On the first day the people assembled near the confluence of the Two Medicine River and Birch Creek. Most of the bands arrived within the compass of the midmorning and midafternoon sun. As each band arrived, members of the All Crazy Dogs, the police society, showed them where to set up. Soon a great circle was formed, as the last of the bands, the Never Laughs, filled the perimeter. The Sacred Vow Woman's lodge was erected in the center and Heavy Shield Woman entered. Then the camp crier rode among the lodges, calling forth all the women who had vowed to come forward to the tongues. He beat his small drum and called for their husbands to accompany them. He stopped before the lodge of Heard-by-both-sides Woman, who had been a Sacred Vow Woman two years earlier, and called her to instruct Heavy Shield Woman in her duties.

When the chosen had been assembled in the lodge, Heard-by-both-sides Woman lifted one of the tongues above her head and asked Sun Chief to affirm that she had been virtuous in all things. All of the women did this. Then the dried tongues were boiled and cut up and placed in parfleches. Heavy Shield Woman began her fast.

The next day she led the procession to the second camp. On her travois she carried the Medicine Woman bundle and the sacred tongues. Four days they camped in four different locations, arriving at last on a flat plain beneath Four Persons Butte. Each day Yellow Kidney and the many-faces man, wise in the ritual of the Sun Dance, purified themselves in the sweat lodge.

The dawn of the fifth day, Low Horn, a celebrated warrior and scout, left his lodge, saddled his buffalo-runner and galloped down off the plain to the valley of the Milk River. As he rode, he examined the bigleaf trees around him. Across the river he spotted one that interested him. It was stout but not too thick. It was true and forked at just the right height. He looked at the tree, the way the sun struck it, and decided it was the chosen one.

When he reached camp--by now everyone was up and the breakfast fires were lit--he rode among the lodges, calling to the men of the Braves society. He ate a chunk of meat while the others saddled their horses. Then he led them back to the spot. Everybody-talks-about-him had been selected to chop it down, and he set upon it with his ax. He had killed many enemies. At midmorning, his bare back shiny with sweat, he gave a final blow and the tree groaned and swayed and toppled into a stand of willows. The men who had been waiting jumped upon the tree and began to slash and hack, cutting off the limbs as though they were the arms and legs of their enemies. Not too long ago, these would have been traditional enemies; now, more than one of the Braves was killing the encroaching Napikwans.