"It is time for our son to learn to use the bow," said White Wolf one evening when all the family was sitting in the light and warmth of the little lodge fire.

"Ai! So it is," old Red Crane exclaimed. "I will begin work on one for him to-morrow, and it shall not be a wooden bow; it shall be made of horn."

"I wouldn't take so much trouble as that," said White Wolf. "A bow of wood will be good enough for him to begin with."

"But what does my time amount to?" Red Crane asked. "I am old, old. I tell you it makes me sick when I see the younger men start out to hunt, or leave to make war against the enemy, and I can't go with them. All I can do now is to stay here in the camp. All I can do is to teach our little Sinopah; teach him to shoot and hunt; teach him to be good and kind and brave. My time is all for him. So it is that he shall have a fine little bow of horn."

"Father, don't you worry about these things," said White Wolf. "I can hunt for us all, and I can go to war. All I ask of you is to be happy. It is great work that you are doing for our little Sinopah. We are all glad that you do so much for him."

The next morning the old man went up in the hills with Sinopah to get some buffalo horns. They soon found the heads of some freshly killed animals, and took the horns from three of them, all big, shiny black horns of three- and four-year-old bulls. Back they went then to the valley and threw the horns into a hot spring, where they were to remain a couple of days and get soft.

On the third day old Red Crane took the horns out of the spring and found them so soft that they could be split with a knife as easily as if they were just soft wood. So he took them home to the lodge and began making a bow, Sinopah watching every part of the work, and asking many questions about it, so that he could some day make such bows forhimself.

First, the old man cut the horns into long splints of different size, the larger ones an inch wide, and a quarter of an inch thick. The larger pieces were for the middle of the bow, the smaller ones for the ends, and all were neatly shaved, so as to lap closely one on the other,—to splice, as such work is called; all the pieces being stuck together with a very strong waterproof glue made by boiling down the hoofs of the buffalo. When this was done, the old man scraped the bow with sandstone, and then a knife, until from end to end it was as smooth as glass, and of the right shape, heavy and thick in the middle, and from there tapering each way out to the tips. Lastly, to make the bow all the stronger, and springy, he glued strips of sinew to its whole outer length, and wrapped it with sinew bands about four inches apart. When finished, the bow was about three feet long.

The next thing was to string the bow with a fine cord of twisted sinew, and then the arrows were made, the shafts of straight, hard, heavy greasewood, the points of thin iron bought from the traders, and the feathering of quills of wild-goose wings.

The old man made eleven of these iron-pointed arrows, and then went to work on another shaft with which he took especial pains, working a whole evening in just scraping and polishing it, and soaking it full of grease. Sinopah, watching him, grew restless, and asked why he worked so long on just one arrow shaft.

"Because this is to be a medicine arrow; a lucky arrow," Red Crane replied.

He then took from his own quiver an arrow that had a very small, thin, sharp point of black obsidian, or natural glass. In the Yellowstone country there is a whole mountain of such stuff.

"Now, I am going to take this point off and fasten it on this shaft," said the old man, "and you are never to use it except when in danger. My father made the point for me, and three different times it has saved my life. By that you can see it is great medicine."

"Oh, grandfather! Tell me about it," said Sinopah, snuggling up to him and hanging onto his hand so that he could not work.

"Well, you shall hear," the old man answered, lifting the boy into his lap and smoothing the hair back from his forehead. "Ai! But the first time was long ago. Why, I was not much older than you are now. My father had made a horn bow and twelve arrows for me. Eleven of the arrows had common white flint points and the twelfth one carried this fine black one. Just as I tell you now, my father told me then: I was not to use it except when in great danger.

"One day I went hunting with two boy friends. It was a very hot day and we walked in the timber close to the river. In my left hand I carried my bow and two arrows; one a common arrow, the other having this medicine point. All the rest of the arrows were in a quiver slung at my back.

"My two friends walked in the middle of the timber and near the river, and I kept at the outer edge of it. After a long time I came to a very thick patch of willows, so very thick that I could not see into it. In there I heard a queer noise; a snuffling noise, and little faint cries as of something in great pain, just such a noise as a dog makes when it is badly hurt. I thought it was a dog, one of our camp dogs, that had got hurt and had come out there to die. So I pushed into the thicket, and suddenly came face to face with a big wolf. Now, wolves, as you know, never harm any one. They are afraid of man. But this wolf was different. A big fluff of white foam covered its mouth, and by that I knew it was a mad wolf, and very dangerous. When it saw me it raised up and made ready to jump at me, and at the same time I fitted the medicine arrow to my bow. The wolf opened its mouth and made ready to jump at me, and I shot the arrow right down its throat. It did jump, but never touched me. It fell almost at my feet and died, and I got back the arrow.

