only
by the crack of a lash across a horse's flank.

At midnight the faithful twenty men were still seated in a row around
Iron Horn while the horses, too tired to eat, hung their heads. The
old chief dismissed his war-party saying: "To-morrow we will make the
mystery--we will find out whether the Good Gods will go with us to war
or let us go alone."

Sunrise found the ponies feeding quietly, having recovered themselves,
while the robed aspirants sat in a circle; the grass having been removed
from the enclosed space and leveled down.

A young man filled the long medicine-pipe and Iron Horn blew sacrificial
puffs about him, passing it in, saying: "Let no man touch the pipe who
has eaten meat since the beginning of the last sun. If there are any
such he must be gone--the Good Gods do not speak to full men." But the
pipe made its way about the ring without stopping.

Iron Horn then walked behind the circle sticking up medicine-arrows in
the earth--arrows made sacred by contact with the Great Medicine of the
Chis-chis-chash and there would hold the Bad Gods in check while the
Good Gods counseled.

Resuming his seat, he spoke in a harsh, guttural clicking: "What is said
in this circle must never be known to any man who does not sit here now.
The Bad Gods will hear what the Good Gods say in such an event and the
man who tells against them will be deserted by the Good Gods forever.
Every man must tell all his secrets--all the things he has thought about
his brothers since the last war-medicine; all the things he has done
with the women of the tribe; all that the Gods have whispered in his
dreams. He must tell all and forever say no more," and Iron Horn rested
on his words for a moment before continuing his confession.

"Brothers, I am a great medicineman--no arrow can touch me--I do not
fear men. I am too old for the women to look upon. I did not say it at
the time but when the sun was low on the land last winter I made it turn
blue for a time. I made it cold in the land. Our horses were poor and
when I made the sun blue we crusted the buffalo and killed many with our
lances. Brothers, it was I who made the sun blue in the winter.

"Brothers, I love you all--I shall say no more," and Iron Horn threw
tobacco on the earth in front of him.

A young man next to him dropped his robe from about his body and with
fierce visage spoke excitedly, for it was his first confession, and his
Indian secretiveness was straining under