"He mentioned the idea, and the tribe woted in the affirmitude."
Here they were interrupted by a young warrior, a messenger from Sitting Wolf and the tribal council, requesting Storm to attend them.
"We'll be right along," said Hiram.
But Storm looked at the American's hair, which was cropped at the neck. "I wouldn't," he said earnestly.
"What's bitten you?" asked Hiram.
"A man with short hair ain't axed to sit with Injuns in council. Wait till your hair grows, and you're asked to come."
"Is that so? Waal, of all the——"
Storm followed the messenger to a lodge covered with mats of rushes. There in the chief's place opposite the door was Sitting Wolf, dressed in his finest robe, and on his left in order of their rank the leaders of the septs, very grave and formal. The white man was asked to take his seat on the women's side of the lodge.
In front of the chief lay a bundle which he now opened, making a prayer for each of the many coverings disclosed, until amid a breathless hush—as when at the Roman Mass the Host is revealed to the people—he took up the sacred pipe. Its bowl of red sandstone came from the pipe-stone quarry in far-away Michigan, and the stem, ancient, charged with mysterious power, was hung with eagle feathers. The messenger, kneeling in homage, received the medicine pipe, charged the bowl with tobacco, and after praying, lighted it with a coal from the hearth.
Sitting Wolf stood to perform the culminating rite. He was a young man in those days, by all accounts a gallant gentleman, lightly built, graceful of bearing, his clear-cut face austere, now made beautiful by reverence, by faith as he prayed. Filling his mouth with smoke and blowing it in homage, he greeted first the Spirit in the Sun, then by turn the Spirits of the Four Winds, and lastly Mother Earth. Afterwards each of the leaders smoked in turn, once, and Storm last of all, before the pipe was returned and covered up.