It was a small band of buffalo, an offscouring or little side eddy from one of the black masses of millions that moved across the plains, and, when Rushing Wind came on their traces, his heart leaped with the lust for fresh meat. Parched corn and dried buffalo flesh, tasteless as dry chips of wood, had been his diet for days during a lonely excursion upon the prairie. He had gone out from the Cheyenne village like some knight of the olden days, riding aimlessly, praying for adventure, hoping greedily for scalps and for coups to be counted. But no good fortune had come his way. For ten days, patient as a hungry wolf, he had dogged the way of a caravan of white men, pushing west and west, but he had had no luck. In the night they guarded their circle of wagons with the most scrupulous care. In the day, their hunting parties were never less than three well-armed men. And though their plains craft might not be of a very high order, it was an old maxim among the Cheyennes that all white men shoot straight with a rifle. The Indians were apt to attribute it to bigger medicine. As a matter of fact, it was simply that the whites had infinitely more powder and ball to use in practice. The red man had to get his practice out of actual hunting or battle. Accordingly Rushing Wind had at last turned off from the way of the caravan and struck at a tangent from its line across the prairie, and now he had come upon the trail of the buffalo.

When he first came on the trail, he leaned from the saddle and studied the prints. The grass was beginning to curl up and straighten again around the marks of the hoofs. So he knew that the animals had passed within a few hours. He set off after them cautiously, creeping up to the top of every swale of ground.

It was a typical plains day, bright, warm, and so crystal-clear that the horizon line seemed ruled in ink. Presently he saw the moving forms far off. They were drifting and grazing to the south. The wind lay in the southeast. Therefore, he threw a long, loose circle to the north and west, coming up cautiously in the shelter of some slightly rising ground.

Coming to the crest, he dismounted, and lay flat in the tall grass. This he parted before his face and looked out. He was very close to them. There was a magnificent bull. He admired the huge front, the lofty shoulders of the animal, but he knew that the flesh of such an experienced monster would be rank to the taste and so tough that teeth hardly could manage it—not even such white, strong teeth as armed the mouth of this Cheyenne. Then he slid backward through the grass.

As he did so, a second rider to the rear, a man on a silver-flashing gray mare, dismounted and sank into the grass, and his horse sank down with him.

Rushing Wind sat up and looked all around him, as though some shadow of danger had swept across his mind, like the dark of a cloud across the ground. It was not fear of immediate danger, however. It was merely the usual caution of a wild thing hunting in the wilderness, and, therefore, in constant dread of being hunted. For just as he had wandered across the plains in search of adventure and scalps and coups and plunder, so many another individual was cruising about the prairies, as keen as he, as crafty, as clever with weapons, as merciless.

Seeing nothing between him and the horizon, however, the young Cheyenne returned to his patient horse and took from the case strapped behind his saddle a strong war bow made of the toughest horn of the mountain sheep, boiled, straightened, and then glued and bound together in strips. It was flexible enough to stand infinite bending and yet stiff enough to require all the weight of a strong man’s shoulder to draw an arrow home against such resistance.

He had a long and heavy rifle as well, but, as usual, he was abroad with a most scanty supply of the precious powder and lead. He had to save that for human enemies. He strung the bow with some difficulty, tried the strength of the beautifully made cord by drawing it to his shoulder several times, and then selected from the quiver several hunting arrows—that is, arrows that having been shot into game could be drawn forth, and the head, at least, used again and again. The arrows for war, of which he had an additional small supply, were barbed so that it would be a murderous task to draw them from the flesh.

When he had made sure that the bow was in good condition and the arrows all that he desired, he planted in the ground his long lance, hung his shield upon it, with the festoon of eagle feathers hanging from its face, and then carefully leaned the invaluable rifle against this stand. Next he loosed the packs from behind the saddle of the pony.

It might be that the chase would be long. In any case, the pony needed all its agility in the dangerous task that lay before it. After that, he stood before the head of the horse and looked keenly into its eyes.

They were like the eyes of a beast of prey—bright, treacherous, wild. But the Indian looked for no softness and kindness there. He would have been suspicious of a friendly glance. What he wanted was what he found—untamable fierceness, endurance, force of heart.

Assured of this, he bounded into the saddle and began to work the pony around the edge of the hill with much caution, for the buffalo sometimes seemed to be endowed with an extra sense that told them of approaching danger.

In fact, as he rounded the hill, he saw the entire little herd rushing off at full speed, their hoofs clacking sharply together, the ground trembling under the beat of their heavy striding.

He was after them with a yell. Heavy and cumbersome as the buffalo looks, he can run at a good pace, and he can maintain it through a wonderful length of time. It takes a good horse to come up with them, but the pony that this young brave bestrode was the best of his herd, and his own herd was a hand-picked lot.

Like an antelope it flashed forward. It passed a lumbering yearling. It ranged beside a three-year-old cow. Then the bow was at work at once. Drawn to the shoulder, it drove a shaft with wonderful force. At four hundred yards a Cheyenne bow had been known to strike game and to kill it. And if Rushing Wind was an archer not quite up to such a mark as this, at least he sent the shaft into the side of the cow behind the shoulder almost up to the feathers.

The big animal swerved, coughed, and then dropped upon its knees, skidding forward through the grass.

That was food for the Cheyenne. His sport was still ahead of him, and with a yell he sent the pony forward. The bull ran well, but there was still a burst of sprinting left in the horse. It carried its master straight up to the panting bull, and a second arrow went from the bow. This time it struck dense bull hide. It sank deep in the flesh of the big fellow, but the roll of muscles and the looseness of the skin itself forced the arrow upward. The bull was merely stung, and he whirled toward the rider with such suddenness that the second arrow that flew from the string merely ripped a furrow in the tough back of the buffalo.

With a roar came the bull, a veteran of many a battle with his kind and ready to fight once more against such a strange foe. The surge of its head swept past the flank of the pony narrowly as the active little horse bounded to the side.

Presenting his battle front, circling as the Indian circled, the bull waited, tearing up the ground, sending his long, strange bellow booming, so that it seemed to be flooding up from the earth itself and rising now here, now there.

Rushing Wind, his eyes on fire, began to maneuver the little pony like a dancer, but it was some moments before the foaming horse caused the bull make a false step that left the tender flank open again. Then loudly twanged the bow string, and the arrow sank into the side of the monster half the length of the shaft.

The bull charged, but blindly. He came to a halt, tossing his head. His hide twitched convulsively, so that the two arrows imbedded in him jerked back and forth. His head lowered. Blood burst from his mouth. He sank to his knees, and even then, with more courage than strength, he strove to rise, and still he boomed his defiance. Life was passing from him quickly, however. Before the last of his fleeing herd was out of sight, he rolled upon his side, dead.

From the carcass, the Cheyenne took only the tongue. He returned to the cow, took from her the tongue, also, and then prepared to remove some other choice bits. He would gorge himself in a great feast, dry the flesh that remained in strips, and then set himself for the homeward journey. It was not a great thing to have killed two buffalo, but it was better than nothing, and it was, perhaps, the explanation of the dream that had sent him forth to try his fortune in the open country alone. At least, he had not so much as broken the shaft of an arrow in this encounter. The arrows, soon cleaned and restored to his quiver, were as good as ever, though they might be the better for a little sharpening.

On the whole, the heart of Rushing Wind was high, and he returned cheerfully to the point where he had left his other weapons, hastening a little on his still sweating horse, because he was as anxious about the welfare of the rifle as though it were a favorite child.

He sighed with relief when he found that lance and shield and rifle and pack were all in place, and, dismounting, he looked first to the gun, stroking it with a smile. It was half weapon and half medicine, in the eyes of Rushing Wind. He had only one thing more precious, and that was the richly ornamented hunting knife in his belt, the gift of that prince of doctors and medicine men, White Thunder.

Something stirred just behind the Indian. It was no more than the slightest of whispers in the grass, but it made the young Cheyenne twist sharply around.

He found a white hunter risen to his knees in the grass, a long rifle at his shoulder, and a deadly aim taken upon his own heart.

“Stand fast,” said the white man. “Drop your rifle. You still may live to return to your lodge.”

He spoke in fairly good Cheyenne, and the young brave said with a groan: “Roger Lincoln!” Clumsily the English words came upon his tongue. “And the dream was a lying dream that was sent to me.”

In the first place, Rushing Wind was disarmed. Some brush grew nearby, hardly ankle high. Then, at the suggestion of the white man, they gathered some of this brush. They made a fire and began to roast bits of the tender buffalo tongues on the ends of twigs. While they cooked, they talked, the Cheyenne with a rising heart.

Roger Lincoln said in the beginning: “You were with Standing Bull when he came to Fort Kendry and first stole away Paul Torridon, who you call White Thunder?”

“I was not,” said the Cheyenne.

“But you were with Standing Bull when he came up again and captured the white girl, Nancy Brett, and took her away across the plains?”

The young Indian raised his head and was silent. His eyes grew a little larger, as though he were in expectation of an outburst of enmity. But Roger Lincoln pointed to the little fire that was burning so cheerfully.

“We are cooking food together. When we eat together we are friends, Rushing Wind, are we not?”

The other hesitated: “It was I who was with Standing Bull,” he said. “Why should I deny it? You saw me with him. I was with him when you offered all the guns and horses if he would set White Thunder free.”

“But he would not do that.”

“How could Standing Bull promise? How could any of us promise? Not even High Wolf, the greatest of our chiefs, could send him away. The people would not endure to see him go. They know what he has done for us.”

Roger Lincoln nodded and frowned. “He has made rain for you, and through him you’ve killed a good many Dakotas.”

“And he has healed the sick and given good luck to the men on the warpath. He brings the buffalo to the side of the village,” added Rushing Wind.

“Those things have happened now and then. He doesn’t do them every day.

“A man cannot hope to take scalps every day of his life,” said Rushing Wind naïvely. “And,” he added, growing sadder, “I never have taken a single one.”

“All is in the hands of Heammawihio,” said the white man. “All that a warrior can do is to be brave and ready. Heammawihio sends the good fortune and the bad. Tell me, are you a friend of White Thunder in the camp?”

The eye of the youth brightened. He took from his belt the hunting knife with the gaudy handle. Roger Lincoln had not troubled to remove that means of attack from his captive, as though he knew that his own great name and fame would be sufficient to keep the youngster from attacking hand to hand.

“This,” said the young Cheyenne, “was given to me by White Thunder. You may judge if he is my friend.”

“And Standing Bull. He also is your friend?”

“He is a friend to White Thunder. Not to me. Standing Bull,” went on the boy carefully, “is a great chief.” He explained still further: “White Thunder has made him great.”

“No,” said Lincoln. “Any man who dared to come into the middle of Fort Kendry twice and steal away whites is great without any help. But although this man is a great chief, he is not a great friend of yours?”

The boy was silent.

“Very well,” said Roger Lincoln. “We cannot be friends with everyone. That isn’t to be expected. But now I want you to look at everything with my eyes.”

“I shall try,” said the boy. “You are a great hunter of bears and buffalo . . . and men.” He let his brow darken a little as he said this.

“Tell me,” said Roger Lincoln. “Before White Thunder was stolen away, was I not a friend to the Cheyennes?”

“It is true,” said the boy.

“He is my best of companions and friends,” said Roger Lincoln. “Once my life lay at his feet like this fire at ours. He could have let it be stamped out, but he would not do that. He saved my life. And at that time I was a stranger to him. I was large and he was small. I was strong and he was weak. Now, after he had done that much for me, I ask you to tell me if he should not be my friend?”

The Cheyenne listened to this story with glistening eyes. “It is true,” he said, and his harsh voice became soft and pleasant.

“However, he was stolen away by Standing Bull, whose life also White Thunder had saved,” continued Roger Lincoln.

“Yes,” said Rushing Wind, “and more than his life, his spirit.”

“And after he was taken away, what should I do? Should I sit in my lodge and fold my hands?”

“No,” Rushing Wind replied carefully. “You should have put on the war paint and gone on the warpath. And you have done it,” he added. A glitter came in his eyes. “Six Cheyennes have died. Their names are gone. Their souls have rotted with their bodies on the prairies.” He looked keenly at Roger Lincoln. “I am the seventh man,” he said.

“You are not,” replied the great hunter. “We eat together, side-by-side. I give you my friendship.”

Rushing Wind replied, still hesitant: “The hawk and the eagle never fly side-by-side.”

“Listen to me, hear with my ears and believe with my mind. In my day I have killed warriors. The list of them is not short. It would be a small pleasure to me to add one more man to the number who have gone stumbling before me to the house of darkness. But you can do a great service to me out of good will and with your life still yours.”

The Cheyenne was silent, but obviously he was listening with all his might to this novel suggestion.

“I cannot buy your good will,” said Roger Lincoln, “but I give your life back to you as a peace offering. This thing I will do, and I promise that I shall not take my gift back. Besides this, I ask no promise in return from you. I shall tell you the thing that I wish to do. Afterward, you will think. Perhaps you will wish to do what I want. Perhaps you will merely smile and laugh to yourself and say that I have talked like a fool.”

He made a pause and began to eat heartily of the roasted tongue. The Cheyenne imitated that good example, and though he was a smaller man by far than Roger Lincoln, and though the white man had fasted the longer of the two, yet the Indian fairly ate two pounds for the one of his captor.

At last, Roger Lincoln pushed back a little from the fire. He filled a short-stemmed pipe and began to smoke strong tobacco. The Indian, however, took out a bowl of red catlinite, which he filled with a mixture, always holding the stem up as he worked. Then he lighted the tobacco and flavoring herbs with a coal from the little dying fire and began to smoke, after first blowing, as it were, libations to the spirit world.

Neither of them spoke until after a few minutes. Then Roger Lincoln said: “How did the girl come to the village?”

“She was very tired.”

“Was she taken to the teepee of White Thunder?”

“Yes.”

“How did he receive her?”

“In his arms. He . . .” The Cheyenne paused. And Roger Lincoln was silent, frowning with a desperate blackness at the sky before him.

“He received her, also,” said Rushing Wind, “with tears.”

His face was actually puckered with emotion as he said this. Plainly he could hardly connect the word tears with the word man and control his disgust. A flicker of contempt went over the face of Roger Lincoln, also. Men told their stories of how Roger Lincoln, on a time, had been tormented almost to death by a party of Crows, and how he had laughed at them and reviled them with scorn, heedless of his pain, until he was rescued by the luckiest of chances. So, being such a man as he was, he could not help that touch of scorn appearing in his face. However, he came instantly to the defense of his absent friend.

“No man can have all the strength in the world,” he said.

“It is true,” said the Cheyenne earnestly. “I would not have White Thunder think that I have spoken with scorn about him.”

He glanced upward with awe and trouble in his face, as though he feared that a circling buzzard far above them might be an emissary sent by the medicine man to spy upon his words.

“However,” said the Cheyenne, “everything is as I have told you. She began to wake up and hold out her arms to him. She was tired but happy.”

“So,” said the hunter. Then he kept silence, being deep in thought. At last he went on in a changed and gruffer voice: “He took her into his teepee?”

“Yes.”

“He has kept her there ever since?”

“Yes.”

Roger Lincoln exclaimed with something between disgust, impatience, and anger: “Then he has taken her as his wife, as an Indian takes a wife?”

At this, the Cheyenne shook his head.

“Who is to understand the ways of people who are guided by the spirits and the Sky People?” he said naïvely. “I, at least, cannot understand them.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It is a big lodge,” said the young warrior. “There is no whiter or finer lodge in all the camp of the Cheyennes. And now one part of it is walled off with curtains of deer skin from another part. And when they sleep, the girl goes into one side as though it were a separate lodge, and White Thunder goes into another part.”

The light reappeared in the eye of Roger Lincoln. “A good lad!” he exclaimed. “I had written him down a good lad. I would have wagered my blood on him.”

“Ha?” grunted Rushing Wind. “Then is this a mystery which you, also, understand?”

