“He will take you back,” he said; “dreams are wiser than men!” XV THE SMILE OF GOD THE Omahas were hunting bison. The young moon had been thin and bent like a bow by the arm of a strong man when they had left their village in the valley of Ne Shuga. Night after night it had grown above their cheerless tepees, ever further eastward, until now it came forth no more, but lingered in its black lodge like a brave who has walked far and keeps his blankets because the way was hard and long. All through the time of the growing and dying moon, the Omahas had sought for the bison. Upon a hundred summits they had halted to gaze beneath the arched hand into the lonely valleys from whence came no sound of lowing cows or bellowing bulls. Like the voice of Famine through the lonesome air came the _caw-caw_ of the crow. Like heaps of bleaching bones the far-off sage brush whitened. This evening as the women busied themselves with the building of the tepees, there was no crooning on their lips. The valley in which they were placing their camp was still but for the clattering of the poles, as they were placed in their conical positions, or the flap of the blankets, which were being bound about the poles for a covering. At dreary intervals a grazing pony would toss its weary head and neigh nervously, as if wondering at the stillness of its masters. The silent squaws gathered armfuls of scrub oak and plum twigs, and lit fires that lapped the blackening air with ruddy tongues and sent their voices roaring up the hills, to be answered by their echoes that came back faintly like the lowing of a phantom herd! The old men and the braves sat about the fires and no word was on their lips. From lip to lip the fragrant pipe passed, yet even its softening influence could not move to speech the lips it touched. Each face upon which the firelight fell was hideous with the gauntness of hunger. One by one the runners, sent out in search of the herds, came into camp. With a slow, swinging trot these great lean men approached, as the gaunt wolf approaches his lair in the cold light of the morning when no prey has been abroad all night. Sullen and silent they took their places in the cheerless circles about the fires. There was no need for words from them. Their expectant kinsmen looked into their faces and read the tale of their despair so readily from the drawn skin and sunken eyes that they groaned. The glow of the west fell into the greyness of ashes, as a camp fire falls when all the women sleep. Then the dark came over the eastern hills. Far into the night the braves and old men sat about the fires, speechless. As they listened, they could hear the hungry children whining in their sleep. Once a squaw, suddenly awakened from a dream near the fires, leaped to her feet and cried “_Tae!_ _Tae!_ [bison]” The hoarse cry beat against the black hills and came back like a mockery. The men gazed at each other and grinned with twitching lips.