"The next time I used the arrow-point was some winters later. I had grown to be a man. I had taken the point off from the little arrow-shaft, and fitted it onto one such as men use. I had been running buffalo one day, and killed four with my common arrows. Then I shot a big, fat cow, and at the same time my horse fell and broke its leg. The cow was only wounded, and very mad. She charged me and I jumped to one side and fired a common arrow at her; it only stuck in her shoulder.

"Four times she turned and charged me, and four times I fired an arrow, but none of them did any good. I had but the one arrow left, this one with the medicine point. I made a little prayer, fitted it to the bow, and then shot it when the cow turned to charge me again. Straight into her heart it went and down she fell, and I was saved."

"Yes, that makes two times; now tell about the last one," said Sinopah, for the old man had stopped talking and was looking with dreamy eyes at the fire.

"Oh, yes, the last time," Red Crane answered, sitting up straight again. "No. I will not tell you about that, because you might have bad dreams about it. All I can say is that I had a fight with a Crow chief and killed him with the medicine arrow."

Sinopah wanted to know all about the fight, but he had now become very sleepy, and was put on his couch before he had time to ask more questions.

On the next day old Red Crane made more arrow shafts, these being made sharp at the end, instead of having iron points. They were for shooting at marks, and for a long time the old man made Sinopah practice with them every day. At first he shot them at little sagebrush bushes, or a piece of robe thrown onto a bush; but after a couple of moons he was taught to shoot at a ball of grass thrown up in the air. He became so skillful that he could pierce it nearly every time.

Then, one morning after the early bath in a hole cut in the ice, old Red Crane took Sinopah out to hunt with the real arrows. It was a very cold morning; the trees were covered with thick, white frost, and all up and down the valley they were popping with a noise like rifle-shots, while the ice on the river heaved and cracked with a rumbling like that of far-off thunder.

Not far below the camp they heard prairie chickens (sharp-tailed grouse) clucking, and presently saw a number of them sitting in a small cottonwood tree. The birds felt so cold that they sat all crouched on the tree limbs, and paid no attention to the man and boy approaching them.

"Well, you are close enough to them now," Red Crane told Sinopah when they had got so near that they could see the shiny black eyes of the chickens.

Sinopah dropped his robe then and fitted an arrow to his bow, one of the arrows with iron point, and took aim at a bird at the top of the tree.

"No, no! You must not shoot that one," Red Crane said, "for it would drop fluttering down among the rest and scare them all away. Shoot at the very lowest bird in the tree."

Sinopah took quick aim and let the arrow fly; and as the bow-cord twanged the chicken fell down from the limb with the arrow in it, and after a few flutters of its wings lay still on the blood-stained snow. Sinopah never said a word, but his snapping eyes showed how excited and happy he was as he shot another arrow at the next lowest bird in the tree.

This time he missed, but a third arrow brought the chicken down, and three more arrows got two more birds. He was about to shoot at a fifth bird when Red Crane seized his arm: "That is enough," he said. "You have one for your mother, one for your father, one for yourself, and one for me. Remember this: the gods do not love wasters of life. They made the animals and birds for our use, but we may kill no more than we need."

Sinopah never forgot that. Afterwards, during all his life, he was careful never uselessly to take the life of beast or bird. Most of the white hunters of our country have not done that. They have killed the buffalo and deer, the pigeons and ducks and other birds, just for the fun of seeing them die. Had they shot only just enough for food, there would still be plenty of game from one end to the other of our great land.

Having picked up the four chickens, and the arrows that had been shot, the old man and the little hunter started back toward home. Had you been in Sinopah's place, without mittens on that cold morning, you would have had your fingers frozen stiff. But he never felt the cold, and his hands were almost as active as on a summer morning. That was because he had to bathe in the frozen river every day.

On their way through the timber near camp they saw a cotton-tail rabbit sitting in the edge of a rose-brush thicket. "I would like to have it," said Red Crane, "but not unless you can kill it when it is running. Now, fit an arrow to your bow and see what you can do when I throw one of these chickens that way."

They were only forty or fifty feet from the rabbit. The old man tossed a chicken and the little animal started off on the jump through the snow, passing right in front of Sinopah. He aimed about a foot ahead of it, and zip! the arrow struck it fairly just behind the shoulder. It was a fine shot. Sinopah shouted as he ran to pick it up, and when he returned and held the rabbit up before Red Crane, the old man shouted too and made a little prayer of thanks to the gods. "Never was there such a fine boy as this one you have given us," he said.

IT WAS A FINE SHOT

And at home he said to White Wolf: "Now, listen! Sinopah is going to be a great chief. I know that he is."

"I believe you," White Wolf replied. "I am very proud of him."