They stared for a moment at one another. But, since it was not the first time in the life of either that he had been aware of the great difference and distinction between the viewpoint of red man and white, they passed on in their conversation, Roger Lincoln taking the lead.

“The girl is now happy?” he asked. “Or does she sit and weep?”

“Weep?” said the Indian. “Why should a woman weep when she has become the squaw of a great medicine man such as White Thunder? No, she is singing and laughing all day long.”

The white man smiled a little.

“Besides,” said the Cheyenne, “she does little work. Her hands are not as big as my two fingers. Young Willow still keeps the lodge for White Thunder.”

“And what of White Thunder himself? Is he happy, also?”

“He is more happy than he was,” said the boy. “He is able to ride out now on the great black horse.”

“Is he free, then?”

“Yes. He is not guarded except when the girl rides out with him. But when she is left behind in the lodge, the chiefs know that he will not go far.”

“How far does he go?”

“Sometimes he is gone in the morning and when he comes back in the evening even the black horse is tired.”

“There is no other horse like that one,” admitted Roger Lincoln. “Though there was a time when I thought that Comanche was the swiftest foot on the prairie.” He pointed to her and she, hearing her name and marking the gesture, came forward fearlessly, gently toward her master.

“It is plain that White Thunder put a spirit in her when he had her,” said Rushing Wind. “She also understands man talk, as the black horse does.”

“Does the black horse understand man talk?” queried Roger Lincoln, suppressing a smile.

“Perfectly,” said the Cheyenne in all seriousness. “So well does the stallion understand, that he repeated to his master what the herd boys said to one another when they were out watching the horse.” He began to fill his pipe again, observing the same careful formula as before.

“Ah, then,” said Roger Lincoln, “people must be careful of what they say in front of this clever horse.”

“As much so,” replied the Cheyenne, “as if it were his master that listened. The tall brave with the scarred face, Walking Horse, said when he was near the big stallion that he thought White Thunder was a coward and not a good man. Not a week later Walking Horse’s son fell sick and would have died. But Walking Horse took the boy and went to the lodge of White Thunder. He confessed his fault and asked for pardon, and begged White Thunder not to take away the life of his boy. So White Thunder kept the boy in his own lodge and made big medicine, and in a few days the boy could run home. Then Walking Horse gave White Thunder many good robes, and ten fine horses from his herd.”

“By this I see,” said Roger Lincoln, “that my good friend, White Thunder, is growing rich.”

“He would be,” replied the young brave, “the richest man who ever walked or rode among the Cheyennes. But what is wealth to him? It runs through his fingers. He gives to the poor of the tribe. He mounts the poor warriors from his horse herd and lets them keep the horses. His lodge is open to the hungry. What is wealth to him? He can ask more from the Sky People if there should be need.”

This speech he made with perfect simplicity and openness of manner, and Roger Lincoln, watching narrowly, nodded his head.

“But still White Thunder is not happy?” he said.

“It is true that often he looks toward the horizon,” was the answer.

“Then let me speak the truth. Has this medicine man great power?”

“That we all have seen.”

“Has he struck down even the Dakotas with his wisdom?”

“And they turn aside, now, from our war trails,” said the youth with a smile of savage triumph. “They are familiar with the medicine of White Thunder, and they do not wish to anger him again. They have not tried to strike us since the last battle. Even Spotted Antelope cannot find braves to follow him south against our lodges. They know that the birds of White Thunder would watch them coming.”

“Do the birds work for White Thunder, then?”

“Yes. Do you see that buzzard still hanging in the sky above us?”

“Perhaps he is waiting until we go, so that he can drop down on the dead buffalo, yonder?”

“Perhaps,” said the boy, but his smile showed that he was confident in his superior knowledge.

“Farther,” he expanded suddenly, “than they can smell dead meat, the buzzards and all the other birds can hear the name of White Thunder, and they come to listen, and to talk to him.”

“It is a great power,” Roger Lincoln said, keeping a grave face.

“I myself,” said the youth, “have seen a sparrow fly out from the lodge entrance of White Thunder.”

Roger Lincoln, after this crushing proof, remained respectfully silent for some time. “Now tell me,” he said finally, “if he has this great power, and if he is not happy among the Cheyennes, what keeps him from one day striking a great blow against the Cheyennes?”

“We are his people,” said the boy uneasily. “He was sent to us. Standing Bull brought him.”

“Did not White Thunder once ride away from you?”

“That is true,” admitted the Cheyenne.

“May not White Thunder be waiting patiently, hoping that because of the great services he has rendered to your people they will soon set him free, and let him go, with many horses to carry him and his possessions over the prairie?”

The young warrior was silent, scowling at the thought.

“And when he finds that the thing is not done, may he not lose his patience at last? May he not strike down the whole village with sickness, and while they die, he will ride away?”

Rushing Wind opened his eyes very wide.

And, striking while the iron was hot, Roger Lincoln continued: “Now I shall tell you why my rifle did not strike you today. A dream came to me. My friend, White Thunder, stood before me and said . . . ‘Every day I say to High Wolf and the other Cheyennes that I wish to be gone. They will not listen. Therefore, come and tell them for me. They may believe you. They are like children. They do not think that I shall strike them. Tell them. They may believe your tongue when they will not believe mine.’”

He paused, and Rushing Wind sat tense with fear and excitement.

“If I live to reach the village, I shall carry the word to High Wolf,” the young Cheyenne said.

“That would be the act of a very young man,” said Roger Lincoln.

“What should I do?”

“If you tell the chiefs, they will sit and do a great deal of talking with the old men. Everybody will talk.”

“That is true.” The young warrior nodded. “A great many words . . . many feasts . . . and nothing is done.”

“At last they will not be able to give up White Thunder,” Lincoln said. “He is precious to them. A man does not like to sacrifice his best rifle.”

“True,” said the Cheyenne again, wincing as he let his gaze rest upon his beloved weapon.

“And White Thunder is like a rifle to the Cheyennes.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Be a brave and bold man, for your own sake, for your friendship to White Thunder, for the sake of your whole tribe . . . and for the sake, perhaps, of the life that I have given back to you this day.”

Rushing Wind listened to this solemn prologue with grave, bright eyes.

“The day will soon come when you will be a guard with White Thunder in your care.”

“True,” said the youth.

“Let him ride out with the girl. Let him ride straight north. I, night and day, shall be waiting and watching for his coming. I shall have fast horses with me. It will be your part to handle the guards so that the two have a chance to get a little start. You are a strong young brave. Perhaps you will be the chief of the guards on that day.”

“Perhaps,” said the boy, stern and tense with excitement.

“Your own horse could stumble in the hunt. The other two or three you could first have sent back a little distance for some purpose. You could fire your rifle, and the bullet could miss the mark. These things all are possible.”

“Among the Cheyennes,” said Rushing Wind, “after that day I would be counted less than a dog in worth.”

“You could leave the Cheyennes and come to us. We would make you richer than any chief.”

“I would be known as a traitor. My tribe would scorn me.”

“Time darkens the mind and the memory. After a little while you could come back. You would have fine horses and guns to give to the chiefs. You would have splendid knives, and horse loads of weapons and ammunition. You would make the whole tribe so happy with your return and the riches that you gave away that they would never raise a voice against you in the council.”

Rushing Wind drew a great breath. His eyes were dim. The adventure was taking shape before them.

“And if you were not condemned in the council, you would be able to meet the warriors who spoke to you with anger or with scorn.”

The breast of the youngster heaved with pride and with courage.

“But if you do not do this thing, no one will do it. I have been led by the dream to find you. The medicine of White Thunder is working already. It has brought me here. It fills your own heart, now. His bird is watching above us to listen to your answer. Tell me, Rushing Wind, will you deliver your people from danger, or will you not?”

Rushing Wind leaped to his feet and threw his hands above his head. “I shall!” he cried.

“Look,” said the other. “The bird has heard. He departs to carry the news to his master.”

For the waiting buzzard, which rapidly had been circling lower, now, startled as the Indian sprang up, slid away through the air, rising higher, and aiming straight south and east.

Young Rushing Wind stared after it with open mouth of wonder. “Great is the medicine of White Thunder,” he said. “I am in his hands.”

When Rushing Wind returned to the Cheyenne camp, he wrapped himself in as much dignity as he could, because his expedition had not been successful. Not that this was a matter to bring any disgrace upon him. As a matter of fact, nine-tenths of the excursions—particularly the single-handed ones—never brought any results. But they were valuable and were always encouraged by the chief. No one was more valuable during the hardships of a long march than the young man who had learned to support himself for many days, weeks, or months, riding solitary on the plains. He who had made several of these inland voyages was looked up to almost as though he had taken a scalp or counted a coup. A chief gathering a party for the warpath was sure to try to include as many of these hardy adventurers as possible.

As he crossed the river, he saw some boys swimming. They spied him at once and came for him like young greyhounds, whooping. Around him they circled, rattling questions, but when they gathered from his silence and the absence of any spoils that he had not done anything noteworthy, they left him at once, scampering back to the water. For the day was hot, the air windless. Only one careless voice called over a shoulder: “You have come back in good time, Rushing Wind. Your father is dying!”

Rushing Wind twisted about in his saddle. Then he galloped furiously for the village, quite forgetting his dignity in his fear and his grief.

He passed like a whirlwind through the village. Vaguely he noted what lay about him. Rising Hawk had a new and larger lodge than ever. Waiting River, in front of his teepee, was doing a war dance all by himself, looking very like a strutting turkey cock. In front of the home of Little Eagle seven horses were tied, and Little Eagle was looking them over with care. Ah, Little Eagle had a marriageable daughter, and no doubt this was the marriage price offered by her lover.

Here, however, was his father’s lodge. He flung himself from his pony.

Smoke issued in thin breaths from the entrance; he smelled the fragrance of the burning needles of ground pine, and knew that some doctor must be purifying the teepee.

Softly he entered.

There were no fewer than four doctors and their women at work in the lodge. They were walking back and forth or standing over the sick man, shaking the rattles of buffalo skin filled with stones to drive away the evil spirit that caused the sickness. As for Black Beaver, he lay stiffly on his bed, his face thin, cadaverous. His eyes were half opened. They looked to Rushing Wind like the eyes of a dead man.

Along the walls of the tent he saw his mother and the other squaw, watching with strained eyes, already gathering in their hearts, apparently, the fury of the death wail and the horror of the death lament.

Rushing Wind was a bold young brave, but he trembled with weakness and with disgust. Death seemed to him a foul, unclean thing. Such a death as this was most horrible. But a death in the open field, in battle—it was that for which a man was made.

He passed quickly through the weaving mass of the doctors and their women and crouched beside the bed of his father. So dense were the fumes of the sweet grass and the other purifying smokes that he hardly could make out the features of the warrior. He had to wave that smoke aside.

When his son spoke, Black Beaver merely rolled his eyes. His skin was dry and shining. It was hot as fire to the touch. Plainly he was out of his mind and very close indeed to death.

Rushing Wind himself felt dizzy and weak. He thought that it was the evil spirit of sickness coming out of his father’s body and attacking him in turn. So he shrank back beside his mother. It was frightfully hot in the teepee. Naturally everything was closed to keep in the purifying smoke, and the fire blazed strongly. Outside, the strong sun was pouring down its full might upon the lodge.

“How long?” he asked his mother in the sign language.

“For three weeks,” she said in the same method of communication.

“What has been done for him?”

“Everything that the wise men could do. Look now. You would not think that an evil spirit could stay in the body of a warrior when so much purifying smoke is in the air.”

“No. It is wonderful.” The boy sighed. “It must be a spirit of terrible strength. What was done at the first?”

“All that should be done. Your father began to tremble with cold one night. Then he burned with fever. He was nauseated. The next day he began to take long sweat baths, and after each bath he would plunge into the river. This he did every day.”

“That was good,” said the boy.

“Of course it was good. But he seemed to get worse. We called in a doctor. Still he got worse. Two doctors came. Now we have given away almost everything. There are only two horses left of the entire herd.”

In spite of himself, Rushing Wind groaned. However, he was no miser. He said at once: “Why have you not called for White Thunder?”

“I would have called him. But your father and his other wife, here, would not have him. Your father does not like his white skin and his strange ways.”

“Mother,” said the boy, “I will go for him now. Black Beaver is wandering in his mind. He would not know what was happening to him.”

“It is no use,” said the squaw. “We have nothing to pay to White Thunder.”

“But he often works for nothing.”

“Your father is not a beggar, Rushing Wind,” she answered.

“He will come for my sake. You will see that he will come gladly. He is my friend.”

“There is no use,” repeated the squaw sadly. “I have seen men die before. Your father is rushing toward the spirits. He will leave us soon. Nothing can keep him back, now.”

Rushing Wind, however, started up and left the tent. When he stood outside the flap of the entrance and had carefully closed it behind him, he was so dizzy that he had to pause a moment before the clearer air made his head easier. It was marvelous, he thought, that such clouds of purification should not have cured his father.

He went at a run across the camp and came quickly to the lodge of White Thunder, noticeable from afar for its loftiness and for the snowy sheen of the skins of which it was composed. But when he stood close to the entrance, he heard voices and paused. He had seen a great deal of White Thunder, and the great medicine man always had been simple and kind to him. However, one never could tell. These men of mystery were apt to be changeable. Suppose that when he asked the help of the great doctor the latter demanded a price and then learned that only two horses remained to the sick man.

With shame and pride, Rushing Wind flushed crimson. He knew not what to do, so he hesitated.

“Here,” the complaining voice of Young Willow was saying, “the red beads should go in a line that turns here.”

“I shall do it over again,” said the voice of Nancy Brett.

The brave listened with some wonder. The white girl had learned to speak good Cheyenne with marvelous speed. But, for that matter, of course the medicine of White Thunder would account for much greater marvels than this.

“Let the moccasins be,” said White Thunder, yawning.

There was a cry of anger from Young Willow. “Do you want to teach your squaw to be lazy?” she asked.

“She is not my squaw,” said White Thunder.

“Ha!” said Young Willow. “The stubborn man will not see the truth. It pleases him to be wrong because he prefers to be different. Is she not living in your lodge? Does she not eat your food? Does she not wear the clothes that you give her?”

“She is not my squaw,” White Thunder persisted carelessly. “She is a stolen woman. Who asked her father for her? Who paid horses to her father?”

“What horses is she worth?” asked the squaw roughly.

“Hush,” White Thunder said. “You are rude, Young Willow.”

“I am not rude,” said the old woman. “I love her, too. But she is a baby. I speak with only one tongue. I cannot lie. How many horses is she worth? She cannot do beadwork except slowly and stupidly. She cannot flesh a hide . . . her wrists begin to ache. She cannot tan deerskins. She does not know how to make a lodge or even how to put it up. She cannot make arrows.”

“She is a wonderful cook,” said White Thunder.

There was a peal of cheerful laughter. It fell on the ear of Rushing Wind like the music of small bells. He knew that it was the white girl laughing, and he wondered at her good nature.

“Bah!” said Young Willow. “What is a bow good for when it has only one string? Besides, marriage is more than a giving of horses. It is love, and you both love one another.”

“Are you sure?” White Thunder asked.

“Of course I am sure,” said the squaw. “You look at each other like two calves that have only one cow for a mother. I understand about such things. I am old, but I am a woman, too.” She cackled as she said it.

“You are old,” said a heavy voice—and Rushing Wind recognized the accents of Standing Bull, that battle leader—“you are old, and you are a fool. Old age is often a troublesome guest.”

“If I am troublesome,” grumbled Young Willow, “I shall go back to the lodge of my husband. I never have any thanks for the work that I do here.”

“Do what you are bidden,” rumbled Standing Bull. “Keep peace. Speak when you are bidden to speak. A woman’s tongue grows too loose when she is old.”

