In great good-humor was High Wolf and with reason. No fewer than twenty of his young men were on the warpath under the leadership of the young chiefs, Rising Hawk and Standing Bull, but still the man power of his camp was so great that he had been able to send out young and old to a great hunt, and a vastly successful one, so that now the whole camp was red with hanging buffalo meat and white with the great strips of back fat. It was not strange that the old warrior chose to wrap himself in his robe and walk slowly through the camp. Everywhere the women were at work, for now that the meat had been hung to dry, there was the labor of fleshing the many hides—cowhides for robes and lodge skins, bull hides for parfleche, shields, and everything that needed stiff and powerful leather. Three days like this, in a year’s hunting, would keep the entire camp in affluence.

So, therefore, smiles and flashing teeth turned toward the chief as he went on his solitary way through the crowd, apparently oblivious of everything, but with his old eyes missing not the least of details, until he had completed the round of the teepees and returned to the center of the camp where, near his own big lodge there stood a still more brilliant teepee, a nineteen-skin beauty, of snowy hide, with just enough gaudy paint to show off its white texture.

Without envy, but with a critical eye, he regarded this lodge, moving from one side to another, as though anxious to make sure that all was well with it. Then he struck with his walking staff at the flap of the tent. He was asked to enter, and, stepping inside, he found there an old woman, busily beading moccasins. She rose to greet him. It was one of his squaws, Young Willow, though there was nothing young about her except her name. Time had shrunk and bowed her a little, but her arms were still long and powerful, and she was known through the whole tribe for the work of her strong hands.

High Wolf tapped the hard floor of the lodge impatiently with his staff.

“Why are you not fleshing hides?” he asked. “It is not always summer. When winter comes, White Thunder will have to sit close to the fire, and even then his back will be cold. He will not have anything to wrap himself in.”

In spite of the awe in which she held her husband and master, Young Willow allowed herself the luxury of a faint smile, and she waved to the furnishings of the tent. There was only one bed, but there were six backrests made of the slenderest willow shoots, strung on sinew, and covered with the softest robes, and between the backrests were great sacks of dried meat, corn, and fruit. There were huge, square bundles, too, encased in dry rawhide, almost as stiff and strong as wood. One of these she opened. It was filled with folded robes, and, lifting the uppermost one, she displayed to her husband the inner surface, elaborately painted.

“And there are many more,” said Young Willow. “There are so many more than he can use that I have to keep them in these bundles. He has enough to wear, enough to wrap his friends in in cold weather, enough to give away to the poor and the old warriors, and besides there are plenty to use for trade. He is rich, and there is no one else among the Cheyennes who is as rich as he. Look!”

She took up a bag, and, jerking open its mouth, she allowed the chief to look down into a great mass of beads of all colors, all sizes. There were crystal beads that flashed like diamonds, there were beads of crimson, purple, yellow, black, gold, and brown. There were big and small beads, dull and bright beads.

Even the calm of the chief was broken a little and he grunted: “This is well. This is well. Who gave him all these beads?”

“Whistling Elk brought them yesterday,” said the squaw. “When he came in from the traders, you know that he brought many things. But most of his robes he had traded for these beads and he came to the teepee here and told White Thunder that he wanted him to have the beads. White Thunder did not want to take them.”

The chief grunted.

“Why not?” he asked sharply. “Does a treasure like this fall down every day like dew on the ground?”

“White Thunder said that he had more than he required. But Whistling Elk reminded him that his son would have died, if White Thunder had not cured him with a strong medicine.”

“I remember,” said the old man. “That is very true. The son of Whistling Elk became very sick.”

“He was as hot as fire,” said the squaw. “The medicine men could not help him. Then White Thunder had him carried to this lodge. Listen to me. For three days he gave that boy nothing to eat except water in which meat had been boiled. He wrapped him in cold clothes, too. On the fourth day the boy began to sweat terribly. His mother was sitting beside him and she began to cry and mourn. She said that her son was melting away. But White Thunder smiled. He said that the sickness was melting away and not the body. He was right. The boy slept, and, when he opened his eyes, they were clear and bright. In half a moon he could walk with the other boys.”

“I remember it.” The chief nodded. “Heammawihio has clothed White Thunder with power as he clothes a tree with green leaves. If he is rich now, still he is not rich enough.”

“He has sixty horses in the herd,” said the woman.

“Still he is not rich enough,” said High Wolf. “I have given you to this teepee to take care of him and cook for him. It would be better for you to displease me than to displease him. It would be better for you to displease underwater spirits than to displease him, Young Willow!”

He spoke so sternly that she shrank from him a little, and immediately explained: “Wind Woman and three young girls are all working to flesh hides for White Thunder. They can do more than I can do alone. Besides, I am working here at this beading to make him happy.”

She showed the moccasin and the chief deigned to examine it with some care. He handed it back with a grunt and a nod.

“He did not go to the hunt,” he said. “Why did he not go? Was he sick?”

“His heart is sick, not his body,” said the squaw sullenly. “He has all that any warrior could want, and yet he is not a warrior. Look. There is always meat steaming in the pot. It is the best meat. There is always fat in it. The flesh of old bulls is never given to him. The dried meat of young, tender cows and calves fills those sacks. He lives like a great chief. But he is not a chief. He has never made a scalp shirt. He has never taken a scalp or killed an enemy or counted a coup!”

“So,” said the chief, “you work for him with your hands, but in your heart you despise him.”

She answered sullenly: “Why should I not? He is not like us. There is no young man in the camp who is not stronger and taller.”

The chief made a little pause in which his anger seemed to rise. “What young man,” he said, “has come to us from among the Sky People?”

She was silent, shrugging her shoulders.

“What young man,” he said, “could drive off the water spirits when they were tearing down the banks of a great river?”

At this she blinked a little, as though remembering something important, but half forgotten.

“What young man among us . . . or what old man, either . . . what great doctor or medicine man,” went on High Wolf with rising sternness, “was able to bring the rain? The corn withered. Dust covered the prairie. In the winter we should have starved. But White Thunder went out and called once, and immediately the clouds jumped up in the south. He called again and the clouds covered the sky. The third time he cried out, the rain washed our faces and ran down to the roots of the dying corn . . . but these things you forget!”

“No,” she muttered, “I never shall forget that day. No Cheyenne ever has seen such strong medicine working.”

“But you,” went on the chief sternly, “are not contented with such things. What are scalps and scalp-takers compared to the strength of a man who can call down the Sky People to help him? Since Standing Bull brought him to us, everything we do is lucky. There is no drought. The young men and the children do not die of sickness. The buffalo come up and stand at the edge of our camp and wait for us to surround and shoot them down. Our war parties have struck the Crows and the Pawnee wolves and brought back horses and scalps, and counted many coups. But this man is not great enough for you to serve! You despise him in your heart while you work with your hands. Do you think that he does not know? I tell you, Young Willow, that he sees the thoughts in your heart as clearly as he sees the paintings on his teepee.”

This speech he delivered in a stern and gloomy voice, and the squaw began to bite her lips nervously.

“I am willing to work for him,” she whined. “All day my hands never stop.”

“There are other women who would work for him,” said the chief. “There are other women who would be glad to live in the presence of such good medicine all day long.”

“All day he never speaks,” she answered in feeble self-defense. “There are many backrests in this lodge. It is a lodge for a great and noble chief to fill with feasting and friends. But he never calls in friends, except Standing Bull or Rising Hawk. He would rather sit on his bed of rye grass and rushes, wrapped in an unpainted robe. Then he takes a flute of juniper wood and makes sad music, like a young man in love. Or he goes down to the river and sits on the banks. The three young warriors who have to be with him to guard him, they stand and yawn and wish to be hunting or on the warpath, but he sits and plays the flute. Or else he takes his pistol from his breast and shoots little birds that fly overhead near him. Even a child would be ashamed of such a life.”

“Can a child take a pistol and shoot little birds out of the air?” asked the chief sharply. “Can any of the warriors do that?”

“No man could do it,” she replied. “It is medicine that kills them with the flash of his pistol. But when does he take the war rifle and go on the warpath?”

“You speak,” said the chief slowly, “like a fool and the daughter of a fool. But you have given me a thought. If he makes sad music on the flute, it is because he has seen some beautiful girl among the Cheyennes. He is in love. Now, Young Willow, learn the name of the girl he has seen, and he shall have her, and you . . . you shall come into my lodge and name the thing you want as a reward. Only learn the name of the girl he wants.”

Under a spreading willow on the bank of the river lay White Thunder, his hands beneath his head, his sad eyes looking up through the thin branches, noting how they changed their pattern against the sky as the wind stirred them. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, because, in so doing, he would be forced to see the three who guarded him. Every moon three chosen and proved young warriors were told to watch him day and night. In the day they never left his side except when he entered his teepee. And in the night they slept or watched outside his lodge. The vigilance of the Cheyennes netted Paul Torridon about in the dark and in the daylight, so that he had given up all hope of escape from them. If there were any hope left to him, it was something that he could not visualize, something that would scatter the tribe and by a merciful accident leave him free to return to his kind. Particularly he wished to avoid the attention of these three, because he knew their hearts were burning with anger against him. They had yearned to go off with the hunt, but, since he refused, they were forced to remain idly in camp watching him, instead of flying their horses among the wild buffalo—a sport for a king.

The three were talking, softly. For though they despised him, they held him in awe, also. As a man, he was to them less than nothing. As a communer with the spirits, he was a dreadful power. Now they mentioned a familiar name. Torridon half closed his eyes.

“What do you say of my horse?” he asked.

“I say,” answered a voice, “that the horse would come to you even through a running river.”

Another answered sharply: “And I say that no horse will swim unless it is forced. It would be a strong medicine, for instance, that would make a horse go into that stream. A horse has no hands to push himself away from sharp rocks.”

Torridon thrust himself up on one arm, and shook back the hair from his face. It was quite true that the river beneath them was not a pleasant ford for horses. Men could manage it easily enough, but it was thickly strewn with rocks, and among the rocks the current drove down strongly.

Torridon whistled, and up to him came a black stallion at a sharp trot and, standing before him, actually lowered his fine head and sniffed at the hand of his master as though to inquire his meaning.

The three young braves looked on with hearts that swelled with awe.

“Do you fear the water, Ashur?” asked Torridon in Cheyenne.

He flung out his hand in a little gesture, and that gesture made the horse turn his head toward the river. But so seemingly did Ashur understand the question, so human was that turning of the head to look at the water that the young braves murmured softly to one another.

“You see,” said Torridon, who was not above a little charlatanry from time to time, “that he has no fear of the water. He asks me for what purpose he should go into it, however.”

The young Cheyennes were filled with amazement. “But in what manner did he speak?” asked the eldest, who had taken his scalp in regular battle and therefore was the accepted leader of the little party. “For I did not hear a sound.”

“Tell me,” said the untruthful Torridon, “do you have a sign language?”

“Yes, with which every Indian can speak.”

“Well, then, a horse has signs, also.”

“But a horse has no fingers with which to make signs.”

“He has a tail, however,” said Torridon smoothly, “and also two ears, and a head to nod or shake, and four hoofs to stamp.”

There was a general exclamation of wonder.

“However,” said the scalp-taker a little sullenly, “I still think that no horse would cross that water, except under a whip.”

Torridon pretended to frown. “Do you think,” he asked, “that when I put a spell on a horse it is less than a whip on his back?”

“Even a child,” replied the young warrior truthfully, “may speak about great things.”

“Very well,” said Torridon, “this is a knife that you have admired.”

He took from his belt a really beautiful weapon, the point curving only slightly from the straight, the steel of the finest quality, with the glimmer of a summer blue sky close to the sun. The haft was ornamented with inset beadwork, to roughen the grip. It was a treasure that Torridon had received from a grateful brave to whom he had given good fortune on the warpath, the fortune immediately being proved by the counting of a coup and the capture of five good horses.

“It is true,” said the young Cheyenne, his eyes blazing in his head. “But,” he added, “what have I to offer against it?”

“You have a new rifle,” said Torridon carelessly.

The other sighed. The rifle was a very good one. It was the pride of his young life. However, the knife was a gaudy trinket that inflamed his very heart with lust to own it, and he reassured himself by looking down at the dangerous water.

Besides, a horse was to be persuaded through the midst of that water without the use of a whip or a spur, and with no man on its back to direct it. He nodded as he turned again to Torridon. “Look!” he exclaimed suddenly. And he laid the rifle at the feet of a companion.

“And there is the knife,” said Torridon. He took it again from his belt, and, with a little flick of the wrist that he had learned from Rising Hawk, he drove it half the length of its blade into the ground before their companion.

Then he rose to attempt the venture. On the edge of the bank he took off his clothes. White as polished marble he flashed beneath that strong sun. The wind blew his hair aside, and he laughed with pleasure at the cool touch of the air and the angry hand of the sun.

The Indians looked significantly at one another, partly admiring and partly in contempt. The Cheyennes were huge specimens of manhood. He was of small account who stood under six feet in height, and they had shoulders and limbs to match, but Torridon was made slenderly, tapering and graceful. He was fast of foot, the Indian youth knew. How would he appear in the water?

He did not leave them long in doubt. He merely paused to adjust a headband that would bind his unbarbered hair. Then he dived from the bank.

There was only a slight sound as he took the water. Then, through the black shadow of the pool under the bank, they saw him rise glimmering. He struck out through the current. It was true that he had not the might of arm that many of them possessed. But neither did he have their bulk to drag through the water, and he used the stroke that Roger Lincoln, that flawless hero of the plain, had taught him.

“It’s only in the brain that you can beat an Indian,” Roger Lincoln had been fond of saying. And he had taught Torridon many things as they voyaged over the plains together. A most unreceptive mind had dreamy Paul Torridon for woodcraft or for the arts of hunting, but at least he could learn the craft of swimming from a perfect master.

He glided rapidly through the water, now, lying face down, rolling a little from side to side to breathe, and the long strokes of the arms and the thrashing feet carried him rapidly through the stream.

He could hear them on the bank behind him calling: “Hai! He is being pulled by a string!”

He swerved past a reaching rock, stepped on another, and leaped onto the farther bank. There he wrung the water from his long hair and waved a flashing arm.

“Ashur!” he called.

The black stallion was already at the brink of the stream, looking wistfully after his master. At this call, he advanced his forehoofs into the water and sniffed at it, but immediately he withdrew and bounded away, throwing his heels into the air.

The wagerer shouted with triumph: “The knife is mine, White Thunder!”

Torridon made no reply. He sat down, dripping on the bank, and seemed more interested in the flight of a hawk that was swinging lower and lower through the sky above them.

“Come back, White Thunder!” cried the brave. “You see he never will take the water!”

Now for an answer, Torridon raised an arm and pointed. He was more than half ashamed of himself to resort to such trickery and sham. But, after all, these people had forced the role of medicine man upon him quite against his will. They had dressed him up in fake garments of mystery; they had stolen him away from the girl he loved and from his best of friends. It was hardly more than fair that they should be called upon to take something for which they were even asking. So he pointed at the descending hawk, as though it were a symbol sent down to him from the Sky People, who were so eternally on the tongues of the Cheyennes.

It made a great sensation among the three braves. Torridon saw them pointing and whispering together, and he with whom Torridon had made the wager hastily caught up a handful of pebbles and sand and began to shift them from hand to hand, blowing strongly on them—making medicine against the medicine maker.

Torridon laughed. They would take that laughter for invincible scorn of them. As a matter of fact, it was pure amusement and good nature. Of Ashur he had had no doubt from the first.

Now, indeed, the black horse returned to the edge of the water. He sent one whinny of complaint across to his master, and straightway he plunged in. Torridon was very confident. Out here on the plains the rivers were few and far between. They were apt to be comparatively still, also. But where Ashur was raised, two stormy creeks had cut the grazing lands, and the horse that aspired to the richer, farther pastures had to cross them both. From colthood Ashur had been a master of the difficult craft.

