d heard the thick bull's-hide promise that no arrow or bullet
should ever reach the Bat. He lost the contents of his lodge at the
game of the plum-stones--all the robes that Seet-se-be-a had fleshed and
softened, but more often his squaw had to bring a pack-pony down to the
gamble and pile it high with his winnings. He was much looked up to
in the warrior class of the Red Lodges, which contained the tried-out
braves of the Cheyenne tribe; moreover old men--wise ones--men who stood
for all there was in the Chis-chis-chash, talked to him occasionally out
of their pipes, throwing measuring glances from under lowering brows in
his direction to feel if he had the secret Power of the Eyes.

The year passed until the snow fell no longer and Big Hair said the
medicine chiefs had called it "The Falling Stars Winter" and had painted
the sign on the sacred robes. The new grass changed from yellow to a
green velvet, while the long hair blew off the horses' hides in bunches
and their shrunken flanks filled up with fat. As Nature awoke from the
chill and began to circulate the Indians responded to its feel. They
stalked among the pony herds, saying to each other: "By the middle of
the moon of the new Elk Horns, these big dogs will carry us to war.
There the enemy will know that the Chis-chis-chash did not die in the
snow. There will be blood in our path this grass."

Red Arrow and the Bat prayed often together to the Good God for fortune
in war, as they sat in the lodge running their eyes along their arrows,
picking those which were straightest, and singing:

"This arrow is straight
This arrow is straight
It will kill us a man
It will kill us a man--"

and the Bat boasted to his chum: "When I come to the enemy, I shall go
nearer than any other Red Lodge man. I shall have more scalps to dance
and no bullet or arrow can stop the Bat when he strikes his pony with
the whip." Red Arrow believed this as much as the boaster did, for men
must believe they will do these things before they do them. "Red Arrow,
we will not go with a big war-party. We will go with Iron Horn's band of
twenty warriors. Then next winter at the warriors' feasts when we tell
what we did, we will count for something. Red Arrow, we will see for the
first time the great war-medicine."

The boys of the camp herded the ponies where the grass was strongest,
and the warriors watched them grow. It was the policy of the tribe to
hang together in a mass, against