72 ADVENTURES OF DR. ALLEN. 



the cry of wild animals, dies on the sighing winds. The 

 mourners place themselves at the graves and remain appar- 

 ently grief-stricken while the chiefs, Sitting Bull, Rain-in- 

 the-Face and Gaul,, hastily arrange the scalp pole upon which 

 scalps are hung by the score. 



The warriors speedily assemble, camp-fires are built, 

 the tom-toms are brought forward and the great scalp-dance 

 begins. Slowly the muffled sounds echo from valley to hill 

 and from hill to valley. The wild war-notes from thousands 

 of throats unite and the braves glide around like evil spir- 

 its. Old men with warclubs bound about like deer, strike the 

 , scalp poles, with bead-like eyes they renew their youth, while 

 with fiendish delight they gloat over the stiffened forms 

 of the pale faces. Intoxicated with victory over the race 

 they hate, their fiendish delight knows no bounds. On 

 they go, with tom-tom pealing, the muffled sound of thou- 

 sands of moccasined feet stamping time to the blood-curd- 

 ling music. Howling dogs take up the direful cries, which 

 echo from river to plain, where the wolves repeat their 

 echoes to the farther mountains. 



It is pandemonium let loose. Devils chained a thou- 

 sand years are now freed. As one set of dancers becomes ex- 

 hausted and sinks to the earth, the gap is filled with an- 

 other crowd, crying and wailing,, the gestures of each set 

 being more fierce than those of their predecessors. Gaudy 

 feathers, war bonnets, paint and human blood bedeck their 

 grim visages. Hags a century old are reeling around the 

 death ring. Close at hand lie forty-two warriors silent in 

 death, and the wails that come from the mourners sound 

 like those of lost souls. Joy and sorrow mingle together 

 on the Little Horn,, whose placid stream glides by, crimsoned 

 with both the blood of the red man and of the palefaces. 

 The tom-toms subside until its muffled sound is almost ex- 