There was a cry of anger from Young Willow. “Why are you here to teach me?” she demanded of Standing Bull. “Go back to your own lodge. You have wives and you have children. Why do you always sit here? Why do you come here and look at this white girl like a horse looking at the edge of the sky?”

“I shall go,” Standing Bull said with a grunt of anger.

“Stay where you are,” said White Thunder. “When Young Willow is angry, her talk is like the throwing of knives. Don’t pay any attention to it. We never do.”

“I am going to get some wood,” said Young Willow. “But today I have said something that a wise man would remember.”

She came hurrying from the lodge, and behind her was the laughter of White Thunder. Rushing Wind prepared to enter.

He found on entering that White Thunder and the girl were still chuckling over the departure of Young Willow in a rage, while Standing Bull sat impassively in the place of honor in the lodge, propped luxuriously against a backrest, his gaze fixed upon vacancy.

It came to the mind of Rushing Wind that there might be much in the warning that had just been given to White Thunder by the squaw, but both the girl and the white man seemed oblivious of any such thought. Rushing Wind greeted all within the house with ceremony. He was given a place. Nancy Brett, smiling as a hostess should, offered him meat from the great pot in the center of the teepee, and he ate of it, as in duty bound. Then a pipe was passed to him and he accepted it, after White Thunder had lit it. Standing Bull inquired after the fortune of the young brave in the prairie, and the latter said simply: “I saw many days of riding, and many days of prairie, and many days of blue sky. But I found nothing but buffalo.”

“Long journeys make good warriors,” said Standing Bull sententiously. “I, before long, if the medicine is good, will start against the Crows. I shall remember you, Rushing Wind.”

The young brave heard with eyes that sparkled. He was working his way up through the crowd of the younger warriors. Such a patron as White Thunder—and now the kindness of Standing Bull—promised him a future to which the doors stood wide.

“Now,” said White Thunder, “you are very welcome to us, Rushing Wind. But is there any special reason why you have come to me?”

“My father is sick,” said the young Cheyenne sadly. “It must be a very strong spirit that is harming him, because now there are ten rattles being shaken in his lodge, and still he grows sicker and sicker.”

White Thunder rose at once. “Come,” he said. “I shall go with you. I heard that your father would not have me near him. Otherwise, I should have offered to help long before.”

“His mind is gone now,” said the son, “and his eyes are in the other world. He cannot help but let you treat him.”

They came to the lodge and at the entrance flap the steam and heat and smoke from the interior boiled out into the face of Torridon. Inside, there was a wild tangle of figures, dancing in a crazy maze, raising a dust that thickened the haze, and chanting a howling dirge in unison.

“Listen,” said the son in admiration. “Is it not wonderful that all this medicine cannot make my father well?”

Torridon stepped back from the lodge. “Send those rascals away,” he said, flushing with anger. “Send them scampering. Clear every one of them out of the lodge. Then I will come in.”

Rushing Wind was in desperate woe at this request. He was fairly overcome with anguish at the thought that he might offend one of the great doctors now at work in the lodge.

He said eagerly to Torridon: “If one gun is good, two guns are better . . . if one doctor is good, two doctors are better.”

Torridon was too excited and angry to listen to this reasonable protest. He exclaimed again: “Send them out, Rushing Wind, or I’ll turn my back on your lodge! Send them out. I’ll tell you this much . . . they’re killing your father as surely as if they were firing bullets into him.”

Rushing Wind rolled his eyes wildly. But at length he hurried into the lodge and after a few moments the doctors began to issue forth, each puffing with his late efforts, each followed by a woman loaded down with rattles and animal masks, and other contraptions. They strode off, all turning baleful eyes upon Torridon as they went by. He had offended them before merely by the greatness of his superior medicine. But now he had interfered directly with their business, and they would never forget it, as he well knew.

He was in a gloomy state as he entered the lodge. Life in the Cheyenne community was dangerous enough already, but the professional hatred of these clever rascals would make it doubly so.

The women were on their feet when he came in, looking at him with doubt, awe, and fear in their eyes. He crossed at once to the sick man and saw that he was at death’s door. Most mightily, then, did Torridon wish that he possessed some real knowledge of medicine. Instead, he had only common sense to fall back upon to save this dying man.

He ordered Rushing Wind and the squaws to roll up the sides of the lodge and to open the entrance flap. There was a groan in response. The air, they told him, was fairly rich and reeking with purifications and charms. All these were now to be dissipated. All these high-priced favors were to be blown away.

He was adamant. The tent was opened and fresher wind blew the foulness away. Yet it was very hot. The sun was relentless. The breeze hardly stirred. Torridon made up his mind at once.

“The underwater spirits,” he said to Rushing Wind, “might help me to carry away the evil spirit that is in your father. He must be carried at once to the side of the river. Put two backrests together and then we will carry him. Let the women come after. They should bring robes, food, and plenty of skins to put up a little tent. Let this be done quickly.”

It was done quickly, with many frantic glances at the man of the lodge, as though they feared the veteran warrior would give up the ghost at any moment. Rushing Wind took the head of the litter. Torridon took the feet—and light enough was their burden. For the fever had wasted poor Black Beaver until he was a ghost of his powerful self.

They bore him from the camp and then up the river to a considerable distance, so that the merry sounds of the boys at the swimming pool floated only dimly to their ears, like the broken songs of birds. Here Torridon chose a place high on the bank between two lofty trees. The tent was put up with speed and skill. Cut branches made the foundation on which the bed was laid, and Black Beaver was made warm and comfortable.

He had begun to roll his head from side to side and mutter. Sometimes the muttering rose to a harsh shout.

“He is dying,” the younger squaw said, and fell on her knees beside the bed.

“Peace,” said Torridon, who was reasonably sure that she was right. “The underwater spirits are now trying to take the evil out of him. That is why he shouts and turns. Because there is a battle going on in his heart.”

He next asked what had been eaten by Black Beaver, and was told that for three days the warrior had refused everything, even the tenderest bits of roasted venison.

No wonder he was failing rapidly—a three-day fast, a burning fever, and a lodge choked with foul air and smoke!

Torridon had a broth cooked for the sick man. Then the head of Black Beaver was supported, and the broth poured down his throat. In the end the brave lay back with a groan. His eyes closed. Torridon thought that death actually had come. Silence fell on the watching group. But presently all could see that the sick man’s breast was rising and falling gently.

“That is good,” whispered Rushing Wind. “He sleeps. Oh, White Thunder, how mighty is your medicine. The others are nothing. All the other doctors are the rattling of dead leaves. You, alone, have power.”

Torridon sat down, cross-legged, under a tree and looked at the hushed squaws, at the tense face of Rushing Wind, and wondered at himself. All his amateur attempts at cures had been strangely successful. Those powerful frames of the Indians, toughened by a constant life in the open, seemed to need nothing but a quiet chance and no disturbance in order to fight off every ill that flesh is heir to. The torments of the doctors, felt Torridon, had killed more than unassisted disease could have done.

He looked farther off at the prairie, wide as the sea and more level, no bush, no tree breaking its monotonous outline, and he wondered whether, when he returned to his own kind—if that ever was to be—he could accomplish among them work half so successful as that which he had managed among these red children. Among them he was a great man, he was a great spirit walking the earth by special permission of the Sky People. Among his white cousins he would be insignificant Paul Torridon once more.

So he wondered, half sadly and half with resignation. He could see that his affairs were now involved in so great a tangle that his own volition was not sufficient to straighten matters out. Nancy Brett was in his hands. That situation could not continue. Vaguely he hoped that a priest might be found, somewhere, who would be brought to the camp to perform a marriage ceremony. Until then, he passed the days in constant dread of the future, and of himself.

That long silence on the bank of the river continued the rest of the day. About evening, the sleeper wakened. He remained restless from that point until midnight. Torridon managed to give him a little more broth, but, after eating, Black Beaver became more restless still. His fever seemed higher. Throughout the night he groaned continually, and sometimes he broke out into frightful peals of laughter.

After midnight it was plain that he was weakening. The squaws, with desperate, drawn faces, sat by the bed, and their eyes wandered continually from their lord and master to the face of Torridon. He felt the burden of their trust, but he knew nothing that he could do.

Some hours after midnight, there was a convulsive movement of the sick man. Torridon ran to look at him and found that Black Beaver had twisted over and lay face downward. He did not stir. This time Torridon made sure that death was there.

He touched the back of Black Beaver. To his astonishment, it was drenched with perspiration. He leaned lower, and he could hear the deep faint breathing of the Cheyenne.

Once more the power had been granted to Torridon. One more life was saved. He looked up reverently to the black of the trees, to the fainter blue-black of the sky beyond, dappled with great stars.

“He will live,” said Torridon. And then he added, with irresistible charlatanry: “The underwater spirits have heard me calling to them. They have come and taken the evil spirit away.”

When Torridon and Rushing Wind had left the lodge, Standing Bull showed no inclination to depart from it. As a matter of fact, it was rather a breach of etiquette for him to remain there after the man of the lodge had departed—particularly since the squaw, Young Willow, was gone out, also. Nancy Brett was perfectly aware of this; however, she made light of the matter and began to talk cheerfully, in her broken Cheyenne, about the illness of Black Beaver.

The war chief listened to this talk without comment, fixing a grave eye upon her.

However, he finally said, as though to end the subject: “White Thunder will cure Black Beaver.”

“He is very ill,” said the girl.

“White Thunder,” the chief said, “has power from the Sky People . . . over such matters as this.” He added the last words with a certain significance.

And Nancy Brett, canting her head like a bird to one side, asked him gravely what he meant.

“Heammawihio,” the warrior explained, “is jealous of men on earth. He does not give double power to one man. The great warriors are not the great medicine men.”

“White Thunder,” said the girl readily, “has led the Cheyennes against the Sioux and beaten them badly. Is not that true?”

“He was with the war party,” said the chief in answer. “He saw signals from the Sky People, which they had sent down because they love the Cheyennes. All that he needed to do was to read those signs. He has power to read them. Just as certain of the old men are able to read the pictures that are painted on a lodge. That is all. The eye of White Thunder is clear to read dreams. He has read my own dreams.”

The girl suppressed a smile. She had listened to many absurd interpretations that her lover had put upon the dreams of the Indians. However, now she maintained a straight face. Apparently there was more to come, and it was not long before the chief spoke.

“But as for battle,” said Standing Bull, “he never is great. He never has counted a coup. In the fight against the Dakotas, he was not in the front rank. He ran weakly behind the others.”

“He killed two men. I thought,” said Nancy Brett.

“The Dakotas,” explained the Cheyenne, “were herded together like buffalo that do not know which way to run. A child could not have missed them with a headless arrow. But White Thunder did not count a single coup. He did not take a single scalp. When the warriors returned home, White Thunder was not seen at the war dance. He did not come to the feasts to boast.”

“He never talks about what he has done,” the girl said readily.

“Of course, he does not,” answered Standing Bull. “And the reason is that he knows he does nothing of himself.”

“Who has made rain for the Cheyennes and saved them when their corn was dying?” she asked.

“Heammawihio,” Standing Bull answered with perfect satisfaction in his face.

The girl was silent, wondering at these speeches. Standing Bull appeared in the camp as the greatest friend to Torridon. Certainly, however, he was attacking him now.

“Then,” she said at last, “everything that White Thunder has seemed to do really was done by Heammawihio?”

“Everything,” said the warrior. “And since he has done nothing in battle, is it not plain that Heammawihio does not wish to strike through his hand at the enemy of the Cheyennes?”

There was a certain childishness in this species of reasoning that she saw could not be answered. Therefore, she was silent. Another thought was entering her mind. She fairly held her breath.

“In war he is weak,” went on the chief. “And that is a sad thing. We have spent many days together. I have waited to see White Thunder strike down a single enemy, or count a single coup, or take a single scalp. He never will do that. His spirit turns to water. I have seen his knees shake and his face turn pale.” His lip curled as he spoke.

“I don’t think that you understand him,” she ventured at last. “He always has been very high-strung and nervous. He’s not like other men. But I’ve seen him ride a wild horse that even Roger Lincoln could not ride. And I’ve seen him stand up to a bully three times his size. He may tremble and turn pale, but he’s not afraid to attempt all sorts of things.”

Standing Bull merely shook his head. “You,” he said, “are a woman, and you know nothing about battle. But I know about battle. I understand such things. You should believe what I tell you.”

To this blunt speech, no rejoinder was possible.

“You, just now,” went on the chief, “think that he is a very great man. You look on him kindly. You love White Thunder. Is that true?”

She answered frankly: “That is true.”

“Women,” said the warrior after a moment of gloomy reflection, “are like children. They see the thing that is not and they believe it to be true.”

“Perhaps,” she said, rather afraid to contradict him.

“Yes, it is true. All wise men know that this is true. So you look like a child at White Thunder. You see that the children follow him, expecting marvels, and the young men talk about him, and the old men ask for his voice in the council. You would say, therefore, that the Cheyennes have no chief greater than White Thunder.”

“I would say that he is a great man among the Cheyennes,” she agreed cautiously.

“But you do not know,” Standing Bull went on, “that in their hearts, when they speak among themselves, all the Cheyennes despise this man.”

She was struck dumb.

“All,” he continued, “except some of the young braves, like Rushing Wind. They, also, do not think clearly. Their minds are full of clouds. But the warriors who have counted many coups and taken many scalps see the truth about this white man.”

She listened, seeing that a crisis was rapidly approaching in the conversation.

“After a while,” he continued, “even the younger warriors will understand White Thunder. They, also, will smite to themselves when they see him pass. And then how will you feel?”

“If I love him, I shall not care,” she answered.

“Why do women love men?” asked the chief. He did not wait for an answer, but he continued swiftly: “Because a man is brave, because he does not fear the enemy, because he breaks the ranks of the Dakotas in the charge and counts coups upon them and takes their scalps.”

She could not speak. He was growing more and more excited.

“You think,” he went on, “that someday White Thunder will grow older and bolder and that then he will begin to do these things, but you are wrong, for he never will do them. I, Standing Bull, will tell you that, because it is true, and I want you to know the truth.” His breast was beginning to heave and his eyes to shine. Then he said: “But there are others among the Cheyennes who have done these things. I, Standing Bull, have done these things. It was I who went out and dreamed by the bank of the river, with the underwater people reaching out their hands for me. It was I who went up among the Sky People and found White Thunder and brought him down to my people. All this is known to the Cheyennes. All the chiefs and even the children know of these things that I have done.”

“I have heard them say so,” the girl said, still careful to a degree.

“And also in their councils the old men send for me. They put me in a good place in the lodge. The medicine of Standing Bull is good, they say. It is very strong. When I speak, they listen. I have a strong brain. It thinks straight as a horse runs. When I speak, the Cheyennes all listen. Before long, when High Wolf dies, I shall be the greatest of the chiefs. I tell you this, because it is a thing that you ought to know.”

“I have heard all the people speak well of you,” she replied. “White Thunder praises you, too. He is a great friend of yours.”

She hoped that this remark might soften the humor of the chief, but it had a contrary effect.

“He cannot help but be a friend of mine,” said Standing Bull. “The Sky People sent him to me. Therefore, he is forced to be my friend, but all the time he hates me in his heart. He knows that I first brought him here. When he ran away, I went after him. I found him among the white men. They had many guns. They were great warriors. They were his friends and they were ready to strike a blow for him. But Standing Bull was not afraid. He went in among them. He took White Thunder as a mother takes a child. He carried White Thunder across the wide prairie and back to the Cheyennes, and all the people shouted and were glad to have the great medicine man among them once more. So White Thunder still pretends to be my friend, but it is only because he knows that I am strong. I am stronger than he is. In spite of all his medicine, I can do what I want with him. He was given to me by the Sky People.”

In his emotion and his pride, he swayed a little from side to side, and his voice reverberated through the lodge like thunder.

The girl watched, cowering a little. She felt that there was a touch of madness in this frantic warrior.

