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Pretty Rock was fourteen he at last had his vision and was ready to go on the warpath. But before he could leave, the village moved to the place where the sacred pipestone was quarried. Redbird thought his son needed better horses for the raid and so had decided first to make a few redstone peace pipes and offer them in trade to their tribal cousins the Teton Sioux. The Tetons were known to have the swiftest of all horses.
    So they went to the Place of the Pipestone where the flesh of their ancestors had been hardened into stone. They pitched their camp near a patch of red kinnikinick, west of the quarry. Across the stream were the Two Maidens and the Rock Split By Thunder. Redbird, Moon Dreamer, Owl Above, and certain other braves who had refrained from intercourse and were worthy, took the sweat bath, rubbed their limbs with silver sage, offered an incense of burnt sweetgrass to Wakantanka, and then, purified, delved into the earth. The other braves, meanwhile, hunted buffalo, and the women cut and dried the meat.
    It was very early in the spring. The fresh tips of new grass were still a pointed yellow, like sharp gopher teeth, and the wild crocus had just come to bud. The tall bluestem, red and musty from long winter drying, clogged the feet. Robins scurried for worms on the warm hills to the north.
    The Yankton bird, the meadowlark, cried to them: “Spring is here! cheer up! Spring is here! cheer up!” The meadowlark’s whistling was irresistible and presently the maidens answered it, singing, “The meadowlark is my brother, friend! The voice of fidelity is in the air.”
    The lynx-eyed boys, Pretty Rock among them, played games. They found some dried rose hips and pelted a fleeing cottontail with them. They went to Leaping Rock and dared each other to make the jump across the chasm. It was Pretty Rock who finally tried it and made it. He stuck an arrow into a crack ofthe red rock, then teased the others, saying he was now a true brave while they were but cowards, and when they still didn’t jump, leaped back to show them he was twice brave. Next the boys played at the foot of the double Falls of Winnewissa. Here all the boys dared to leap across the chasm and show their valor. Next Pretty Rock picked up a piece of defective pipestone and dared the boys to touch their lips to it. All knew that even the bad piece of pipestone was wakan because it was the flesh of their ancestors turned to stone. No one took him up.
    Next the boys went across the meadow and dared each other to touch the Rock Split By Thunder, the place where a Sioux brave had been struck down because he refused to offer the usual sacrifice of tobacco before pitching his tepee. The place was so wakan, however, that even Pretty Rock was afraid.
    Then they went to play near the Two Maidens, or the Place of Six Strange Boulders. Here Pretty Rock was once again daring. He challenged the others to play follow-the-leader and climb with him onto the cluster of mysterious mossy granite rocks and see if they could keep off the ground by leaping from one rock to the other.
    At this Pretty Rock’s friends became very frightened. They knew the six boulders were greatly wakan. Under them, in a hole, lived the Two Maidens who liked to catch young boys. “Something will happen,” they cried.
    Pretty Rock laughed. “Cowards!” He leaped from the largest moss-green boulder on the east end to the one with the wide lips, then to a small boulder, to another small one, to yet another small one, and finally to the big boulder on the west end. “See,” he cried, “they do not harm me.”
    His friends backed away into the tall grass, their eyes rolling in fear. “Come down, come down! Something will happen!”
    Pretty Rock only laughed more. “The Two Maidens won’t hurt me. They like me. See?” He leaped across the little boulders again, all three, and then up on the Boulder With Wide Lips.“Besides, if the Two Maidens don’t like it, I’ll marry one of