The old woman outside called to them, “Friends, is it smoking in there now?”

“Not a bit,” replied Cold Maker.  “We are very comfortable.”

She waited.  They did not come out.  She stood near the door.  Her stone club was ready.  She grew impatient.  She wondered what had gone wrong with her plans.  The two friends were silent.  She looked at the smoke hole, but it was closed securely.  She lifted the door covering to see if the friends within had died.  They sat perfectly still.  She entered to look more closely, and as soon as she was fairly inside Cold Maker and Broken Bow rushed out and dropped the door covering.  Before she could move they piled great heaps of stone in the door-way.  The bears growled.  She called for help.  Cold Maker and Broken Bow went on down the river.

Then Cold Maker took from a little sack a few white eagle-down feathers.  He blew them from him.  At once a fierce storm blew across the valley.  The bitter cold froze the water, but only in this one place.  It dammed the stream with fast forming ice.  The water rose higher and higher.  It spread out over the banks.  Cold Maker and Broken Bow went far off on the hills and watched it.  Little by little it rose.  It reached the stone lodge.  The bears roared.  The woman screamed.  The water reached the top and covered the lodge from sight.  All sound ceased.  A moment more, and the water was quiet.  Once more Cold Maker blew from him a few white eagle-down feathers.  The storm subsided.  It became warm again.  The ice melted.  The water retreated to its channel.

Cold Maker and Broken Bow went to the stone lodge.  The woman was lying beside the pot.  The grizzly bears were close to the stones which blocked the door-way.

Cold Maker said, “Here is your new robe,” and Broken Bow took from the bears their thick, warm skins.

On his way home Cold Maker again passed the Sand Hills.  Entering the country was an old woman bent with age and crippled.

He hurried on.

THE ALL COMRADES SOCIETIES

In the Blackfeet tribe was an association known as the All Comrades.  This was made up of a dozen secret societies graded according to age, the members of the younger societies passing, after a few years, into the older ones.  This association was in part benevolent and helpful and in part to encourage bravery in war, but its main purpose was to see that the orders of the chiefs were carried out, and to punish offences against the tribe at large.  There are stories which explain how these societies came to be instituted, and this one tells how the Society of Bulls began.

THE BULLS SOCIETY

It was long, long ago, very far back, that this happened.  In those days the people used to kill the buffalo by driving them over a steep place near the river, down which they fell into a great pen built at the foot of the cliff, where the buffalo that had not been killed by the fall were shot with arrows by the men.  Then the people went into the pen and skinned the buffalo and cut them up and carried the meat away to their camp.  This pen they called piskun.