Andramark turned and found that the flaps of the
lodge had been drawn aside, and that within there was thick darkness and
the sound of men breathing.

"Come in, Andramark."

The flaps of the lodge fell together behind him. Fingers touched his
shoulder and guided him in the dark, and then a voice told him to sit
down. His quick eyes, already accustomed to the darkness, recognized one
after another the eleven medicine-men of his tribe. They were seated
cross-legged in a semicircle, and one of them was thumbing tobacco into
the bowl of a poppy-red pipe. Some of the medicine-men had rattles handy
in their laps, others devil-horns. They were all smiling and looking
kindly at the little boy who sat all alone by himself facing them. Then
old Owl Eyes, who was the central medicine-man of the eleven, spoke.

"In this lodge," he said, "no harm will befall you. But lest the women
and children grow to think lightly of manhood there will be from time to
time much din and devil-noises."

At that the eleven medicine-men began to rock their bodies and groan
like lost souls (they groaned louder and louder, with a kind of awful
rhythm), and to shake the devil-rattles, which were dried gourds,
brightly painted, and containing teeth of famous enemies, and one of the
medicine-men tossed a devil-horn to Andramark, and the boy put it to his
lips and blew for all he was worth. It was quite obvious that the
medicine-men were just having fun, not with him, but with all the women
and children of the village who were outside listening--at a safe
distance, of course--and imagining that the medicine-lodge was at that
moment a scene of the most awful visitations and terrors. And all that
afternoon, at intervals, the ghastly uproar was repeated, until
Andramark's lips were chapped with blowing the devil-horn and his
insides felt very shaky. But between times the business of the
medicine-men with Andramark was very serious, and they talked to him
like so many fathers, and he listened with both ears and pulled at the
poppy-red medicine-pipe whenever it was passed to him.

They lectured him upon anatomy and hygiene; upon tribal laws and
intertribal laws; and always they explained "why" as well as they could,
and if they didn't know "why" they said it must be right because it's
always been done that way. Sometimes they said things that made him feel
very self-conscious and uncomfortable. And sometimes they became so
interesting that it was the other