Far up the river the blue haze of the sky-fringed woodland blended into the purple shadow beneath the contrasting yellow of the bluffs, that looked down into the smooth waters, upon their own scarred and wrinkled images crowned with golden crowns by the last scant sunlight. The cottonwoods placed their long shadows like soothing fingers on the muddy madness of the central stream. The Night awakened in the east and stretched its long black arms into the west, and the glory vanished. The distant woodland and the bluffs grew into indistinguishable masses. The river became a faint film above a lower concave of dawning stars. The camp fires in the village reared long towers of light into the darkness, then fell back into a sleepy glow. One dreaming out a sunset on the prairie cannot wonder at the exquisite hyperbole of the Omaha language; that tongue nurtured amid marvellous possibilities of fury and calm, of beauty and terror, all within the sight-tiring circle of stupendous distance. The dawn came, and by the first light the Poncas beheld their enemies camped across the valley. Upon one side the bluff fell sheer to the river; upon the other lingered a cruel and patient foe. So it happened that after many days, moans of suffering arose from the lodges on the bluff; and the Omahas laughed in their tepees, for the sound of an enemy’s wailing is sweet. The sweltering suns of the prairie September beat upon the bare summit where the village pined, and the lips of the Poncas burned with thirst, while their eyes drank of the copious floods far below them. So it chanced one day, when a cry went up through the village: “Our children are dying of thirst; let us beg mercy of our enemies!” that an unarmed brave passed out of the village and across the valley toward the camp of his foes. With tottering step he approached the tepee before which Big Axe waited. His lips were swollen and cracked; his eyes were bleared and sunken, yet they glared as the eyes of a wolf from the darkness of a cavern. In a hoarse, inarticulate whisper he spoke to the chief: “Pity my people, for they are dying of thirst!” There was lightning in the eyes of Muzape Tunga. “Badger!” he hissed; and he struck the suppliant down before him. The sun burned down the glaring blue of the west. A continuous wail arose from the suffering village like the cry of pines in a gentle wind; while from the tepees of the besiegers came the sound of merry laughter that mocked like the babble of inaccessible waters.