“Or maybe it would be a woman so very old that she could not get fat any more, and she was all skin and bones. And maybe she would be nodding over a moccasin she had been trying to bead for a long while, and her hands were like eagle claws, and her eyes dim, so that the moccasins did not ever get finished. And she would look up and squint hard at me, and say, ‘Are you not so-and-so’s son?’ And it would be somebody whose name I had not heard. I would tell her my father’s name, and she would look troubled. Then she would thank me and smile at us just like our own grandmothers, and tell us we were fine boys. “While we were going around inviting old people, my step-father went over to see Blue Spotted Horse and asked him to thank the food for us. He could do this because he was old and very wise. Also he was a holy man. He had taught me when I went on vision quest, and he had helped me in the sun dance. I was like a younger grandson to him. “The feast was ready, so we were waiting for the old people. We could see them coming from all over the village, bringing their cups and knives with them. They were all three-legged, the way I am now, for near the end of the black road there is a cane. Some of them would be all bent over and they would be holding their heads up like turtles to see where the pots were steaming. I was a boy, straight and tall, then, and that is the way they looked to me. Some would be holding their hands on their backs where it hurt them to walk. Some of them would be hurrying and some would not be hurrying at all; but one would be coming no faster than the other. “We could hear them making songs as they came, and when they got near enough, maybe the song would be like this: “‘_Hi-a-he! Hi-a-he!_ Eagle Voice, you are brave, they say, And I have heard.’ “Maybe it would start thin and high like singing, and then get tired all at once and be just muttering. “‘To be a man is difficult, they say; But you are brave and I have heard. Many horses you have brought; Many horses, I have heard. _Hi-a-he! Hi-a-he!_’