He came swiftly, snorting the froth and water from his nostrils, so low did he carry his head, stretching it forth over the surface. A smooth, strong glide of water seized him and dropped him through a narrow passage between reaching rocks. That instant the heart of Torridon stood still and he regretted the bet. But now Ashur came again, more strongly than ever, pricking his little ears in recognition of the master who waited for him. A moment more and his forehoofs grounded. He climbed out, shook himself, and then, leaping to the side of Torridon, he turned and cast back at the young warriors a ringing neigh of almost human defiance.

A shout of mingled wonder and applause came across the water to Torridon, but he had turned his head toward the plains that stretched off to the north. Naked as he was, weaponless, for an instant he was on the verge of throwing himself on the back of Ashur and flying away into the wilderness. But when he looked back to the farther shore, he saw that three rifles were gripped in three ready pairs of hands. It was their business to watch him, and watch him they would—aye, and scalp him gladly if the worst came to the worst!

He abandoned his thought with a sigh, and then swam back to the waiting three. Ashur followed him obediently, his nose in the little smother of water raised by the kicking heels of his master. The rocks reached for the fine horse again, and in vain, and Torridon stood again with his guards, whipping the water from his body with the edge of his hand, laughing and panting.

“Look!” cried the youngest of the three warriors suddenly, but in a voice muffled with awe. “He has brought down the power from the clouds, and now he is going back again!”

He pointed, and Torridon, turning his head, saw that the hawk was rising even more swiftly than it had descended. He laughed again to himself. No doubt this tale, liberally reinforced by the imaginations of the three, would soon be circling the village and adding to the great stock of folly and lies that already circulated about him among the Cheyennes.

The eldest of the trio took up his rifle and laid it at Torridon’s feet.

“When I made the bet,” he said, “I forgot that you could command the air spirits out of their places. Of course they made the horse light and showed him where to swim through the rocks.”

“I saw a ripple go before him,” said the youngest of the three gravely. “Of course something invisible was stopping the current to let the horse through. This is a great wonder. I, who did not see the making of the rain, at last have seen this.”

Torridon dressed quickly. There was not much dressing to do, for he was equipped like any other young Cheyenne in breechclout, leggings, and a shirt. There were distinctions, for the leather was the softest of deerskin, white as snow, and worked over in delicate designs with beads and porcupine quills, while the outer fringe of the leggings was enriched with glittering beads and even some spurious hoofs of buffalo, polished highly. He put on his moccasins first, and stepped into the rest of his apparel, after wriggling into the tightly fitted shirt. Then he sat down and began to dry his hair, by spreading it to the sun and the wind.

The three regarded him with profoundest silence. They had seen such things that it was well to be quiet for a time, and rehearse the affairs in their own minds. Afterward, even the elders would be glad to invite them to feasts and let them talk of the prodigies that White Thunder on this day had performed. One of them had turned the hawk into an eagle, already, in his mind’s eye. And another had made out the form of the water spirit that drew the stallion through the river.

At last, Torridon took up the rifle that was his prize. He examined it with care.

“Rushing Wind,” he said to the young man who had given up the gun, “how many times have you fired this?”

“Three times.”

“And what did it do?”

“It killed three buffalo,” said Rushing Wind, his breast heaving just once with mingled pride in the weapon and grief because of its loss.

Torridon handed it back to its first owner. “Take it again,” he said. “It is good medicine in your hands. I already have many guns in my lodge. I do not want to empty yours. Besides,” he added shamelessly, “as you have seen, I have other things than guns with which to do what I wish.”

The latter part of this speech was accepted by the young men with nodding heads. But Rushing Wind hesitated about the return.

“My brother is rich,” he said. “Nevertheless, even a rich man wants something with which to remember a great day.”

“That is true,” agreed Torridon. He reached out and took the knife from the belt of Rushing Wind. He replaced it with his own rich knife and waved his hand. “By that exchange,” he said, “we can remember one another.”

Rushing Wind returned no answer. He had seen himself, a moment before, compelled to fall back upon the war bow and arrow. Now, not only was the rifle his once more, but, in addition, he wore at his belt such a jewel as would make even the great war chiefs look on him with envious eyes. His heart was too full for utterance, so that he was forced to scowl bitterly.

Torridon, understanding perfectly, arose to cover the confusion of the warrior and led the way back to the camp. At the door of the lodge he invited them to enter; they perfunctorily perfunctorily refused, so as to remain lounging outside, while he entered the cool shadow of the teepee. He was still amused, still inclined to laugh to himself so that Young Willow, at her beading, glanced keenly at him.

She was a little afraid of this youth, though as the daughter of one great war chief and the wife of another, she despised this counter of no coups, this taker of no scalps. He was an outlander. The joys and the sorrows of the tribe did not affect him; he pretended no interest. Their victories were things at which he shrugged his shoulders; their dances and celebrations left him cold and unstirred. Therefore, she both hated and despised him, but also she was afraid. She, with her own eyes, while all the tribe was witness, had seen him call up the rain clouds. At his bidding, the lightning had flashed and the thunder had roared. He had disappeared in the middle of the confusion. Some said that he simply had ridden off through the darkness of the storm, but it was whispered everywhere that no mortal could have ridden through the assembled Cheyennes at that time. Had he not been wrapped in a storm cloud and snatched away?

For her own part, she knew that she was honored to have been selected as the keeper of this lodge, and, as such, all that she said was now listened to, and the chief men of the nation stopped her when she was abroad and asked after the latest doing of White Thunder. If there were little to tell of interest, fortunately Young Willow had a sufficient imagination; no audience that asked wonders of her should go away with empty ears.

Now the youth sat smiling to himself. “White Thunder,” she said, “where is the knife that you wore at your belt?”

“I have given it to Rushing Wind.”

She raised her head. “Do you know that that is a medicine knife, worth five horses if it is worth a handful of dried meat?”

“So I was told.”

She muttered angrily: “One spendthrift makes a naked lodge. You gave away the white saddle yesterday?”

“The young man had nothing but a buffalo robe to ride on.”

“It is not the seat that makes the horseman,” said this quoter of proverbs, “neither is the horse judged by the saddle.”

“Saddle and mane make a horse sell,” he retorted, having picked up some of the same sort of language from this ancient gossip.

Fairly stopped by this, she returned to her beading. It was true that the goods in this teepee were not hers, and it was also true that the generosity of the Cheyennes was flooding the lodge constantly with more than the master of it could use. Nevertheless, she was old enough to be parsimonious. The aged ask for a full house and larder.

Torridon lounged against a supple backrest and raised his eyes to the top of the teepee with a great sigh. Time, time, time! How slowly it goes.

“Aye,” said Young Willow, spiteful after her last silencing, “you may well sigh. For in a hundred winters we shall all be bald.”

“That is true,” he answered, “and it is also true that even a little time will hatch a great mischief.”

She looked askance at him, rather suspecting that there was a sting in this speech, but not quite confident of the point. So she pursed her withered lips and consulted her profound heart to find something more to say.

He, in the meantime, began to finger some of the articles that hung beside the backrest, taking down a great war bow of the horn of mountain sheep, tough and elastic, able to send an arrow four hundred yards in battle, or, in the hunt, drive a shaft to the three feathers into the tough side of a buffalo bull.

“A strong bow for a strong hand . . . for the weak hand it is a walking staff,” said the venomous old woman.

“Yes,” said Torridon, “or it would do as a whip.”

She caught her breath and mumbled, but the reply was too apt not to silence her again.

He laid aside the bow and picked up the favorite solace of his quiet hours. It was a flute of the juniper wood, from which one could draw plaintive sounds, and by much practice upon it, he was able to perform with a good deal of skill. He tried it now, very softly. And he half closed his eyes in sad enjoyment of the harmony he made, for the sorrowful love sorrow.

As for Young Willow, she would have admitted at another time that it was excellent music, and she would tomorrow attribute the skill of the youth with the instrument to the direct intervention and assistance of the Sky People. Now, however, she was looking for trouble.

“Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow,” she muttered. “A sorrowing child is never fat.”

He lowered the flute from his lips and looked vaguely upon her, as though he had only half heard what she said.

So she, glad of a quiet audience, went on sharply: “And sorrow and love are brother and sister. They go hand in hand. Who is the girl that you make music for, White Thunder?”

At this, he actually dropped the flute and sat bolt upright, staring at her, and very wide awake indeed.

Young Willow pretended to go on with her beading, but her grin was very broad, so that it exposed her toothless, dark gums. She had stung him at last.

Busy at her work, or apparently busy, Young Willow said: “There are many beautiful maidens among the Cheyennes. Even the Sky People draw down from the clouds, and wonder at them.”

“That is true,” he agreed absently.

He had been too amazed by her remark to pay much heed to what followed.

“So,” said Young Willow, “it is no wonder that you, White Thunder, should have come down to us. Tell me, therefore, the name of the girl.”

“Of what use would it be if I should tell you?” he asked.

“Of what use? I would myself go to High Wolf, and he would go to the father of the girl. Presently all would be arranged with the father.”

“And she would be brought home to this lodge?”

“Yes.”

Torridon smiled faintly, and the squaw frowned, unable to read his mind, no matter how she tried. She was angry with herself, when she found that she was baffled so early and so often by this youth. His white skin was a barrier that stopped her probing eyes, as it were.

“What should I do with a woman?” said Torridon.

“A wife is better than many horses,” said the squaw sententiously.

Torridon fell amiably into that mode of maintaining the discourse. In a way, he feared to be left to his own thoughts, for since Young Willow had turned the conversation into this channel the picture of Nancy Brett stood like life before him, in all her beauty, her gentleness, her grace. He tried to turn from that hopeless dream into the present. So he answered the squaw: “A bag of fleas is easier to keep watch over than a woman.”

“Ha?” cried the squaw. “I think you are talking about the Arapahoes, or the Dakotas. You do not know our Cheyenne girls. After the sun has gone down, they still have firelight to work by.”

“People who work forever,” quoted Torridon, “are dull companions. You cannot dig up wisdom like a root.”

Young Willow grunted. Her eyes had a touch of red fire in them as she glared across the teepee at her young companion.

“You cannot judge a woman by her tongue,” she replied.

“No,” said Torridon, “but with a small tongue, a woman can kill a tall man.”

“Very well,” grumbled Young Willow, “but you know the saying . . . a woman’s counsel may be no great thing, but he is a fool who does not take it. I am giving you good advice, White Thunder.”

“No doubt you are.” Torridon yawned rather impolitely.

“Aye,” she answered, “but only a pretty woman is always right.”

“No,” he replied, “a pretty woman is either silly or proud.”

“For a proud woman,” she said, “take a heavy hand.”

He raised his slender hand with a sigh. “My hand is not heavy, Young Willow. Even if I had a lovely wife, how could I keep her?”

“With a whip, perhaps.”

“A Cheyenne girl,” he said more seriously, “wants a strong husband. She wants to see scalps drying in the lodge and hear her man counting his coups.”

“You are young,” said Young Willow tactfully, for she had been pleased to the core of her heart by the remark dispraising beauty in a woman. “You are young, and a man is not grown in a summer.”

“I never shall take scalps,” said Torridon, sighing again. “I never shall count coups, or steal horses. How could I be honored among the Cheyennes or by a woman in my own lodge?”

This plain statement of fact took Young Willow a good deal aback. It was, in short, what she had said at greater length to High Wolf. But at last she replied: “Take a wife, and I shall teach her how to behave. She will not be able to draw a breath that I shall not count. Afterward, you will have sons. You will be a great chief.”

She painted the rosy picture with a good deal of warmth. And suddenly Torridon said gravely: “Let us talk no more about it, Young Willow. Are you tired of doing the work in this lodge?”

“I? No, no!” cried the squaw.

“Then stay with me, and I shall not ask for a Cheyenne girl as a wife. There is only one woman in the world who I could marry, Young Willow.”

“And she is not in this camp?”

“She is far away.”

“She is a Blackfoot,” said Young Willow instantly. “They are tall, and a short man wants a tall wife. They have big eyes, and the white men love only big eyes.” Her own small eyes became mere glints of light.

“No,” said Torridon. “Big eyes are good to look at, but not to look. It is not a Blackfoot girl. I never have seen a Blackfoot.”

“Then you have seen a Sioux girl smiling. They always are smiling, and they always are untrue.”

“In short,” said Torridon impatiently, “it is no Indian girl at all.”

“A white woman?” asked Young Willow.

“Yes.”

“She is tall and proud and rich,” said Young Willow.

“No, she is small,” mused Torridon. “Or rather, she is no size at all, but she fits into my mind and heart . . .”

“As the saddle fits the back of a horse,” suggested Young Willow.

Torridon merely sighed.

“When you were carried away in the storm,” said the squaw, “and disappeared over the prairie, then you went to Fort Kendry to find her there?”

But, at this direct question, Torridon recovered from his dream, and shrugged his shoulders. “I am going to sleep,” he said abruptly.

He settled against the backrest and closed his eyes. Young Willow was too well trained in the lodge of her husband to utter a word when one of the lords of creation was resting. Therefore, Torridon heard nothing except the light, faint click of beads in the rapid fingers of the squaw from time to time.

And he passed into another of the weary, sad vigils that he had kept so many times before. At last he actually slept and dreamed of great woe and misery, a dream so vivid that dreary, wailing voices thrummed in his ears loudly. He wakened to find that the sounds were no dream at all, but that from hundreds of throats, apparently, a paean of grief was rising through the village. The noise came slowly toward the teepee. He heard the screaming of women, who seemed maddened with woe.

Young Willow dashed into the lodge, her hair flying in long strings, her breast heaving.

“Why do so many people cry out, Young Willow?” he asked her, bewildered.

“You!” shrieked the squaw, shaking her bony fist at him. “You that make medicine when you wish, but let our men go out to die! It would have been better for us if you had been left in the sky!”

“But what has happened? Has someone died?”

“Has someone died?” exclaimed the squaw. “Eleven men are dead and Rising Hawk has brought home the rest, and all of the eight are wounded.”

“Rising Hawk has brought them home?” exclaimed Torridon. “Then tell me what has become of Standing Bull?”

“He was lost! He was lost! He was captured in the battle and carried away by the Dakotas, and by this time they are eating his heart! He was your friend! He was your friend! Could you make no medicine for him?”

She ran out of the lodge again, raising her voice in a shrill keen as she burst through the entrance.

Torridon, amazed and shocked, followed. It was to Standing Bull that he owed his first captivity in the tribe. It was to Standing Bull, also, that he owed his recapture after the first escape. And yet he had been so much with the Cheyenne giant that he was shocked to hear of his capture. There was little chance that such a warrior as Standing Bull would be spared except for the sake of tormenting him slowly to death when the Dakotas had reached their homes after the war raid.

Torridon wrapped himself hastily in a robe and stepped into the entrance of the teepee in time to see the mass of the crowd of mourners move past. Every relative of a dead or wounded man was called upon by invincible custom to mourn, and with a dozen deaths to account for, it seemed that half the tribe was officially interested.

At that moment Owl Woman went by. She was the young squaw of Standing Bull, the mother of his son, and as handsome a woman as could be found in the tribe. She had disfigured herself for life. Her hair was shaved from her head, and the scalp gashed across and across, so that blood had poured down and blackened over her face and shoulders. She went with bare legs, and along the calves she had ripped up the flesh again. As a crowning token of her affliction, she had actually cut off a finger of her left hand, and what with loss of blood and the shock of her grief and the torment of her exhaustion, she staggered rather than walked, her head rolled on her shoulders, and Torridon could hear her sobbing. It was not the noise of weeping, but the heavy gasp of exhaustion and hysteria.

