I tucked the butt of my rifle into the hollow of my shoulder and prayed. Prayed a wordless, formless prayer that God would give this eagle of the earth into my hands. I drew down on him carefully. I took the edge of the neck just above the top arch of his crest. Then I fired.
He was off like thought. The mares burst into full speed behind him, but they seemed to be laboring with all their might and standing still - so tremendously fast did he leave them behind. Never was such running. Never since the world began such running as White Smoke, hurling himself through the air to reach freedom. I had missed.
The Indians looked at one another as though that were almost as great a miracle as the beauty of White Smoke. Then Two Feather breathed: “The old men have spoken the truth. This is no horse, but a thing dear to the Great Spirit.”
How shall I say what I felt? Like one who stands in the harbor and sees the ship go out to sea and vanish with all the human lives that are dear to him on board. So I felt as I watched White Smoke flash across the horizon. From that instant I knew that I could never be truly happy until I sat on his back. I jumped up and screamed at the Pawnees: “Follow! Follow! Every second is floating him away from us!”
They merely looked at one another and smiled until Two Feather, who was more or less in command, said: “Let us follow, then. He must learn.”
We flew to our horses and galloped like mad. Twice we changed mounts and still raced on until the dusk, but we reached not even the sight of their dust. Then I understood what Two Feather had meant. Truly I had learned what White Smoke was. As well try to follow the flash of lightning as to follow that great stallion and his mares with anything that moved on feet.
But we were not done. The fever had us. We became twelve silent men, filled with a single thought of which we never spoke. No one dreamed of giving up the hunt. For a fortnight we trailed the herd, looping back and forth among the hills, the trail growing always fainter and fainter. Then we lost it.
A month later we picked up the sign once more as we cut for it in huge circles - this time it led us far, far out onto the prairie. It circled back toward the mountains, but not before we had been scarred by the first danger of the hunt, for a flying war party of Cheyennes chased us and emptied three of our saddles before we drew clear of them.
We regained the mountains with the cold of the winter drawing near us. The first cold brought with it a fever that carried away two more of our men. Seven remained beside Black Bear. Of the three dozen horses with which we had started, a scant score were left, but these were the hardened best of the lot, inured to speed and bitter work. It was midDecember before we found the next sign of White Smoke, and on a white morning I had my second glimpse of him - but he was far, far away from rifle range, a glistening crystal form, standing on the shoulder of a mountain with a cluster of down-headed mares behind him. Then he disappeared once more, and the faint clarion note of his challenge floated dimly back to us.
The mares, at least, had been worn down one by one by the tenacity of the pursuit. Hardly a dozen remained to him, and time and again we passed the outworn creatures, beautiful even in their starved exhaustion, each of them worth fifty common nags, each of them an Indian’s fortune. We passed them by like dirt. Who cares for a common jewel when he has before his eyes a diamond that fills the whole hand with electric fires?
So, through the winter, we dragged a blind and wretched existence among the mountains. Now lone hunters gave us word of the great horse. He traveled by himself. His herd was gone. He was thinner. A vague hope of wearing him down made our hearts leap. But never once during that lone, bleak season, while we starved and groaned in our miseries, did we lay eyes on him again. We had lost one man in a fall on an iced trail. We were seven when the spring brought us back among the hills and once again on the hot trail of the stallion. Then Two Feather said: “We can never follow him…our horses are too weak. But by the gate through which he went out, he may return, and he may return with mares behind him.”
We took him at his word. After all, though we were keener than ever for the trail, we were worn to shadows. So we rested by the side of that pass and hunted through the hills behind us, while the horses grew fatter and began to lift their heads. We waited for weeks. But what are weeks to those who have labored on the actual trail for months? And each day, like men on a ship eager for sight of land, we kept our look-out posted on the ridge of a hill, scanning the lower hills and the prairies beyond in the hope of seeing the flash of a bright form. When the hail came, it was like a voice in a dream.
“White Smoke!”
We were already in our covert. We only needed to lie quietly, all saving myself, for I was desperately massaging the numbness of the morning chill out of the fingers of my right hand which must grasp the stock and manage the trigger. This time I meant to capture or kill. I had shot a fraction of an inch too high before. Now I meant to cut deep, deep - and God preserve his life, for I should not miss.
The Indians were like trembling children, eager to help, not knowing how. They smoothed the place for me. They parted the brush before me. Then they retreated, and I felt six pairs of eyes burning steadily at me.
THE MIGHTY STALLION FALLS
I have heard men - and wise ones, too - affirm with much certainty that the Indian never lived who really loved his horse. There is no doubt that usually they do not love them enough to fondle them and give them careful handling. But if to love a thing is to prize it highly, then I say that no miser ever loved gold as a Plains Indian loved a fast horse. And with excellent reason. In those prairie lands one’s life often depended on nothing but the speed of the four strong legs beneath. The difference between a good horse and a great one was the difference between life and death. It meant, too, that the proud owner could range at will, like an eagle through the air, striking where he pleased, and then defying pursuit. Still, their love was something more than this even. Six prayers went soundlessly up to the Great Spirit as I leveled my rifle at the stallion.
And here he was, all in a trice. Even after the first view of him, I had wondered how it was that he could have kept away from us during those many months of hard search. Now I could understand. He blew up out of the prairie like a storm cloud over the sea, and all as effortless as the very wind. So he galloped into our sight with a band of some twenty-five mares behind him. In the rush from the inhabited lands, from the pursuit of the Indians or the white traders he had robbed, the weaker spirits were already weeded out, and these twentyfive were as beautiful and as chosen as the hardy band that we had first seen at his flying heels.
I caught him in my sights instantly and held my bead on him with a steady hand as he poured along over the ground. I repeat solemnly, with all the gravity of a very old man with little of the long trail left before him, that never did the world behold another such horse. They tell me of their modern flyers, and their miles in a minute and thirty-five seconds. But I tell them that they never saw White Smoke, sliding across the hills or turning himself into a white streak, lost on the horizon.
The wind, what there was of it, had been, wavering and faltering all the day. Now, it seemed to me, it had died away utterly, but just as White Smoke came into the hollow mouth of the pass, he stopped with such a sudden violence that his mane fluffed forward over his head and his tail went high. He stopped not like the giant that he was, but like a small dog playing tag, or like a cat ready to spring one way or another.