I fell asleep, and my dream was worse than my waking vision. I saw our camp within the barricade a wreck, with smouldering heaps of lodges, and scalped bodies strewn among them. The dream was so real, so terrible that the force of it woke me and I came to myself standing and tensely gripping my rifle. I looked up to the north and was astonished. The Seven Persons had nearly completed their nightly course; morning was at hand. How could I have slept so long? I sprang up and saddled my horse, watered him, and, mounting in the light of the half-moon, again took up the trail to the west. When I had gone two or three miles from my camping-place my horse raised his head and neighed loudly. I angrily checked his attempt to neigh again and probably betray my presence to some enemy near by. When he pulled on his bit and pranced sidewise, eager to go on, I fought his attempts and looked up and down the rise in front of me as far as I could see in the moonlight. I listened and heard the far-off but unmistakable howling of dogs. How my heart rose at the sound of it! Ahead was the camp of the Pikuni, I was sure. Crows or other enemies would not dare bring their women and children so far into Blackfoot country. I let my eager horse go. We fairly flew up over the next rise and then over another, and there at the foot of it, in the light of breaking day, scattered up and down a willow-fringed streamlet, were the lodges of my people and their herds of horses blackening the valley. Smoke was rising from several of the lodges as I rushed into the camp, sprang from my horse in front of White Wolf's lodge, and dived into it. "Hurry! Hurry! Call the warriors! The cut-throats are at our camp! Oh, why were you so slow in coming?" I all but shouted. "Now, calm yourself! Excited ones can't talk straight--" White Wolf began. But his head wife interrupted him by springing to my side, grabbing my arm, and fiercely crying, "My son--Pitamakan! What of him?" "Somewhere near here, looking for you," I answered; and with a queer, choking croon of relief she sank back upon her couch. "If we are too late, it is Far Thunder's fault," White Wolf said to me sternly. "His message was that the cut-throats were encamped upon their own river in the north. Why should we hurry, then, when they were more than twice as far from you as we were? Well, tell us how it is!" I explained our situation in a few words, but, few as they were, they set White Wolf afire. "There is no time to lose! Come! Quick to Big Lake's lodge!" We ran and burst in upon the head chief, who was still lying under his robes. I had not half finished telling why I had come when he had one of his women running for the camp-crier. Five minutes later the crier and several volunteers were hurrying up and down the long camp calling out the warriors and ordering the clan chiefs and the chiefs of the bands of the All Friends Society to hurry to a council in Big Lake's lodge.