The Way of an Indian | Page 4

symbol of the Good
God's protection, he lay down to sleep. The stone giants ceased their
clamors, and all the world grew still.
White Otter was sleeping.
In his dreams came the voice of God, saying: "I have given it, given
you the little brown bat. Wear it always on your scalp-lock, and never
let it away from you for a moment. Talk to it, ask of it all manner of
questions, tell it the secrets of your shadow-self, and it will take you
through battle so fast that no arrow or bullet can hit you. It will steal
you away from the spirits which haunt the night. It will whisper to you
concerning the intentions of the women, and your enemies, and it will
make you wise in the council when you are older. If you adhere to it
and follow its dictation, it will give you the white hair of old age on this
earth, and bring you to the shadow-land when your turn comes."

The next day, when the sun had come again, White Otter walked down
the mountain, and at the foot met his father with ponies and buffalo
meat. The old man had followed on his trail, but had gone no farther.
"I am strong now, father. I can protect my body and my shadow--the
Good God has come to Wo-pe-ni-in."

II
The Brown Bat Proves Itself
Big Hair and his son, White Otter, rode home slowly, back through the
coulees and the pines and the sage-brush to the camp of the
Chis-chis-chash. The squaws took their ponies when they came to their
lodge.
Days of listless longing followed the journey to the Inyan-kara in
search of the offices of the Good God, and the worn body and fevered
mind of White Otter recovered their normal placidity. The red warrior
on his resting-mat sinks in a torpor which a sunning mud-turtle on a log
only hopes to attain, but he stores up energy, which must sooner or
later find expression in the most extended physical effort.
Thus during the days did White Otter eat and sleep, or lie under the
cottonwoods by the creek with his chum, the boy Red Arrow--lying
together on the same robe and dreaming as boys will, and talking also,
as is the wont of youth, about the things which make a man. They both
had their medicine--they were good hunters, whom the camp soldiers
allowed to accompany the parties in the buffalo-surround. They both
had a few ponies, which they had stolen from the Absaroke hunters the
preceding autumn, and which had given them a certain boyish
distinction in the camp. But their eager minds yearned for the time to
come when they should do the deed which would allow them to pass
from the boy to the warrior stage, before which the Indian is in embryo.
Betaking themselves oft to deserted places, they each consulted his
own medicine. White Otter had skinned and dried and tanned the skin

of the little brown bat, and covered it with gaudy porcupine decorations.
This he had tied to his carefully cultivated scalp-lock, where it switched
in the passing breeze. People in the camp were beginning to say "the
little brown bat boy" as he passed them by.
But their medicine conformed to their wishes, as an Indian's medicine
mostly has to do, so that they were promised success in their
undertaking.
Old Big Hair, who sat blinking, knew that the inevitable was going to
happen, but he said no word. He did not advise or admonish. He doted
on his son, and did not want him killed, but that was better than no
eagle-plume.
Still the boys did not consult their relatives in the matter, but on the
appointed evening neither turned up at the ancestral tepee, and Big Hair
knew that his son had gone out into the world to win his feather. Again
he consulted the medicine-pouch and sang dolorously to lull the spirits
of the night as his boy passed him on his war-trail.
Having traveled over the tableland and through the pines for a few
miles, White Otter stopped, saying: "Let us rest here. My medicine says
not to go farther, as there is danger ahead. The demons of the night are
waiting for us beyond, but my medicine says that if we build a fire the
demons will not come near, and in the morning they will be gone."
They made a small fire of dead pine sticks and sat around it wrapped in
the skins of the gray wolf, with the head and ears of that fearful animal
capping theirs--unearthly enough to frighten even the monsters of the
night.
Old Big Hair had often told his son that he would send him out with
some war-party under