torious raiders did
return that way, and Junction City was most hospitable to their thirst.
The valley of the Big Horn was resonant with their homeward yells. They
swept up the river, and the agent heard them coming, and he locked his
door immediately. He listened to their descent upon his fold, and he
peeped out and saw them ride round the tightly shut buildings in their
war-paint and the pride of utter success. They had taken booty from the
Piegans, and now, knocking at the store, they demanded ammunition,
proclaiming at the same time in English that Cheschapah was a big man,
and knew a "big heap medicine." The agent told them from inside that
they could not have any ammunition. He also informed them that he knew
who they were, and that they were under arrest. This touched their
primitive sense of the incongruous. On the buoyancy of the whiskey they
rode round and round the store containing the agent, and then rushed
away, firing shots at the buildings and shots in the air, and so
gloriously home among their tribe, while the agent sent a courier
packing to Fort Custer.

The young bucks who had not gone on the raid to the Piegans thronged to
hear the story, and the warriors told it here and there, walking in
their feathers among a knot of friends, who listened with gay
exclamations of pleasure and envy. Great was Cheschapah, who had done
all this! And one and another told exactly and at length how he had seen
the cold water rise into foam beneath the medicine-man's hand; it could
not be told too often; not every companion of Cheschapah's had been
accorded the privilege of witnessing this miracle, and each narrator in
his circle became a wonder himself to the bold boyish faces that
surrounded him. And after the miracle he told how the Piegans had been
like a flock of birds before the medicine-man. Cheschapah himself passed
among the groups, alone and aloof; he spoke to none, and he looked at
none, and he noted how their voices fell to whispers as he passed; his
ear caught the magic words of praise and awe; he felt the gaze of
admiration follow him away, and a mist rose like incense in his brain.
He wandered among the scattered tepees, and, turning, came along the
same paths again, that he might once more overhear his worshippers.
Great was Cheschapah! His heart beat, a throb of power passed through
his body, and "Great is Cheschapah!" said he, aloud; for the fumes of
hallucination wherewith he had drugged others had beg