I am joking, but if I had a heyoka dream now which I would have to re-enact, the thunder-being would place something in that dream that I’d be ashamed of. Ashamed to do in public, ashamed to own up to it. Something that’s going to want me not
to perform this act. And that is what’s going to torment me. Having had that dream, getting up in the morning, at once I would hear this noise in the ground, just under my feet, that rumble of thunder. I’d know that before the day ends that thunder will come through and hit me, unless I perform the dream. I’m scared, I hide in the cellar, I cry, I ask for help, but there is no remedy until I have performed this act. Only this can free me. Maybe by doing it, I’ll receive some power, but most people would just as soon forget about it.

Let me tell you a story of a heyoka who performed his act the way he dreamed it. It happened in Manderson, back in the 1920s. It happened on a Fourth of July, and this man was real lively the way he acted. He turned somersaults, and there was a bunch of young cowboys chasing him on horseback. They couldn’t catch up to him. They were trying to lasso him, but they never came close. He was running in front of them, and sometimes he would turn somersaults. Sometimes he would turn around and run backward, and when they got near him he’d turn around once more and get away. When he was through, when he took off the ragged sack cloth he had on him, with holes for the eyes to look out of, we saw him. He was an old man in his seventies. What was his name? I can’t recall it. An old, white-haired grandfather, but the thunder-beings had given him the power to run fast.

Lame Deer-Seeker of Visions, p. 242