“Twelve sleeps--water, water, water! Twelve sleeps! When the winds were asleep and the sun was showing, it was a flat blue prairie with no grass. Maybe it was like the prairie where the star nations live, and the sister in the story I told you fell through it! But no turnips on this prairie! The _peyta watah_ shook itself and breathed hard, and smoke came out of its belly; but it did not move. The sun moved and the stars, and the sunrise was no nearer. “The Thunder Beings came with lightning and a great wind that howled, and the flat blue prairie changed into dark hills that grew tall and fell, grew tall and fell. I was more afraid than I ever was before. All of us were afraid and the horses too. Sometimes I could hear them scream in the _watah’s_ belly. I was not afraid to die in a battle with enemies I could kill. But there was no enemy to fight. Maybe the quirt could not help me. If I died there in the great water, maybe I could not find the way to the spirit land, and I would be lost always in the dark hills. That is what made me afraid. If I died in the hills of water, maybe I could never find my relatives again. But I had my pipe with me, and I remembered what my father said with the voice of the eagle in my vision, ‘Hold fast to your pipe, for there is more.’ So I held fast to my pipe. Also, Pahuska was like a father to us. He laughed and told us to be brave. He had a strong heart. “We came to where the hills were smaller and the winds were asleep. Then we saw the sun again and the blue prairie; and the strange land came floating to us out of the sunrise.” XXVIII _In the Village Called Pars_ “There was another iron road,” the old man continued after a period of silence, “and we came to the village they called Pars. This village was so big that we could never see how big it was, and the tepees were made of stone. The Wasichus there could not be counted. They piled tepees on top of tepees and climbed up there so that they could have places to live. These places were full of people, all looking out like prairie dogs from their holes. There were big roads and little roads going everywhere in this village, and the people and the horses and wagons were always going everywhere with much noise and many cries. I do not know what they were doing.