“Also,” said the chief, continuing rapidly, “I tell you that Standing Bull has counted many coups. When the coup stick is passed and they ask who has counted twelve coups, the other braves sit silent, until I am called upon. I have taken six scalps. With them I am going to make a rich scalp shirt. Those scalps now are drying and curing in my lodge and they make the heart of Standing Bull great.

“Now I tell you why I am saying these things. If you stay with White Thunder, soon you will be ashamed. You will wish that you had married even the poorest of the warriors. You will wish that your man was brave and strong in battle. But I, Standing Bull, offer to take you. I will put you on a fine horse. I will carry you away. We will forget White Thunder. I have spoken.”

No speech was possible to poor Nancy Brett. If an indignant denial and upbraiding burst almost to her lips, she forced it back.

This was treason of one man to his friend. But, moreover, it was something else. It was what Standing Bull considered a statement of plain fact. He wanted to spare her a dreadful humiliation and the complete ruin of her life.

He would leave his place in the nation, and for her sake strive to work out a new destiny in another tribe of the Cheyennes. Leaving his lodge, his horses, his wives, his son and daughters, he would begin a new life.

She felt the force of all these things. She felt, too, that if he were repulsed he would become an active and open enemy, not only of her but of Paul Torridon. And what an enemy he could be she was well able to guess.

So, half stunned as all these thoughts swept into her mind, she was unable to speak, but stared first at the chief, and then at the ground.

He took the burden of an immediate decision from her. He rose and said gently: “Men are like midday, clear, strong, and sudden. Women are like the evening. They are full of a soft half light. Therefore, let my words come slowly home to your mind. Then as time goes on, you will see that they are true. I, Standing Bull, shall wait for you.”

With this, he wrapped himself in his robe and passed out from the lodge, clothed in his pride, his self-assurance, his vast dignity. She watched him going like the passing of a dreadful storm, with yet a fiercer hurricane blowing up from the horizon’s verge.

She wanted to talk to Torridon at once and give him warning of what had happened. But there was no one with whom she could talk except Young Willow.

That bent crone returned to the teepee, carrying wood. When she saw Nancy Brett alone, she cried out in anger, and, casting down her own burden, bade her run to help in carrying in the next load.

Nancy went willingly enough. Any exertion that would take her mind away from her own dark troubles was welcome to her. The squaw, at the verge of the village, where the brush grew, had cut up a quantity of wood, and she stacked the arms of Nancy with a load under which she barely managed to stagger to the entrance of the lodge. Then she pitched it onto the floor and clung to a side pole, gasping for breath. Young Willow, in spite of her years, threw down a weight twice that which Nancy had been able to manage, and, scarcely breathing hard, turned to the girl with more curiosity than unkindness.

“They have let you grow up lying in bed,” said Young Willow. She took the arm of the girl in her iron-hard thumb and forefinger.

“Tush,” said the squaw. “There is nothing here. There is nothing here.” She tossed the arm from her, but then she told Nancy to sit down and rest. On the contrary, the white girl followed her, though Young Willow scolded her all the while they went back to the brush, saying: “What! White Thunder will take your hand and find splinters in it. ‘Who has made this child work?’ he will say, and he will look on me with a terrible brow.”

It seemed to Nancy an ample opportunity to draw from the squaw confirmation of the viewpoint of the Indians concerning Torridon.

She said simply: “I don’t think you would be very afraid of White Thunder, no matter what he said.”

“You think not?” Young Willow asked shortly.

“Of course not. You are only afraid of men like your chief, High Wolf.”

“Why only of him?” asked the squaw, more abrupt than ever.

“He has counted how many coups, and taken how many scalps?” asked Nancy.

“And should that make us afraid?”

“Yes. Doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does. High Wolf is a famous warrior. But he never has pulled the rain down out of the sky.”

“And White Thunder never has taken a scalp.”

The squaw stopped and peered beneath furrowed brows at the girl.

“You are like all the others,” she said. “A woman is never happy until her husband beats her. I never could be sure that High Wolf was a great chief until the day when he threw a knife at me. It missed my eye by the thickness of a hair. After that I knew that I had found a master. I stopped thinking about other men. You are the same way. White Thunder is not great enough for you.”

It eased the heart of Nancy to hear this talk. Nevertheless, she wanted much more confirmation, and she went on: “White Thunder is very gentle and kind . . . his voice never is harsh . . . of course I love him. But there are other things.”

“Like crushing the Dakotas? Like making the rain come down when he calls for it? Like using the birds of the sky to carry his messages and be his spies? Is that what you mean? What other men can do those things so well as White Thunder?”

“He never has taken a scalp,” Nancy repeated, recurring to the words of Standing Bull.

“Why should he take scalps?” said the old woman fiercely. “Does he need to take scalps? When a chief has killed a buffalo, does he cut off its tail? When a chief has killed a grizzly bear, does he cut off its claws and wear them as ornaments? No, he lets the other men, the younger men, the less famous warriors, cut off the claws. He gives the claws away. That is the way with White Thunder.”

“He never has joined the scalp dance. He never has joined in the war dance and boasted of what he has done.”

“The crow can caw and the blackbird can whistle,” said the squaw, “but a great man does not need to talk about himself. No more does White Thunder.”

“Never once has he counted coup.”

“Listen to me, while I say the thing that is true,” the other said. “He struck the Dakotas numb. He sent in the young warriors. All the sighting men rushed on the Dakotas, and the Sioux could not strike to defend themselves. With his power, White Thunder could do this. But why should he want to count coups on men who he knew were helpless? That is not his way. He knows that Heammawihio is watching everything that he does. Therefore, he does not dare to cover himself with feathers and scalps, and he does not even carry a coup stick. It is not necessary. His ways are not the ways of the other Cheyennes, and neither is his skin the same color. But you,” she added with heat, “talk like a young fool. You bawl like a buffalo calf whose mother has been killed. There is no sense in what you say. You should sit at home and work very hard and thank Heammawihio for the good husband he has given to you. I, Young Willow, have known many men and seen many young warriors. I have been a wife and still am one. But I never have seen a man so great and also so kind as White Thunder.”

This speech utterly amazed Nancy. From what she had heard, she rather thought that Young Willow hated the young master for whom she drudged at the bidding of High Wolf. Certainly they constantly were jangling and wrangling, uttering proverbs aimed at one another, to the huge delight of Torridon, and the apparently constant rage of Young Willow.

But now she saw that the sourness of the old squaw was rather a habit of face than a quality of heart. She smiled to herself, and went on with Young Willow to help carry in the next load of wood.

As they drew nearer to the brush, they saw some boys, stripped for running except for the breechclout thong around the hips, getting ready for a race. When they saw the two women, they rushed headlong upon them, yelling.

“What do they mean?” Young Willow cried, alarmed. “What do they want?”

She raised a billet of wood above her head and threatened them, shouting: “You little fools! I am the squaw of High Wolf, and this is the squaw of White Thunder with me! White Thunder will wither your flesh and steal your eyesight if you displease him!”

In spite of these threats, one of the youngsters darted in, took a heavy blow on the shoulder from the cudgel, and caught both Nancy’s hands.

She was cold with fear; his grip had the power of a young tiger’s jaws.

He shrilled at her: “You are White Thunder’s woman. Some of his medicine must be about you. Give me some little thing! I never have won a race! I am smaller than the others. Give me some little bit of medicine, and I shall carry it back to you afterward. Give something to me, and I shall win the race. They will be blinded by my dust!”

He shouted this. Other boys were pressing about her, clamoring likewise, catching at her eagerly. She almost thought that she would be torn to bits.

At her breast she had a small linen handkerchief. She took it and gave it to the first claimant, the small child who had so desperately wanted help. And off he went, whooping with delight.

The children lined up at a mark. Their race was around a tree some distance off and back to the mark again.

“What can that do for him?” said the girl to Young Willow.

Young Willow laughed. “You will see,” she said. “Everything about White Thunder is full of magic. Speaking Cloud had not killed game for a whole moon. I loaned him White Thunder’s bow. He killed four buffalo in one day.”

Nancy might have pointed out that this handkerchief was hers and had nothing to do with White Thunder, but she said nothing. So often it was impossible to speak sense to these people.

In the meantime, the race began. They were off in a whirl, rounded the tree, and came speeding back for the goal.

“Now look! Now! Do you doubt?” Young Willow asked in exultation.

Behold, the bearer of the white handkerchief was sweeping up from behind his other and larger companions. A starved-looking, wizened boy was he, half blighted in infancy by some illness. But now he came like the wind.

The boys in the lead jerked their heads over their shoulders. Their legs seemed to turn to lead. Their mouths opened. They staggered. And the youngster sped past them, half a stride the first to the line.

“White Thunder! You see what he can do?” cried Young Willow.

And even Nancy was a little staggered.

But, for that matter, she had long been convinced that her lover was the greatest of all men.

For twenty-four hours after the crisis was passed with Black Beaver, Torridon remained close to him, teaching the awe-stricken and joyous squaws how to cook broths for the patient and gradually to increase the food as the strength returned to the sick warrior. With care, there no longer was any danger. Black Beaver was an emaciated skeleton of a man, but his eyes were clear, and the joy of restored life burned in it wonderfully bright.

So Torridon, a tired man, went back to the village. On the way, he encountered a youngster bearing to him in his arms a little puppy, dead and cold. He laid the puppy at the feet of Torridon, made an offering of half a dozen beads from a grimy hand, and then stood expectantly.

It had even come to that—they looked to Torridon to raise the dead to life again.

He stared at the poor dead thing with pity and sorrow. “I shall tell you what I can do,” said Torridon. “His spirit has left him and will not come back. But I shall send that spirit into the other world. There it will grow big. When you die in your turn, it will be waiting for you. It will know you and come to your feet.”

The youngster stared with round eyes of grief, yet he was a little consoled, and particularly when Torridon helped him bury the puppy and said over the grave a few words of gibberish. He went bounding back to the village, and Torridon followed after, a sadder man, indeed.

He could see that his life among the Cheyennes was drawing toward a crisis. They had demanded of him one impossibility after another. By the grace of a strange fortune he had been able to meet their wishes, but that good fortune could not continue much longer, and with his first important failure, he dreaded the reaction. What would the wild warriors do?

Full of that thought he came back to the lodge and found Nancy waiting for him with an anxious eye. Young Willow was at work outside, tanning a deerskin, so that Nancy was free to tell him all that had happened.

He heard the story of Standing Bull and his treacherous proposal with an air of fixed gloom. They sat close together. And Torridon took out the slender, long, double-barreled pistol, and cleaned and loaded it with care, not conscious of what he was doing, though the girl read his mind clearly.

What could she say to him, however? What resource was left to them?

The suggestion that came was out of another mind.

Rushing Wind came that evening and took Torridon apart from the lodge. They were beyond the camp before he would speak. Then he declared all that Roger Lincoln had planned and announced that he was willing to do his share. Torridon, hearing, was half doubtful of the faith of the warrior. But like a desperate man he was of a mind to clutch at straws.

They made their plans with care. Every day, Torridon and Nancy were to make a habit of riding out from the camp with their guard around them rather late in the afternoon. Because, as Rushing Wind pointed out, in case of an actual attempt at escape succeeding, the closer the fugitives were to the night, the better for them.

The greatest difficulty, beyond that of breaking away from the guards in the first place, would be in finding a proper mount for Nancy. The best they could do was to hope that the finest animal in Torridon’s herd would be swift enough for the work. This was a pinto, a strong little fellow, rather short of leg, but celebrated for iron endurance.

Through all this talk, Rushing Wind spoke nervously, uncertainly, as a man who is not at all sure that he is following the course of duty. However, as they turned back toward the camp he finally declared with some emotion: “I have given my word in exchange for my life. And the life of my father has been given to me, also. May I become a coward in battle, White Thunder, and a scorn and a shame to my people, if I do not work for you in all this as if my soul were in your hands.”

With that avowal, Torridon had to rest content, though he was well aware of the shifting mind of an Indian, and the changes that a single day might produce in Rushing Wind and in his resolve.

They had no sooner got back to the camp than two eager messengers pounced on Torridon and dragged him off on an errand of the greatest haste.

They carried him to the lodge of Singing Arrow, an old and important member of the tribe. He had passed the flower of his prime as an active fighter, but he was still of great value and much respected in the council. When Torridon entered, he found Singing Arrow sitting, cross-legged, at the side of a young and pretty girl who he had recently taken as a wife. On the other side of the lodge lay a Negro with a close-cropped, woolly head.

And at a single glance he could tell that the Negro and the girl were suffering from one ailment. Their faces were puffed. Their eyes were distended. Their breath was an alarming rattle in their throats.

The story was quickly told. The evening before, Torridon knew that a Negro, apparently a runaway slave, had come to the camp riding a horse that staggered with exhaustion. The Negro himself appeared weak with the long journey from the settlements. And Singing Arrow, out of the largeness of his heart, had taken him into his teepee. Apparently the poor black man was suffering from some highly infectious disease, and it was making terrible progress with the young squaw.

Torridon examined them in wonder. He never had seen such sickness before. The limbs seemed to be shrunken. The bodies and the faces were swollen. On the right arm of the Negro, high up on the inside, there was a hard swelling beneath the skin. On the left arm of the girl there was a similar swelling. They had high fevers. Their eyes were bloodshot and rolled in delirium. Never before had Torridon seen such a thing.

He gave strong advice at once—that the Negro and the squaw be moved to the edge of the camp, away from all the other lodges. That no one from this teepee should so much as speak to other members of the tribe. That the patients should be watched day and night and given only that light broth that was Torridon’s staple diet for all the sick of the Cheyennes.

“The evil spirit in the body of the Negro,” he explained gravely, “has called on its fellows. They have passed into the body of the squaw. From her, in turn, they may pass into others.”

After that he went back to his own lodge, took off the clothes he was wearing, and had Young Willow hang them outside the lodge, with orders that they should not be touched again until a fortnight of wind and sun had passed over them. Then he went to sleep, very troubled. It seemed as though the great disaster that he had been fearing was already upon the Cheyennes.

In the morning, he learned that the Negro and the squaw were in the same condition. The lodge had been moved, obediently, to the verge of the camp, but in doing so neighbors had given help. Torridon shuddered when he learned this story.

However, there was another thing to occupy both Torridon and Nancy. He told her the plan that morning, and, in the late afternoon, they went out together, with Ashur and the pinto. The great chief, Rising Hawk, was in person at the head of their escort on this day. With him were two young braves, scarcely past boyhood, but for that reason all the lighter, on horseback, all the wilder and swifter as riders.

They passed far down the bank of the river, turned, and rode in a broad circle back toward the village.

As they came nearer, a frantic horseman approached them. His news he shouted from a distance, and again in stammering haste as he came closer. Every person in the lodge of Singing Arrow was prostrate and helpless with the illness. The Negro who brought the pestilence into the village was dead. And half a dozen of those who had helped in the removal of the lodge that day were already ill.

What was to be done? Already the medicine men of the tribe were hard at work, purifying the lodges, treating the sufferers, but so far they had not driven away a single devil from one sick man’s body.

Riding hastily back toward the town, they passed the sweat house in time to see a naked man issue from it and run with staggering steps down to the river, accompanied by a medicine man who, with the head of a wolf above his own and a wolf’s tail flaunting at his back, bounded and pranced at the side of the sick man.

“Stop them!” cried White Thunder. “That will kill the poor man!”

“Who can stop a doctor when he is in the middle of a rite?” asked Rising Hawk in sharp reproof. “If your own medicine is stronger, go heal the rest of the sick, White Thunder!”

A harsh voice had Rising Hawk as he uttered this dictum, and Torridon made no reply. He merely glanced at Nancy, and she back to him.

He went back to his lodge, took off his clothes, and donned the suit that he had worn on the evening before when he entered the lodge of Singing Arrow, and began a round of the teepees that had the sick in them. Every case was exactly the same, except for one girl who seemed to be in great pain. The others suffered no agony—only a numbing fever that made them unwilling to move, even to eat.

