“When I awoke, the ponies were gone, the meat was gone, Black Dog was gone. I grew strong as a bear. I shrieked into the stillness! I shook my fists at the sun! I cursed Black Dog! I stumbled on over the hills and valleys, shouting, singing, hurling big words of little meaning into the yellow day. “Before night came I found the body of a dead wolf, and I fell upon it like a crow. I tore its flesh with my teeth. I called it Black Dog. I ate much. It smelled bad. I found a little stream and drank much. It was almost lost in the mud. I slept and dreamed of Paezha. I awoke, and it was day again. I found the dead wolf again. I ate. Then I was stronger and I went on into the empty yellow prairie. “Toward evening I heard a thundering, yet saw no cloud. It was the dry time. Still it thundered, thundered—yet no cloud. I ran to the top of a hill and gazed. “Bison! Bison! The prairie was full of bison, and they were feeding slowly toward the camp of my people. “I turned, I ran! I did not make a sound, tho’ I wished to cry out. I needed all my strength for running, for I had no pony. I ran, ran, ran. I fell, I got up, I fell. Night came; I walked. Morning came; still I walked. Night came; I stumbled. And in the morning I was creeping. “I do not know when I reached the camp of my people, I remember only a shouting and a sudden moving of the tribe. And then, after many bad dreams, I was awake again and the people were feasting. They had found the bison. “Then, when we were on the home trail, I learned of the treachery of Black Dog. He had told my people how he had found Half-a-Day dead upon the prairie, but was too weak to bring him back. And the people believed for a time. And Black Dog spoke soft words to Paezha, brave words to Douba Mona, until I was almost forgotten. “But now I was a great man among my people, and Black Dog could not raise his head, for he had seen hate in the people’s eyes. “And in the time of the first frosts we reached our village and Paezha became my squaw. Also I got the ponies.” Here Half-a-Day paused to fill his pipe. “It is a good story, Half-a-Day,” I said. Half-a-Day lit his pipe, stared long into the glow of the embers, for the fires had fallen, and sighed. “I have not spoken yet,” he said; “for one day in the time of the first snow, Paezha lay dead in my lodge, and my breast ached. Black Dog had killed her at the big spring. At the same place where I had first seen the look, there he killed her. “I remember that I sat beside her two sleeps and cried like a _zhinga zhinga_. And my friends came to me, whispering bitter words into my ears. ‘Kill Black Dog,’ they said. And I said: ‘Bring him here to me, and I will kill him; my legs will not carry me.’