had at last spoken to him, and that he was going on a long quest into the
limestone canyons. There the Great Spirit would reveal to him a cure for
the dread disease. He called for the swiftest runner to go with him.
Huckween, the Night Voice, volunteered, and so they started, all the
warriors accompanying them to Sentinel Point, chanting prayers to the
Great Spirit.

"Several days later Huckween returned to camp, haggard and weak and
hungry, bearing the medicine wand of Eagle-Foot. He took it straight to
the Chief, and on bended knee told him the strange tale. How Eagle-Foot
had left him in the morning at the entrance to a mighty cavern and told
him to follow in at 'high sun.' This he did, and when he reached this
spot, the Bottomless Pit, he found Eagle-Foot's sacred medicine wand
stuck in the mud, his belt of sacred feathers fastened to the end of it,
dangling down into the mouth of the pit. From the depths he heard strange
sounds, but Eagle-Foot was gone. As he lay looking into the blackness, he
seemed to realize suddenly that the wand was the promised cure, and that
Eagle-Foot had given his own life in the Bottomless Pit that the sacred
feathers might become a saving potion for his people. It was the old idea
of a blood sacrifice.

"Every season since that the great medicine man of the Utes came here to
receive the mystic cure, bringing with him Eagle-Foot's staff and belt.
Long strips of cedar bark were bound together into a rope. This was
soaked in deer's grease, one end lighted, and dropped into the Pit, the
other fastened to the staff, which was stuck into the ground near the
edge. The spirit of Eagle-Foot thus returned, using the flaming bark rope
as a ladder, to bless the feathers of his brother, the medicine man of
the Utes."