The other mourners made way for her, partly because no victim had been of so high a rank as her husband, and partly because she had honored herself and the whole nation by this perfect expression of her grief. A dreadful picture of despair and madness, she staggered on past Torridon and he closed his eyes, feeling very sick indeed at the sight.

He did not need to ask questions. From the babble of the crowd and the exclamations of the mourners he learned the details sufficiently. Standing Bull and Rising Hawk actually had pushed so far into the land of the Dakotas that they had entered the deep and narrow ravine leading toward the village over which Spotted Antelope was the great chief. But while they were passing through, that formidable warrior had fallen upon them, taken them in the rear with a mighty attack, and crushed them.

Standing Bull indeed had played the hero. He had allowed the remnant to get away, assisted as they were by the savage fighting of Rising Hawk, who had actually found time to count four coups and take a scalp in the short encounter.

The sound of the mourning rolled farther away, though the very heart of Torridon still was stabbed from time to time by the sudden shriek of a woman. He opened his eyes and saw before him the silent form of High Wolf, robed to the eyes, and those eyes were fixed on the face of Torridon with a terrible malignity.

It was plain to Torridon that the anger of the war chief was less because of the loss that had fallen upon the young braves of his tribe than because of some passion that he held against the white man himself.

“Hau,” said Torridon in quiet greeting.

The chief, uninvited, strode past him to the interior of the lodge, and Torridon followed him, seeing that some tiding of grave importance was about to be communicated to him. When he faced High Wolf, the latter said harshly: “It is true that White Thunder does not love Standing Bull. Standing Bull brought him to the Cheyennes. On account of that, White Thunder has given over the whole war party to the Dakotas. Twelve men are dead. Twelve men are dead and scalped, or else they are in the hands of the enemy. Why have you done this thing, White Thunder? If you did not love Standing Bull . . . well, you have the thunder in your hand and you can throw the lightning. Why did you not kill him and let the rest go?”

The first impulse of Torridon was open and frank disavowal, but suddenly he saw that merely to protest was of no avail whatever. To these red children of the prairie, he was the possessor of the most wonderful and potent medicine, and, if he wished, he could extend the aegis of his might over all their war parties, even the most distant. To deny that he possessed that power would, in the eyes of High Wolf, make him appear the merest hypocrite. It might mean, at once, a knife in the throat, or slow burning over a fire. He thought of this as he looked the old chief in the eye and answered slowly: “Even good medicine may be used wrongly.”

High Wolf blinked and then frowned. “Then what did they do? Did you make medicine for them, after all? No man heard you so much as sing a song when they left the camp.”

“Why should I sing songs or shake rattles like the other medicine men?” asked Torridon scornfully. “When the corn was dying and the dust was deep and white on the plains, did I sing a song to make the rain come?”

“You called to it,” said High Wolf, “and the heavens were covered with clouds. Why did you not call again, and send strength to Standing Bull?”

“If they had gone slowly and laid in wait,” said Torridon on the spur of the moment, “they would have had no harm. But they ran in like wild buffalo, and like buffalo they were killed.”

High Wolf apparently checked an angry exclamation. Then he replied: “Before the night comes, we send out fifty braves to go north. Tell me, White Thunder. What will be their fortune?”

Torridon was taken well aback. He had had to make medicine for these strange people before, but he had not been called upon to make prophecies.

As Torridon paused, the chief continued: “Now Spotted Antelope rides far south from his village. He waits for us. How shall we pass him, or how shall we fight against him? He has two or threescore fighting men. Their hearts are big. They laugh at the Cheyennes. What medicine have you for that, White Thunder?”

Like one who has his back against the wall, Torridon replied: “What is the use in sending the Sky People to help the Cheyennes, when the Cheyennes will not know how to use them?”

The return of the chief fairly took his breath. “You have been one who speaks with a single tongue in the camp of the Cheyennes. Tell me now, White Thunder . . . will you give me your promise to ride with a war party against the Dakotas and never try to escape from them? Will you go with them, and make the Sky People fight on our side?”

There was no possibility of refusal. The passion of the chief swept Torridon before it, like a cork on a flood. He dared not resist.

“I can give you my word,” he said gloomily.

High Wolf paused, his eyes still glittering. “I go to the young men,” he said. “Rising Hawk burns like a fire. He shall ride out again in spite of his wound. You, then, will ride with them and give them fortune?”

Torridon, dumb with amazement and woe, merely nodded, and the old man was gone, leaving the boy regarding earnestly a most terrible fate. He had but the slenderest doubt as to what would come of this. Pawnee or Crow or Blackfoot, all were dangerous enough, but the Dakotas, each as able a warrior as ever bestrode a horse, were distinguished above all for their swarming numbers. They could redden the plains with their men, if they so chose. He who invaded their country was like a fly walking into a spider’s web.

Young Willow came back into the lodge and, in silence, set about cleaning the rifle, though it needed no cleaning, and then laying out a pack that consisted of dried meat and ammunition, together with a few other necessaries. Plainly she had been told to do these things by High Wolf. And when Torridon glanced at her, he thought that he spied a settled malice in her expression.

Ashur was brought, the saddle put on him. Still the sounds of mourning filled the camp, but other noises were blended with them. Wild yells and whoops cut the air, somewhere a battle song was being chanted, and, going to the entrance of the lodge, Torridon saw half a dozen braves in front of their teepees dancing about in the fantastic step of stiff-legged roosters. All were painted for war; several were wearing war bonnets of eagle feathers. Nearby their horses were being prepared by industrious squaws, just as Ashur was being fitted.

The preparation was speedy. Torridon had known war parties to make medicine and go through formalities for a fortnight. Now everything was rushed through; the Cheyennes were red hot for vengeance, and old customs had to give way before the pressure.

For his own part, he wondered that, on an expedition of such importance, every man worthy of carrying arms was not enlisted, leaving the defense of the camp to the very old and the very young. But Indian measures were rarely so whole-hearted as this. They loved war and they loved scalps, but they hated to commit all their forces to a single action. They believed in skirmishes rather than in pitched battles.

So at last Rising Hawk was seen, mounted on a spirited pony, a dressing on his left forearm, which had been cut across by a bullet in the late action. Before him went two medicine men, complete in masks and medicine bags, and all the weird implements of their profession. As they came closer, they halted and held back, and one who had a mask like a wolf’s head over his shoulders pointed at Torridon, and then turned away.

Of course they were jealous of him and of his reputation. Their income for healings and for soothsaying had fallen away sharply since the coming of the white man to their camp, with his marvels of rain-making, and all the rest. No doubt, in their heart of hearts they were wishing the worst of ill fortune upon the expedition that he was to accompany.

Rising Hawk, however, greeted the white man courteously. Torridon mounted. They rode on from the camp. The warriors fell in behind them. Children and young braves rushed out to see them pass, and so the procession grew.

At the edge of the camp, they broke into a gallop. Young boys, yelling like demons, rushed bareback before and behind them, and whirled around them like leaves in a wind. And so they were escorted as far as the verge of the river. Up its bank they passed until they came to the ford, crossed this, and at last they were committed to the width of the prairies.

Torridon turned in the saddle, on the farther bank, and looked across the stream and back to the distant village. He felt almost a touch of homesickness in seeing it thus. Anything was preferable to that grim expedition against so dangerous a foe as the Sioux. But the dice had been cast and he was committed. Even so, he could not help considering a sudden break away from the Cheyennes, and then trusting to the speed of the black stallion to take him safely out of range of the pursuing bullets.

His honor held him, albeit by a single thread, and he remained trailing at the rear of the party, full of his thoughts.

A horseman dropped back beside him. It was Rushing Wind, his late guard, who was pointing an excited hand at the sky.

“Look, White Thunder, already your thoughts are answered by the Sky People. They have sent down their messenger to give you good fortune again!”

Torridon followed the direction of the pointing arm and saw that a hawk was circling slowly above them, keeping pace with the progress of the party. He forced back a melancholy smile from his lips.

But in the meantime, every brave in the party had taken note of that hanging hawk against the sky, and the same thought seemed to fill every breast. Their eyes flashed. Rising Hawk could not keep from raising his long lance and shaking it victoriously against the sky, and the braves went onward with a great gaiety of demeanor. Already they had forgotten the recent crushing defeat that the Sioux had inflicted upon their nation. They were as full of confidence as a body of children at play.

As though the sting of the wound in his arm was a constant spur, they went north like the wind, with Rising Hawk constantly urging them to greater efforts. A dozen horses dropped dead under the fierce riding. That was in the early days, and the rest grew thin, but wonderfully hard and fit, and the boys were easily able to keep the horse herd within striking distance of the riders. Torridon spared Ashur every other day. But even those alternate journeys on random ponies hardly were necessary, for Ashur was laughing at the miles. All his running under Torridon or with the herd barely had sufficed to thumb a little of the flesh off his ribs and cut the line of his belly a little harder and higher. But on the days when he ranged with the herd, the Indian boys were happy. There were four of them, like four young winged imps, ever flying here and there, merciless to the steeds, slaves to the braves on the warpath. But when Ashur ran with the herd, their work was nothing. He ranged back and forth at the rear of the trotting ponies. He guarded and guided them like sheep, and they feared him and respected him. He was a king among them.

His size, his grandeur, his lofty air and matchless speed made Torridon feel every day more keenly his own lack of force of hand. He was as no one in the party. Surely, in battle, the least of all the warriors would do far more than he.

In the day he was little regarded, but in the evening, after food, Rising Hawk and the chief men of the party were sure to draw close to him and discuss plans and futures. He was very reticent. He had been forced to promise them good fortune. If that good fortune did not develop, he would get his throat cut as a reward for his false prophecy. In the meantime, he would not speak more, except enigmatic sentences.

And so they came, at last, among the big, bleak, northern hills. They had seen nothing of the famous Spotted Antelope, whose party was rumored to be south by the river, waiting to intercept their passage. But the river was many days behind them. They had plunged for four days through the very heart of the Dakota lands, unspied. But on the fifth day they rode over a ridge and came swooping down on four horses and two men at the edge of a creek. So infinitely distant were these Sioux from any thought of danger that they could not believe their eyes until this mysterious Cheyenne charge had scooped them up and made them safe prisoners.

The coups were duly counted, the scalps were promised, but then Rising Hawk determined to extract what information he could from the prisoners.

The first was a stalwart brave of forty-five, hard as iron. He did not stir an eye or abate his contemptuous smile while splinters were driven under his nails and then set on fire. Torridon, transfixed with horror and fear, saw the Cheyennes prepared to take sterner measures and could not stand it. He snatched his pistol out and sent a bullet through the poor fellow’s brain.

He half expected that the Cheyennes, their cruel taste once sharpened, would rush on him in a body. To his amazement, they took not the slightest heed of his action. They merely ripped the scalp away from the dead man and turned to the second prisoner. He had borne up as calmly as the other until this moment, but it appeared that the slaughtered warrior was his father. Now his nerves gave way. He was only a lad of fourteen or fifteen, early on the warpath. In another moment he was groaning forth answers to the questions of Rising Hawk.

It was true that Spotted Antelope was far away to the south and not expected for many days. In the meantime, the Sioux village for which the march was aimed had been shifted from its old site to one a little more southerly, among the lower hills, between two shallow streams of water. It was a scant half-day’s march distant. There was no dream of danger threatening among the villagers. They felt that Spotted Antelope was an ample shield between them and the Cheyennes. In conclusion, the youth begged a knife thrust that would end his wretched life, since he had proved a coward and betrayed his people.

Even that mercy was denied him. Rising Hawk felt that something more could be gained, perhaps, from this glib talker. For now, all was as he wished. There were some sixty or seventy braves within the village. One rush should carry it, and, after that, there would be the scalps of women and children—cheaply taken, and just as valuable as the scalps of matured warriors.

They pushed on until the evening. Rising Hawk himself, riding in advance, spied on the enemy from the crest of a hill and came back with the report that the Sioux were in their hands. All the village was preparing for the night; the horses were being driven in in the most leisurely fashion. Should they not attack now and overwhelm that town with a single rush?

They turned to Torridon for an answer. He answered with simply an instinct to delay the horror that seemed sure to come. Let them rest throughout the night. They were weary, now, from the long march. In the morning they would be fresh, and the Sioux would be cold with sleep. In the gray dawn the blow should be struck. Rising Hawk submitted to this advice with some grumbling, but he did not make any appeals. It was felt that the mighty medicine of Torridon alone was worthy of credit for having brought them undetected into the heart of the enemy’s country, and he was looked upon with great respect.

They pitched their camp at the throat of a blind cañon. It ran straight in toward the heart of the higher hills, and, around the first bend, they camped for the night. The cañon was a pocket that would conceal them from the foe. In the morning they would break out and slaughter!

Wrapped in his blanket, Torridon lay long awake, staring at the distant, cold shining of the stars. He felt weak and small. It was not the cold of the night that made him tremble. And he wished, with closed, aching eyes, for the end of tomorrow, whatever it might bring.

He slept and dreamed that the attack took place and that he himself rode in the forefront, shouting, and that in the village he was slaughtering more than all the rest—slaughtering women and children, until the iron hand of a Dakota warrior fell on his throat. He wakened, half choking. There was a touch on his shoulder.

It was Rising Hawk. All around him stood the shadowy forms of the warriors. The horses had been brought in, soundlessly.

“What has happened?” asked Rising Hawk.

“There is danger,” panted Torridon.

“Aye, White Thunder,” said the chief. “There is danger. Last night you would not let us strike. Now the time has passed. The Dakota boy has escaped and gone to warn his people. What medicine have you now to give us a victory, White Thunder? Or rather, after all our work, what medicine have you that will take us safely home?”

Torridon staggered to his feet. Across the sky was stretched a thin, high-riding mist. Behind it rode a young moon. Everything could be half seen—the tall, ragged rocks at the sides of the ravine, the tall gloomy forms of the Cheyennes.

He thought he could see, too, the arrival of the Dakota boy at the village, the mustering of the warriors, and then what? According to the plan that had been made and that the boy could not have failed to know, the Cheyennes were to wait until morning to attack. What band of Dakotas could hear this plan without determining on a counterstroke? No, they were already out and coming, moving swiftly and softly across the plain—on foot, perhaps, to make sure of greater noiselessness. And then the Sioux would come to the mouth of the ravine—perhaps they were here already, and creeping up, rifles ready, murder in their savage hearts!

Torridon looked wildly around him. How should they escape? The walls went up like perfect cliffs. No horse could mount them. And if the men saved themselves, they would be saved only for the moment. On foot, this vast distance from home, they would be hunted down and speared, like starved wolves.

“What are we to do?” asked Rising Hawk more harshly. “Do you tremble, maker of medicine?”

Bitterness and mockery was in his voice, and Torridon said in husky answer: “Leave the horses here . . . go down the ravine . . . every man softly . . . every man softly. Do you hear me, Rising Hawk?”

“I hear,” said the war chief. “Are we to leave our horses and have them caught . . . while we . . . ?”

That was not the thought in the mind of Torridon, but suppose that they tried to move from the valley on horseback, and gave to the Sioux the huge targets of man and horse together? So he thought and he insisted almost angrily: “Leave the horses here with the boys. Move out with the rifles. Quickly, quickly, Rising Hawk!”

“It was at dawn that we were to take scalps,” the chief reminded him with a voice like a snarl. “Now we shall be lucky if we save our own.”

Nevertheless, he gave the order, and they moved down the cañon slowly, softly. The warriors were both angry and nervous—angry because after all their march they now appeared to be turned back with but a single scalp, nervous because they dreaded any move, no matter how short, without their horses under them.

They passed down the ravine—Torridon in the rear, stumbling, making more noise than all the rest of that shadowy party, for his knees were very loose and wobbly beneath him. Yet they gained the mouth of the ravine unhindered. Not a shot had been fired against them, and the way home across the prairie was open.

