Could it be that even now Old Bear had died, and was riding with ghosts in the spirit land?

But he looked about himself, at the slow, muddy river, at the brush and sage, the sand, the cottonwoods along the banks. At the cactus, and the shattered fragments of the skull of a buffalo that lay near it.

No, said Old Bear, I am not in the spirit land.

But perhaps the young man had come from the spirit land, in spite of the rifle, come to tell him about the buffalo? Old Bear looked after the distant figure, who had ridden away singing medicine as it had not been sung for twenty years.

And the young man was riding toward the camp of Sitting Bull. This was also the camp of Old Bear.

Old Bear turned his pony to ride after the young man, to question him, to find out what he had meant. This was, after all, Sunday, and was a medicine day, and who knew what could happen on such a day, or who the strange warrior might be, or from where he might have come.

And this morning when he had touched his shield, Old Bear had known that today was not as other days, that this day was different.

With a sudden cry Old Bear kicked his pony into a sudden gallop, racing after the figure in the distance.

Forgetting the white buffalo.

Chapter Two

With one long, yellow, thick nail, Lester Grawson picked his teeth, leaning back against the cane seat of the luxury passenger car, watching the thousands of gaslights in the great city of New York loom like candles in the black night, over the shining rails as the train entered the yards.

“No,” he growled, moving his sleeve so that it would not be touched by the black porter with his handbroom.

The porter turned to the occupants of the seat across the aisle. “Station in five minutes,” he said. “Station in five minutes.”

Suh, thought Grawson to himself.