They left the ghost country to go home, and on the fourth day the wife said to her husband, “Open your eyes.”  He looked about him and saw that those who had been with them had disappeared, and he found that they were standing in front of the old woman’s lodge by the butte.  She came out of her lodge and said to them, “Stop; give me back those mysterious medicines of mine, whose power helped you to do what you wished.”  The man returned them to her, and then once more became really a living person.

When they drew near to the camp the woman went on ahead and sat down on a butte.  Then some curious persons came out to see who this might be.  As they approached the woman called out to them, “Do not come any nearer.  Go and tell my mother and my relations to put up a lodge for us a little way from the camp, and near by it build a sweat-house.”  When this had been done the man and his wife went in and took a thorough sweat, and then they went into the lodge and burned sweet grass and purified their clothing and the Worm Pipe.  Then their relations and friends came in to see them.  The man told them where he had been and how he had managed to get his wife back, and that the pipe hanging over the doorway was a medicine pipe—­the Worm Pipe—­presented to him by his ghost father-in-law.

That is how the people came to possess the Worm Pipe.  That pipe belongs to the band of Piegans known as the Worm People.

Not long after this, once in the night, this man told his wife to do something, and when she did not begin at once he picked up a brand from the fire and raised it—­not that he intended to strike her with it, but he made as if he would—­when all at once she vanished and was never seen again.

THE BUFFALO STONE

A small stone, which is often a fossil shell, or sometimes only a queer shaped piece of flint, is called by the Blackfeet I-n[)i]s’k[)i]m, the buffalo stone.  This stone has great power, and gives its owner good luck in bringing the buffalo close, so that they may be killed.  The stone is found on the prairie, and any one who finds one is thought to be very lucky.  Sometimes a man who is going along on the prairie will hear a queer faint chirp, such as a little bird might make.  He knows this sound is made by a buffalo stone.  He stops and searches for it on the ground, and if he cannot find it, marks the place and comes back next day to look for it again.  If it is found, he and all his family are glad.  The Blackfeet tell a story about how the first buffalo stone was found.

Long ago, one winter, the buffalo disappeared.  The snow was deep, so deep that the people could not move in search of the buffalo; so the hunters went as far as they could up and down the river-bottoms and in the ravines, and killed deer and elk and other small game, and when these were all killed or driven away the people began to starve.

One day a young married man killed a prairie rabbit.  He ran home as fast as he could, and told one of his wives to hurry and get a skin of water to cook it.  She started down to the river for water, and as she was going along she heard a beautiful song.  She looked all about, but could see no one who was singing.