Stripping himself of feathers and hawk-bells and bearclaw necklace and every form of ornament, wrapped in his raggedest blanket, with a daub of mud in his hair as one who mourns, without word or sign to any concerning his purpose, the Lone Wolf turned his back on the Cimarron and wended northward. His face paints were black, for his heart was sad. The only matters about him that did not tell of woe and bankruptcy, and warn one of an Indian without fortune or future, were his pony and his arms. These showed of the best, and this weapon-care was not without a reason. More than ever would the Lone Wolf require a pony tireless as the storm and as swift, and lance and bow and knife without flaw or fault; for now when he had lost his “medicine,” he was singularly undefended and weak. No one knew better these latter helpless truths than did the Lone Wolf. It was by no means sure that a child might not overcome him—he who, but a fortnight before with his otter-skin “medicine,” had been a thunderbolt of war. Wherefore, with his heart little, his courage water, his bow an arc of weakness, his arrows no better than windle-straws, and his lance as forceless as a cornstalk—for losing one’s “medicine” means all these grievous conditions of undefence and inability to smite—it behooved the Lone Wolf to provide as much as he might, with prudence and farsighted care, in favour of a possible success. The Lone Wolf would have no help from the good ghosts, for these had left him with the lost “medicine.” What ghosts might still be riding in his disgraceful company, were bad ghosts. So far as they did anything they would do harm, not good, and the best he might look for at their hands was a sort of ghostly non-interference. There was a least slant ray to encourage the latter hope. If the Lone Wolf had the luck to cross up with a Pawnee or a Sioux as contemptible as himself, the ghosts would not choose between them. In such miserable coil of coyote-snap-coyote, the disgusted ghosts would stand afar off. They would be content with the outcome, whatever it was, and refuse to contaminate their vapourish hands by mixing in the business. That was the one favouring chance that lay before the Lone Wolf. To have full advantage of it, he wore his best weapons and rode his best war pony. If he happened upon a Pawnee or Sioux, disreputable in the eyes of gods and men, he might yet be saved from out those fires of disgrace that were consuming him. He would kill that Pawnee or Sioux, and wash himself free of stain with his victim’s “medicine.”