He had necklaces of grizzly bears' claws, others of the beaks of eagles and vultures, and beneath his white beaver robe was the ghost shirt, painted with red hieroglyphics and symbols intelligible only to the medicine chiefs. His hands were painted blood red, and hanging to a string of braided scalps was a hatchet painted a carmine hue. As he went along he chanted a weird song, yet his keen eyes seemed to take in the country thoroughly as he approached the Bad Lands. And such a country, if so it could be called, for it was wild and barren to the extreme of desolation. The surroundings were seamed and scarred with ravines, rocks, and desert patches. A table land, or what the Indians called a mesa, arose abruptly from the plain surrounding, and could only be reached by two or three passes, one coming in from the Cheyenne River, which was wild, precipitous, and dangerous to ascend. Ascending this steep, winding pass, the medicine chief halted, and gazed about him by the fast receding light, for the sun was upon the horizon. The _mesa_ was many miles long, and several in width in some places, and almost as desolate as the plains surrounding it. Over in one corner, securely sheltered, the camp of the hostiles was discernible, for the camp fires began to brighten in the gathering twilight. Indian guards were stationed at the passes, and scouts in small bands were encircling the plateau, to warn the camps of the approach of a foe. The approach of the medicine man had been signaled by the scouts, and the guards at the pass crowded about him, and yet with seeming awe and respect, for not a word did they utter. The stranger half-straightened up, shaded his eyes and glanced toward the eastern skies, yet rosy with the sunset, and bent low again. Then he turned toward the other direction, unshaded his eyes, and seemed to regard the darkened skies as though he could read there omens of good or evil. In silence he passed on toward the distant camps of the hostiles. In the same bent posture he entered the village of tepees, making his way along toward the medicine lodge of the Brules.[7] The medicine chief of the Brules was a cunning old fox, very infirm, however, from his years, and yet one who could mold his people to his will. Suddenly the strange medicine chief, wearing the white beaver robe[8] of honor, entered the sacred precincts of the medicine tepee, and said in a low voice: "The Moon Eyes has come to see by night what the Sun Gazer cannot behold in the darkness. The Moon Eyes has come from the foes of our people, and he wears the ghost shirt to kill, and the red tomahawk." The Sun Gazer, for such was the name of the Brule medicine chief, at once welcomed the stranger to the tepee, and the two talked long and earnestly together. At last the Moon Eyes arose and glided from the tepee, making his way about the Indian village, and gradually edging toward the pass nearest the Cheyenne River.