He could have shouted for joy, but he was withheld by the fierce rush of another thought upon him. Somewhere across the dimness of the moonshine, surely the Sioux were advancing with all their warriors—their boys left at home with the old men and the women to keep guard against the chance of any counterstroke. So they were coming, or else they were unworthy of the name that they gained in generations of fierce campaigning until all their kind upon the plains trembled at the dreadful name of the Dakotas. Tribe after tribe they had thinned to the verge of extinction; tribe after tribe they had thrust west and south. Their pride and their courage and their self-belief were all equally great.

So they would surely come, to rush the Cheyennes in the throat of the valley. They would come hastily, though silently. Once they closed the mouth of that ravine, the Cheyennes to the last man were theirs, and they would make even the late crushing victory of the great Spotted Antelope seem like child’s play compared with the slaughter that they would make among the rocks.

So thought Torridon, and then he saw the great opportunity. No rushing of a village. No butchery of women and children. But a stroke of war!

It lay before him so clearly that already he seemed to see the dark figures trooping. He found Rising Hawk.

“Half on each side of the ravine, among the rocks . . . scatter the men, Rising Hawk,” he advised. “Then wait and wait. The Dakotas are sure to come. They come to trap us, and they will be trapped like fish in a net. Every Cheyenne will be drenched with blood, and there will be scalps in every teepee.”

Rising Hawk hesitated, not from doubt, but because the incoming of that thought numbed him with pleasure. He gave the orders instantly, and the idea spread like fire through the ranks. Despite all discipline and the necessity of silence, a grim murmur ran among the braves. They split into two sections. One rolled to the eastern side of the valley, the other rolled to the western side, and in a trice all sight and sound of them had disappeared among the shrubs, among the splintered rocks.

Even Torridon could hardly believe that the ground was alive with such a dreadful little host of trained fighters. But up the valley, from the place where the boys still kept the horses, there was occasionally the sound of a hoof striking against a rock, or the distinct noise of a snort or a cough, as one of the grazing animals sniffed dust up his nostrils.

And now only time could ripen the tragedy and bring it to perfection. But as he lay, he heard a whisper of one warrior to another: “We cannot fail. How can we fail? The Sky People fight for us. They will lead our bullets into the hearts of the Sioux. Hai! We have strong medicine with us this night.”

Torridon found his lips stretching into a stiff and painful smile, and his heart was hot and glad. He had hunted beasts before this day. Now he was a hunter of humans, and his veins were running with hot wine.

The moon was westering fast. The light it cast seemed to grow dimmer, but this was only in seeming and not in fact, for the sky was mottled with a patterning of broken clouds, and in the distance the curve of the river was beginning to be visible, like a streak of smoke across the lower ground.

Torridon began to take sights with his rifle, aiming at rocks on the farther side of the valley, shifting to shadowy bushes, and promising himself that it would be difficult work to strike a target by such a light as this. A light that constantly changed. Yes, when he looked now down toward the river, he saw that it was no longer a strip of smoke, but a width of dull, tarnished silver. Then he understood, the dawn was coming.

He was cold and stiff with lying in one place. Dew clogged his hair and moistened the tips of his ears. But wild excitement made him forget such minor evils. The dawn was coming, the light slowly, slowly, was freshening—and then suddenly out of the lowlands came a troop of figures!

They were like black, striding giants through the ground mist. And, he could see, faintly, the shimmer of light on their rifles. They had taken long, long to come, but now they were coming swiftly.

He turned his rifle toward them—then remembered that their keen eyes might detect the shining of the steel of the barrel. Hastily he muffled the gun under his robe.

Surely fifty other men among the rocks were making similar movements, but there was not so much as a whisper of sound. Very well that this was so, for there was no wind. The morning was deathly still, and the sky was turning milk-white with the coming of the day.

Straight on came the Dakotas. With a wildly beating heart Torridon counted them. Forty—sixty—seventy-two striding forms, black as jet through the land mist. Coming rapidly and yet without a whisper of sound.

They gained the throat of the ravine. Let not a Cheyenne move. Another ten strides, and the foe would be in the mouth of the trap.

But in the mouth of the ravine, as though suspicious of the greatness of their luck, the Sioux made a considerable halt, until, up the valley, came the sound of stamping and snorting horses. Then with one accord, no signal or order given, they moved forward, drawn by their lust for horseflesh and their burning hunger for Cheyenne blood. They went with their straight bodies now bent well forward, their rifles swinging, and presently they were well within the gap . . .

At that instant, a single rifle clanged from the opposite side of the ravine. In the middle of the Sioux band a warrior bounded into the air with a cry that seemed to Torridon the hugest sound that ever left human lips.

Before the dead body reached the ground, fifty rifles had spat fire and the Dakotas went down like toppling grass. They were all in a close body. If a bullet missed one it was almost sure to strike another. A great shout of woe and terror rose from them, and, as it fell, the shrill yell of dying men still hung high in the air. They wavered—then they broke back for the mouth of the ravine. Too late! Loading as they moved, the Cheyennes were slipping from among the rocks. That instant of wavering was costly. Against freshly charged weapons the Dakotas made their rush, and the blast of the second volley withered and curled them up and sent them scampering in plain panic down the valley.

After them went the Cheyennes, for they remembered, now, the horses and the boys with whom their trap had been baited. They rounded the turn of the ravine. The ground was littered with fallen guns, which the enemy had dropped in their flight, and in the growing light the Dakotas could be seen clambering hastily up the sheer walls of the rocks.

There were few loaded weapons to fire after them. But there was enough work to secure those who had not managed to gain the rocks. The fleetest of the Cheyennes had overtaken them, and, in the largeness of their hearts, a few prisoners were taken.

Madness took the Cheyennes by the throat. Up and down that ravine men danced and yelled in the fury of their joy. The scalps had been torn from the dead or the dying. The weapons had been gathered, the fallen stripped of clothing.

Before full day showed the real horror of the cañon, Torridon took Ashur and rode him down the valley, the stallion snorting with disgust. At the mouth, facing the brightening lowlands, he waited for the Cheyennes to come after him and begin the southward march. And then it was that temptation swelled big in the heart of Torridon. There was no one near him. Once away, no horse among their numbers could overtake Ashur.

But his promise held him—that and the knowledge that he was deep in hostile country where, in a day or two, scores of manhunters would be on the trail.

So he hesitated, and at last the torrent of warriors poured out around him. Their work was finished. Twenty-six dead men lay in the cañon. Five captives, their feet tied beneath the bellies of ponies, were carried along, and among them—strange chance—the boy who had escaped from them and given that warning by which the Sioux had been drawn into this dreadful man trap.

As every man went by Torridon he cast a present or a promise to the white man. Beaded moccasins, hunting knives, a deer-skin shirt, even one or two rifles were donated. A spare pony was loaded with these gifts, and well burdened by them.

But this was not all. Rising Hawk was hot to go at once against the Dakota village and strike it while its defenders were away and before those stragglers across the hills could regain the town.

He was dissuaded with difficulty. The way across the high hills was very short. It was certain that the stragglers from the battle already had carried themselves and their tale of woe to the town, and at that very moment the Dakotas were able to throw into the field a greater manpower than that of the invaders.

But though dissuaded from an attack, upon one point Rising Hawk had made up his mind. Among his prisoners was a tall youth, wounded through the left calf and bleeding freely in spite of what bandaging they could do. He never could live through a single day of riding. But he was the son of Spotted Antelope, and in the camp of the Sioux, still living and reserved for the return of Spotted Antelope, was Standing Bull. Why not exchange the son of the chief for the big Cheyenne?

They journeyed rapidly around the hills toward the town. Before they saw it, they heard a sound like the noise of a rising wind. It was the many-throated wail from the village. And as they came in view and drew nearer, they heard the noise increasing, a sound that took from the heart of Torridon all the hot pride of victory.

Such a victory never had been before—twenty-six Sioux fallen and five taken, and not a single Cheyenne had been lost!

Yet all the manhood of those stern Dakotas was not broken. Re-armed with every chance weapon they could pick up, the survivors of the late battle, reinforced by old men and young boys, sat their horses in a long line. They were drawn up close to the outer line of the lodges, to be sure, but nevertheless it was plain that they intended to fight their defensive fight, in case of need, in the open field and not from behind shelter. Up and down their ranks rode an old chief, no doubt exhorting them to be of good heart in spite of the disaster.

Rising Hawk sent in the boy who had been captured before. It was only a few minutes that they had to wait. Evidently the son of Spotted Antelope was highly prized in the Dakota camp, and presently the great form of Standing Bull was seen riding out from the village, with an escort of two warriors.

The son of the Sioux chief was sent forward to meet them, likewise accompanied by two Cheyenne warriors. So the parties met. The Cheyennes took their comrade and turned away. The Sioux returned to the village.

And so it was that Torridon clasped hands with Standing Bull again.

The giant Indian made no secret of his joy at finding himself among his friends again, but he declared that he never had had a doubt that his good friend, White Thunder, would devise some means for his delivery. He had been assured in a dream, he vowed, that White Thunder was coming to his aid, with the Sky People. Now it was accomplished.

The happiness of Standing Bull, indeed, was complete. For, having brought Torridon into the tribe and recaptured him after his escape, he felt that everything that was done by the medicine of the white man redounded largely to his credit. In this belief he was not crossed by the remainder of the Cheyennes.

Of the entire party of fifty, there was not a single man who had not at least counted a second or a third coup. And twenty-six scalps hung dripping at their saddlebows. They were enriched with honor, and they had avenged a recent defeat so thoroughly that the whole Cheyenne nation and all the most distant tribes of it would rejoice with them.

Rising Hawk was now a man of note. On the strength of this brilliant action, performed while he was yet wounded from the other battle, he stood fair to succeed High Wolf when that old man at last died or resigned his leadership of the tribe.

As for Torridon, he did not receive so much honor for his suggestion of the trap at the mouth of the ravine. It was rather because he had predicted the time at which they would take scalps. And even for that the regard he received was of a peculiar nature. To be sure he had done well. He had fought with the foremost. But still there was little honor paid to his person. It was to his magic powers that honors were accorded in the most liberal sense. They looked upon him not so much as a brave or wise man but as a peculiar instrument to which the spirits had confided an overwhelming power. He was hardly thought of as an individual at all.

Trusting in that power, straight south rode the war party. If they met with Spotted Antelope, they were wildly confident that victory again would be theirs. So Torridon spent anxious days until the river was crossed and at last they entered the comparatively friendly prairie where the power of the Cheyennes ruled.

A treble dignity invested Standing Bull when the war party returned to the village, so that even he could dispute with Rising Hawk the honors and the dignities of the expedition, though all that he had done was to be delivered from the hands of the Dakotas.

But, in the first place, he it was who had brought Torridon to the Cheyennes, and at second-hand, as it were, all the wonders that Torridon had worked since his arrival. Again, Standing Bull had taken prominent part in the first unfortunate expedition against the Sioux and duly counted his two coups before capture. Thirdly, the big man had the credit that comes of entering the jaws of death and escaping.

When the multitudes poured out from the Cheyenne camp, they yelled the name of Standing Bull louder than all the rest, except for a continual roar that lasted from the time the party was first met by fast-riding young men until the whole band had conducted the warriors to the center of the camp, and the burden of that roaring noise was the name of White Thunder. They called upon him, however, as they would have called upon a spirit. But they called upon Standing Bull as upon a man.

When that warrior returned, therefore, he found all in order with his reputation, but all out of order in his lodge. His favorite wife was a wracked and helpless woman, lying stretched on her bed, too weakened by a debauch of grief that had followed the tidings of the loss of her lord to do more than raise her head and smile weakly in greeting. Her shaven head glistened repulsively under the eye of her husband; her body was slashed and torn; her scalp was crossed with many knife slashes, and, beyond this, she had given away practically everything in the lodge and the entire horse herd of her husband in the midst of her grief in order to propitiate the Sky People and to give more lasting rest to the spirit of Standing Bull. In all this, she had acted a most pious part, but it left Standing Bull a beggared man.

For that, he cared not at all. There were many gifts from his friends. White Thunder alone gave ten horses to make a handsome beginning of a horse herd for his old friend, and High Wolf donated a store of provisions. In a day, the lodge was well supplied with all the necessaries. So fluid was prosperity in an Indian tribe. It ebbed and flowed like the sea.

The entire stage was left to be monopolized by Rising Hawk and Standing Bull. White Thunder had withdrawn to his teepee, where he lay on his bed and slept longer than any warrior should, and the whoopings and the yellings only made him turn from time to time and exclaim impatiently.

Young Willow, grown suddenly tender beyond her wont, watched over him. With a new-cut branch she waved the flies away from him, and with ambidextrous skill saw to it that he slept and that food was ready when at last he wakened.

He lolled at ease against the most comfortable of his backrests and ate of the meat that was placed before him—not simply dried flesh of the buffalo, but stewed venison, freshly killed, and roasted venison, turned at the fire on a dozen small spits and handed to him bit by bit by the squaw.

With burning eyes of pleasure she regarded the man of the lodge. “So,” said Young Willow, “you rode out groaning, and you have come back famous!”

“Fame is noise,” said Torridon sententiously—and wearily, also, for he was still tired from the long ride.

“Noise?” cried Young Willow, growing angry at once. “Fame is all that men live for and all that the dead are remembered by!”

“The people shout today, they yawn tomorrow,” sighed Torridon.

“Good fame is better than a handsome face,” said the squaw.

“It is a breath,” said the man.

“It is to men what their breath is to the flowers,” said the squaw.

“The flowers soon wither,” said Torridon, “and so what becomes of them?”

“The sweetness they have left on earth is remembered,” replied Young Willow.

He felt himself fairly beaten, and, acknowledging it by his silence, he smiled almost fondly on that grotesque face, and she smiled back at him, gently.

“From the time we left until the time we returned,” said Torridon, “I fired my rifle only twice.”

“And then?” she asked him hungrily.

“Then,” he admitted, with a lift of the head, “I saw a Sioux jump his height into the air each time.” He added, chuckling: “They must live on springs, because they die in the air.”

Young Willow laughed, like the cawing of a crow. “That is a good thing to remember,” she said. “How many spirits, White Thunder, came down at your call?”

An honest man would have shrugged his shoulders and declared that there was not a spirit in the air on that day of bloodshed. But Torridon had discovered that honesty availed him nothing. If he put all on a common-sense plane, it was simply believed that he was deceiving the people and hiding the truth, and veiling his powers.

He said as gravely as possible: “There was a spirit in front of every man. There were eighty Sioux, and yet all their bullets could not find a single Cheyenne. I shall tell you why . . . I had placed a spirit in front of every warrior. The ghosts turned the bullets away. Some of those bullets went back and killed the men who had fired them.”

At this prodigy, Young Willow opened her eyes and her mouth. She drank, as it were, of the mystery. Doubt was far from her. This was a story that would thrill the very hearts of the men, the women, and the children, and she could be fairly sure that White Thunder would not tell the story himself. It was in her hands. Beads and shells would be showered upon her for the telling of such a miracle. In fact her housekeeping for the white man was turning out a sinecure of great value, in her eyes.

“You saw them, White Thunder?” she breathed.

“I alone,” he said. “There is a veil before the eyes of other men. A spirit like a great bat flew before Rising Hawk. Bullets glanced from its wings and made sparks of bright red light.”

There was a little more of this fantastic conversation. Then, when Torridon went to sleep again, the squaw slipped from the lodge, fairly bursting with her tale. She went back to the teepee of her husband to find that High Wolf was in serious conversation with Standing Bull.

The old chief turned on the squaw with a harsh voice. “What of White Thunder?” he asked.

She concealed the miracle that had just been confided to her. She preferred to retell it herself to small gatherings. “He still sleeps.”

High Wolf made a gesture of impatience. “The Sky People have sent us a pig in the form of a man,” he declared scornfully. “Has he done no boasting?”