In every case he made the same suggestion—that the whole lodge be moved away from the camp, and a city of the sick segregated, having no communion with the rest of the camp.

His advice was received with open anger.

“You,” said one strong warrior whose son was stricken, “have power in such matters as these. Heammawihio gave you that power and sent you down here to take care of the Cheyennes. Now, why don’t you do something to help us? You are only giving us words. You are not doing anything or making any medicine to drive away the evil spirits!”

Torridon went back to his lodge sick at heart. He had the feeling that even a skillful doctor would have had his hands more than full in such a case as this, and he was sure that calamity was soon to fall upon him.

When he had changed from the polluted clothing and washed his body clean, he dressed, and went to the entrance of his lodge. Young Willow came to hold back the flap that he might enter.

“Don’t come near me,” he told her. “If you so much as touch me, you may die of it. I have been near evil spirits.”

“You have washed yourself clean,” said the squaw.

“It may be even in my breath,” Torridon said bitterly.

“Come,” said Young Willow stoutly. “I am not afraid. I have never been a man to take scalps, but I never have been afraid to do my duty. Come in. I have some fresh venison stewing in the pot. You may smell it now. Rushing Wind gave us that for a present.”

Nancy came in haste, calling softly to him, but he warned her back sharply.

He sat outside the lodge, and ate some meat from a bowl that was placed at his direction near the entrance. A robe was also passed to him. Wrapped in that, he sat back against the wall of the teepee. Nancy crouched anxiously inside.

It was the quiet of evening. The hunters all had returned. Man and boy and dog had eaten and now rested. Later on, the yearning young lovers would wander out with their musical instruments and make strange noises and singing to their loved ones. But now they were quiet, and the dogs that would begin snarling and howling were now hushed, also.

Dun-colored or gleaming white, like pyramids of snow, the teepees stood shadowy or bright around him. From the open entrances, soft voices spoke. Firelight wavered out upon the night through the mouths of the lodges, or in red needles darting through small punctures in the cowhides. The morrow night would not be like this, Torridon could well guess. There would be wailings and weepings for the dead.

He looked above him. The stars were out, unblemished and clear. He felt a strange connection with them, so much had the wild tales of the Cheyennes about him entered his mind, and a sense of doom came over Torridon.

“Nancy,” he said.

“Yes,” she murmured. “Are you going to stay there the whole night?”

“I don’t dare to breathe the same air that you may breathe after me.”

“Paul, Paul,” cried the girl softly, “if anything happens to you, do you think that I want to live on after you? And in such a place?”

“I’ve thought it out,” he said. “As long as I’m here, they don’t care for your comings and goings. You can do what you please. And this is what you must do. Will you listen?”

“Yes.”

“Will you do what I tell you to do?”

“I’ll try my best.”

“Go out and take the pinto horse. He’s tethered behind the lodge. Young Willow has gone to High Wolf. You’re free to load the pinto with food and robes and never be suspected. Then lead him out of the village and down toward the river. Mount him and ride across. Keep on steadily to the north. Ride due north and never stop. Keep your horse jogging or walking. You’ll cover more miles that way without killing your pony. When the morning comes you’ll find Roger Lincoln. He’s waiting there to the north for us.”

“He’s waiting for you, Paul. Not for us.”

“You’ve given your promise to do what I tell you.”

“Do you think I could go?” she asked.

“You must. There’s no escape for the two of us. I see that now. But there is an escape for you. Find Roger Lincoln, and tell him to go back to the fort. Once you’re away . . . I’ll find some means of escaping . . . after the sickness is ended and gone.”

“But you’ll never escape,” Nancy sobbed. “You’ll be visiting the lodges of the sick and you’ll be sure to catch it. Then who will take care of you?”

“Such things are chance,” said Torridon calmly. “A man has to face some dangers. This isn’t a great one. I don’t touch these poor invalids. I don’t come near their breath.”

“Ah, but I know their lodges will be reeking. Six sick people, perhaps, in one teepee.”

“Nancy, we’re talking about you. Will you go?”

She answered him with an equal calm: “Do you think that I love you as other women love? I mean, women who can live apart from their husbands? I’m not that way. I’d never leave you unless I were dragged away.”

After that, he was silent for a time, trying to find some argument to persuade her.

“You can do nothing for me here,” he said. “And you have a father and a mother to return to.”

She answered bitterly: “I have no father and no mother. They drove me away from you. Following me, you came to the Cheyennes. Except for my father and mother, we would not be here now, Paul. We would be happy in a home of our own.”

“If they did wrong,” said Torridon, looking as he spoke into the very heart of things, “they did it for your sake. You must not blame them too much. Besides, our lives have some meaning. Is it right to throw them away?”

Nancy strove to answer; the words were lost and stilled in faint sobs, and Torridon knew that it was useless to talk to her any longer on this subject. She would not leave him. And for the first time in his young life true humility flowed into the heart of the boy, and he wondered at her goodness, and the pure, strong soul of Nancy. He wondered if it had not been planned that all this should happen so that he should find the truth about life and about himself.

A haze drew gradually over the eyes of Torridon. The stars floated in a dim mist of thin, golden sparks. He slept.

When he wakened, the cold dew was in his hair and on his face. And from the distance, at the verge of the Cheyenne camp, he heard strange, high-pitched cries. For a moment they were a blended part and portion of his dream, then, wakening fully, he knew them for what they were—the dirges of lament.

And he could see with the mind’s eye the poor squaws disfiguring themselves for warrior husbands, or helpless child, now dead and still.

He prepared himself for the grimmest and saddest day of his life, but all his mental preparations were less than the reality.

Like a dreadful fire the pestilence was sweeping through the Cheyenne camp. In the morning, a warrior and two children lay dead, and thirty more were sick. But by noon the sick numbered more than fifty, and they were scattered through all parts of the camp.

The medicine men, frantically rushing here and there, were working in a frenzy to cast out the wicked spirits. But they themselves soon paid for their rashness. Four of them were stretched helplessly by noon in the heat of the day, two of them howling with appeals to the spirits and with pain.

And Torridon went everywhere, grimly, from lodge to lodge. Men and women looked at him with stony eyes, heard his advice with glares, and in silence let him retire. And it began to appear to Torridon that this calamity was blamed upon him as a thing done to the whole nation out of personal malice.

He could have smiled at such childishness, but behind the sullen silence of those red men there was all the danger of drawn knives and leveled rifles. Before noon came, he knew that death was not far from him, if he had to remain in the camp.

He waited until the sun was sloping into the far west, its heat half gone. Then he mounted Ashur, and Nancy Brett joined him on the pinto.

For that was the day of days, so far as they were concerned. Rushing Wind was in command of the guard upon Torridon. And with him were two young braves.

In silence they rode out of the camp toward the river, but as they did so, young Rushing Wind was saying to the white man bitterly: “Why is it, White Thunder? What have the Cheyennes done to you? Why don’t you drive away the bad spirits?”

“Rushing Wind,” said Torridon, “I haven’t the power to do this thing.”

“Ah, my friend,” said the young brave, “I saw my father lying dead. You brought him back to life.”

“He was not dead. He was only very sick.”

“His eyes were half opened. His breath did not come,” said Rushing Wind. “To you that may not be death, but, to us, it seems death. But in a short time, you made my father strong. Already he sits up against a buffalo robe and asks for meat. But you, White Thunder, are angry with my people. You wish to punish them. Well, I am your friend and I tell you this as a friend. The Cheyennes are growing desperate. Some warrior who sees his son dying, some squaw who sees her strong husband falling sick, may run at you with a knife.”

Torridon made no reply.

For just then, out of the village, rode Rising Hawk, and with him were two tried and proved warriors, and they came straight toward Torridon and Rushing Wind.

Had some whisper of the plot to escape come to the ears of this stern young chieftain?

However, when he joined them he gave Torridon a quiet greeting, and simply fell in with the rest of the escort.

“What does it mean?” Torridon murmured to Rushing Wind.

The latter leaned far over and pretended to fumble at his girths. At the same time he whispered: “Give up any thought of escaping today. Rising Hawk suspects something, and he has come here to watch.”

Torridon straightened in the saddle and drew a great breath. He had no doubt that Rushing Wind spoke the truth, but he also felt a vast assurance that unless he managed to escape on this day, he never would live to leave the Cheyennes on the morrow. Even as they rode down toward the river, the wailing from the camp followed them from afar, like the screaming of birds of prey in the distance.

Rising Hawk was not the only addition to the guard. Presently Standing Bull was seen coming out from the village, armed to the teeth and riding on a dun-colored pony, celebrated as the fastest of his string.

Unquestionably it looked as though the Cheyennes had heard some whisper of the proposed plan to escape. Nancy Brett swung her pony a little closer to Torridon.

“You look like death,” she said. “You must smile . . . talk . . . do something to keep them busy and get their eyes off you. Start a game.”

“What game could I start?” Torridon asked heavily, for hope had left him.

“Horse racing, then?”

“Against Ashur? They know that they wouldn’t have a chance.”

“Give them a flying start. Paul, Paul, this is our last chance. Do something.”

Her energy and courage shamed him into making some sort of attempt.

He said cheerfully to Rising Hawk, as that dignitary came up: “Here are the fastest ponies among all the Cheyennes. Which is the finest of them all, Rising Hawk?”

The latter swept his glance over the number. “Who can tell which horse will win or which one will fail?” said the chief.

“Ah, well,” Torridon answered, “Standing Bull would have made a longer answer than that. He knows that his dun horse is the best one in the tribe.”

Rising Hawk turned, and the long eagle feathers stirred behind his head. “It is wrong,” he declared sententiously, “to count a coup before the enemy has been touched. And no scalp is taken until it hangs at the saddle bow. There is the horse of White Thunder himself. Does he compare his pony with yours?”

“My horse,” Torridon said, as though carelessly, “came from the sky as everyone knows. Standing Bull was comparing his horse with the others that were raised on the prairie. For my part, I think that your own pony, Rising Hawk, would throw dust in the eyes of the others. I have a good hatchet, here, that I would be willing to bet, if you were to run as far as to those trees and back.”

It was, in fact, an excellent hatchet of the best steel, and the handle had been roughened and ornamented by the sinking of many glass beads into the wood. When Torridon picked out the hatchet from the sling that held it, Rising Hawk watched with glittering eyes.

“Hai! Standing Bull!” he called. All the warriors drew near. “White Thunder thinks that my pony is the fastest of all these. He offers to bet his hatchet.”

Standing Bull expelled a breath with a sort of groan. “You have a good horse,” he said, “and the horse has a good rider. But I would ride for the sake of that same hatchet.”

There was not a warrior in the band but had the same thought.

A course was suggested to a tree half a mile away and back. Suddenly there was dismounting and looking to girths. But Rising Hawk said sullenly: “The rest of you ride. I shall stay here with my friend, White Thunder.”

The first hope of Torridon disappeared like a thin mist. Rising Hawk did not intend that the prisoner should escape so easily. He would make surety doubly sure.

However, Torridon added in haste: “I’ll ride in the same race with you. Why not? I shall start fifty steps to the rear of the others. Perhaps I can catch you.”

“Perhaps,” Rising Hawk said with a satisfied smile.

And, in an instant, they had lined up their horses.

Nancy Brett was to have her part, which consisted in holding her own pony to the side of the others and dropping her raised arm as a signal. Torridon reined back black Ashur to the rear. He gave Nancy one fixed look as he did so, and she nodded ever so slightly in return.

They understood one another. The heart of Torridon turned to ice, and all his nerves quivered like wires under a breaking strain. In the meantime, the Cheyennes had gathered at the mark. Every moment, Torridon expected Rising Hawk to call him closer. But though that chief twice turned in his saddle and marked the distance to which Torridon had withdrawn with the black horse, still he made no objection.

The attention of every Indian was now occupied with his pony. Those keen little animals, as though they knew what was wanted of them, began to rear and pitch and kick, and when they lined up, first one and then another strove to dart away.

Several heart-breaking minutes passed in this fashion. But at last the hand of Nancy fell, and the Cheyennes were off the mark with a loud grunting of the ponies as they struggled to get at once into full stride.

Nancy followed then one instant with her eyes. Then Ashur bore down on her.

As keen as any of the Indian horses for the race, the great black stallion had started with a lurch that almost tore Torridon from the saddle, but in an instant he had mastered the big horse with a touch on the reins and a word. He swerved to the left, and, turning her agile little pony around, Nancy fell in at the side of Ashur.

They made straight for the river, above the rocks, where the bed fanned out very broad, and a horse could be ridden easily and quickly through the shallows.

At the top of the bank, they looked back and saw that the furious riders were still rushing ahead for the tree that was the turning point of their race. Rising Hawk, true to his promise, was beginning to forge into the lead.

When they turned that tree, they would see that Torridon was not with them—was not in sight. And they would come like demons to catch him again.

This was the heart-breaking moment of the escape for the two. They gave each other one pale-faced glance, and then their horses dipped down the bank. They struck the water with a splashing of spray. Still, the blinding mist dashed up against their faces as the animals struggled through the shallow current.

At last, firm ground was under the hoofs of their horses. They could see again, and above them, dancing on the top of the bank, they saw an Indian boy of thirteen years or more, with a bow in his hand—dancing from side to side, his arms outspread to stop them, and his voice raised to an anxious scream as he called for help.

Help was coming up to him rapidly, moreover. The boys from the swimming pool, flashing ashore and catching up bows, stones, little javelins, went leaping up the bank and then racing for the danger point.

Torridon knew those youngsters well enough and dreaded them. They had no war bows, to be sure, but they were accurate to a wonderful degree with their play weapons. And a well-placed shaft might kill. Those stones and javelins, too, would make a formidable shower.

But now Ashur and the pinto were struggling up the bank.

They gained the ridge. Torridon pointed his double-barreled pistol at the young Cheyenne, and he turned and bolted with a yell of terror, dodging from side to side to avoid the expected bullet.

Backward glanced Torridon, and he saw the seven racers coming in a wide-flung line, and their shouting went before them, cutting the air with a sound more dreadful than the whistling of whips.

Those shouts had sent the alarm into the village. Other men and boys were darting out from the teepees. Still others were seen rushing to catch horses.

And the heart of Torridon sank in him. For Ashur he had no fear. But how could Nancy on her pinto outride these savage horsemen?

The cloud of youths came like a torrent at them. An arrow hissed past Torridon as he gave Ashur his head, and away they went across the plain, north, due north, where Roger Lincoln, in the dim distance, must be waiting for them according to his promise.

Heaven bring him close—Roger Lincoln and the magic of his long rifle.

The air was filled with the glancing points of javelins. Stones leaped still farther forward into the valley. Arrows arched bravely after them. But neither the pinto nor Ashur was so much as touched. Their speed was great, and the boys were overanxious and at too long a distance.

But that was a small consolation.

At the very first bound, the black stallion had drawn away from the little pinto and had to be pulled back. Running infinitely within his mighty strength, still he was able to keep the pony extended to the uttermost. He seemed to be floating along, and the little pinto was working with all its might.

Nancy, with the same anxious thought in her mind, looked up at Torridon with dread. But she made herself smile, and at that, the heart of Torridon swelled almost to bursting with pride in her courage, with love for her beauty, with pity for the terrible fate which he saw so close before them.

There would be no mercy for him on this second time when he tried to escape. They had spared him before, but now they had watched their best braves sickening, and they had attributed their fall to Torridon’s own malice. They would have his scalp and return with Ashur to the village.

As for Nancy? He dared not think of that.

A wild wave of noise broke over the nearer bank of the river. It seemed impossible that the Cheyennes should have crossed the water so quickly, but there they came, every one of the seven racers, still riding abreast in a line that flashed like polished metal in the sun.

