“Then when the day was going to the spirit land, some friends came leading a pony with a drag. When they had placed my father on the poles we started away towards the hills. Behind the drag was my grandfather leading the buffalo-runner; then my grandmother, then my mother, and I followed her; and behind us were relatives and those who had the gifts that made us poor. And as we walked we wept. “I remember how a big flock of crows saw us coming up a little valley, and rose with many voices of mourning and fled from us, still crying far off; and how the hills looked down at us, all listening and sorry. “Then we came up out of the valley where the shadows were growing, and in the low sunlight on a hilltop was a new scaffold that our friends had made that day. The four standing poles were stripped of bark, and the story of my father’s deeds was painted on them, to tell how brave he was. “They unhitched the pony and leaned the drag against the scaffold. Then two men climbed up and pulled the bundle to the top and tied it down with thongs against the winds. And when this was done, they led the buffalo-runner under the scaffold, with his face towards the setting sun; and just before they shot him, he lifted up his head and sent forth a great, shrill neigh, as though he were calling to my father away off yonder. “The people all went away in the twilight, and the night up there was big and still and starry; so big and still that it did not seem to know about my father and our weeping and moaning there by the scaffold. Only the coyotes heard us; and when they raised their high sharp song of sorrow and ceased, the night was bigger and stiller than before, and nothing cared. “I remember my grandfather standing still and dim and tall against the stars, facing the end of earthly days with his hands held high. Sometimes I could hear him praying aloud to Wakon Tonka, then for a long while he would just stand there holding up his hands. When I heard him asking for ‘the strength to understand and the eyes to see,’ I forgot to cry with wondering how strong I’d have to be. Maybe the buffalo-runner could understand because he was so strong; maybe he had the eyes to see; and maybe that was why he called so loud towards where the sun goes down. Maybe a buffalo bull, a very big one, could understand everything. Then I got to wondering what it would be like if I were strong as a big buffalo bull and had the eyes to see into the land of spirit. How blue would the sky be and how green the grass? If there were never any clouds, how could it rain and keep the grass from getting yellow? What was my father doing now, and had he caught his buffalo-runner yet? “Then all at once I wasn’t there on the hill any more, and I could see.