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He commenced to count by making notches in his pipe stem one notch for every lodge. The cabins became thicker, along the river banks, and his comrade needs must call off the lodges while he made the notches. Soon there was no more space on the pipe stem, and Wijunjon changed to his war club. Speedily he had filled this also. Luckily, the barge tied up at the shore, while dinner was cooked.

But he could not tell one tenth and yet, with the very first, several of the old men and chiefs arose and went out. They said that this Wijunjon was a liar, and that they would not listen to him. The white people were known to be great liars, and he had learned from them! In vain, the next day, and the next day, the Pigeon's-egg Head tried to make himself popular.

The Assiniboins, the Cheyennes, the Blackfeet, the Crows they all came to Fort Union, to trade their furs for powder, lead, sugar and blankets. Major Sanborn asked the Assiniboins for a warrior. They appointed Wijunjon and another. Now, this was to be a long journey, among strangers.

His people had sent him to see, and he had seen, and he spoke only true words. After a while, the Assiniboins took a different view of Wijunjon. Any person who had such stories in his brain was certainly great medicine. No common liar could invent these stories about impossible wonders. Yes, Wijunjon was doubtless taught by a spirit. He had dreamed.

Wijunjon led the procession down the gang-plank. It was not Indian etiquet to make an ado over the return. Wijunjon was roundly eyed, but nobody spoke to him. His wife, the Fire-bug-that-creeps, was here; so were his children, who scarcely knew him; so were his old parents.

Nobody had gone yet, from as far away as the Assiniboin country; therefore young Wijunjon feared, but was brave. He bade his wife, Chin-cha-pee, or Fire-bug-that-creeps, and his little children goodby, and with the other Assiniboin and chiefs from the Blackfeet and Crows, set out on a fur company flatboat under protection of Major Sanborn. The Assiniboin women on the shore wept and wailed.

There was a young man who agreed to rid the Assiniboins of this wizard. Beyond question, Wijunjon was too great medicine to be killed by an ordinary bullet; another way should be found. This young man, also, was a dreamer. And in his dreams he was told, he said, how to kill Wijunjon. The wizard must be shot with an iron pot handle! Nothing else would do the work.

His people scarcely expected to see him again. It was one thousand miles by river through the enemies of his nation, thence on to the great village of St. Louis; but he passed in safety. And when he began to see the first smaller villages of the Americans in Missouri, Wijunjon started in to count the houses, so that he might tell his people. He had promised to report everything.

In one hand he carried a blue umbrella, in the other a fan, and in his arms a keg of rum. Thus Wijunjon, the big brave, proudly strode the deck of the steamer Yellowstone, and impatiently looked forward to the moment when he might step off, among his people. The moment came. Two thousand Indians had gathered on the prairie at Fort Union, to greet the thunder-canoe and the returning travelers.

Wijunjon did not despair. He was so full of words that he simply must talk, or burst. He wished that he might bring forward the other Assiniboin who had been with him and who knew that all these stories were true; but the other Assiniboin had died on the way home. That was too bad. However, he stuck to his stories, for he knew that he was right.