Torridon looked back at them almost with exultation in their skill that was redoubling the speed of their horses. He had been among these people so long that, in spite of himself, some pride in their prowess could not be kept out of his mind.

He looked again at Nancy Brett. On her, more than on her horse depended the result of the race, and the first real hope came to Torridon when he saw that her pallor was decreasing, and the color beginning to flare up in her cheeks.

After all, it is not altogether strength that rides a horse, but balance, spirit, rhythm—or otherwise the greatest jockeys would be those of the strongest hands. So Nancy Brett rode well, her heart in her work, her body light in the saddle, and the stout little Indian pony flying over the ground.

They held the rushing Cheyennes behind them. Aye, and then they began to draw away, slowly and surely. So that Torridon, looking to the west and seeing the sun declining with rapidity, laughed aloud in his joy. A trembling laughter, however, so close was his terror on the heels of his exultation.

“We’re winning, Nan!” he called to her. “They’re falling back! They’re falling back!”

She gave him a flashing smile, then returned seriously to her work, putting all her care into it—just a sufficient pull to keep up the pony’s head and make it run straight, and always with her eyes before her, if perchance dangerous holes should open in the ground, or to swerve from obvious soft spots.

He, watching her, gloried in her courage and in her spirit. And never had he loved her as he loved her then, when her good riding seemed about to win.

But when he looked back again, he saw that they no longer drew away; the Cheyennes stuck stubbornly at one distance behind them.

Then he remembered with a sinking heart what had been told him more than once before—that good riding on an Indian pony in time of need consists in torturing from the suffering little hardy creatures the last ounce of force. There was an old saying, also, that a horse that a white man had abandoned as useless from exhaustion would still carry a Mexican two days, and when the Mexican gave it up, an Indian could wring another week’s travel out of its pitiful bones and stumbling feet. So Torridon kept careful watch behind, never communicating his fear to the girl.

He saw the sweat beginning to run fast from the flanks of the little horse. Then the shoulders were varnished with foam, and foam also flew back from its mouth. If only he could have transferred by magic some of the supreme quality of Ashur to this short-legged running mate. For the lordly Ashur still floated serenely forward, careless, at ease, turning his proud head from side to side, seeming to mock the leagues before him, and the foolish pursuers.

The sun, too, seemed to stick at one place, in the west, refusing to descend lower, so that Torridon could believe the miracle in the Bible. To the slaughtered host, it must surely have seemed that the night would never come, as it seemed now to anxious Torridon.

When he looked back again, he told himself that the distance between them and the Indians was as great as ever, but he knew in his heart that it was not. The pursuers were gaining, little by little.

But it was no time to alarm the girl. She was riding well, closely, with all her attention and skill. Let the Cheyennes press still closer before she began to use the whip.

She would not waste attention, or run the risk of throwing her pony out of its stride by turning to look behind, but from time to time she flashed a glance at Torridon, as though reading the progress of the race in his face.

He knew he was growing pale. He tried to smile at her, and he knew that the smile was a ghastly mockery, because she blanched, and leaned lower over the saddle bows, trying to transfer her weight forward a little and so ease the running muscles of the horse.

At last, glancing back, the leaders of the Cheyennes seemed literally devouring the space left between them and the fugitives. And now into the lead two were racing.

They were well-mounted boys, scarcely established as warriors, but already known for their skill and their daring on the warpath. Light in the saddle, keen as hawks for their cruel work today, they were at their best, and they forged steadily into the lead until, at last, one of them yelled loudly in triumph, and the other, as though spurred on by the shouter, snatched out a heavy pistol and discharged it.

Torridon could not hear the sound of the ball. He felt that they were still too far off to be damaged by such a fire, but he glanced eagerly at Nancy. She gave him that quick, bright smile that meant that all was well.

“The whip, Nan!” he cried to her.

“It’s no good,” she answered. “He’s doing his best.”

“The whip! The whip!” he begged.

She obeyed, cutting the little fellow resolutely down the flank, and the result showed that Torridon was right. The little horse, tossing his head, certainly added to his pace.

More and more that hawk-like pair fell to the rear. And ease began to come again over poor Torridon. Still he was by no means sure. Struck by the whip from time to time, the pony certainly was giving his best now. He was strung out straight as a string from head to tail. Foam and sweat ran from him, and his nostrils strained wide, showing the fiery-red lining as he strove to take down deeper breaths of the vital air.

And well and truly was he running, for he was standing off the prolonged challenge of the fastest mounts in that section of the Cheyennes.

Slowly, slowly the sun began to sink. It entered the region of the horizon mist, which stood well up above the level of the plain, and as it turned from fire to gold Torridon smiled faintly and looked again to Nancy. She was looking a bit white and drawn, now, but she never flinched, and well it was that her nerve remained steady and true.

For again the Indians were coming. The main body was some distance back, but the two young falcons in the lead were rushing forward with a wonderful velocity. Torridon could see that with hand and heel they were tormenting the poor horses into greater efforts. There simply was not strength in the arms of Nancy to equal those torments, and, if there had been, she had not the heart for such riding.

So Torridon spoke no more to urge her. He did not need to speak, for every glance she cast at him showed her the agony in his eyes, and that was more than shouted words to her.

Far ahead he saw the streak of shadow that showed where trees were rising above the level of the plain. There, he felt, might be shelter, but he knew in his heart that there was no shelter whatever. It could be no more than the fringing of trees along the bank of a small stream that cut through the plains, and in such a meager wood there would not be a moment’s hiding from the sharp eyes of the Indians.

Even that shelter it seemed impossible they should make, for the Cheyennes were pressing closer and closer.

“Nan, Nan,” he cried, “for heaven’s sake make one grand effort!”

The brave flashing smile she gave him once more and began to jockey the pony as though she were sprinting him over a short course.

He looked back and studied the situation again.

They were neither losing nor gaining, now. Her utmost effort was just able to maintain the pace of the pursuers. Looking back, Torridon could see what had happened to the rest of the Cheyennes.

Well behind the two young leaders was a group of some half a dozen braves, among them Standing Bull and Rising Hawk, and counted among the rest, the finest horsemen among the Cheyennes. But the bulk of the leaders were off on the horizon’s verge.

So much the pinto had done, at least. He had sunk the majority of the Cheyenne riders. Only the chosen few remained. But Torridon groaned as he gazed back at them. Two young devils worked in the lead. Behind them came the cream of the entire nation.

The screen of trees before him was all to which he could look forward. After that, death, perhaps. He would not let his mind go past the rising shadow.

Night, at least, would not come down in time. The sun’s lower rim was barely touching the horizon, and afterward would be the long twilight—and now every moment was more than hours, sapping the strength that remained to the pinto. Gallantly, gallantly he ran, but he had not on his back a torturing fiend to make of him a super-horse.

Now, glancing forward again, Torridon saw the screen of green rising straight before him. Beyond it was the gleam of water. Was it a fordable place? He hoped so, because the Indians behind did not swerve off to either side.

He said to Nancy: “Ride straight forward. Take the water, but not too fast, and let him walk up the farther bank. Then use what strength is left him to ride him on across the plain.”

She stared at him with great eyes. “What do you intend to do, Paul?”

He shouted furiously: “Are you going to argue? Do as I tell you!”

Her head sank a little. He felt as though he had struck her in the face, but he cared nothing for that. He had determined on a last desperate bid for their safety—for a moment’s hope in their flight, at the least.

Now he was riding through the thin screen of the willows, and, as he did so, he checked the black stallion and whirled him around; the pinto already was at the water, striking it with an almost metallic crash.

As he whirled the horse about, he saw the two young Cheyennes converge their horses a little, making for the gap between the trees through which the fugitives had ridden, and now Torridon could see the grins of unearthly joy on their faces, the wild glitter of their eyes. Already they were tasting the pleasure of the coup, the death stroke, the scalping.

As for Nancy, she would be reserved—for the teepee of Standing Bull.

He raised his pistol. Both shots must bring down a man, for otherwise it would mean sudden death, clutched by the other young tiger.

They saw that movement. One of them raised his lance and hurled it, but his horse at that moment stumbled, and, although the range was short, the long, slender weapon went past Torridon’s head with a soft, wavering hum that he would never forget to his death’s day.

The second had caught his rifle to the ready, and from this position he fired it, missed grossly, and then swung the heavy weapon with both hands, making ready to use it as a club to dash out the brains of the white man, and the while riding and guiding the pony with the grip of his powerful knees alone.

For a fraction of a second Torridon had held his fire. Not that there was no fear in him. He was cold with it. But as had happened before in dreadful crises of his life, that fear was not benumbing. It left his brain perfectly clear. He gave the first barrel of the pistol to the left-hand man—the lancer, who had now jerked a war club from his saddlebow. And the long years of practice that Torridon had given to that little weapon were useful now.

He took the head for his target and saw the young warrior slung from his saddle as though struck by a vast weight. The second barrel he gave to the other rider. There was no time, now, for delicate precision in aiming. He shot the man through the body and saw the grin of exultant triumph turn to a ghastly expression of horror, agony, and dreadful determination.

With the long rifle balanced for the blow, the brave rushed his pony in. Just above the head of Torridon the danger swayed, and then glanced harmlessly to the side.

The youth struck the ground with a strange and horrible jouncing sound, like the fall of a half-filled water barrel, and rolled rapidly over and over.

Two riderless ponies turned right and fled, frightened, among the trees.

It affected Torridon, at that moment, like a rush of wind against him. And indeed, the dust that the horses of the two dead men had raised was still blowing up against his face. No, not like the passage of wind, but the light of two dim spirits, suddenly launched into nothingness on this calm, clear, beautiful evening.

For the sun was just down. A pillar of golden fire streaked up the western sky, and, on either side of it, broad wings of crimson, feathered with purple cloud, stretched far north and south, where the horizon was all be-dimmed with soft, rich colors in a band that mounted from the dun-colored earth to the incredible green of the lower sky. And above this, still, there was the evening sky, half glorious with day, and half darkened by night.

But out of that beauty rode a level rank of warriors, each a tower of strength, each terrible, now, to avenge the blood of the dead men. Seven noble Cheyennes, the glory of their race. He knew Standing Bull and Rising Hawk of old. And the others were not a whit less formidable. One of them, tipping his long rifle to his shoulder, sent a bullet hissing past the very ear of Torridon. A snap shot—and yet accurate enough even at that distance almost to end the boy’s days.

Then he swerved Ashur away. The stallion crossed the water with a crash and a bound, flung up the farther bank, and went after Nancy Brett and the pinto. When Torridon saw the distance to which she had gained, he was amazed and delighted. He was less pleased when he observed the manner in which Ashur ran up to the pony as though it were standing still.

Nancy, as he came back, turned on him a look as of one who sees the dead returned to life, but she asked no questions. Only when the seven wild riders topped the bank of the river behind them with a yell, she cast one look to the rear.

No doubt she marked the greater distance at which the pursuit rode. No doubt she saw that the two keen hawks of the Cheyennes were nowhere in view. But when she looked forward again, she made no comment to Torridon.

They crossed a little mound in the plain; suddenly the pinto tossed its head. So suddenly did it stop that Ashur was jerked far ahead in his stride before Torridon, his heart still, could swing the stallion around.

He saw Nancy clinging to the neck of the pony, which stood, dead lame, with one forehoof lifted from the ground. Only by grace of good riding and perfect balance had Nancy been able to keep on the horse at all.

Torridon rushed the black to her and held out his arms. “He’ll carry us both!”

“It’s death for both of us,” answered the girl. “Let me go. They . . . they’ll pay no attention to me . . . they’ll ride on after you.”

He answered her: “Standing Bull’s riding with them!”

Leaning from the saddle, he drew her up to him, and Ashur went off with a swinging stride.

The Cheyennes, speeding behind them, raised a long cry. It seemed to Torridon that that wolf-like howl never would die upon the air. It rang, and floated, and rang again, curdling the blood. Like wolves, indeed, when they make sure of the kill.

And yet the stallion ran with wonderful lightness. It seemed to Torridon, at first, that he marked no difference in the length or the rhythm of the stride. Certainly they were walking away from the red men in the rear.

But a difference there was. Nancy, clinging behind, made a secondary load that could not keep in perfect rhythm with the man in the saddle. It was not sheer poundage, only; it was the clumsy disposition of the weight that would kill Ashur.

But he showed no sign of faltering. He ran on into the red heart of the sunset, when the clouds in the sky took the full color, and almost the evening seemed brighter than the day—blood bright it was to Torridon, and like a superstitious child he caught that thought to his soul of souls and told himself that this was the end.

Back, far back fell the Cheyennes. But then they came again. Torridon, looking back, groaned with despair. It seemed as though magic were in them, to come and come again over those weary miles of long running.

The blood-red moment passed. The sky was old gold and pink and rose and soft purples all about. And still Ashur ran on, with his double burden, against the chosen horses of the Cheyennes.

It had told upon him, however. His ears no longer pricked. And his stride was shortened from its old smooth perfection. The flick and spring were gone from his legs, and in their place came a dreadful pounding that made Torridon bite his lips in sorrow and despair. Yet it was better, was it not, that all three of them—man and horse and woman—should die together?

So said Torridon, in his despair.

And then came a voice at his ear like the flutter of the wind: “Oh, Paul, heaven forgive you if you throw yourself away for me. Your life is more than my life. If you live, my soul will watch you, dear. Paul, Paul, let me go!”

He merely clutched one of the hands that she was trying to withdraw from around him. And he drew the pistol, which he had reloaded as he rode up to her from the river. It was pitifully short in range. They could circle and kill him from a distance. But at least one bullet from it would keep Nancy from them.

The time was not long.

Now, looking over his shoulder, he saw their line extending from side to side as they rushed up on him. They had had their lesson in the killing of the two headlong young warriors, and no practiced brave would throw away a single chance of safety. They saw that their prey was in their grasp, and they were aiming at a circle in which they would net him.

The fastest horses went to either flank, surging gradually forward. The slower remained behind, and one of those was Standing Bull. Torridon felt that he could almost see that face, transformed with greedy passion.

Already the flank horses were drawing up to a level with them, and the braves in the lead, looking inward, regarded Torridon with steady glances.

Though from a distance, though in the dusk of the day, he knew them. He knew their hearts.

He turned still farther in the saddle and kissed the lips of Nancy Brett. “Nan,” he murmured, “are you ready?”

“Ready,” she said.

“I’m going to stop Ashur and make him lie down. I’ll fight from behind him as well as I can. But if they rush me . . . the first shot . . .”

“Yes,” she said. And she opened her eyes more widely, and smiled at him without a trace of fear, without a trace of regret, as though to her, dying with him was more than life with any other.

So, in an agony of grief and of love, he looked into her eyes.

A rifle rang. A wild yell burst from behind them, from around them. And then Nancy was crying out in a loud, excited voice.

His own eyes were dim. He had to dash his hand against them before, looking where she pointed, he saw a riderless Indian pony, and the Cheyennes scattering this way and that.

Not fast enough, it seemed, for the gun spoke again, and Torridon saw Young Crow, veteran of many a war raid, peer of all horse thieves, slayer of three Pawnees in one terrible battle, throw up his arms and topple slowly from the saddle, and then roll in a cloud of dust.

The other five, swinging their mounts around, made off as fast as their ponies would bear them from the range of this terrible marksman.

But Torridon, through the thicker shadow that lay along the ground, had marked the flash of the rifle from the top of a rising swale of ground. And he turned to it with an hysteria of joy swelling in him. He tried to speak, but only weak, foolish laughter would bubble from his lips.

Nancy could say the word for him, and her voice was like a prayer of thankfulness: “Roger Lincoln. Roger Lincoln. Thank the heaven that sent him.”

As they swept up to the swale in the golden dusk, they saw Roger Lincoln rise from the grass on his knees and beckon them down to the ground. He wasted not a word on them, but, laying one rifle beside him, he began to load a second with rapid skill, all the while staring keenly through the dim light at the Cheyennes, who had wheeled together and were apparently consulting, though well out of rifle range.