“Only that two Dakotas fell under his rifle”

High Wolf and Standing Bull exchanged glances.

“That is nothing to him?”

“He sleeps again.” Young Willow smiled.

“He neither has danced nor sung?”

Young Willow shrugged her shoulders. “He has had a few Dakotas killed, and taken a few scalps to make the Cheyennes proud. But what is that to him? If he wished, he would wash the Dakotas into the rivers so thickly that the Father of Waters would be choked on his way to the sea. The Cheyennes come home and sing like children over a few beads. White Thunder sleeps so that he may dream of happier things.”

The two warriors listened to this speech with the deepest attention.

“He is not happy, then?” asked High Wolf.

“He is as always. I spoke to him about fame. He turned my words into the thinnest air.”

High Wolf gestured toward the door, and the squaw departed. After she had gone, High Wolf said: “From the time you first brought him to us, I knew that he was a gift from the heavens. But I never knew until now what his powers could be.”

“Use him now, while he is with us,” said Standing Bull. “Use him like a magic rifle that will soon be gone. For he is unhappy among us. I cannot tell why, but he is unhappy.”

“I, however, know the reason,” returned the chief. “It is because of a woman.”

“Ha?” cried Standing Bull. “If it is a Crow, a Blackfoot, if it is even a Sioux, there are enough horses in the tribe to buy ten girls for him.”

“Tell me,” said the old man, “how often do the whites sell their women?”

Standing Bull made a face of disgust. “A woman to a white man,” he admitted, “is like a child to a mother.” He added: “Is it a white girl?”

High Wolf nodded. “It is a white girl,” he said.

At that, the big man threw out his arms. “It is she who lives at Fort Kendry, I saw her. She is no bigger than a child. In twenty days she could not flesh a robe. She has no more force in her hands than there is in the claw of a sparrow. Why should a man want her?”

“This is not a man. It is a spirit,” said High Wolf.

The warrior made no answer.

“Heammawihio,” went on the chief gravely, “has given power to you in this matter. It was you who brought us White Thunder. It was you, also, who followed him to Fort Kendry and brought him to us a second time. Therefore, it is plain that the Great Spirit wishes to work through you in all of these things. Perhaps it was to free you that we were given this last great victory over the Sioux. At any rate, it is clear that you must do what is necessary to keep White Thunder happy . . . that is, to keep him with us. You must bring to him the white girl that he wants.”

Standing Bull groaned. “Twice in the trap makes a captured wolf,” he said.

“Look over the tribe,” said High Wolf. “Take the finest horses and the strongest braves, but fix this in your mind . . . that you must ride to Fort Kendry and bring the girl here.”

For a whole week, Standing Bull purified himself every day. It became known throughout the village that he was about to attempt some great and secret thing. For every day he went to the sweat house and there he had water poured over red-hot, crumbling stones until the lodge was filled with choking, blinding fumes. In these he remained for a long time, and then came out, staggering and reeling like a drunkard. He would run down the hillside naked, the steam flying up from his body, and plunge into the cold river. In this manner he was driving out evil and preparing himself for a great deed.

He fasted, also, eating sparingly only once every second day, and he never smoked, except ceremonially. With his hands he touched no weapons. He was much alone, and used to sit on a hill overlooking the camp and the river for hours and hours at a time. Sometimes he was seen there in the midday. Again, the growing dawn light discovered Standing Bull on the hill. Perhaps he was wrapped in a buffalo robe. Perhaps he was half naked, as though unaware of heat or of cold.

His poor wife, Owl Woman, cured by the return of her husband, was up and about the camp, frightfully worried by the procedures of her spouse. She had harried herself until she was a mere caricature of a woman, but she was honored throughout the village because of the extremity of her devotion. Even that harsh and incredulous critic, Young Willow, was heard to say: “She was just a young woman before . . . now she is beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” echoed Torridon, always willing to argue with the squaw.

“No good woman can be ugly,” said Young Willow.

Owl Woman, therefore, was seen about the camp anxiously inquiring what could be in the mind of her husband, and then rather naturally she told herself that it was because she had deformed herself so greatly by mourning. She even came to Torridon and brought him a gift of carved bone to ornament a backrest. She wanted to know how she could win back her husband.

He accepted the gift, gave her a simple salve to hasten the healing of the wounds that covered her body, and then told her to go home and cover her shaven head with a mantle, and to be seen singing around the lodge. As for her husband, he assured her that the heart of Standing Bull was not estranged. He simply was having a struggle with spirits.

Common sense, of course, would have dictated all these sayings to any man, but she received them with devout thankfulness. She took the mantle that he gave her and went off with a step so light and swift that the cloth—it was a bright Mexican silk gained from the Comanches—streamed out behind her as she went.

Torridon watched her going until Young Willow broke in on his thoughts with her harsh voice: “Why do you sneer and smile to yourself after you have given advice to people and shown them the truth? He that scorns others must sit on a cloud.”

On the evening of the seventh day, Standing Bull himself came to Torridon. He looked thin. His eyes were sunken, and his lips were compressed.

“I am going to try to do a great thing,” he said. “Give me a charm to help me, White Thunder.”

“There are all sorts of charms,” said the young man. “If I gave you a charm at random, it might be the worst thing in the world for you. Tell me what you want to try.”

“I cannot tell you that,” grumbled Standing Bull. “Only . . . it is something to make you happy.”

“Shall I tell you the quickest way to make me happy?” said Torridon. “Send away the young men who watch me day and night. Let me have Ashur and one minute to get away from the camp. Then I shall be happy, Standing Bull, but nothing else matters to me.”

“Do you ask me to give away my right hand, White Thunder?” asked the chief gloomily. “Then I must go away and carry no luck from you.” He departed slowly in a sort of despair.

Then he began to make the round of the camp. His reputation was now so big that he was able to call on six of the best warriors in the village and enlist them to follow him wheresoever he chose to lead them. The desperate nature of the work that he had in mind kept him from revealing the secret. Chiefly because, if it were rumored about the camp and came to the ear of Torridon, he was afraid that great magician would blast all their plans.

At last he had his party together. There were three horses for every man; the braves were painted for the warpath, and Standing Bull rode with them three times around the village. As he came opposite each of the cardinal points of the compass in making this circuit, he blew smoke offerings, but, after the third circle, he bore away to the northwest. They crossed the shallow river, and disappeared over the plains, while Torridon, together with most of the gathered tribe, watched their going.

“Standing Bull is like a buzzard,” said Young Willow. “He is always hungry and therefore he is always on the wing.”

But Standing Bull was not thinking of fame; he was facing forward to the dreadful difficulty of his task and wishing that, in all the world, some other duty could have been assigned to him. Sometimes he wished that the entire Cheyenne nation could be behind him for the work. But again, he realized that such numbers could do nothing secretly, and at the first approach of an armed tribe all the people who lived outside the fort would retire within its walls—Samuel Brett with his niece among the rest. He realized, also, that he never had seen the face of the girl. He had seen her only in the dusk, and, if there were more than one girl in the house, he would be shrewdly put to it to select the right one.

It was no wonder that with these thoughts in his mind he went on the journey with a depressed heart. All the way his words were few, but the warriors followed without a sign of discontent until they came over the lower hills and at last looked down on Fort Kendry.

Then they assembled together and Red Shirt, chief of the followers of the big leader, spoke for the rest. “Have you come for white scalps, Standing Bull?” he asked with much gravity.

“You, perhaps, never have taken one?” said Standing Bull pleasantly. For the entire tribe knew about the long-tressed scalp that hung in the lodge of Red Shirt.

“Because of that scalp I took,” said Red Shirt frankly, “I cannot ride into a trading post without fear. For the white men never forget. Because of that scalp, many Cheyennes have died, and now I know that it is better to fight with the Crows or the Blackfeet or the Dakotas, even, than to fight with the white men.”

The rest of the men listened in silence that agreed totally with their spokesman, and Standing Bull saw that he would have a good deal of explaining to do.

He said cheerfully: “I, too, my brothers, know that the white men are dangerous. I have not brought you here to take scalps, but to do something still more important. I shall tell you simply, now that you have come to the place where the thing must be done.”

He made a pause and swept his hand toward the fort. The rambling group of unpainted walls, some stone built, all rough and carelessly made, the ramshackle roofs, the twisting fence lines, made a very study in confusion. But at the tops of the walls of the fort itself they could see the little round mouths of the cannons that made such miraculous noise and killed at such a miraculous distance.

With equal awe and hate the band looked down upon this stronghold of the white skins.

“We do not love these people,” said Standing Bull, “but one man with a white skin has done much for the Cheyennes. I speak of White Thunder.”

A unanimous grunt of agreement greeted this remark.

“Now, my brothers,” said Standing Bull, “we wish to keep White Thunder among us, I am sure. We never have known hunger since he came. He can bring the rain from heaven, and he can turn the bullets of the enemy in battle. He can bring ghosts to protect us and to send our bullets straight into the hearts of our foes. To keep him, we have our young braves guard him. That is hard work. Besides, someday he may find a way to trick our cleverest young men and to escape.”

“That is true,” said the youngest of the party, a keen stripling of twenty years. “When I guarded him, I trembled with fear. I would as soon try to hold the naked lightning in my hand as to keep White Thunder from doing what he wanted to do.”

“But,” said Standing Bull, “if once we can make him happy among us, all will be well. And that can be managed, I think. Here in Fort Kendry is the thing that he wants. It is not horses or money or buffalo robes. It is a squaw. There is a girl here who he loves. Because she is not with him, his heart is sick. Now I, my brothers, hope to catch that girl and take her back to him. You see that our business is not so dangerous as the taking of white scalps.”

Red Shirt exclaimed impatiently: “I, Standing Bull, know the white men, and I know that they put more value on their women than they do on their scalps!”

Standing Bull scowled at this opposition. He said at length, bitterly: “I shall take the chief risk. I cannot make you help me. But if you stay here, I shall go down alone and bring the girl away, or die in that work. I am trying to do something for all the people of the Cheyennes. Who will help me? Let us bring the girl to White Thunder, and he will stay with us as contentedly as a bird in a nest.”

They stared at him, hardly able to believe. Red Shirt suggested that there were pretty maidens among the Cheyennes. But Standing Bull waved him to scorn.

“White Thunder,” he explained, “does not think like a man, but like a foolish boy that is sick. We, like parents, must try to please him. Because the boy has been given power.”

This simple reasoning appeared conclusive. One and all agreed that they would do their best. If they succeeded, even though they returned without scalps or horses, certainly they would be gloriously received by the Cheyennes. So they loosed their reins and went on toward the fort.

Once before, Standing Bull had gone to Fort Kendry. But though he had come there in the daylight, he had done his work in the night and escaped again under cover of the dark. He had no fear that he would be recognized now, or suspected of any evil intention. To mask the real purpose of his journey, he had seen to it that some of the extra horses were loaded with buffalo robes of good quality. To all intents, they would appear like a small band of warriors who had come in to trade and get what they could. In the meantime, they would look around them for the girl.

They hardly had come into the village before they were welcomed. The more important traders had their quarters within the fort itself, where they worked for the fur company. But in the village were independents that picked up a little business here and there from just such small parties as these. As the Cheyennes entered, wrapped to the eyes in their robes, their long rifles balanced across the pommels of their saddles, first one and then another agent greeted them fluently in their own tongue and tempted them with bottles of whiskey. Both of these, Standing Bull passed by, but a third man he followed into his booth and looked at the display of goods. There were beads of all kinds, together with hatchets, knives, tobacco, tea, sugar, coffee, flour, calico, clothes, and ribbons of many colors, blankets, and a hundred little foolish trinkets. Standing Bull himself was enchanted by the appearance of some little bells that, as the agent pointed out, could be tied in the mane of the horse, or in the hair of the warrior.

“So,” said Standing Bull to Red Shirt, “a brave would be known before he was seen. His friends would be glad. He would walk with music.” And he jangled the bells.

But Red Shirt was entirely absorbed in the contemplation of a jug of whiskey; the pungent fragrance of it already was in his nostrils.

However, nothing would be done, no matter what the temptation, until Standing Bull gave the signal, and certainly he would not give such a signal on this day. The number of the robes was small, barely large enough to excuse their offering in trade, after so long a journey to present them. On the first day there should be no trafficking. Indeed, if possible, Standing Bull intended to get his party away from the fort before the warriors had tasted the unnerving fire of the whiskey. One bottle of that would be enough to start a debauch that would ruin all plans.

In the midst of all this confusion, while the trader and his boy were panting with eagerness for plunder, another form appeared, a tall and magnificently made frontiersman, garbed in the finest of deerskin, heavily beaded, with his long, blond hair flowing down about his shoulders. A pistol in one side of his belt balanced a heavy knife that was in front, and in his hands he carried a long, heavy rifle, using it as lightly as though it were a walking staff. He went straight to Standing Bull and raised a hand in greeting.

“Hau!” grunted the Cheyenne in response.

“Hau!” said the other cheerfully, and speaking the Indian tongue well enough. “Men tell me that you are Standing Bull, the chief of the Cheyennes?”

Standing Bull wanted nothing so little as to be recognized. He maintained a grim silence and looked the other in the eye.

The white man continued: “We have heard of you. The Dakotas have been here. They had something to say of you and your big medicine.”

Here the boy interrupted: “Hey, you! Are you gonna try to swipe these half-wits out of our booth? Back up, will you, and let us finish our trade with them, or else we’ll . . .”

His employer silenced him with a back-handed cuff that sent the youngster staggering. “It’s Roger Lincoln, you little fool,” he said, and added: “Glad to see you, Mister Lincoln.”

Now at that name there was a little stir among the Cheyennes. In fact, it was known from the Dakotas to the Kiowas and Comanches, over the length and breadth of the plains. They moved back a little, partly as though they did not know what to expect, and partly as if they wanted a better chance to examine and admire the white man. They found him perfect in his appointments, from his hat to his beaded moccasins. Except for the whiteness of his skin—and that was weather-browned enough—he might have stepped into the ranks of any Indian tribe of the plains, a chief, or the favored son of some rich brave.

“I have a house close by,” said Roger Lincoln. “I do not wish to make a trade with a friend. I wish to talk to you about better things than buffalo robes. Will you come?”

He added to the trader a brief sentence, promising that he would not barter for a single one of the robes or any other possession of the Cheyennes. The trader, biting his lip, nodded, and watched in silence while the troop filed off at the heels of Lincoln.

The latter took the Indians to his own trading booth a short distance away, and there he seated them in a circle in his room and offered them tea, sweetened with heaps of sugar. With loud smackings, the red men tasted it, rolled their eyes, and poured down the scalding hot tea. They held out their cups for another service, and again the cups were filled brimming. A pipe was passed. Good humor began to possess Standing Bull, greater than the doubt and suspicion in which he had stood when the white man first greeted them. He waited for the meaning of this to be expounded, and presently the meaning was made clear.

“Now, my friend,” said Roger Lincoln, “look around you at everything. You see rifles here and pistols there. Here are some barrels of powder. There is lead for making bullets. There are some bullet molds. Here are some knives. See them. Take this one for a present and feel its edge. Also, there are saddles and bridles. Here you see the clothes. There is enough red cloth to put a headband around the head of every Cheyenne . . . man, and woman, and child. There are beads in these boxes. And here is a little chest stored with all sorts of wonderful things. Back in this corner you can see the hatchets and the axes.”

The nostrils of Standing Bull fanned out and quickly contracted as he drew in an envious breath. “The white men,” he said, “are rich. The Indians are very poor.”

“Nevertheless,” said Roger Lincoln quickly, “they are men, and a man is worth more than you can put on his back or into his hands.”

Standing Bull smiled, touched with pleasure almost in spite of himself. “Perhaps it is true,” he agreed.

“Have you looked at all these things?” asked Lincoln.

“I have seen them very well.”

