The burial scaffold of the Fire Eater’s father had rotted and fallen down with years. Time had even bent his own shoulders, filled his belly and shrunken his flanks. He now had two sons who were of sufficient age to have forgotten their first sun-dance medicine, so long had they been warriors of distinction. He also had boys and girls of less years, but a child of five snows was the only thing which could relax the old man’s features, set hard with thought and time and toil.
Evil days had come to the Buffalo Indians. The Yellow-Eyes swarmed in the Indian country, and although the red warriors rode their ponies thin in war, they could not drive the invaders away. The little bands of traders and beaver-men who came to the camps of the Fire Eater’s boyhood with open hands were succeeded by immense trains of wagons, drawn by the white man’s buffalo. The trains wound endlessly toward the setting sun--paying no heed to the Indians. Yellow-Eyes came to the mountains where they dug and washed for the white man’s great medicine, the yellow-iron. The fire boats came up the great river with a noise like the Thunder Bird--firing big medicine-guns which shot twice at one discharge.
The Fire Eater, with his brothers of the Chis-chis-chash, had run off with the horses and buffalo of these helpless Yellow-Eyes until they wanted no more. They had knocked them on the head with battle-axes in order to save powder. They had burned the grass in front of the slow-moving trains and sat on the hills laughing at the discomfiture caused by the playful fires. Notwithstanding, all their efforts did not check the ceaseless flow and a vague feeling of alarm began to pervade them.
Talking men came to them and spoke of their Great Father in Washington. It made them laugh. These talking men gave them enough blankets and medicine goods to make the travvis poles squeak under the burden. When these men also told them that they must live like white men, the secret council lost its dignity entirely and roared long and loud at the quaint suggestion.
Steadily flowed the stream of wagons over the plains though the Indians plied them with ax and rifle and fire. Sober-minded old chiefs began to recall many prophecies of the poor trappers who told how their people swarmed behind them and would soon come on.