Come--here are four bundles of paints and a filled pipe--let us go to
the place."

When the last words were uttered, Hakadah did not seem to hear them. He
was simply unable to speak. To a civilized eye, he would have appeared
at that moment like a little copper statue. His bright black eyes were
fast melting in floods of tears, when he caught his grandmother's
eye and recollected her oft-repeated adage: "Tears for woman and the
war-whoop for man to drown sorrow!"

He swallowed two or three big mouthfuls of heart-ache and the little
warrior was master of the situation.

"Grandmother, my Brave will have to die! Let me tie together two of the
prettiest tails of the squirrels that he and I killed this morning, to
show to the Great Mystery what a hunter he has been. Let me paint him
myself."

This request Uncheedah could not refuse and she left the pair alone for
a few minutes, while she went to ask Wacoota to execute Ohitika.

Every Indian boy knows that, when a warrior is about to meet death, he
must sing a death dirge. Hakadah thought of his Ohitika as a person who
would meet his death without a struggle, so he began to sing a dirge
for him, at the same time hugging him tight to himself. As if he were a
human being, he whispered in his ear:

"Be brave, my Ohitika! I shall remember you the first time I am upon the
war-path in the Ojibway country."

At last he heard Uncheedah talking with a man outside the teepee, so he
quickly took up his paints. Ohitika was a jet-black dog, with a silver
tip on the end of his tail and on his nose, beside one white paw and a
white star upon a protuberance between his ears. Hakadah knew that a
man who prepares for death usually paints with red and black. Nature
had partially provided Ohitika in this respect, so that only red was
required and this Hakadah supplied generously.

Then he took off a piece of red cloth and tied it around the dog's neck;
to this he fastened two of the squirrels' tails and a wing from the
oriole they had killed that morning.

Just then it occurred to him that good warriors always mourn for their
departed friends and the usual mourning was black paint. He loosened his
black braided locks, ground a dead coal, mixed it with bear's oil and
rubbed it on his entire face.

During this time every hole in the tent was occupied with an eye. Among
the lookers-on was his grandmother. She was very near relenting. Had she
not feared the wrath of the Great Mystery, s