under was.
It was a great black bird; and once he had seen it, in a dream, swooping
down from the Black Hills, with its loud roaring wings; and when it
flapped them over a lake, they struck lightning from the water.

"The thunder is bad," said another old man, who sat muffled in his
buffalo robe; "he killed my brother last summer."

Reynal, at my request, asked for an explanation; but the old man
remained doggedly silent, and would not look up. Some time after I
learned how the accident occurred. The man who was killed belonged to an
association which, among other mystic functions, claimed the exclusive
power and privilege of fighting the thunder. Whenever a storm which they
wished to avert was threatening, the thunder-fighters would take their
bows and arrows, their guns, their magic drum, and a sort of whistle,
made out of the wingbone of the war eagle. Thus equipped, they would
run out and fire at the rising cloud, whooping, yelling, whistling, and
beating their drum, to frighten it down again. One afternoon a heavy
black cloud was coming up, and they repaired to the top of a hill, where
they brought all their magic artillery into play against it. But the
undaunted thunder, refusing to be terrified, kept moving straight
onward, and darted out a bright flash which struck one of the party
dead, as he was in the very act of shaking his long iron-pointed
lance against it. The rest scattered and ran yelling in an ecstasy of
superstitious terror back to their lodges.

The lodge of my host Kongra-Tonga, or the Big Crow, presented a
picturesque spectacle that evening. A score or more of Indians were
seated around in a circle, their dark naked forms just visible by
the dull light of the smoldering fire in the center, the pipe glowing
brightly in the gloom as it passed from hand to hand round the lodge.
Then a squaw would drop a piece of buffalo-fat on the dull embers.
Instantly a bright glancing flame would leap up, darting its clear light
to the very apex of the tall conical structure, where the tops of the
slender poles that supported its covering of leather were gathered
together. It gilded the features of the Indians, as with animated
gestures they sat around it, telling their endless stories of war and
hunting. It displayed rude garments of skins that hung around the lodge;
the bow, quiver, and lance suspended over the resting-place of the
chief, and the rifles and powder-horns of the two white guests. For a
moment al