the guns of the
pony-soldiers, worse yet might overtake them, though the windswept table
lands dismayed them equally with the bullets. Munching their horse-meat,
clutching their meager garments, they elbowed about the fires saying
little. In their homeless helplessness their souls deadened. They could
not divine the immediate future. Unlike the young warriors whose fires
flashed brighter as the talons of Death reached most fiercely for them,
they shuddered and crouched.

[Illustration: 15 He shouted his harsh pathos at a wild and lonely wind]

In the light of day they could see how completely the ravishing fire had
done its work. Warriors came limping back from the battle, their robes
dyed with a costly vermilion. They sat about doing up their wounds in
filthy rags, or sang their death-songs amid the melancholy wailing of
the squaws.

Having warmed himself and quieted the boy, the Fire Eater stalked down
the canon, past the smoking poles, stopping here and there to pick up
fragments of skins which he used to swaddle the boy. Returning warriors
said the soldiers were going away, while they themselves were coming
back to get warm. Hearing this, the old man stalked down the creek
toward the place where his lodge had been. He found nothing but a
smouldering heap of charred robes and burnt dried meat. With a piece of
lodge pole he poked away the ashes, searching for his precious medicine
and never ceasing to implore the Good Gods to restore it to him. At
last, dropping the pole, he walked up the side canon to the place where
his wife had fallen. He found her lying there. Drawing aside the robe he
noticed a greenish pallor and fled from Death.

Finding the ponies tethered together by their necks, he caught them,
and improvising packs out of old robes and rawhide filled them with
half-burnt dried meat. With these he returned to the fires, where he
constructed a rude shelter for the coming night. The boy moaned and
cried through the shivering darkness as the old Fire Eater rocked him in
his arms to a gibberish of despairing prayer.

Late in the night, the scouts came in saying that the walking-soldiers
were coming, whereat the Indians gathered their ponies and fled over the
snow. The young men stayed behind and from the high cliffs fought back
the soldiers. Many weak persons in the retreating band sat down and
passed under the spell of the icy wind. The Fire Eater pressed along
carrying his rifle and boy, driving his poni