iceman who was Sitting
Bull's nephew.

Kicking Bear spoke for a long time. He told Sitting Bull everything.
The new earth, that would bury the whites, was to be five times the
height of a man. It would be covered with sweet grass, and with herds
of buffalo and ponies. The Pacific Ocean would be filled up; the other
oceans would be barricaded. The white man's powder would not burn,
against the Ghost Dancers. The whites who died would all belong to the
Evil Spirit. Only the Indians would enjoy life, under the Good Spirit,
with no white people to molest them.

To the unhappy, starving Sioux this was a promise full of hope.
Sitting Bull at once took the lead at Standing Rock. He danced
himself, reported Agent McLaughlin, "to mere skin and bone." He
introduced new wrinkles of his own.

Down at Pine Ridge reservation old Red Cloud had adopted the new
belief. On the Rosebud reservation Short Bull, who also "had seen the
Messiah," was making the Brules defiant. Now at Standing Rock Sitting
Bull had the fever, and was tireless.

Kicking Bear proved to be a nuisance. The Sioux feared him. It was
said that in the dark there was a halo around his head, and a star over
him; that he had the power to strike unbelievers dead, with a look, or
change them into dogs.

Agent McLaughlin sent thirteen police under Sergeant Crazy Walking, to
arrest Kicking Bear and put him off the reservation.

Crazy Walking went, and found Kicking Bear and Sitting Bull in the
midst of a Ghost Dancer meeting. He listened to the stories, and was
afraid of the medicine. He returned to the agency, and said that
Sitting Bull had promised that Kicking Bear should leave, the next day.

Agent McLaughlin called Second Lieutenant Chatka. Lieutenant Chatka
had good sense. He was a soldier and did not put much faith in such
"medicine." He asked for only two men, and rode straight to Sitting
Bull's camp, on the Grand River, forty miles south of the Agency
quarters.

The Sioux there were dancing--which made no difference to Lieutenant
Chatka, although some of them were his relatives. He broke through the
circle, told Kicking Bear and his Cheyenne River reservation squad that
they must get out; and escorted them twenty-five miles south, to the
line between the two reservations.

Thus Lieutenant Chatka proved himself to be a faithful officer.

This night Sitting Bull snapped his peace pipe in two, before his Ghost
Dancers. His heart had swell