he dancers; their chests
heaved, and their arms and bodies swung alike as the excited crew filed
and circled closer to the pot, following Cheschapah, and shouting
uncontrollably. They came to firing pistols and slashing the air with
knives, when suddenly Cheschapah caught up a piece of steaming dog from
the pot, gave it to his best friend, and the dance was done. The
dripping figures sat quietly, shining and smooth with sweat, eating
their dog-flesh in the ardent light of the fire and the cool splendor of
the moon. By-and-by they lay in their blankets to sleep at ease.

The elder chiefs had looked with distrust at Cheschapah as he led the
dance; now that the entertainment was over, they rose with gravity to go
to their beds.

"It is good for the Sioux and the Crows to be friends," said Pounded
Meat to Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses. "But we want no war with the
white man. It is a few young men who say that war is good now."

"We have not come for war," replied the Sioux. "We have come to eat much
meat together, and remember that day when war was good on the Little
Horn, and our warriors killed Yellow Hair and all his soldiers."

Pounded Meat came to where he and Cheschapah had their blankets.

"We shall have war," said the confident son to his father. "My medicine
is good."

"Peace is also pretty good," said Pounded Meat. "Get new thoughts. My
son, do you not care any more for my words?"

Cheschapah did not reply.

"I have lived a long while. Yet one man may be wrong. But all cannot be.
The other chiefs say what I say. The white men are too strong."

"They would not be too strong if the old men were not cowards."

"Have done," said the father, sternly. "If you are a medicine-man, do
not talk like a light fool."

The Indian has an "honor thy father" deep in his religion too, and
Cheschapah was silent. But after he was asleep, Pounded Meat lay
brooding. He felt himself dishonored, and his son to be an evil in the
tribe. With these sore notions keeping him awake, he saw the night wane
into gray, and then he heard the distant snort of a horse. He looked,
and started from his blankets, for the soldiers had come, and he ran to
wake the sleeping Indians. Frightened, and ignorant why they should be
surrounded, the Sioux leaped to their feet; and Stirling, from where he
sat on his horse, saw their rushing, frantic figures.

"Go quick, Kinney," he said to the interpreter, "and tell them it's
peace, or they'll be fir