Torridon and Nancy were on the ground before the big man stood up and greeted them. Even then he had barely a word for them, and the thanks that began to pour from the lips of the girl he hushed with a wave of his hand. He went on to the stallion and stood before him, hands clasped behind his back, and brows frowning.

“Here’s the weak spot,” said Roger Lincoln, “and it’s the very spot that I thought would be strong.”

He turned with an impatient exclamation and stared at Torridon. One would have thought that he was angry with him, and Torridon said feebly: “We started with Nancy on the best pony we could get, Roger. The pinto went lame, and Ashur has been carrying us both.”

“I could see that,” Roger Lincoln said tersely. “You,” he added sharply to the girl, “get on Comanche. Comanche, stand up!”

Out of the grass rose the famous silver mare, and beside her a tall brown gelding, the very make of speed—lean-headed, long of neck, with shoulders that promised ample power and a deep barrel—sure token of wind and heart.

“Take the brown,” said Lincoln to Torridon, “and lead Ashur. We have to cool him out, and it won’t do to let him stand.”

“And what will you do, Roger?”

“I’ll run.”

Nancy was about to protest, but Torridon himself silenced her.

“Lincoln knows best,” he said. “Do as he says.”

He helped her into the saddle. Roger Lincoln already was running lightly before them at a stride and pace that seemed to show that he intended a long jaunt. And he bore due north.

As Torridon sprang into the saddle on the gelding, he heard Nancy murmuring: “He’s furiously angry, Paul. What have we done?”

“He’s not angry, I hope,” said the boy. “But he’s thinking hard about how he can get us out of this trouble. There’s nothing else in his mind. Don’t doubt Roger Lincoln. Doubt me, sooner.”

He drew on the lead rope, and Ashur broke into a stumbling trot. He was very far spent indeed, with flagging ears and dull eyes. And as Torridon rode, he kept well turned in the saddle and talked continually to the great black.

The last of life seemed to be flickering in the glazing eyes of the stallion, but under the voice of his master that light grew brighter in pulses. The jog trot, also, seemed better for him than merely standing. But still he was very far done, and his hoofs struck the ground, shambling and uncertain, as though they moved by a volition of their own and without the will of the horse. And it seemed to Torridon, as he looked back at the fine head of the horse, that, rather than abandon Ashur, he would stay behind and fight the Cheyennes, single-handed.

The Indians, in the meantime, had spread far and wide across the plain, their five figures gradually dying in the dusk of the day, while Roger Lincoln still ran before Torridon and the girl with a tireless step.

They went on for nearly an hour. The dusk thickened. The last pale glow finished in the west, and then there was darkness, utter and absolute.

Roger Lincoln whirled and stopped the cavalcade. “How is Ashur?” was his first question.

“Tired, tired, Roger. He shambles like a cow.”

The scout spent a moment at the side of the stallion and then said briefly: “He’s only half a step from a dead horse. Here’s a blanket on the ground. Can you make him lie on that?”

The stallion obeyed. Even in the darkness, Torridon could see the knees of Ashur shake violently as his weight came heavily on them.

Lincoln flung another robe over the big black. “Do you know how to rub down a horse, Paul?”

“I know.”

“Work on his shoulders and chest. I’ll take care of the hindquarters. You, Nancy, take the head. Rub with a wisp of that grass. We have to keep his circulation going.”

He made his own two horses lie down. He had chosen a little depression in the surface of the level prairie. That faint declination of the ground and the height of the grass that grew thickly around it gave them some shelter if the Indians should attempt to spot them against the skyline of the stars. But, at the same time, it allowed the Cheyennes to creep up unobserved in turn. In a way, they had blinded themselves and were now trusting to sheer chance to keep them out of the way of those keen hunters.

But even Nancy knew well enough what this work meant. With two horses they never could escape from those bloodhounds of the plains. With Ashur once again on his feet and capable of his matchless gallop, they had at least a fighting chance.

So all three fell to work in silence, only broken when Roger Lincoln, pausing to allow his aching arms a chance of recuperation, murmured: “When I remember how Ashur pitched me into the middle of the sky . . . and then tried to catch me with his teeth . . .” He laughed softly. And then he added: “But that shaking up was worthwhile. I never would have known you, Paul, except for it.”

This was all he said by way of welcoming them. Nancy, from the first, might have been a figure of wood to him, so little attention did he pay to her, but gradually she came to understand. All the heart of that hero of the frontier was bent upon the great task before him. He had no time for amenities. But all the more strongly she began to feel that every drop of blood in his veins was given to the task he had undertaken. He would die most willingly to do the thing he had in hand.

“Hush,” whispered Roger Lincoln suddenly. It was the ghost of a hiss, rather than a word.

They stopped working. Dimly Torridon saw Lincoln reach for his rifle and gradually bring it into position. He himself drew his pistol. They waited endless moments with thundering hearts. Then something stirred through the grass, and against the stars, not ten yards from them, Torridon saw two riders looming, the faint night light glistening on their balanced rifles. But when he raised his pistol, a hand of iron gripped his arm. He waited. For an eternity, the two Indians sat their horses side-by-side. Torridon could see them turning their heads. They were so near that he could hear the swish of the rising wind through the tails of their horses. And he prayed with all his might that none of the horses might make a sound, a snort, or the least noise of tearing at the grass.

That prayer was granted. Softly as they had come, the pair of ghostly forms moved away again. And at an almost mute signal, the fugitives resumed their work on the stallion.

It seemed to Torridon’s trembling touch that the flabby texture of the shoulder muscles had been changing—that the old feeling, like cables of India rubber, was beginning to return to them.

He whispered softly to Roger Lincoln: “I think Ashur could go on now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Almost.”

“Make sure if you can.”

Torridon whispered.

At the mere hiss of sound, the black stallion jerked up his head from the hands of Nancy. “Yes!” Torridon said joyously.

They stood back, and, at Torridon’s murmured command, the stallion rose. The other two horses got up, unbidden, and it seemed now to Paul Torridon that they had risen from the warm, secure darkness of the grass to stand among the very stars. Surely someone of those prowling Cheyennes could not fail to see them.

Roger Lincoln was speaking quietly: “The whole crew of Cheyennes are spilled around us over the plain. They may stumble on us in the dark, and, if they do, nothing can keep them from cutting our throats. I think those red men see in the dark, like cats. But, in the meantime, they’re spreading their nets for us. I propose to head back straight south, march at a walk for a couple of hours, and then swing toward the west for an hour, then back again toward the north. We may be running our heads into the lion’s mouth. If you don’t agree to this, we’ll try something else. But I think that by this time you’d find more of them to the north than to the south.”

It seemed almost rashly bold counsel to Torridon, but he dared not question the wisdom of Roger Lincoln, so often proved—and in times all as perilous as this one. He merely murmured to Nancy: “Have you strength to go on?”

“For days and days,” she said. “It’s no longer terrible . . . it’s a glorious game.”

It stunned Torridon to hear her. She, slender as a child and hardly larger, was making of this a game, while his own nerves were chafed to the breaking point.

But he believed her. There was the wavering note of ecstasy in that whisper of hers. And, after all, she came of wild blood, strong blood—the blood of the clan of Brett.

He remembered them now, like so many pictures of giants, striding across his mind, and he told himself that if she lacked their physical size, all the more heart was hers. So she had borne herself among the Cheyennes at the village cheerfully, with a high head, smiling in their faces. And Torridon felt himself growing smaller and smaller in his soul. Roger Lincoln had a right to such a woman as this. But he, Paul Torridon, what claim had he?

They led their horses. Comanche was blanketed lest her silver coat should reach the eye of the enemy, and so they started on that southward march.

It was an evil time for reflections of any kind. They marched steadily to the south, Lincoln first, Nancy next, and Torridon as the rear guard, his pistol in his hand. Ashur undoubtedly was recovering from the terrible strain of his journey under the double burden. His head was beginning to be held high, and, when they halted once or twice, Torridon felt the flanks and found them firm, no longer drawn by exhaustion. It doubled the courage of Torridon to note these signs.

They marched on for the greater part of an hour, and then a sudden voice cried at them: “Who is that?”

A great, harsh voice in Cheyenne!

Rising from the ground to their right, Torridon saw several Indians, faint against the stars. He himself had no voice, but that of Roger Lincoln made a growling answer: “Standing Bull. Scatter to the west. They are not in the north.”

“It is Standing Bull,” one of the Indians said in a plainly audible voice.

“How could it be?” said another. “I left Standing Bull only a little while ago, and he was on a fresh horse. Why should he be walking now?”

“Mount,” said the soft voice of Roger Lincoln.

And the three of them were instantly in the saddle. The moment Torridon was on the back of the stallion he knew that once more all was well with the great black horse.

“Standing Bull!” called one of the Cheyennes.

Roger Lincoln rode calmly on, still at a walk.

“Look! Look!” cried the Cheyenne who as yet had not spoken. “That is the great horse of White Thunder. There is no other in the world with a neck and head like that!”

Torridon had had a flash of the outline against the stars, and the Indians charged with a yell the next instant. He had a glimpse of Nancy slipping forward on the neck of her horse. He saw the long rifle of Lincoln glimmer at his shoulder, but for his own part he had something better than a rifle to work with. Light in hand, easily aimed, he was as confident of the pistol as though he held two lives in his palm. And a sort of wild ecstasy ran through Torridon. He never had felt it before, but it was as though Indian blood had stolen into his veins, for, swerving the big stallion to the right, he drove him straight at the charging men.

He fired—a tossing head of a horse received the bullet, and down went pony and rider—the Cheyenne with a whoop of rage and dismay. He fired again, and there was an answering half-stifled yell of pain.

There were five in the party. They split to either side before this death-dealing magician.

“White Thunder!” he heard the cry. “The Sky People are fighting at his side!”

And they scattered over the plain.

Torridon found Ashur galloping on, like a set of springs beneath him. Roger Lincoln was ranging on his left side, Nancy on his right. And vaguely he was aware that the great Roger Lincoln had missed his target with the rifle. A long tongue of flame had spurted from the muzzle of the gun, but of the five Cheyennes, only two had fallen.

“Northwest, northwest!” called Lincoln, and swung his horse in that direction.

No doubt the Cheyennes would spread the report that the party was trying to drive south.

Lincoln pulled down from a gallop—a steady jog that would shuffle the miles behind them without exhausting the horses. Plainly he expected more trouble when the morning came, if not before.

But all through that night there was not a sound of a Cheyenne; there was not a sight of them. The gray of the dawn came. They saw one another as black silhouettes. Then features became visible. But first of all they regarded the horses. Ashur, wonderfully recovered, seemed as light as a feather. Comanche was in fine fettle, too, but the gelding that Roger Lincoln rode plainly showed the strain under which it had been traveling. There was now the weak link in the chain.

They came to a thin rivulet. There was only a trickle of water, but they found a fairly deep pool, and there they halted. Much work lay before them before they gained the safety of Fort Kendry.

They washed the legs and bellies of the horses, the men doing the labor while Nancy was sharply commanded by Lincoln to lie down on a blanket that he stretched out for her. Flat on her back he made her lie, her arms stretched wide.

She smiled for a time at the gray sky. A moment later her eyes were closed in sleep.

Torridon, worried, would have wakened her, but Lincoln forbade it.

“If we could make Fort Kendry today,” he said, “it would be worthwhile. But we cannot. It’s a long march. She has to rest.”

“The Cheyennes will never rest on this trail,” Torridon assured him. “They’ll ride on it like madmen. Roger, they’ve had six men shot down, and four of them, I think, are dead or nearly dead. Their pride will be boiling.”

“They’ll never stop,” agreed Lincoln, “and they’ll never rest as long as they can make their horses stagger on. But we can’t go on at this rate, unless we determine to leave Nancy behind us. Help me make a shade over her eyes. Let her sleep as long as she will.”

Over two ramrods and a stick they stretched a blanket, and in that shadow Nancy still slept while the sun rose higher and the world was drenched in white, hot light.

The brown gelding and the mare were lying down. Ashur was busily cropping the grass. And the two men, withdrawing to a little knoll from which they could sweep the plain to a distance, admired the stallion.

“Look at him,” said Roger Lincoln. “You can’t see more than the shadow of his ribs. The work that would have killed two ordinary horses was simply a good little work-out for him. There never will be another like him, Torridon. Never in this world.”

Torridon agreed.

Of other things Lincoln talked, half drowsily.

“Four men for you, Paul Torridon. Four Cheyennes, at that!”

“Luck,” explained Torridon. “Both times it was a question of quick shooting at close range. That was why the pistol was useful. Might live a long life before such a chance came to me again.”

“Only luck?” Roger Lincoln smiled.

“Chiefly,” said Torridon. “I don’t want you to think that I pose as a hero. I’m not. I’ve been scared white all through this.”

“When you rode down at those five yelling redskins?” Lincoln asked with the same good-humored smile.

“Then,” said Torridon, “well, I don’t know. Something came over me.”

“You yelled as though you were having a jolly time of it,” chuckled Lincoln.

Torridon was silent. He could not understand himself, and how could he offer an explanation. But still there was a sort of memory in his throat, where the muscles had strained in that dreadful yell.

He almost felt, in fact, as though another spirit at that moment had entered his body and directed his movements. And there was something disquieting in the calm, curious eye of Lincoln, and the little smile that was on his lips.

“Tell me, Paul.”

“Yes . . . if I can.”

“You can. This is a simple question, this time. Were you ever so happy as you were that instant, charging the Cheyennes?”

“Happy? Good heavens, of course I’ve been happier!” exclaimed Torridon.

“Don’t be shocked like an old maid, my lad. Think back honestly. Even when Nancy Brett, yonder, told you one day that she’d marry you, were you as happy as when you went through those Indians and split them away before you, like water before the nose of a canoe? Be honest, now.”

Torridon, desperately striving for that honesty, suddenly took a great breath. “I think you’re right. No . . . I never was happy . . . in the same way, at least. It was a sort of madness, Roger. It really was a sort of wildness in the head.”

“But not enough to make your pistol miss.”

“They were very close,” said Torridon, vaguely feeling that this was not praise, and worried.

“They were riding like fury at you, and you at them. Most men don’t shoot straight at a time like that . . . particularly with an old-fashioned pistol.” He sat up straight and pointed a finger at Torridon. Every vestige of the smile was gone from his face. “Paul,” he said, “you’re a grand fighting man, but you never ought to stay on the frontier.”

“I don’t understand,” Torridon murmured. “But, of course, I’ve no particular desire to stay out here.”

“You think not. But . . . don’t stay. Go back East and starve, if that’s your luck, but don’t stay on the frontier.”

“Will you tell me why?”

“Because all the men out here are armed to the teeth. And there are plenty of chances for trouble.”

“I don’t pretend to be a hero,” Torridon said a little stiffly, “but I don’t think that I’m an absolute coward, either.”

“You’re not,” replied Lincoln, with the same smile, half whimsical and half cold. “You’re decidedly not a coward. You’re the other thing, in fact.”

“What thing, Roger? Unless you mean a bully?”

He laughed at the mere thought. “Not a bully,” said Roger Lincoln, “a tiger, Paul. Not a bully.”

Torridon stared. “I’m trying to believe my ears,” he confessed, “but I find it a pretty hard job.”

“Why?”

“Because all my life I’ve been afraid of people. Terribly afraid of people. They’ve haunted me. I’ve lain awake at night, hoping that I’d never meet certain men again.”

Lincoln nodded. “You’ve led the life of a man who fears danger, I suppose,” he said dryly. “Think over the skeleton of it. Captured from your own people by the Bretts . . . raised among them and given the sharp side of the elbow all your life . . . made to teach their young bullies in a school, and mastering the roughest of them . . . I know that story.”

“I had help . . . I couldn’t do a thing with them, with my hands.”

