At length he slowly lifted his hand, palm up, and extended his long, powerful arm toward the heavens. Then he said: “When I last saw you, my friends, I was less than a man. My soul was in the hands of the Dakotas. Or else it was rotting on the desert in the rains and drying to dust in the suns. I went out to find another soul.
“I had lain down and asked for a dream and the dream only told me to go out from among my people and follow an invisible guide. I saw no guide, but still I was led for a great distance. I was not told to take a horse, and therefore I left a horse behind me. I did not say farewell to my children or to my wives. I let everything stay behind. Nothing matters to a man so much as his soul.” Here he paused. He lowered the arm that had been raised as though invoking divine witness to the truth of his words. He went on, after a moment: “I was led through many days of marching. But though I had little food, I was not hungry and I was not tired. I was supported by the thing that led me. At last I came to the place where the great river comes to a fork, and above the fork it has two arms. One arm goes north and the other arm goes west. Where they meet, there is an island.” He paused and looked about him for confirmation.
Rising Hawk said gravely: “I myself have seen that island in the last seven days.”
“Do you know what it is now?” asked Standing Bull.
“I know,” said Rising Hawk, and said no more, as though he intended to keep his information secret until the end of the tale, thereby being prepared to check its correctness. This made all heads turn for an instant toward Rising Hawk. Excitement apparently was rising fast. This story would be corroborated or completely disproved by an adequate witness.
“Good,” said Standing Bull. “I do not say the thing that is not true. Therefore I am glad that Rising Hawk has seen the place. But when I came to it the spirit that conducted me told me to stay there and lie down. I lay down on my right side, with my head to the east and with my face to the north. I lay on my right side for a long time, waiting for something to happen.
“After a while I began to grow hungry, but more than the hunger was the thirst, and that thirst was like a fire in me, and all the while I could hear the running of the water among the stones in the bed of the river. Sometimes I fell asleep and dreamed that I was the bed of the river and that the cool water was running through my mouth. But I always waked up and found that I still lay on the hard ground. And my bones began to press through my flesh. My muscles asked me to turn, only a little bit, because they were dying. Still I would not turn. I did not want to get up and go away. I did not care to live if I had no soul. All at once, in the middle of a sleep, a voice said to me . . . ‘Stand up and follow me.’
“I knew that it was a spirit. I tried to get up, but I was too weak to move. Then the spirit said . . . ‘Your body cannot get up, so leave it behind you.’ Then I tried to throw out my thought after the spirit, and all at once I felt as though my body were falling down through thin air. The next moment I was standing on my feet. I looked down, and in the starlight I saw that I was still lying on the ground. Then I knew that my soul had come away from my body. I heard the spirit call again. I walked. And at one step I crossed to the farther bank of the river. I could see the spirit now. It was an old man with feathers in his hair. He had the ghost of a war bow and stone-pointed arrows in his hand, and the ghost of a painted robe was flying over his shoulders in the wind. He smiled and reached out his hand. ‘Come with me,’ he said. He began to walk up through the air. I followed him, and it was as easy to walk up through the air as it was to walk along the ground. Every step we took was longer than the width of this camp.
“After a while we came to the tops of some mountains and we sat down to rest. We could see all the rivers spread out at our feet. Only, to the north and east, there was a shadow on the earth. I said to my guide . . . ‘What is that?’ ‘It is the land of the Dakotas,’ he answered me. Then we stood up and walked through the air again, always going higher, until we reached the clouds. Our bodies were so light that it was rather hard work to walk through them. It was like going in mud. At last we came to the top of the clouds and I saw the sky country filled with Sky People.”
He paused again and looked down with a frown. There was a most breathless silence while the others attended this strange narration. Torridon looked to the chief, expecting that his superior intelligence and experience would at once penetrate the deceit, but, instead, the nostrils of the old man were quivering and his hollow chest heaved with a passionate joy and belief.
“When I try to remember what was up there,” said Standing Bull with a sort of baffled dignity, “my mind walks through darkness. However, I met many good Indians up there. I remember I heard a sound like ten thousand warriors all shouting for battle. I asked what it was and they told me that it was the sound of the wind whistling through the robe of Heammawihio as he strides across the sky country. I remember, too, that I stood before a man as tall as a mountain. He looked like a mountain when it turns blue in the evening. I kneeled before him and begged him to give me another soul. He said that he would. His voice was like the sound of a great river after the spring floods have begun. He offered me a soul in the palm of his hand, but I said . . . ‘If I go back and say that is my new soul, my people will not believe me. Give me a soul that they can see.’
“After a while he said . . . ‘You ask for a great deal, but I want to please you. You have fought bravely. I have watched you in the field and I never saw you turn away from an equal enemy. Now I am going to make a soul for you.’ He took up what looked like white clay and began to work it with his fingers, like an old woman molding a pot. After a while he leaned and breathed on it, and there was a sound like a nation singing. After that the lump of clay stood up, breathed, spoke, and was a man.”
The narrator turned to Torridon. “It was this man,” he said.
There was a stir, an intake of breath like a groan. Torridon saw beads of moisture standing on the forehead of Rising Hawk. Not a shadow of disbelief appeared on any face. These people, more simple than children, did not have to be told that it was a fairy tale they were hearing. They were willing to believe with a wonderful faith.
“‘This is your soul!’ said Heammawihio to me. ‘You had better go down to the earth at once. You had better hurry. The Underwater People are very angry because I am helping you. They want to have you and now they are sending down water devils who will destroy your body. If your body is destroyed, of course this new soul will be no good to you.’ Then he showed me where a white-headed flood was racing down the river toward the island where my body lay.
“I said . . . ‘Alas, we never can get to the body in time.’
“‘That is true,’ said the voice. ‘Then you must have horses to ride.’
“I saw his hand reach away like the shadow of a cloud that reaches across a valley in a moment. The shadow came back and put two horses beside us. One horse was like silver. One was as black as night.
“‘Which horse will you take?’ asked the voice.
“I looked at the white mare. She was like silver. I said that I would take her.
“‘You are wrong,’ said Heammawihio, ‘because the black stallion is much better than she. But they are both medicine horses. However, you chose the silver mare, and therefore you must keep her and always let your soul ride on the black stallion. Now you must go, and you had better hurry. When you come safely back to the Cheyennes tell them that they are my people. The air that I breathe is sweet with the smoke that they blow up to me.’