At last I could stand it no longer, and I said to him, “Let us turn off the trail, and go along a divide where no one is likely to follow us.”  We started, loping.  After we had gone some distance we stopped, took off our bridles, and again lay down, looking back over the way we had come.  The night was dark, but we could see a little, and we watched and listened.  Still my horse would not eat, but kept looking back over the trail.  Suddenly, my friend said, “There he is.  Do you see?” I looked, and looked, but could see nothing.  “Where is it?” said I. With my head close to the ground I looked in the direction in which he pointed, but could see nothing.  My friend saw it move, however.  I said to him, “Here, let us change places;” and I moved to his place, and he to mine.  Then I looked, and in a moment I saw just in front of my face a weed-stalk, and when I moved my head the stalk moved.  This was what he had seen.

For the first time since this feeling had come over me in the afternoon I laughed, and with a rush my courage came back to me.  I felt as brave and cheerful as ever.  All through the evening I had not wished to smoke, and if I had wished to, I should have been afraid to light my pipe.  Now I filled my pipe, lighted it, and we smoked.  When I laughed my friend’s courage came back too.  We lay down and slept, and the next day went on to the village.

A Sacrifice.

During the next two years I went to war five times, always as a servant, but always I had good luck.  This was because early, after my first trip to war, I had asked an old man, one of my relations, to teach me how to make a sacrifice which should be pleasing to those spirits who rule the world.

It was in the early summer, when the grass was high and green, not yet turning brown, that, with this old man, Tom Lodge, I went out into the hills to suffer and to pray, to ask for help in my life, and that I might be blessed in all my warpaths.  Tom Lodge had told me what I must do, and before the time came I had cut a pole, and brought it and a rope, and a bundle of sinew, and some small wooden pins near to the place where we were to go, and had hidden them in a ravine.

It was before the sun had risen that we started out, and when we came to the hill where the things were, I carried them to the top of the hill, and there Tom Lodge and I dug a hole in the soil with our knives, and planted the pole, stamping the earth tightly about it, and then putting great stones on the earth, so that the pole should be held firmly.  Then Tom Lodge tied the rope to the pole, and with sinew tied the pins to the rope, and then holding the pins and his knife up to the sun, and to the sky, and then placing them on the earth, he prayed to all the spirits of the air, and of the earth, and of the waters, asking that this sacrifice that I was about to make should be blessed, and that I should have help in all my undertakings.  Then he came and stood before me,