his vigorous, graceful figure.  He told me that upon it were the feathers of three war-eagles, equal in value to the same number of good horses.  He took up also a shield gayly painted and hung with feathers.  The effect of these barbaric ornaments was admirable, for they were arranged with no little skill and taste.  His quiver was made of the spotted skin of a small panther, such as are common among the Black Hills, from which the tail and distended claws were still allowed to hang.  The White Shield concluded his entertainment in a manner characteristic of an Indian.  He begged of me a little powder and ball, for he had a gun as well as bow and arrows; but this I was obliged to refuse, because I had scarcely enough for my own use.  Making him, however, a parting present of a paper of vermilion, I left him apparently quite contented.

Unhappily on the next morning the White Shield took cold and was attacked with a violent inflammation of the throat.  Immediately he seemed to lose all spirit, and though before no warrior in the village had borne himself more proudly, he now moped about from lodge to lodge with a forlorn and dejected air.  At length he came and sat down, close wrapped in his robe, before the lodge of Reynal, but when he found that neither he nor I knew how to relieve him, he arose and stalked over to one of the medicine-men of the village.  This old imposter thumped him for some time with both fists, howled and yelped over him, and beat a drum close to his ear to expel the evil spirit that had taken possession of him.  This vigorous treatment failing of the desired effect, the White Shield withdrew to his own lodge, where he lay disconsolate for some hours.  Making his appearance once more in the afternoon, he again took his seat on the ground before Reynal’s lodge, holding his throat with his hand.  For some time he sat perfectly silent with his eyes fixed mournfully on the ground.  At last he began to speak in a low tone: 

“I am a brave man,” he said; “all the young men think me a great warrior, and ten of them are ready to go with me to the war.  I will go and show them the enemy.  Last summer the Snakes killed my brother.  I cannot live unless I revenge his death.  To-morrow we will set out and I will take their scalps.”

The White Shield, as he expressed this resolution, seemed to have lost all the accustomed fire and spirit of his look, and hung his head as if in a fit of despondency.

As I was sitting that evening at one of the fires, I saw him arrayed in his splendid war dress, his cheeks painted with vermilion, leading his favorite war horse to the front of his lodge.  He mounted and rode round the village, singing his war song in a loud hoarse voice amid the shrill acclamations of the women.  Then dismounting, he remained for some minutes prostrate upon the ground, as if in an act of supplication.  On the following morning I looked in vain for the departure of the warriors.  All was quiet in the village until late in the forenoon, when the White Shield, issuing from his lodge, came and seated himself in his old place before us.  Reynal asked him why he had not gone out to find the enemy.