“But look at them again. Examine them. Feel them with your hands. Try the weight of this axe. You see that it has a tooth that will never grow dull, and that hatchet was made to sink into the brainpan of a Dakota.”

Standing Bull sighed with a great delight.

“Here, also, are buttons brighter than silver to put along the edges of your trousers. Here are some coils of rope, and look at these iron tent pegs. You know how they are used? And here is an iron-headed hammer that never will break.”

The Indians followed every word with intense pleasure and interest.

“Come back with me,” went on Roger Lincoln. He led the way out of the shack and in the rear a large corral opened. In it were fifty or sixty horses to which an attendant was forking out well-cured hay. “You have the eye which sees horses,” said Roger Lincoln. “When you look at these, you will see that they are not like the other horses of the plains. They are taller. Their legs are longer and stronger. They are crossbred. They are not soft like other horses of white men. They are bred out of plains ponies by fine stallions. Mounted on such horses as these, Standing Bull, you would sweep away from an enemy. You could strike and fly off again out of danger like a hawk playing with a buzzard.”

The Cheyennes devoured those horses with greedy looks. It was true that they understood horseflesh perfectly, and now they proved it by the red-eyed silence in which they observed these animals.

After this, Roger Lincoln went on slowly and impressively: “I am not a rich man, my friends. I have worked many years, and what you have just seen is what I have saved. I have paid for these things with blood, you may be sure. I had hoped that with them I could trade and make more money. At last I could go back among my people and sit quietly in a pleasant lodge by the side of a stream, with trees around me, and take a squaw, and raise many children.

“But dearer than peace and happiness are the life and the happiness of a friend. Do you hear me, Standing Bull? You have in your lodges a man with a white skin, and you call him White Thunder. Is it true?” He said the words as one who puts a statement in question form for the sake of politeness. The Cheyenne leader stiffened a little. His keen eyes turned gravely upon the other, and he said nothing.

“For that man,” said Roger Lincoln, “if you will bring him in safety to Fort Kendry, I will pay you everything that your eyes have seen. If you find anything more, you are welcome. I will give you also even the house in which you find all these things and everything down to the ground on which it stands. I have promised. No man has heard me say the thing that is not so.”

This speech made a vast impression upon the Cheyennes. They drew back a little, murmuring, and among the companions of Standing Bull there was only one opinion. Such a princely offer of dazzling wealth should be accepted at once. Never had they seen such riches heaped together. The whole tribe would be rejoiced.

Standing Bull simply replied: “He is not ours to sell. The Sky People sent him to us, and, if we let him go, they will send us bad luck. Besides, High Wolf never would sell him. And who but a fool, after all, would give up a power that can turn the bullets of the Dakotas as if they were pebbles thrown by children? Do not talk foolishness any more. Besides, Roger Lincoln is a wise man. Would he pay such things except for a man who is worth twice as much? If White Thunder is worth so much to the whites, he is worth ten times more to us!”

He turned to the big, white man and shook his head solemnly. “Our eyes have not seen White Thunder,” he said. “We do not know about what you are speaking.”

Those men who early went to the Western frontier were, almost without exception, children. Great-shouldered, hard-handed, often hard-hearted children, but, nevertheless, children they were. Nothing but childish reasoning could have induced them to leave the cities and the comfortable lands east of the Mississippi for all the chances, the labor, the dangers of the prairie, except that in their heart of hearts they loved a game more than they loved anything else.

So it was with Roger Lincoln. Well-born, well-educated, calm-minded, brave as steel and as keen, he could have had the world at his feet, if he had chosen to live among the civilized. But rather than his knowledge of books he preferred to use his knowledge of the wilderness. Rather than his knowledge of civilized society he preferred to use his knowledge of the barbarians. A fine horse was more to him than a learned companion, and a good rifle better than a rich inheritance.

Stately, gentle, soft of voice, beautiful of face, and mighty of hand, he looked the type of some Homeric hero. There was no cloud of trouble on his brow. His eye was as clear as the clearest heavens.

Yet beneath all this there was the heart of a child. It began to work in him now that he heard the lying reply of Standing Bull. His lips trembled and then compressed. His breast swelled. An almost uncontrollable passion enthralled Roger Lincoln, and the Cheyennes drew a little closer together, overawed and frightened.

“I have been to the Cheyennes a good friend,” said Roger Lincoln. “There are many in your tribe who know that I never have harmed them. Your own chief, High Wolf, remembers a day on the waters of the Little Bender when the Crows were closing around him and there was no hope of help. On that day he was glad that Roger Lincoln was his friend and a friend to the Cheyennes. I split the Crows as a child splits a twig. They ran away, and the Cheyennes followed them and took a great many scalps. There were other days of which I could speak. I have kept the Cheyennes from trouble whenever I was near them. I respected them and thought that they were men and truth speakers. When they came to a trading post where I was, I saw that the traders did not cheat them. I used to stand up in the councils of the white men and say that no matter what they thought of the other red men of the plains, the Cheyennes were real men and brave men and that they spoke the truth.

“Because I thought all these things, today I was willing to do more than is just. My dearest friend is among your lodges. You keep him there. His heart is breaking. What wrong had he done you or any other Indian? He was young and had harmed no one. He was my friend. I have no other friend half so dear to me as this White Thunder. But you stole him and kept him, after he had done good to one of you. I do not want to name the warrior whose life he saved on the island at the forking of the river. I would not like to say that any man would be so base as to betray the friend who saved him. And yet this is what happened.

“I did not want to talk of these things. Instead, I offered to make a bargain with you. I offered you a ransom. What do you do when a most hated enemy is taken in battle? If his friends offer you horses and guns, you take them and set him free. But you did not take White Thunder in battle. You tricked him into coming to your camp and, after that, you surrounded him with guards. You threatened to kill him if he did not work great medicine for you. And all that I say is true. Now you will not take such a ransom as never was offered to Cheyennes before.

“You forgot the wrong you have done to White Thunder. Instead of keeping him, you should cover him with presents. You should give him whole herds of horses, and then you should set him free.

“Or when Roger Lincoln asks, because of the good I have done for you, you should set White Thunder free even if he had killed one of your chiefs. But he has killed no one and he has done you no harm. Only out of the wickedness of your hearts you are keeping him to be a slave to you, to bring rain to your crops and make medicine against the other Indians.

“Now, I tell you that you will come to a day when you will groan at the thought of White Thunder. You will tremble when his name is mentioned. You will wish that you had starved of hunger without corn rather than that he should have been kept in the tribe like a prisoner.

“I tell you this, and, when I speak, it is not the whistling of the wind. I have been your friend. Now I am your friend no longer. From the moment that you leave Fort Kendry I am your enemy, and you shall pay for the evil that is in you. This is my token of what I will do and of how much I hate you!”

There was a big chopping block nearby and in it was stuck a splitting axe—an old and rusted blade with a wide bevel, useless for felling trees but acting like a wedge to tear open sections for firewood. This axe the frontiersman caught up. His childish fury had reached its climax, and with fury in his eye he swung the axe and cast it from him. With one hand he had wielded its heavy mass and it spun lightly away and drove its blade into a post of the corral. So heavy was the shock that the whole fence trembled. And the bright eyes of the Cheyennes flashed at one another.

That blow would have driven the axe head well nigh through the body of a warrior.

“Go!” said Roger Lincoln, and before the wave of his hand the Indians drew back.

They filed through the store. They reached the street and turned down it, still walking one behind the other, their muffling robes high about their faces. They took their horses with them to the edge of the town and there they sat down in a clearing in a circle.

Standing Bull took out a pipe bowl of red catlinite. This he filled with tobacco, mixed with dried, powdered bark to make it burn freely and give pungency to the taste. He fitted in the long stem and lighted the mixture. He blew a puff to the earth spirits. He blew a puff to the cardinal points. Then he held up the pipe to the Great Spirit and chanted slowly a sacred song that, rudely translated, ran somewhat as follows:

Heammawihio, lord of the air,

We are not even master of the ground.

But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

In this last line the entire band joined, singing like a chorus, singing heavily.

Heammawihio, your way is the way of the eagle.

Our way is the way of the prairie dog, creeping in holes.

But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

Heammawihio, your eye sees all things and all thoughts.

But even in the sunlight our eyes are darkened.

But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

Heammawihio, for your enemies you keep

the polished spears of the lightning.

And we have nothing but our weak hands

with which to strike.

But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

Give us good council, open our minds, be pitiful.

We have no words or thoughts, except to pray to you.

But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

Between the verses of this solemn song, Standing Bull had smoked a few pulls from his pipe. Now it was handed around the circle. Each man smoked. Each man was silent. When the pipe was empty, the ashes were knocked from the bowl, and then the council began. Standing Bull invited all to speak who had an idea that might be of service in their present difficulty.

Red Shirt was eloquent at once. His thought was of immediate and complete surrender. From White Thunder, as he said, the Cheyennes had received many services. They could make no repayment for the rain he had brought to them, the Dakota scalps that he had placed in their lodges, or the members of the tribe who he had saved from sickness. It was fitting, therefore, that they should set the white man free. The additional argument was that of Roger Lincoln’s enmity. Certainly they should set White Thunder free at any rate. In addition, they had great treasures offered to them by Roger Lincoln. And, beyond this, there was now thrown into the scale the terrible hostility of this famous warrior. It would be far better at once to return to Roger Lincoln and propose amity. He, Red Shirt, had hardly been able to keep his tongue quiet when he had heard the magnificent proposals of the white hunter refused.

After him spoke Rushing Wind, the same who had made the wager with Torridon about the crossing of the river. He was equally hot on the other side. What treasures, he asked, could be offered by any man to offset the magic powers of White Thunder? He, Rushing Wind, had seen the great enchanter at work. He had seen spirits called down from the air in the form of hawks. He had seen the work those spirits could accomplish. White Thunder knew the language of bird and beast. He could draw the buffalo out of the plains and bring them close to the village. Everything was possible to him. He was a treasure in himself beyond price. As for Roger Lincoln, he was one man. What could one man perform against the entire Cheyenne nation?

If only, then, they could get what they came for and win the squaw who would keep the enchanter happy, they could wish for nothing else. The medicine of White Thunder would be turned against Roger Lincoln himself and soon that famous scalp would dry in the lodge of a Cheyenne. He, Rushing Wind, hoped that he would be the lucky man. At least, he was not afraid.

This speech of a headlong youth was received in silence. Only the eyes of the older warriors turned gravely to one another, exchanging a thought.

Finally Standing Bull said, though gently: “No white man ever is alone. Roger Lincoln is a name that can gather a tribe of white warriors. Because I am leading this party, now I must think deeply and pray to Heammawihio for guidance. For myself I wish nothing. I am doing all this for the sake of our people. I shall pray with a pure heart. May I receive guidance.”

He filled his pipe. The others withdrew softly from about him.

When night came down upon the camp of the Cheyennes, where they had improvised some comfort in the woods, they found that the clement weather had changed much for the worse. The moon for which they hoped did not appear. Instead, the sky was covered with deep gray clouds in the evening, and, as the darkness began, the rain commenced, also, falling small and soft, but gradually penetrating their clothes with wet and cold. The trees gradually were drenched with moisture. A heavy pattering began in the woods that sounded like the fearless striding to and fro of wild beasts. The fire burned small, with much smoke and little heat, as all the fuel was soaked that they threw into the heap. There was small comfort for them. They were in a far land. They were close to the power of the white men. And their hearts were heavy with the knowledge that they had done wrong, and were contemplating a greater evil.

For, as the darkness came thick, and the rain began to descend, Standing Bull had advanced from among the woods and announced that, after consulting the Great Spirit with all his heart, he could not understand any message, and therefore he took it for granted that they should continue with the work on which they had come.

That evening he would look over the situation. As for the rest of the warriors, he recommended to them that they earnestly pray that a dream might be sent to one of them suggesting the proper course for the war party.

With that, Standing Bull left them and slipped away among the woods and among the scattering houses until he came close to the square-built log cabin of Samuel Brett.

Here he began to prowl with the greatest caution. The cold of the rain, driven to the bone by occasional flurries of wind, he quite disregarded. He moved in the darkness as though he had been moving in the open light of day, and trying to make his approach unnoticeable under the battery of a hundred suspicious eyes. From rock to rock, from bush to bush, he worked softly, until he came close to the house.

After that, he worked back and forth under the wall. By the kitchen door he paused and smelled cookery. He was hungry, and the odors tempted him. There were such fragrances as he never before had connected with food. However, he banished this passing weakness at once. Completing his tour of investigation, he found two windows, but both were closed and darkened against the night and the rising storm.

He came back to the kitchen door, and pressed close to it. It was a work of some danger. There were considerable cracks in this home-made door, and through the cracks ran long fingers of light that traveled far into the night and showed the rain sifting down steadily. In addition, those fingers of light must be touching his person, and, if anyone were abroad to watch him, he surely would be revealed.

However, it was necessary for him to learn something of what was inside the house. So he put his eye to crack after crack until through one of the apertures he was able to see the corner that included the stove and the sink.

Two women were there washing tins and dishes. One washed. One dried. He could see the face of her who dried. She was young, slender, dark of eye and skin. She was pretty enough to have caused the heart of a young brave to leap. Doubtless it was she who White Thunder wanted.

As for she who washed, her back was turned. She was doubtless the squaw of the house. Yet her back was not flat and broad. The nape of her neck was delicately rounded. However, the squaws among the whites were not like the squaws among the Indians.

He waited, listening. Their voices were like the sounds of two brooks running through a still woodland, bubbling, and often running together with laughter. Those sounds were pleasant to the ear of Standing Bull. But he thought of the strong-handed squaws in his teepee. He thought of Owl Woman, who nearly had slain herself in the intensity of mourning for her lost lord.

Then his mind grew more contented. To each people, their own women. But his own women were the best in the world, he was sure. Besides, one of them had given him a male child so that the memory of Standing Bull should be kept strong and his spirit alive among men.

At last, she who washed turned from the sink. The heart of Standing Bull sank. She was as young as the other. She was younger. Her hair was not dark, but light. The radiance from the lamp shone through it, making it glisten at the outer edges. Her cheek and throat were as sleek as the cheek and throat of a baby. She had large, dim eyes. They did not dance and sparkle like the eyes of the darker girl. There was not much life in this paler creature. And, therefore, doubtless White Thunder could not have chosen her.

However, he who is wise reserves his judgment. Standing Bull reserved his. Who, after all, can step inside the mind of the white man and be sure of his thoughts? He lives by contraries. The creature will fight, but he cares nothing for the glory of the counted coup, or the symbol of the scalp. He fights to destroy bodies. The red man understands that there is no true death except to the spirit. And so in all things, the white man, in spite of his medicine and his wisdom, lives by contraries, doing foolish things. Therefore, it might be that White Thunder would prefer this paler girl, this dim-eyed, sad-faced creature.

But why, after all, should she be sad?

Something stirred at the edge of the woods. Instantly Standing Bull was close down at the foot of the wall of the house, where the darkness covered him. Footsteps came up to the door, a big man was seen there, striped by the light that shone through the cracks. He thrust the door open.

As the door closed upon him, gay voices broke out. There was laughter. Standing Bull understood not a word, but very well he recognized the sound of rejoicing. Then he crept back to his place of espial and stared through again. The big man had placed on the floor the body of a young deer that he had carried upon his shoulders. Now he sat at a table near the stove—a powerful fellow with huge shoulders and a stern face. His clothes were beginning to steam. A white squaw, older than the two girls, came hurrying in to him. They exchanged words. Her hands were full of cloth, and with it she returned to the other room. The dark-eyed beauty went with her and left the paler girl behind.

She, as was right, tended the hunter. The fragrance of coffee made the air sweet and pungent. There was the scent of frying venison, and the meat hissed and snapped as the heat seared it. Bread was brought forth. It glistened white as snow as the knife of the girl divided it. She laid the food before the hunter. The mouth of Standing Bull watered and he swallowed hard.

