They believe that it warded off sickness, caused happiness, prosperity, many children, success in war, and plenty of buffalo for all the people. It was frequently vowed by persons in danger from sickness or the enemy.[44] Sometimes a medicineman danced to intercede for a sick man. A sick man who had vowed to attend the dance in order to be cured would be carried into the dance lodge, but he would not dance. These dancers make offerings to the _tai´me_. They do not pay the doll keeper in order to enter the dance, and they have no rights in any subsequent performance by reason of having once participated. Like all other dancers they must fast and go without water during the period that they dance; they can however, smoke, provided the proper rites are observed. ... The pipe was filled, brought forward, and laid upon the ground; the person, carefully turning the stem towards the fire, and bedding it in the sand, so that the bowl should remain in an upright position, arose and stood with his back towards it, or facing the medicine. It was then approached by one of the musicians, who, in a squatting position, raised his hand reverently towards the sun, the medicine, the top of the central post, or buffalo; then, passing his hands slowly over the pipe, took it up with his left hand, and taking a pinch from the bowl with the thumb and fore finger of the right, held it to the sun, the medicine, the top of the central post, then the bottom, and finally covered it up in the ground. He then proceeded to light the pipe, blowing a whiff of smoke towards the several objects of adoration, and placed it carefully where he found it, in reversed order, that is, with the stem from the fire. The person who brought it had stood waiting all this time for it. He now took it up and retired to the dancers, who, wrapped in buffalo robes, were waiting, in a squatting position, to receive it. The sand where the pipe had lain was carefully smoothed by the hand, and all marks of it wholly obliterated.[45] These dancers are painted white; they wear white buckskin kilts, with the breechclout outside, carry bone whistles, and are barefoot. They have no headdress, wrist or ankle ornaments. They paint themselves.[46] There is only one style of paint used by either the principal or the common dancers throughout the sun dance.