en they hit the water with their tails. Kokopotamix
then rose and imitated a grizzly bear when he walks on his hind legs.
Apotumenee and Ohisiksim began their performances at the same time.
Apotumenee crouched with his head lowered, and dug his horns into the
ground to imitate buffaloes digging wallows in the Fall, while Ohisiksim
blew out a spray of water from his mouth to suggest a thunder shower.

All this time Lone Chief went on drumming as if nothing else was going
on.

And now the noise of the drums, louder than ever, made the tepee throb
with sound. It maddened Sitting-Always who screamed out again and again
that it was driving the pain into her head; but as no one paid the
slightest heed to her cries, she put her hands over her ears, and moaned
in despair.

And now the medicine-men, as if excited by their own drumming, grew
wilder in their movements. Kokopotamix's walk became a dance in which he
clawed the air like a grizzly sharpening his claws upon a tree.
Kattowa-iski banged his drum like a beaver with a hundred tails.
Apomumenee made terrible roarings and bellowings in his throat, like a
bull buffalo; while Ohisiksim sprayed his thunder-showers so far from
his mouth that they moistened Sitting-Always in her bed.

Dusty Star, looking out upon it all from his hiding-place, felt a
strange excitement growing within him. To him, the antics of the
medicine-men became so life-like that, more and more, they seemed to
grow like the things they represented; and in the flicker of the fire,
on which, from time to time, Nikana put more fuel, the shadows on the
sides of the tepee danced and balanced, as if they also were alive. He
did not understand the new feeling; only it seemed to have to do with
Kiopo; almost as if Kiopo himself were crouching by his side. And the
wolf that was in Kiopo seemed to urge the wolf that was in Dusty Star so
that he felt that he must shoot his body in amongst the dancers, and
make, with Kiopo, the medicine of the wolves.

The movements became wilder, and the drumming louder. The figures
swaying round the fire, appeared to have lost themselves in the medicine
and to feel nothing but the dance. It was not Kokopotamix only who was
there, or Kattowa-iski, or Apotumenee, or Ohisiksim; nor even a Grizzly
bear, a Beaver, a Buffalo, or a Thunder Bird; but all the spirits, and
the beasts, and the birds, of the lonely places, and the great silences
of the enormous West. Either it was the tepee w