Swiftly the hunter ate, and hugely. Like a starved brave returned from the arduous warpath he devoured his food. Then he leaned back in his chair and lit a pipe.

Oh, white man, are there no spirits in your world? Without ceremony, brutally, crudely, he filled and lit the pipe. He leaned back in his chair, chewing the short stem, shifting it from side to side in his white, strong teeth. As he smoked, he talked. The girl was washing dishes again. Tobacco smoke filled the air. A heavy, thick, sweet odor, unlike that of Indian tobacco.

The hunter drew the smoke into his lungs. It poured forth at his mouth and his nose as he talked. His words became living images in smoke. They rose and melted slowly and flattened against the ceiling.

Standing Bull watched, fascinated. He felt the muscles tightening along his spine. He bristled as a dog bristles, when a strange animal comes near. And Standing Bull, out of instinct, fumbled the haft of his big hunting knife. That rough blond scalp would look very good in the lodge.

The man inside now spoke and beckoned, and the girl stood before him. Was she his daughter? Was she his youngest squaw?

No, the white man kept only one squaw, for in all things his ways were the ways of ignorance. It was even said—a wonder not to be believed—that sometimes he helped the women in their work around the lodge.

Now the girl stood before the big man. He put out his hand and laid it on her head, and her head bowed a little, as though under a weight.

He spoke to her. His rough voice was softened. His gesture indicated that he talked of some far thing. He shook his head and denied that far thing. Then he appeared to argue. He talked with gestures of both hands. He was eager. Almost he was appealing.

To all of this talk the girl replied with short answers. A brief word. A syllable. Presently tears began to run down from her eyes. They fell on her round, bare arms. They fell on her hands, which were folded together. She was not talking at all, and indeed she did not seem even to be hearing what the big hunter said. Her eyes looked off at that distant thing of which they had been speaking before. They were sad eyes. They were like blue smoke. Looking at them, Standing Bull sighed a little.

Suddenly the white hunter jumped up from the table and threw his hands above his head. Standing Bull grinned, for he expected the blow to fall on the girl, but, instead, the white man struck his own head and then rushed from the room.

But still the young squaw paid no attention. She was still looking into the distance, still weeping. She sank into a chair. Her head fell against the wall. Her eyes closed. She wept no longer. She was as one who grief has sickened past tears.

Then by revelation Standing Bull knew what he should have known before. This was the girl.

Dim of eye she was now, but it is happiness that lights a woman, as fire lights a branch and the branch lights the forest. She wept, and she was in sorrow for the sake of a man who was far away, and that man was White Thunder. It was all clear, clearer than any story told in pictures, as though an old sage were at hand to explain their meaning.

Standing Bull slipped away through the woods and rejoined his anxious companions. He came among them with a glistening eye, but he said not a word. Much that was done on distant trails was better left untold until one returned to the village. For what was described on the trail, that was remembered, but what was unnamed at the time, afterward could be expanded.

He closed his eyes. He was regardless of the smoke from the fire that was pouring into his face. Somehow, he would be able to turn this night’s adventure and the real peril he had endured into a story of some worth. He was sure of that, if only he could have patience. He would invent; it needs time to search the spirit.

Then, by dim degrees, his thoughts turned back to the white girls. He tried to think of the one of the dancing eyes. But instead, all that he had in mind was the eyes of the other, like blue smoke, covered with sorrow.

He wondered greatly how she would appear if she saw White Thunder. Was not White Thunder just as the girl? There was a veil over his eyes, also. Partly of thought and magic, partly of grief.

Standing Bull no longer wondered that his friend the white magician sorrowed for this girl. He was himself beginning to understand that there is other beauty than that found in red skins. The taste of it, like the taste of a strange and delightful food, entered the soul of Standing Bull.

He stood up. Rather, he leaped to his feet with a grunt that startled his companions out of slumber.

“What is wrong?” asked Red Shirt.

“Nothing,” said the leader. “But the fire is all smoke, and the evil ghosts are throwing it into my face.”

Big Samuel Brett hardly had settled to his second pipe and the narration of the day’s hunting when a hand struck at the door. He went to open it, cautiously, one hand ready to thrust it home again and the other hand occupied with his rifle.

“It’s Roger Lincoln,” said a voice from the rain.

The door twitched wide, instantly, and Roger Lincoln came in, glistening with the wet, his deerskins soaked through and blackened.

“You been swimming in it, it looks like,” said Samuel Brett. “Come in and dry yourself out at the stove.”

Roger Lincoln waved his hand. “I’ve been stalking,” he said.

“Deer?”

“Indians.”

Brett whistled. His eyes widened, and then drew into the shadows of his brows. “Where?”

“The trail came here.”

“To Fort Kendry?”

“To your house.”

“It’s that darned drunk Crow with the crooked nose,” suggested Samuel Brett.

“It’s a tall Cheyenne by the name of Standing Bull. He was watching through your door.”

“I got nothing to do with the Cheyennes. Never traded with them, worse luck,” said Brett.

“They want something to do with you, however. That fellow was very curious.”

“Every Indian is half wolf,” said Brett easily. “They gotta go snoopin’ and sniffin’ around. Why didn’t you collar him?”

“My hands are off that gang until they leave the fort. I’ve told them so. After they start, the knife is out.”

“With the Cheyennes? You could’ve picked an easier job. Ah, then I understand. It’s young Torridon?”

“It is.”

The face of Samuel Brett darkened. “You’re wrong again, Lincoln. There never was a Torridon that wasn’t a snake and deserved to be treated the same as a snake. And if . . .”

The hand of Lincoln was raised again, and Brett shrugged his shoulders.

“I shouldn’t talk that way. I’ve tried to argue you out of it before, Roger. But if the kid showed a white face to you, he’ll show a black face before you’re through with him. I know the breed.”

“Perhaps you do,” said Roger Lincoln a little coldly. “But I’ve not stopped in to talk about Torridon. I’ve come to tell you that a hard-headed, hard-handed Cheyenne brave is watching you. Why, I don’t know, but I don’t think he’s going to do you much good. Man, watch your house!”

He said it with gravity, and the other nodded assent.

“I’ll get Murphy’s dog, tomorrow, and keep it around. He’s a man-eater, that brute. And Pat offered him to me.”

“Take the dog by all means . . . and sleep light. Good bye.”

He was gone, in spite of the hospitable protests of Brett. The door closed. Roger Lincoln went back toward his house with a mind filled with misgivings.

Samuel Brett, however, was not alarmed. He had lived all his days in the midst of danger. That which is too well known is apt to be taken too lightly.

To be sure, when he went to bed that night he saw that the door was well secured, and that his rifle and two pistols were at hand nearby him. But after that he slept profoundly, and the rumble of his snoring filled the house.

The night grew wilder and wilder.

Before morning, the Cheyennes in their clearing had been forced up from their blankets, and they huddled around a newly built fire, removing to the shelter of the trees. It was only a mock shelter. The heavy rain, driven far in through the foliage by the whip of the wind, came sluicing down upon them in quantities. Over their heads the storm yelled and roared, and the day came slowly upon them.

They prepared a meal of a few mouthfuls. When it was eaten, they smoked a pipe with some difficulties. And then Standing Bull asked for dreams.

Yellow Man was the only one who could oblige. He declared he had dreamed that he was back in the Cheyenne village, and that, in the middle of the night, he had stepped outside his lodge. Suddenly the night had become terribly dark. All was blackness. A wind hooted in his ears like an owl. And when he stumbled back toward the lodge, it was gone. He ran here and there. He could find nothing, though his teepee stood in the center of the camp.

At last a star began to shine. He found that he was alone in the midst of a great plain. Nothing was near him. There was no village in sight. It was as though the wind had blown him to a great distance. He dropped to the ground, thereby hoping to see something against the horizon. Something he did see. It was a tree standing on a hill. The star was right behind it, and, indeed, the star was in the middle of it. From the distant heavens, straight through that tree or ghost of a tree, the star was shining.

This was the dream of Yellow Man. Let anyone who could interpret it.

This strange story was received in silence. But when Yellow Man left the circle, a little later, Red Shirt remarked with a grunt: “My blood is cold, brothers, and I think that when we come to the lodge of Yellow Man, we will find the women and the children wailing in it.”

There was no further comment, but all the braves had the same gloomy thought. Red Shirt insisted that this was a token that they should give up the attempt that they had in mind. Even if peace was not made with Roger Lincoln, it would be best to try nothing more, but to make the best and quickest way back to the village on the prairie.

Standing Bull answered, logically enough, that a dream in which a village disappeared and a star shone through the ghost of a tree might mean a great deal to Yellow Man, but it hardly had significance for the rest of the party or their work. He had made up his mind. They would attempt what they had come for.

That day, the storm still held, growing momently more violent. They could hear the roaring of the river, swollen with a great voice. And during the day, they went down to trade off their buffalo robes. Under the keen eye of Standing Bull and against his express admonition, they did not dare to take whiskey in exchange. And in the evening they went back to their camping grounds with a load of ammunition, a few knives, many trinkets and beads.

When the darkness came on, Standing Bull made his further preparations. Two of the men were to keep the bulk of the horses at the edge of the woods, prepared to rush them into the prairie on a moment’s notice. The remaining four, and Standing Bull himself, were to go back with chosen ponies—and one extra mount—to the vicinity of the house of Samuel Brett.

There, a pair of the warriors would keep the animals at the edge of the trees, taking what care they could that the ponies should not neigh or make any noise of tramping or fighting. Then, accompanied by Red Shirt and Rushing Wind—especially chosen for this purpose by Standing Bull as being the keenest of the band that accompanied him—the leader would go toward the house and try to take the girl from it, in silence if he could, by force and slaughter of the rest of the household if necessary.

The others listened to the plan in silence. They saw that it was desperately bold. The explosion of a gun and a single shot would be enough to bring out the rest of the settlers, gun in hand. But not one of the braves would draw back from his leader in such a time of need. Certainly Rushing Wind and Red Shirt did not know fear.

All was done as had been planned, the horses were established under the trees that stood nearest to the house, and then Standing Bull began to approach, taking the lead, as was his right and his duty.

He went forward, crouching, shifting from bush to rock, and rock to bush, and gradually working his way closer. He had covered most of the distance when there was a snarl and then a furious barking just before him.

He heard the rush of a dog through the darkness!

There was no better watchdog in the world than that borrowed man-killer that now was lunging at the Indian. His was a crossed breed. He was mastiff, boar hound, and wolf, mixed discreetly. He had the cutting power of a wolf, the wind of a hound, and the grip of a mastiff, together with the heart of the latter dog. He was as good as half a dozen armed guards to keep off strollers and the overcurious, because men do not like to face the danger of a dog bite. The bite may only break the skin, but the broken skin is apt to lead to hydrophobia. Who can tell?

Standing Bull never had seen that dog before. He did not need to see him clearly, however, to realize what was coming. The monster charged through the whipping rain. Straight at him came the dog, with a savage, brutal intaken breath of satisfaction.

At the last instant the Cheyenne twisted on his side. A snake could not have moved more quickly. The dog shot past, trying in vain to check its impetus, and, as it went on, Standing Bull drove his hunting knife through the heart of the creature.

There was no sound. The dog fell limply, and Standing Bull wiped off the blade of the knife, listening intently as he did so.

Nothing stirred in the house. He could only trust that the sudden cessation of the growling of the big animal would not rouse suspicions in the house. And so far nothing indicated that they were on their watch. They had consigned their safety into the keeping of one power. That power now was removed, and Standing Bull felt that perhaps swift success would crown his work.

His two attending shadows drew close to him. They did not congratulate him on the deed he had just performed, but congratulation did not need to be spoken. Standing Bull felt that the very air was electric with the admiration of his friends.

Therefore he went on swiftly to the door. It was the one weak point of the house, being thin and, as already noted, full of cracks. It was the hope of Standing Bull that a little work with a sharp knife might so enlarge one of the cracks that he could reach the latch bar and open the door without more ado.

He worked rapidly, but with the greatest care. Even the squeak of a heavily pressed knife in wet wood might be enough to catch the ear of a sleeper and undo all that had been accomplished up to this point.

Presently, when the soft wood had yielded sufficiently, he thrust the point of the blade through the crack and worked it upward. It clicked on iron, the iron stirred, and with a slight creak of the hinges, the door sagged inward.

Big Standing Bull crouched on the threshold, his heart thundering in his breast like a charge of wild buffalo. But still nothing stirred in the interior. Neither the breath of fresh air entering, full of the dampness of the rain, nor the sound of the door turning on the hinges had been enough to disturb the slumberers—or were they waiting among the shadows all this while, smiling to themselves, their guns ready as soon as the door, like the mouth of a trap, had admitted sufficient victims?

Even on the verge of entering, Standing Bull thought of all these things, and hesitated. But something had to be done. The rain beat like hammers on the surface of the ground. It rattled on his own broad shoulders so loudly that he could have sworn that a whole tribe would have been alarmed by such a noise.

In through the door he went, and moved hastily to one side. The other two followed him. He could hear them breathing, and the faint creaking of a leather jacket as its wet folds were drawn tight at each inhalation.

He got to his feet, but, when he made a step, the water squelched and hissed in his moccasins. He had to pause again, listening with the rigidity of a statue, and then he sat down and dragged off the moccasins. In his naked feet he proceeded with greater ease.

First he went to the stove and from this took out a half-burned stick of wood. There was a glowing coal at one end, while the other end was cool enough to hold. The coal made a dim point of light that tarnished quickly in the open air, and then freshened to an amazing degree when blown upon.

Standing Bull was satisfied. It would have been very well if he could have guessed in what room the girl was sleeping, but, since he did not know, he would have to look.

All the doors stood open upon the big kitchen, in order that the fire might send its heat through all the chambers. This was partly an advantage and partly a great disaster. For though it meant that he would have no difficulty in opening the doors, every move that he made was now likely to strike upon the ears of all the sleepers.

The two helpers went behind him. He had told them beforehand what he wanted them to do. He dared not entrust the actual kidnapping to them. He felt that the body of this slender white girl was so fragile that it would have to be touched with the greatest care.

He stepped through the first doorway. It was like walking into the throat of a cannon. Then, blowing softly on the dying coal, he got from it the faintest of glows, yet enough to enable his straining eyes to distinguish the vast shoulders of the white hunter in the bed.

Instantly he veiled the coal with his hand, and, as he stepped back toward the door, he was startled to hear a woman’s voice exclaim: “Sam! Oh, Sam!”

“Aye?” growled big Samuel Brett.

“There’s something wrong!”

“What could be wrong?”

“I . . . don’t know . . . I just have a feeling. Sam, do get up and see if everything’s all right.”

“Now, what’s ailin’ you?” asked Samuel Brett. “What could be wrong?”

The Indian, in the darkness by the door, kept his hand on the haft of his knife. What the words meant, he could not understand. But his very blood was frozen with fear.

“I don’t know . . .”

“I do know. Nobody could get past that dog. It’s got eight legs and two heads. It can look both ways at once. I never seen such a dog. And if it found a man, it’d eat him.”

“Suppose that he was knocked senseless . . .”

“Supposin’ that the sky wasn’t blue, well, it might be green!”

“You can bully all you please. I tell you, I got a feelin’ that there’s somebody in this house.”

“Hey? What?” asked Samuel Brett in changed tones. “Well, I’ll get up and look around.”

The bed squeaked as he sat up. But then the cool of the night air made him shiver. “I’m darned if I get up and catch a cold for the sake of pleasin’ the whim of a silly old woman. You go to sleep and leave me be.” He settled back with a groan of comfort into the warmness of the bed.

Freed from the direct danger, Standing Bull drew once more into the kitchen. There were two other doorways. Into which one should he go next?

