ng him around somewhere. But
there was no red sword waving. Then the white men must be blind
already, wherever they were, and Cheschapah, the only thing he could
see, sat leaning one hand on his horse's rump firing a pistol. The
ground came swimming towards his eyes always, smooth and wide like a
gray flood, but Two Whistles knew that Cheschapah would not let it
sweep him away. He saw a horse without a rider floated out of blue
smoke, and floated in again with a cracking noise; white soldiers
moved in a row across his eyes, very small and clear, and broke
into a blurred eddy of shapes which the flood swept away clean and
empty. Then a dead white man came by on the quick flood. Two Whistles
saw the yellow stripe on his sleeve; but he was gone, and there was
nothing but sky and blaze, with Cheschapah's head-dress in the middle.
The horse's even motion continued beneath him, when suddenly the
head-dress fell out of Two Whistles' sight, and the earth returned.
They were in brush, with his horse standing and breathing, and a dead
horse on the ground with Cheschapah, and smoke and moving people
everywhere outside. He saw Cheschapah run from the dead horse and jump
on a gray pony and go. Somehow he was on the ground too, looking at a
red sword lying beside his face. He stared at it a long while, then
took it in his hand, still staring; all at once he rose and broke it
savagely, and fell again. His faith was shivered to pieces like glass.
But he got on his horse, and the horse moved away. He was looking at
the blood running on his body. The horse moved always, and Two
Whistles followed with his eye a little deeper gush of blood along a
crease in his painted skin, noticed the flannel, and remembering the
lie of his prophet, instantly began tearing the red rags from his
body, and flinging them to the ground with cries of scorn. Presently
he heard some voices, and soon one voice much nearer, and saw he had
come to a new place, where there were white soldiers looking at him
quietly. One was riding up and telling him to give up his pistol. Two
Whistles got off and stood behind his horse, looking at the pistol.
The white soldier came quite near, and at his voice Two Whistles moved
slowly out from behind the horse, and listened to the cool words as
the soldier repeated his command. The Indian was pointing his pistol
uncertainly, and he looked at the soldier's coat and buttons, and the
straps on the shoulders, and the bright steel sabre