffaloes were Pawnees and wore out our horses charging them. Then we lost the trail, and when at last we found a village the enemy had moved on following the hunt, leaving only bones and ashes. I do not know what we should have done," said the Dog Chief, "if we had come up with them: three boys armed with hunting-knives and bows, and a lance which War Bonnet had thrown away because it was too light for him. Red Morning had a club he had made, with a flint set into the side. He kept throwing it up and catching it as he rode, making a song about it.
"After leaving the deserted camp of the Pawnees, we rode about looking for a trail, thinking we might come upon some small party. We had left our own camp before finding out what Wolf Face and Tall Bull had come back to tell them, that the enemy, instead of being the whole Nation of Pawnees as we supposed, was really only the tribe of the Kitkahhahki, helped out by a band of the Potawatami. The day before our men attacked the Kitkahhahki, the Potawatami had separated from them and started up one of the creeks, while the Pawnees kept on up the river. We boys stumbled on the trail of the Potawatami and followed it.
"Now these Potawatami," said the Dog Chief, "had had guns a long time, and better guns than ours. But being boys we did not know enough to turn back. About midday we came to level country around the headwaters of the creek, and there were four Potawatami skinning buffaloes. They had bunched up their horses and tied them to a tree while they cut up the kill. Red Morning said for us to run off the horses, and that would be almost as good as a scalp-taking. We left our ponies in the ravine and wriggled through the long grass. We had cut the horses loose and were running them, before the Potawatami discovered it. One of them called his own horse and it broke out of the bunch and ran toward him. In a moment he was on his back, so we three each jumped on a horse and began to whip them to a gallop. The Potawatami made for the Suh-tai, and rode even with him. I think he saw it was only a boy, and neither of them had a gun. But suddenly as their horses came neck and neck Suh-tai gave a leap and landed on the Potawatami's horse behind the rider. It was a trick of his with which he used to scare us. He would leap on and off before you had time to think. As he clapped his legs to the horse's back he stuck his knife into the Potawatami. The man threw up his arms and Suh-tai tumbled him off the horse in an instant.
"This I saw because Red Morning's horse had been shot under him, and I had stopped to take him up. By this time another man had caught a horse and I had got my lance again which I had left leaning against a tree. I faced him with it as he came on at a dead run, and for a moment I thought it had gone clean through him, but really it had passed between his arm and his body and he had twisted it out of my hand.
"Our horses were going too fast to stop, but Red Morning, from behind me, struck at the head of the man's horse as it passed with his knife-edged club, and we heard the man shout as he went down. I managed to get my horse about in time to see Suh-tai, who had caught up with us, trying to snatch the Potawatami's scalp, but his knife turned on one of the silver plates through which his scalp-lock was pulled, and all the Suh-tai got was a lock of the hair. In his excitement he thought it was the scalp and went shaking it and shouting like a wild man.
"The Potawatami pulled himself free of his fallen horse as I came up, and it did me good to see the blood flowing from under his arm where my lance had scraped him. I rode straight at him, meaning to ride him down, but the horse swerved a little and got a long wiping stroke from the Potawatami's knife, from which, in a minute more, he began to stagger. By this time the other men had got their guns and begun shooting. Suh-tai's bow had been shot in two, and Red Morning had a graze that laid his cheek open. So we got on our own ponies and rode away.
"We saw other men riding into the open, but they had all been chasing buffaloes, and our ponies were fresh. It was not long before we left the shooting behind. Once we thought we heard it break out again in a different direction, but we were full of our own affairs, and anxious to get back to the camp and brag about them. As we crossed the creek Suh-tai made a line and said the words that made it Medicine. We felt perfectly safe.
"It was our first fight, and each of us had counted coup. Suh-tai was not sure but he had killed his man. Not for worlds would he have wiped the blood from his knife until he had shown it to the camp. Two of us had wounds, for my man had struck at me as he passed, though I had been too excited to notice it at the time ... 'Eyah!' said the Dog Chief,--'a man's first scar ...!' We were very happy, and Red Morning taught us his song as we rode home beside the Republican River.