One among the many traditions connected with the charming but weird place was told by an aged warrior of the Comanches one evening, around the camp-fire, in 1868, after white-winged Peace had spread her wings once more over the prairies, and we were pulling vigorously at our "brier-woods" filled with fragrant "Lone Jack." The old fellow, wrinkled and black with the smoke of the tepee in which he had lived for nearly eighty years, and now wrapped in that of his stone pipe, which he sucked as industriously as an infant, told this story: There was once, ages before the white man had invaded the country of the Indian, a very old warrior, who, sick and despondent, went to the top of Medicine Bluff to be cured. He for many years had ceased to hunt the buffalo, lived with the women of the tribe, and settled himself down to a peaceful calm, awaiting the time when he should be called to join his fathers. One day he struggled to the top of the bluff in the hope that he might die and be carried bodily to the happy hunting-grounds, as he knew from the traditions of his tribe others had been before him. He had been absent from his lodge and the village for three nights. During all that time the frightened people down below, who had been diligently watching, observed a great blaze on the top of the mountain, as if it were a signal-fire to warn them of some impending danger to the tribe. On the third morning a young warrior was seen descending the trail from the heights of the bluff, drawing near to the village. When he entered its streets he looked about him in evident surprise. He approached the chief's lodge and sat down by the fire. The warriors of the tribe gazed at him with awe and that curiosity which a stranger ever evokes. No one seemed to recognize him. All remained silent, waiting for him to speak. Lighting his pipe with a coal, he took a pull at it himself, Indian fashion, then passed it around the circle. The warriors noticed that his pipe-stem was decorated with the feathers of the gray eagle, denoting him to be a great warrior, one who had captured a large number of scalps, so they regarded him with still greater wonder. After every one in the circle around the chief's fire had taken a whiff, the stranger commenced his story: "After I arrived at the top of the Medicine Bluff, I looked off at the vast expanse which surrounded me. I saw the village of my people; I could hear the dogs bark and the children laugh; I could hear my own family mourning, as if some one had been taken from them; I saw the buffalo covering the prairie, and the cunning wolf lying in wait to pounce upon his prey. When I again looked all around me, and beheld the young warriors in their pride and strength, I asked myself: 'Why do I live any longer? My fires have gone out. I must follow my fathers. The world is beautiful to the young, but to the old it has no pleasure. I will go there!'