“But when I was about seventeen winters old, a long dust of horseback soldiers with their wagons came down upon Pa Sapa, and I heard their chief was Long Hair. They came to look and went away; but they had seen the yellow metal [gold] that makes Wasichus crazy; and I think the whole Wasichu nation heard about it. So when the young grass came again and died, big trouble started.” XXIII _Fighting the Gray Fox_ As the old man had foreseen, a melting wind had risen with the waning of the softened day, and the night came roaring with no cloud. Next morning, when again we sat together, the puffing wood-fire grumbled to the gusts of false April, and the tepee canvas bellied, whipping the poles. “It was a wind like this,” said Eagle Voice; “a big wind, strong and roaring, but it was full of snow and cold. I think I was eighteen winters old that time, and it was in the Moon of Snowblinds [March]. We of the Oglala band had our winter village in the valley of the Powder, not far from where the Little Powder comes in. I think there were fifty or sixty lodges of us; and when our Cheyenne friends came from Red Cloud’s agency to visit and trade with us, I think there were a hundred smokes in our village. We had plenty of _papa_ and _wasna_ and buffalo robes, and the Cheyennes came with powder and guns and canvas tepees they had got from the Wasichus. Also, they came with more word of the big trouble about Pa Sapa. They were saying down yonder that the Wasichus would drive us into those little islands that Wooden Cup had seen long ago; and there we would have to turn ourselves into Wasichus, so that our country could be taken from us. We knew that Gray Fox [General Crook] was in the country and that he had many walking soldiers and horsebacks waiting for the young grass. I was out on a hunting party just before this happened that I am going to tell you, and we saw some of the soldiers. But it was long before the grass, and not yet the time for war, so we were not afraid. “When our Cheyenne friends came to visit us, there was feasting, for we had plenty, and I heard much talk around the fire at night about the trouble, and about a big village the crazy Wasichus had built in Pa Sapa. But there was talk about the old times, too, when everything was better; and old men told stories that were good to hear, so that those who told and we who heard did not sleep soon.