Near the center of the camp, and apart from the others, the powerful society of Brave Dogs had their lodges where they kept their weapons and dance clothes. In their society lodge they gathered to feast and dress for their ceremonies and social dances, which took place at all times, both day and night. They were the police of the tribal camp. The head men looked to the Brave Dogs to enforce their orders. They saw that all the tepees were in their proper places and the big camp was symmetrically formed. CHAPTER XXXVI LIFE IN THE CIRCLE CAMP The first day of the big camp, the Indians were all outside their lodges, eager to see friends and on the lookout to greet those who came from a distance. Excitement was in the air. Packs of dogs ran barking through the camp. Men and boys galloped over the hills, shouting and singing, rounding up bands of horses and driving them to water, picketing them in the meadows and driving others to feed on the grassy hills. Women were at work cooking, stacking lodge-poles or handling unwieldy covers flapping in the wind. My lodge was pitched in the band of the Hard-Top-Knots, near Mad Wolf’s tepee, where the ceremony of the Sun Dance was taking place. I shared it with Little Creek and Strikes-on-Both-Sides, my Indian sister, and their children, also Tears-in-Her-Eyes, a niece of Mad Wolf’s, a baby of six months whom Strikes-on-Both-Sides adopted, because the mother had died in childbirth. Near by was the lodge of Morning Eagle, an aged warrior, the hero of many battles. He was so old and decrepit he had to be lifted from his horse. Every morning before sunrise, he wakened me, singing his medicine songs. He was not musical and they all sounded alike; the only variation being slight changes in the rhythm, or in the bird or animal calls, at the end of each song. On a cold and rainy day, he crawled from his tepee to drive back the storm. In spite of his age and rheumatism, he sat in the wind and rain, singing and praying to the Maker of the Storm. Another neighbor was Little Owl, who had a large family. I watched them every day at their outside fire. His pretty young wife, Coming Running, was tall and slender, with jet-black hair, which hung in heavy braids below her waist. Strong and healthy, she was always at work, with a flock of small children about her. She had many cares—a babe in arms and a small daughter with a dangerous abscess, and two visitors to entertain from the Flathead tribe. Yet she was always smiling and in a good humor. I did not hear her complain or speak an angry word. She had a little play-tepee for the children, made by a blanket fastened round a cluster of poles. There they kept their playthings—dolls with deerskin suits decorated with real beads and feathers, dolls in baby cases, also little robes and blankets and cooking utensils. The boys had bows and arrows, and stilts made of cottonwood, crooked sticks for hobbyhorses and wooden tops.