Little Eagle gave his friend a startled look. It was true that both of them were entitled to be called warrior, but would he be made a medicine man? He had never heard of a boy of his few summers winning that honor.
“Let’s wait until we reach the winter camp,” he suggested.
“It shall be as you say,” Angry Wolf agreed.
While Angry Wolf fixed piles of leaves for their beds, Little Eagle searched in the grove and the prairie nearby. It was late in the afternoon when he returned to camp with a few berries and some roots in his hands.
Angry Wolf would have liked to sit by the fire and talk about their adventures, but Little Eagle was tired and his wound was beginning to throb. He crawled into the pile of leaves, where he fell asleep at once.
Little Eagle didn’t awaken in the morning until the sun’s rays were striking against his eyelids. Angry Wolf was cooking meat over the fire. He smiled briefly at Little Eagle.
Little Eagle gave him an answering smile.
“I’ll work hard when we reach winter camp,” he answered. “There is much that I want to learn from Clawing Bear.”
Angry Wolf loafed about the camping place while they waited for the warriors to return. Little Eagle took his cooking pot and put some of the berries in it. He tended the cooking until it was finished. He poured the stuff he had cooked into one of the bags he had used for water. He cooked another bowlful of a mixture of berries and the roots he had brought into camp. When this was done, he poured it into another bag.
The sun was going down when the warriors finally returned. They weren’t driving any Crow ponies and they didn’t have new Crow scalps at their belts. As soon as the warriors had cared for their horses and started to cook their meal, they told what they had found. Little Eagle saw the admiration in their eyes as they talked to Angry Wolf.
“You are almost as wise as a medicine man,” one of the warriors told Angry Wolf. “Your plan of building those fires completely fooled the Crows.”
“We read the trail signs,” another warrior explained. “When the Crows saw the smoke of those fires, they turned and rode away. Truly you are a wise warrior.”
“The Crows had too much of a start for us to catch them,” another warrior said.