ed within him.

"Why did you break your pipe, Sitting Bull?"

He replied hotly:

"Because I want to fight, and I want to die, if need be, for this new
religion."

He declared that the dancing must continue. The spirits had said that
the Sioux must dance or they would lose their lives.

Four hundred and fifty of the Standing Rock Indians were his devoted
followers. It was he who translated the messages received for them
from the spirit world. It was he who anointed them, after the sweat
baths, with the sacred oil. It was he who urged them to dance until
they dropped at the wave of his sacred feather. He was all-powerful,
again.

First Lieutenant Bull Head, of the Sioux police, lived three miles west
of him, up river, and was watching him. Sitting Bull did not like to
be watched. The police irritated him.

The constant dancing, day and night, on the reservations, alarmed the
white officials. It was a threat, like the threat of Tecumseh and the
Open Door.

Down at Pine Ridge, Short Bull, the Messiah's prophet there, announced:

"My friends and relations: I will soon start this thing in running
order. I have told you that this would come to pass in two seasons,
but since the whites are interfering so much, I will advance the time
from what my father has told me to do, so the time will be shorter.
Therefore you must not be afraid of anything. Some of my relations
have no ears, so I will have them blown away."

He told them all to gather in one place and dance and make ready. Even
if the soldiers surrounded them four deep, no harm would occur.

At last, on request of the agents at Pine Ridge and Rosebud the troops
entered, to keep order. Short Bull, Kicking Bear and other prophets of
the Messiah led their people into the Bad Lands, in the northwest
corner of the Pine Ridge reservation, there to await the promised time.

They had destroyed their houses, and the houses in their path. Many of
the Sioux who had not danced went with them, or joined them, because of
fear of the soldiers. They feared being arrested and held as hostages.
Soon there were three thousand of the Sioux in the Bad Lands.

This left Sitting Bull and his dancers alone, up at Standing Rock, with
the police watching them. He felt that he ought to go to the Ghost
Dance big camp, in the Bad Lands. And he decided that he would.

Agent McLaughlin had asked him to come to the agency for a talk; but
Sitting Bull well knew that if he