“I was alone with him in his tepee,” Eagle Voice replied, “and a little fire made the light. He looked hard at me for a long time when I had spoken, then he said: ‘You have seen in a sacred manner and your praying has come alive. By the lightning and the thunder and the rain that fell about you, the power to make live and to destroy will protect you to the end of the black road, and the road will be long. You shall breathe the dust of battles, counting many coups, and shall not be hurt. You shall travel far and see strange peoples; but the sacred hoop of all the peoples under the flowering tree, you shall not see by the light of the sun. It was your father talking through the eagle. Hold fast to the vision Wakon Tonka has sent you, and pray for the strength to understand it. _Hetchetu aloh!_’ “Then he waved his hand, and I went out into the low day. I was very hungry.” IX _The Old Bull’s Last Fight_ Dry snow had fallen in the night, and it was scurrying drearily under a dull sky when I reached the old man’s tepee the next morning. He sat smoking serenely with his blanket tucked about his waist and legs. “I thought you might not come, Grandson,” he said; “but you are here, and it is good.” When we had smoked awhile together, he began: “We are going on my first war party today, and it is very bad weather for fighting; but no snow has fallen in my story. The grass is getting strong; the animals are making fat; there is a warm wind blowing; and I am just a boy with long legs. “After my vision quest people noticed me more than before, and they did not treat me like a little boy. So when it was time for a war party to start out, I went along on Whirlwind. There were thirty-seven of us, and we were not all Oglalas. Some of us were Miniconjous and Sans Arcs, and a few were Cheyennes, for we had camped together along the valley of the Greasy Grass that winter. Some of us were only boys getting started to be men; some had been in many fights and had scars to show; and there were a few who almost could have been the grandfathers of the boys. “Crazy Horse was leading the party, and he was already getting a big name then, for he had a mysterious power. People talked about him, and told stories of his deeds in fights with the Crows and Shoshonis. Also he had fought the soldiers when the hundred were killed on the ridge, and that was a story too. He was not a big man, for I was even then almost as tall as he; and he was not a little man either; just above a little man, and he was not fat at all. He was slender and very strong; and his face was lean too. It looked sharpened like an arrowhead. They said he never wanted anything for himself but a good horse and weapons to fight for his people, and that he always gave everything away.