“They did not hurry; but they came and came, swaying together in the wind of singing that they made--a loud wind dying, a low wind rising--loud and low, loud and low. “Some horsebacks charged from over by the Little Piney, and a great cry went up from the women on the hills. And then--the ring of boxes was a whirling cloud again with that ripping thunder in it. “They were coming faster now and we could hear their singing high above the thunder. We could see the point go dull and sharpen again, go dull and sharpen, until it was hidden in the whirling smoke. Then there was nothing to hear but the voices of the women like one great voice. “Now our warriors would go over, and it would be finished. They had given themselves to death, and what could stop them? They would go over now, and it would be finished at last.” The old man sat tense and breathless for a moment, peering narrow-eyed through and beyond the tent wall. Then the look of battle left his face and his eyes returned to mine. “It was the new medicine power,” he said wearily, “and it was stronger than ours. When they came out of the smoke, fleeing back towards the draw, they were like that blooming meadow in a hailstorm. Many, many were carrying their comrades on their backs, the wounded and the dead.” IV _Wandering to Mourn_ “We all went away from the hill back to our camp on the Peno,” the old man continued, “and I heard them say the soldiers were coming from their town. But they did not follow us. Maybe if they had followed we could have rubbed them out like the hundred on the ridge, for the anger of our people was as strong as their sorrow, and the village was full of mourning. “When they carried my father into our lodge and laid him on a buffalo robe, his face was a stranger’s and it made me afraid. His war paint was all smeared with the sweat and dust of the battle. His eyes were empty and his mouth was still open for the song he was singing to death when it took him, and the blood was black on his chest.