He chose the middle one. A gesture in the dark placed both the Cheyennes on guard at the door of the white man’s room. Then Standing Bull proceeded into the next chamber. At the first flare of the coal beneath his breath he found himself looking into the same face that he had seen in the kitchen of the house—the same pale face, the same pale hair. But the eyes were not dim. They were sparkling and wide with incalculable terror as the girl sat up in the bed and supported herself with both shaking arms.

How long had she been there, awake, listening, thinking that she heard a sound, denying that it could be so?

Standing Bull went straight toward her and she shrank back against the wall. Her lips parted and her throat worked, but no scream would come. Time was short with Standing Bull and every instant in that house was of infinite danger to him; yet he dared not take her out into such a night clad only in a thin nightgown of cheap cotton.

He pointed to the clothes that lay upon a chair and made a commanding gesture. She obeyed, her enchanted eyes of terror fixed on him, and her movements slow, like those of one whose body is numbed with deadly cold.

He had drawn a knife that the fear of it might stimulate her and keep her from screaming for help. Under the dull glow of the coal, the blade of that knife seemed to run again with blood, and he could see her like a shadow among shadows dressing with stumbling hands and numb fingers from which the clothes slipped away.

At last, at a sound in the next room, he could wait no longer. He caught up a heavy buffalo robe that covered the foot of the bed, and, throwing it around Nancy Brett, took her in his arms. Hers was like the weight of a child, thought Standing Bull. He strode to the door of the chamber.

Inside the next room, Samuel Brett was rumbling: “Darn me if I can go to sleep. Where did you leave the candle? Eh?” There was a noise of fumbling. The man of the house began to mutter beneath his breath, impatiently.

But Standing Bull with his burden went on toward the rear door, and, with Rushing Wind carefully opening it, he passed through and out into the night.

There had been only one sound from his captive, and that, as they reached the open air, was a faint sigh. She became limp in his arms and he knew that she had fainted. So much the better.

He began to run. Inside the house there was a sudden shout. The rear door was slammed shut with a great crash, as Red Shirt leaped through and swung the door to behind him. In another moment the whole settlement would be up.

The shout of Samuel Brett was enough to have alarmed whole legions. And the ears to which that shout did not reach certainly were touched by the sound of rifle shots, as Brett ran from his house toward his horses. From every house men began to turn out, but for a time they were a little uncertain as to whether they should fly to the fort for protection, stand firm on the defense, or else act as aggressors.

By now Standing Bull had reached his horses. He mounted. It was unfortunate that the girl had to be carried. But perhaps it was better to have her senseless than that with her screams she should guide the whites as with a flaming torch.

The five galloped back to the main body of the horses at the edge of the wood—the whole body then rushed out across the plain beyond, and the thick curtain of the rain drew together instantly behind them.

The care with which Standing Bull had distributed his forces from the start now began to tell, for there was no sign of sudden pursuit. He did not follow the river, but cut back across the hill, hoping that the enemy would hunt for the Cheyennes along the riverbanks, for that was the easiest course. In that direction the greatest number of miles could be made.

Now, when the first rush of the flight was over, Nancy Brett recovered her senses with a groan. She was given no sympathy. They made the briefest of halts, during which she was clapped into a saddle and tied securely to it. A whip cracked on the haunches of the half-wild Indian pony. It pitched high into the air, and came down running, with the Indians rushing their own mounts beside it. So they dashed on into the night, and the cold whip of the rain in her face began to rouse Nancy Brett.

It was so strange, so utterly incomprehensible, that her mind was in a whirl. She knew something about Indians and their ways. They might capture the daughter of a great and rich man and hold her for ransom. Or an Indian might even kidnap a woman with whom he was in love. But she was certain that neither of these motives appeared here.

She was sure that she never had seen this monster of an Indian before. And as they tore on through the night and the dawn began to come nearer, she looked more curiously at her captor. No, she never had seen that homely profile before.

When day came, they pitched camp—or rather made a short halt—at the bank of a stream. There the saddles were changed, the used horses turned into the herd, and the next best mounts requisitioned. In this way, they would shift the saddles half a dozen times in twenty-four hours of work, reusing the horses in turn. Standing Bull, regarding his captive, was amazed to find that she seemed to be bearing up against fatigue and fear very well indeed. There was more color in her face than there had been when she wept in the kitchen of the house of Samuel Brett.

He wished that he possessed sufficient English to pronounce the name of the great white medicine man to whom he was bringing her. But he did not even know that name in the first place.

She made no trouble, however. Her grave, blue eyes never stared at them. She seemed only watchful to do what was wanted of her. And Standing Bull wondered greatly. She acted, in fact, almost as an Indian girl would have acted at such a time as this.

All the day they rode on under a gray sky. There were only the halts for the changing of saddles, and to eat a little dried meat at the same time. The girl was no longer tied to her horse, but the pony she rode was tethered to the saddle of Standing Bull. He watched her begin to droop as the afternoon wore away. When they at last halted on the edge of night, she almost fell from the saddle.

“She must sleep,” said Red Shirt uneasily, and looked toward the northwestern horizon.

“She must sleep,” answered Standing Bull. “But first she must eat.”

She would have refused food. He commanded with a savage growl, and she choked down a few morsels in fear. Then, wrapped in a robe, she slept. The Indians already were sleeping, except Standing Bull. He needed no sleep. His heart was full of glory for the thing that he had done. He began to frame in his mind the song he would sing when he reappeared in the Cheyenne village. The notes of the chant ached in his throat and the sweetness of fame among his fellows made the head of Standing Bull sway a little from side to side.

The sky cleared during the night. When the clouds had blown down to the horizon, he roused his sleepy command. He touched the girl, and she sprang to her feet with a faint cry. In two minutes they were on their way again.

So they pressed on until they were three days from Fort Kendry, and trouble for the first time overtook them. Had it not been for Nancy Brett, they could have made somewhat better time, and yet the horses hardly could have stood up to more work. They were growing very thin. Sometimes at a halt many of them were too weary to begin to graze.

And while the party was in this condition, on the pale verge of morning, saddling for the day’s ride, Yellow Man was seen to throw up his hands, whirl, and fall without sound, while the sharp, small clang of a rifle struck at their ears. Glancing wildly about them, they could see a wisp of smoke rising above a small cluster of shrubs and trees nearby.

“Take two men,” said Standing Bull to Red Shirt. “Take three if you will, and go back. If there is one man, bring us his scalp. If there are more, skirmish and delay them.”

Red Shirt went instantly to execute the order. With Standing Bull and the girl remained only that capable young brave, Rushing Wind. And the three of them, with the larger body of the horses, struck away across the prairie. As they did so, they saw Red Shirt’s party approach the trees in a wide circle, and out from the trees rode a man on a fine, gray horse.

Roger Lincoln!

They knew well that it was he the instant the gray began to run. It was not likely that two gray horses on that prairie had the long and flowing gallop of the mare, Comanche. She drifted easily away toward the north, with the party of Red Shirt and his three braves hopelessly laboring in the rear.

Glancing keenly at the girl, Standing Bull made sure by the light in her eye that she, too, had recognized the rescuer and that hope had come to her. So strong was that hope that it enabled her to endure a whole day of savage riding, and as the evening drew near they knew that the Cheyenne village was not far away. So great had their speed been that the party sent back to block Roger Lincoln had not been sighted again since first they disappeared. Perhaps the gray mare had failed, after all, and the four warriors now were blockading Roger Lincoln in some nest of rocks.

So hoped Standing Bull, and smiled at the thought. He talked with Rushing Wind as they changed saddles for the last time. Yellow Man had fulfilled his weird dream of the night before. He was dead, but his body, lashed to a pony’s back, was being brought back to his family. Not two hours of steady riding lay before them. And if the girl collapsed, they could tie her to her saddle and finish the ride at any rate, like a whirlwind covering the plains.

So, as they made the change of saddles, they helped her to her new mount. She was a dead weight in their hands. With sunken head and lips compressed she sat the saddle, both hands clinging feebly to the pommel.

“Tie her now in her place,” suggested Rushing Wind. “She is very weak.”

It was done at once, and, while Standing Bull made sure that the fastenings were secure, he heard an excited call from Rushing Wind.

On the northern horizon, clearly seen against the red of the sunset sky, there was a flash as of silver, and, when Standing Bull looked more closely, he made out a horseman coming steadily toward them.

Roger Lincoln! Or was it one of the Cheyennes who, having killed Lincoln, had sent back one of their number on the captured horse to give the news to the village and bring out food and a medicine man to the wounded of the party?

So muttered Standing Bull, but Rushing Wind cried excitedly: “I tell you I can see that it is the white man! I can see the paleness of his long hair about his shoulders even at this distance. But what has become of the others?”

“He has dodged them,” said Standing Bull gloomily. “Or else . . .”

“Or else he has killed them!” exclaimed Rushing Wind. “He has killed them, Standing Bull. I feel that they are dead men and that we never shall look on them again. Shall we go back to face him?”

“He has great medicine in his rifle,” said Standing Bull in grave thought, “but I would not run away from any single warrior. Nevertheless, it is not for us to think of ourselves. We are working to bring happiness to White Thunder, and through him to the entire tribe. Is it true?”

“That is true,” admitted Rushing Wind, still staring at the far distant rider.

“Let us finish that work,” said Standing Bull. “Afterward we may be able to ride out and find Roger Lincoln on the war trail. I hope so. In his death there would be enough fame to make ten braves happy. Now let us ride. Pray to the wind to help on our horses, or the white man will send our souls where he has sent all five of our companions before us. Ride, Rushing Wind, and call on the ghosts of our fathers to make the legs of our horses strong.”

By the time they were in the saddle, the form of Roger Lincoln was beginning to grow more and more distinct until, even in that half light, they were sure of the blond hair about his shoulders.

Nancy Brett cast one last, desperate look over her shoulder, and then set her teeth to endure the last stage of the journey as well as she could. If she was not strong, she was not brittle stuff that breaks. Only by degrees her power had failed her in this long forced march.

Making no effort to keep the horse herd running before them now, Standing Bull drove the last three ponies straight across the prairie and toward the Cheyenne village.

How earnestly Standing Bull prayed for the night, then. And night was coming down upon them fast. In a few moments, there would not be sufficient illumination to enable the white man to use the great magic of his rifle on the Cheyennes, and without that gun Standing Bull feared Lincoln not at all.

But the gray mare, Comanche, drew closer and closer. She seemed supported on wings, so rapidly did she overtake the straining Indian ponies. She had been matching her wonderful speed that day against half a dozen animals, and yet she had the strength to make such a final burst as this.

Standing Bull, throwing glances over his shoulder from moment to moment, suddenly exclaimed: “Rushing Wind, my brother! Look and tell me if what I think is true! That the gray gains on us no longer!”

Back came the joyous cry of the younger brave: “She has lost her wings! She is flying no longer!”

“Ride hard, ride hard!” urged Standing Bull. “Now that he cannot gain, he will no longer try to push the mare. He will take to the ground and fire on us.”

He had rightly interpreted the intention of the white scout. Now that the last strength had gone from beautiful Comanche, Roger Lincoln pulled her up short and dropped to his full length on the prairie. It was wonderfully long range, and the light was very bad indeed—far less than a half light. Yet at the explosion of the gun, Rushing Wind ducked his head and lurched forward with a stifled cry.

“Brother, brother!” called Standing Bull anxiously. “Did the bullet strike you?”

“No, no!” answered the boy. “But I heard it singing past me more loudly than a hornet. I am not hurt. Heammawihio, to you I vow a fine buffalo hide, well painted. I shall make your heart glad because you have saved me today.”

There was no second report. In another moment they were out of sight of Roger Lincoln in the thickening dusk. And now the stars began to come out, pale and winking. Other lights like stars, like red stars, appeared on the southern horizon.

“That is our city,” said Standing Bull. “We are free from pursuit.”

He drew up his horse. So weak was the girl that, as her horse stopped, she lurched forward and almost sprawled to the ground. But she recovered at once, and sat with stiffened lip.

“Look,” said Standing Bull to his fellow warrior. “I have never seen such a woman before. I saw her in the house in Fort Kendry, crying as a baby cries. I smiled and thought she was worthless. But you see, my friend. Out of such metal a man could make arrowheads and knives. White Thunder . . . you will see . . . he will be mad with joy.”

“I shall stand by and watch,” said Rushing Wind, laughing. “He pretends that nothing matters to him. He yawns when warriors make great gifts to him. But now we will see him cry out and shout and dance. But, for me, I prefer the girls of the Cheyennes. It needs a strong back to dig roots and a big hand to hold an axe.”

Standing Bull, however, made no answer. Once or twice he turned and stared earnestly into the darkness behind him, but there was no sound or trace of Roger Lincoln. It was as though he had permitted the night to swallow him after that single shot into which he had thrown all his skill.

Now the Indian leader rode close to the girl. With a strong hand beneath her arm, he supported her greatly. She let her head fall straight back, sometimes, so utterly weakened was she.

“She is tired. She is like a dead reed. It may break in the wind, Standing Bull,” cautioned the younger man.

Again Standing Bull made no reply, but looked earnestly on the face of the girl. There was no moon. There were no stars. Yet he could see her. It was as though he beheld her by the light of her own whiteness.

They came to the edge of the village before they were discovered. They entered, of course, in the midst of pandemonium. And straight they went to the lodge of White Thunder. It was as white as his name, made of the skins of nineteen buffalo cows, all of an age, all killed at the perfect season, or cured in exactly the same fashion.

Fires glimmered dimly through open lodge entrances. In the center of White Thunder’s lodge there was a fire, also. Standing Bull took the girl from her horse. She lay in his arms with closed eyes. Then he stalked into the lodge.

Paul Torridon lolled against a backrest, by the firelight, carefully sharpening a knife. Young Willow was at work cleaning the great iron cooking pot that simmered over the central fire all the day.

“Brother,” said Standing Bull, “I have come back from a far land and a far people to bring you a present.”

At the sound of his voice, all the noise outside the lodge was hushed. Only a child cried out, and the slap of a rebuking hand sounded like the popping of a whiplash. All that Standing Bull said clearly could be heard.

“When I brought you alone,” said Standing Bull simply, “I saw that you were unhappy. I decided that I would bring you a present that would fill your lodge with content.”

Here Torridon stood up and waved a hand in acknowledgment. Then, taking closer heed of the burden that the big Indian carried in his arms, Torridon stepped closer.

“She should be worth much to you,” said Standing Bull in conclusion, “because five good men and brave warriors have died that she might be brought to you.” Suddenly he stretched out his arms and the burden in them.

Torridon peered at it curiously, the white face, the closed eyes—and then with a great cry he caught Nancy Brett to his breast. Young Willow, her eyes glittering like polished steel, threw a robe beside the fire, and on it Torridon kneeled, and then laid down the girl, crying out her name in a voice half of joy and half of sorrow.

Standing Bull strode from the teepee, herding Rushing Wind before him into the outer darkness. He raised his great arm and stilled the clamor that began to break out from the crowd that surrounded him.

“Be still,” he said. “In that lodge there is a woman who is worth five men. Heammawihio demanded their lives before we could bring her here. And he knows the worth of human beings. It is her spirit that is great. Her body is not strong. Now all go away. Your shouting would kill her. Go away. The village should be silent.”

Out of respect for him, the throng was still. He walked through them to his teepee, and there was Owl Woman, the perfect wife, waiting to greet him. The firelight turned her to golden copper; her smile was beautiful. But to Standing Bull she suddenly seemed like a hideous cartoon of a woman, with a vast, stretching mouth, and a great nose, and high cheek bones. He made himself take her in his arms. She had been boiling fat meat in the pot. The odor of cookery clung to her garments. And Standing Bull remembered how he had ridden grandly from Fort Kendry, and the slender body that had lain in his arms, and the fragrance as of spring wildflowers that had blown from her hair against his face.