“My grandmother and grandfather came to mourn with my mother and me; and two good old women came also. It was the way they would come to help a baby get started right to live in this world, and now they came to help him go away to the world of spirit. They washed him all clean and rubbed his body with sacred red paint. Then they unbraided his hair and combed it, and when it was all clean and shiny, they braided it again very carefully and tied an eagle feather in it for spirit power. And when this was done, they painted his face, with a young moon on his forehead, blue for the west where it would lead him. There all the days of men have gone, and the black road of trouble ends. The grass is green forever there and the sky is always blue and men and animals are happy together. There nothing is afraid and no one is old. Then they dressed him in a fine buckskin dress that my grandmother had made for him; tanned very soft, it was, and beautiful with beadwork and porcupine quills. And when I looked at him I was not afraid any more; but I cried hard when they wrapped him in a buffalo robe and tied it tight about him with thongs until he was only a bundle, for I would never see his face again in this world, and the land of spirit was very far away. “It made me cry harder to hear my mother and grandmother mourning. I can hear my mother saying like a song: ‘He was so good to us and he always brought us plenty of meat and always gave to the old people too. And now we are all alone.’ And I can hear my grandmother singing a low sleepy song to him now and then, as though he were a baby, and I can hear her saying: ‘I fed you at these breasts when I was young and you were little. Now my breasts are dry and you have gone away, my son, and I want to go too.’ I can see my grandfather with tears shining on his cheeks in the firelight, and I can hear him singing a low song for courage over and over, so that his son would still be brave. “Afterwhile I cried myself to sleep; and it was morning. “Then some people came and my grandfather told them he wanted to give everything away. So the criers went about the village calling out to all the people: “‘Gray Bear’s son is going on a long journey and will not come back. His mother will not see him again in this world, and his woman is left alone. Let the needy come to Gray Bear, for now he has no son and he wants to give away the little he has left.’ “So people came to our lodge, mourning with us; and when they went away, we had nothing but sorrow. Only one horse we kept, my father’s buffalo-runner, and that was for him to ride on his long journey.