ndian
stoicism was gone, perspiration streamed from dark faces, eyes
became bloodshot as their owners danced with feverish vigor,
savage shouts burst forth, and the demon dance grew wilder and
wilder.

The tread of thousands of feet caused a fine, impalpable dust to
rise from the earth beneath the grass and to permeate all the
air, filling the eyes and nostrils of the dancers, heating their
brains and causing them to see through a red mist. Some fell
exhausted. If they were in the way, they were dragged to one
side; if not, they lay where they fell, but in either case others
took their places and the whirling multitude always increased in
numbers.

As far as Dick and Albert could see the Sioux were dancing.
There was a sea of tossing heads and a multitude of brown bodies
shining with perspiration. Never for a moment did the shrill,
monotonous, unceasing rhythm of the whistle cease to dominate the
dance. It always rose above the beat of the dancers, it
penetrated everything, ruled everything--this single, shrill
note, like the chant of a snake charmer. It even showed its
power over Dick and Albert. They felt their nerves throbbing to
it in an unwilling response, and the dust and the vivid electric
excitement of the dancers began to heat their own brains.

"Don't forget that we're white, Al! Don't forget it!" cried
Dick.

"I'm trying not to forget it!" gasped Albert.

The sun, a lurid, red sun, went down behind the hills, and a
twilight that seemed to Dick and Albert phantasmagorial and shot
with red crept over the earth. But the dance did not abate in
either vigor or excitement; rather it increased. In the twilight
and the darkness that followed it assumed new aspects of the
weird and uncanny. Despite the torches that flared up, the
darkness was mainly in control. Now the dancers, whirling about
the pole and straining on the cords, were seen plainly, and now
they were only shadows, phantoms in the dusk.

Dick and Albert had moved but little for a long time; the wailing
of the demon whistle held them; and they felt that there was a
singular attraction, too, in this sight, which was barbarism and
superstition pure and simple, yet not without its power. They
were still standing there when the moon came out, throwing a veil
of silver gauze over the dancers, the lodges, the surface of the
river, and the hills, but it took nothing away from the ferocious
aspect of the dance; it was still savagery, the cu