“The brain, Paul! The brain is the tool that wins battles of all kinds. After that, you tame a wild horse that no man could handle except you . . .”

“Only by patiently visiting him every day, because I loved him. I never dreamed of mastering him.”

“But master him you did. Do you carry him, or does he carry you? When I lay on the ground with more than half a ton of that black stallion charging at me, who stood up and braved him away?”

“Afterward I . . . was sick with fear,” Torridon said honestly.

“The girl is sent away. You are thrown into a cellar and kept for a dog’s death . . .”

“From which you saved me, Roger, and heaven bless you for it.”

“I never could have saved you. We fought our way out, side-by-side. The girl was gone to the Far West. You didn’t hesitate to start cruising after her. Was that the act of a timid man?”

“I would have gone anywhere with you, Roger, of course.”

“You lost me on the plains. I gave you up for dead, but, just as I gave you up, you turn up at the fort. By heavens, you’d joined the wild Cheyennes, and you’d become their chief medicine man.”

“It was a strange combination of circumstances. I did nothing but a few silly tricks for them. Luck was with me tremendously.”

“Luck was with Columbus, too,” Lincoln said dryly. He went on: “They want you so badly that they follow you on and kidnap you at the fort. When you’re not happy among them, they steal Nancy away, too. You take them in the palm of your hand. Finally you break away and carry the girl with you . . .”

“Because you helped me, Roger.”

“Don’t interrupt. And when they follow too closely, you turn around and kill a pair of their best fighting men.”

“They were mere youngsters!”

“Were they? And was that nest of five scorpions that you charged, back yonder, a set of youngsters, too?”

“I had the night to cover me.”

“So did they! But you looked through the darkness like a cat and shot down a pair of them.”

“I don’t think either of them was very badly hurt.”

“Paul,” said Roger Lincoln, raising his hand gravely, “let me tell you that when I heard that terrible yell come out of your throat, I was frightened. So were those Cheyennes. They ran as if a fiend was after them. And just at that moment, you were a fiend. You were in your glory. And I tell you, Torridon, that having had one hot taste of blood, you’re going to turn into a man-eater, unless you keep away from temptation . . . such as you’ll find on this frontier.”

Torridon shook his head with conviction. “I hope I never have to draw a gun again,” he said earnestly.

“You think you hope that. You don’t know yourself. We’re always confusing the self of today with the self of yesterday. We don’t understand that we change. Now, you know your history better than I do. But I believe that in the beginning Robespierre hated the sight of blood. Even the blood of a chicken was too much for him. But in the finish, he shed tons of it.”

“Am I a Robespierre?” Paul Torridon asked with a faint smile.

“You’re not,” answered the frontiersman, “but you’re the hardest type of gunman and natural killer that steps the face of the earth.”

“Good heavens, Roger, what are you saying to me?”

“The gunman who is a bully,” said Roger Lincoln, “soon does murder for its own sake, and soon he’s disposed of. But the deadly fellow is the quiet man who looks always afraid of the world . . . who always is a bit afraid . . . and who loves that fear thrilling in his backbone as a dope fiend loves cocaine . . . the quiet, shrinking little fellow who never speaks without asking pardon, who, nevertheless, by some fatality is always near danger, who always is being forced to draw his weapons. Torridon, if you stay on the frontier six months longer, you’ll have killed six men . . . not Indians, Paul . . . white men as good as yourself.”

He drew a long breath, and, leaning back on the hummock, he filled his pipe and began to smoke, while Torridon, confused and half frightened, stared at the distance and tried to recognize himself. He could not believe that Roger Lincoln was entirely right, but of one thing he was suddenly sure—that his old self was dead, and that in its place there was a man who he did not know, wearing the name of Paul Torridon!

There was a stir, and Nancy Brett came from beneath her shelter.

“Breakfast time,” said Roger Lincoln cheerfully, and got up from the grass.

Whether the Cheyennes had been thrown into confusion by the failure of the fugitives to keep due north in the first place, and their then swinging south, and so had failed to guard the thrust to the northwest, the three were not able to tell at the time. But, going carefully forward, husbanding the strength of their horses as they worked back toward the direction of Fort Kendry, certain it was that no sign of the red men appeared until that wildly happy day when they rode into the fort and there passed in the street, no other than the tall form of Standing Bull, wrapped in a gorgeously painted buffalo robe, his eyes fixed blankly before him, as though he were unable to recognize the party.

Roger Lincoln was for taking the big Indian in hand at once, but Torridon dissuaded him. He pointed out that his relations with Standing Bull had been more friendly than hostile. And, at any rate, they were safely in from their long voyage over the prairie.

They took Nancy to her uncle’s house, and Torridon only hung in the background long enough to hear the shrill nasal cry of joy with which her strong-armed aunt welcomed her.

Then, with Roger Lincoln, he went toward the fort.

They were welcomed effusively. On that wild frontier strange exploits took place every day, but there was a peculiar strangeness about the adventures of Torridon and Nancy Brett. The commandant sat them down at his own table, and a crowded table it was to which Roger Lincoln was asked to give the details of the escape. He gave them with the utmost consideration of Torridon, but no matter what he said, the exploits of the boy were passed over. And if some eye lit with wonder and turned on Paul Torridon, the glance turned away again at once. Men want one of heroic appearance to fill the hero’s role, and Torridon looked too young, too weak, too timid, in fact, to satisfy. Everyone preferred to cast the entire glory upon Roger Lincoln. He filled the eye. He filled the mind, and he was known to have a long tale of glory in his past. This was treated as a crowning feat.

As for consideration of Paul Torridon, that unlucky youth himself blasted all opportunity when, as the party broke up, he was heard murmuring to his friend: “How shall I ever dare to go to Samuel Brett’s house to see Nancy, Roger?”

The remark was repeated with roars of laughter.

Hero? This? Fort Kendry told itself that it knew a man, and it could not be deceived.

But there was more trouble in store for Torridon. Some few lingered with the commandant after the supper party had broken up, and Torridon, with others, had gone to bed. And in the midst of this final chatting, there was a rap at the door, and a huge young man in rather ragged deerskins appeared before them. He wanted Paul Torridon, he said.

“Torridon’s not here.” said Roger Lincoln. “But I’m his friend. Can I give him a message? He’s gone to bed, dead tired. I don’t want to disturb him unless it’s very important.”

The youth in the doorway stepped a little inside and ran his bold eyes over the company.

“It might be important, it might not,” he said. “That all depends. My name is Dick Brett. I come out here with my brother Joe. We come hunting for a low skunk and yellow-hearted cur by name of Paul Torridon. We heard he was here. But if he ain’t . . . just somebody tell him that I’m gonna be waiting for him in the street in front of Chick Marvin’s store tomorrow morning about nine. If he comes and finishes me off, then he can take on Joe. But if he don’t come, I’m gonna hunt him down and finish him. I guess that’s about all.” He waited a moment.

There was an uneasy instant during which the guests half expected Roger Lincoln to attack this slanderer of his friend, but Roger Lincoln said not a word. And Dick Brett departed unhindered.

“What’ll be done, Roger?” asked the commandant uneasily. “It’s sort of a shame for a kid like that Torridon to be put on by one of Brett’s size. Any relation of that same Nancy?”

“Second cousin,” Roger Lincoln said smoothly. “And what do you think will happen when Torridon gets this message?”

“He’ll be heading back for the open lands,” chuckled the commandant.

There was a general nodding of heads.

“And what,” said Roger Lincoln, “will happen if he goes out to meet the pair of them?”

“Roger,” said one of the trappers, “I like you fine, and I know that you’ve got brains in your head. But you made a mistake about this here one. He ain’t got nothing in him. I looked him in the eye. He dropped his look. He’s pretty thin stuff for the making of a man.”

Roger Lincoln looked about him with a sigh. “I knew it would come unless I got him away quickly,” he said, “but I hoped that I’d have more time than this.”

“Before we found him out to be yellow, Roger?” asked the commandant curiously.

“Before,” said Lincoln, “you found him out a man-eater. Man, man, do you think I was talking for fun, tonight? Did I tell you he shot four Cheyennes out of their saddles with a pistol during that chase? And I tell you again that he’ll never be stopped by those great hulks, the Bretts! Only . . . how can he marry Nancy after he’s shed the blood of her kindred?”

“That’s sounding talk,” said the commandant calmly. “But you know yourself, Roger, that the kid would never dream of coming to the scratch, unless he knew that you’d be there to back him up.”

“Then,” said Roger Lincoln, “I’ll I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let one of the rest of you carry the word to Torridon. I’ll not go near him tonight or tomorrow. And heaven help the Brett boys, is all that I have to say.”

When Torridon heard the news, he merely lifted his head from the pillow and stared at the commandant with such gleaming eyes that that gentleman withdrew in some haste. He went thoughtfully back to his table companions.

“Roger,” he said slowly, “maybe there’s something in what you were saying.”

But Torridon himself merely lay awake for a few moments, staring into the darkness, then he fell into an untroubled sleep. When he wakened, he found himself singing as he sponged with cold water and then shaved. And in the midst of that singing he paused and struck himself lightly across the forehead with the back of his hand.

It was not as it had been of old. He should be cowering sick at heart in a corner. Instead, there was wine in his blood. And he remembered with a shock what Roger Lincoln had said about the hot taste of blood, never to be forgotten.

He shook that thought away. He had slept late. At 7:30 a.m. he went out from the fort to a vacant field, shrouded with fir trees, all whitened and frosted over by a slowly falling rain mist. He fired ten shots at a small sapling. When it sagged and then toppled over with a sharp, splintering sound, he cleaned his gun thoroughly, reloaded it, and went in for his breakfast.

Breakfast was over. The cook could give him only soggy, cold slices of fried bacon and cold pone, heavy as wood. Yet, with lukewarm coffee, that was a feast to Torridon. The famine of the long ride was still in his bones. He found the cook watching him curiously. When he came out into the big yard of the fort, other men left off their occupations and regarded him with the same wondering, hungry eyes, as though they could not believe what they saw.

He asked for Roger Lincoln. Roger was not there, it appeared. Well, he was glad of that. Roger, at least, would not be there to see the fight. Roger would not be there to accuse him. He felt a sudden pang of shame as he went into the street. Those other men, rifle raised and rifle trained, how could they stand against the subtle speed of a pistol at short range? Ah, well, they were Bretts. What pity need a Torridon show them?

And a terrible joy filled the blood of Torridon. He wanted to laugh and sing. He wanted to run. But he made himself go with a soft, quiet step, with a composed face; what wonder that his eye was fire, then?

He went straight to the house of Samuel Brett. That huge man in person came to the door, and, when he saw Torridon, he roared with rage, and lifted up a hand like a club. From within the house came the sharp call of Samuel’s wife, and the shrill cry of Nancy—poor Nancy.

Torridon laid his pistol mouth on the chest of the giant. “I’m going to kill a pair of Bretts,” he said quietly, “and then I’m coming back here to find my wife. I expect the door to be open.”

He put the pistol away, and turned slowly and walked up the street, and as food to his heart was the memory of the pale, astonished face of Samuel Brett.

He went in the middle of the road, picking his way carefully among the ruts and the puddles. It still rained. Once a gust of strong wind and rain came and unsettled his hat. He paused, deliberately raised his hat and combed the moisture from his long hair with his fingers, settled his locks over his shoulders, replaced the hat, and went on.

There was no one in any house. And, when he arrived there, he found the whole population of the town at the big store. They were like a sea at every door, at every window, and banked across the street—Indians, whites, half-breeds, Negroes, French Canadians, all wild as tigers, but looking to Torridon, suddenly, like a very gentle and rather awe-stricken crowd.

And in the middle of the street stood Dick Brett, huge as a tree and as immovable.

“He has a heart, however,” said Torridon coldly to himself, “and even with a pin one could kill him. Accuracy is all one needs.”

He walked straight on, while Dick Brett pitched the butt of his rifle into the hollow of his shoulder, aimed—and still Torridon went lightly, steadily toward him. The rifle was lowered. He was close now—pistol close. And yonder at the edge of the crowd, stern of face, was the other brother, rifle ready, too.

“You treacherous, sneaking rat and woman-stealer!” bellowed Dick Brett. “Have you come to fight like a man, or to get down in the mud and crawl?”

“I’ve come to kill you,” said Torridon pleasantly, and drew the pistol. Light, light was the metal in his fingers. He could not miss. It was as though a silken thread drew the muzzle straight to the forehead of big Dick. He, with an exclamation, snatched the rifle butt once more to the hollow of his shoulder. How slow and blundering seemed the motion to Torridon.

There was almost time to pause and smile at it—then he fired, and Brett fell, the gun discharging as he went down, face foremost. And smiling indeed was Torridon as he went on, the pistol hanging at his side. The second brother had disappeared.

There was a whirl and eddy in the crowd where he had been standing, and then red fury took Torridon, and red drunken joy in killing. He ran like a greyhound for a hare. He rushed through the crowd—they gave back suddenly before him, split away as by a vast hand of fear. He hurried into the store. He peered under draped counters and tables. He ran out into the back yard.

Slowly, his teeth gritting, he came back to the street and looked up and down. Another day, then, for the second brother. Then he saw men carrying a prostrate form, a sagging body, toward the door of the store—Dick Brett, who lifted his head a little, despite the red wound in his forehead. That head was turning, and Torridon saw a crimson gash down the side of it. Then he understood—the bullet had slipped off the bone, and glanced around the scalp. He stepped to the wounded man and touched his shoulder.

Fear made the eyes of Dick Brett bulge in his head.

“There will be another day for you and me,” said Torridon.

Then he turned back down the street, past white, icy faces, and eyes that looked at him as though he were a column of fire. A great voice called. And there was Roger Lincoln beside him, walking with him toward the house of Samuel Brett.

“Paul,” said the frontiersman, “before you go into the house, ask yourself if you’re a safe man to be her husband. I warned you about yourself before. Was I right, or was I wrong?”

Torridon paused. And as he paused darkness ran over his brain. He found himself repeating: “What have I done, Roger?”

“Nearly killed one man . . . tried to kill two. And now you’re going to marry Nancy Brett to a gunfighter with not three years of slaughter before him, perhaps.”

Torridon caught at the arm of Lincoln. “Oh! Oh!” he groaned. “What’s happened to me? I don’t know myself. Roger, what shall I do? What shall I do? Shall I turn back? Shall I leave Nan?”

Roger Lincoln held him off at arm’s length. “You’re past the help of any man,” he said. “But maybe . . . wait here.”

They were in front of the house of Samuel Brett, and Roger Lincoln went into it, leaving Torridon stunned, feeble, in front of the place. The wind was shaking the rain clouds to bits. Long rifts and streaks of blue appeared in the sky. And the poplars around the Brett house began to shine like silver—like silver mist was the smoke that rose languidly from the chimney top.

It was to Torridon like a dissolution of the world, and his own self had dissolved before it. He was a new man; what manner of man he hardly could tell, but those words of Roger Lincoln in the prairie came hauntingly through his mind—he saw the train of his life behind him, the super delicacy, the hypersensitiveness of his body, of his very soul. And brutal chance had taken him in hand and hammered and hardened him until, at last, he had been changed from flesh to metal.

Aye, at that very moment, half his heart was back up the street, yearning to hunt down that other who had fled, savagely yearning.

Something came down slowly toward him. It was a shape of mist to him, in his rush of thoughts. But those thoughts cleared, and like a light through a storm he saw Nancy coming to him. And a wild torrent of emotion made Torridon fall on his knees before her, and take both her hands.

They trembled under his touch.

“Nan,” he cried wildly, “tell me, for heaven’s sake, that you have no fear of me!”

She drew him up to her, her slender arms about him. “Don’t you see, Paul?” she said to him. “I’ve always been afraid of you from that first day in the schoolhouse. I always knew that this day would come. I always feared you, and I always loved you, too.”

THE END