“It was the time when leaves would be falling in my country; and when I thought about this I would feel sad, because it was far across the dark hills of water. It was in the night when she came back. Some of us Lakotas were standing outside, for it was not our time to play war in there. Sometimes we heard the hill of people roar. There was a light that flickered in a cage where we were, and Wasichus came close to look at us. They would look and look, and we were making jokes about them, but they did not know it because we made our faces stone. Sometimes we would growl and the people near us would push back, and we would look angry, but we were laughing inside. They were funny, the way they looked and looked and peeked around each other to see us. “She came out of the shadow. One of her hands was on my naked arm and one upon my naked breast--thin white hands--and she was looking up at me.” The old man ceased again and gazed awhile upon the ground with half-closed eyes. “Leaves were falling at home,” he said in a low voice, still looking at the ground. Then, raising his eyes and fixing upon me a squinting gaze that had a question in it, he continued. “She had much hair. Sometimes I think about it yet, and I see a bright cloud when the sky is white in the morning and the sun is just beginning to come. Her look was soft and kind. There was a power that went through me from her hands. Sometimes when I think about this, I remember when I was a boy and Blue Spotted Horse gave me the sacred pipe to touch, and the power went through me.” Again the old man paused, and the focus of his gaze fell beyond me. “If it was good or bad,” he continued, “I do not know. It is far away and I am old; but sometimes when I think about it, I am a boy in the night and the moon makes him want to sing, but something is afraid in the shadows. She pulled me with her look and with her white hands. I went into the dark with her. There was laughing and there were voices back there, but they were far away, far as across the hills of water. “Out in the dark was a little wagon with two wheels, and one horse pulled it. These were always going up and down the many roads in that village, and a man sat high on top to make the horse go. We got in there and the whip popped and we went fast. Her mouth was on my face; her hair was on my eyes; her hands were about my neck. I did not know what she was saying again and again, but it was like singing; and I could smell young grass when rain has fallen and the sun comes out. “There was a place where two dark roads crossed, but some little fires burned in cages on poles and made shadows. That is where we got out of the wagon, and the man on top laughed and popped his whip and went away. We climbed twice to where she lived and we were alone in that high place.” The old man ceased and began fumbling in his long tobacco sack. When he had prepared the pipe with more than necessary attention to detail, he lit it and blew a cloud.