“That night the snow came and a great wind blew, and we were alone in the little gray house. When the storm died, and it was very cold, some people came and we heard that her man was dead in the valley where the butchering began. “Looks Twice and my mother came back with my grandfather and grandmother. We lived together there until the young grass came. And then one day when she did not cry any more, and we were talking about the good days, I said, ‘I want to be your horse again. Do I have to go and eat grass?’” The old man chuckled over the memory for a while, and then he said, the warm glow spreading from his smile: “That is when we made this little gray house here where my daughter lives, and now she is getting old too. “It was a good road that we walked together, Grandson. Sometimes we were hungry, but it was a good road. Our children came to us, and when we were old, we saw our grandchildren too. It was a good road.” At this point it seemed that I had suddenly dropped out of the old man’s world, and a great distance lay between us. He sat with closed eyes, making low, plaintive sounds on his eagle-bone whistle. When he had sat thus over long, I said, “Grandfather, you still have your eagle-bone whistle; but what became of the sacred quirt?” Slowly he returned to awareness of my presence, the smile and glow warm upon his time-carved face. “When she died--” he said in a low, gentle voice that quavered a bit--“when she died, I just put it down beneath her dress, between her breasts. I would not need it any more.” THE END FOOTNOTES: [1] Here the word signifies white man; but see page 36. [2] Sioux. [3] This prayer was given to me by my old friend and teacher, Black Elk, the Oglala Sioux holy man. Transcriber’s Notes Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. Italics are represented thus _italic_.