* * * *

So it happened that, before famine could touch these people who had
already struggled through drought and blizzard and despair, they found
help in sight. Halbert Donovan put up $50,000 as a start, to be dealt
out for emergency on land, livestock, etc. Heretofore loans had been
made on land only. Now the reliability of the borrower himself was often
taken into account as collateral. It was enough that we knew the
borrower was honest, that he was doing his best to conquer the land and
to make it yield. We gambled on futures then, as we had done before.
That it was eastern capital, handled through a system of exchange and
agencies, was all that those who borrowed knew or cared.

And each day we scanned the heavens for signs of rain. We searched for a
cloud like a starving man for bread. The settlers went stalking about
with necks craned, heads thrown back, eyes fixed on the sky. And the
cartoonist from Milwaukee took to looking for a cloud with a field
glass. A cloud no bigger than a man's hand would raise the hopes of the
whole reservation. But in vain we searched the metallic blue of the sky.

With spectacular ceremonial and regalia the Indians staged their "rain
dance." The missionaries had long opposed this form of expression by the
Indians, and their objections led to a government ban which was finally
modified to permit some sort of ritual.

These symbolic dances were not mere ceremonials for the Plains Indians;
they were their one means of expressing their emotions en masse
rhythmically, of maintaining their sense of tribal unity.

The first part of the ceremony was secret and lasted for several days.
After that the public ceremony began. Painted according to ritual, they
danced in a line from east to west and back again, whistling as they
danced, every gesture having its symbolic meaning. The whistle
symbolized to them the call of the Thunderbird.

Pioneers belong to the past, people are prone to say; savage customs
belong to the past. But it was in the twentieth century that primitive
men, their bodies streaked with black paint, fasted and danced,
overcoming an enemy as they danced, compelling the Thunderbird to
release the rain. And on the Strip men and women prayed as fervently to
their own God, each in his own way.

That night, something breaking the dead stillness woke me. A soft, slow
tapping on the roof of the shack, like ghostly fingers. It increased in
tempo as though bird