Said Jack to him on a day—Jack, newly back from a long hunting trip, brown, hard, powerful as Hercules—“Tell me, Paul, don’t you ever hanker to get over the mountains to your own people?”
Paul had often thought of it, of course. But his answer to himself always had been what it was to Jack Brett on this day. “Suppose that I started. They’d hunt me down with dogs, Jack.”
“Who?” asked Jack, frowning.
“John Brett . . . your own father . . . perhaps you yourself, Jack.”
“I?” cried Jack. “Never, Paul!”
The schoolteacher laid a hand on the arm of his great friend. “You don’t know yourself. Suppose that I’m out of sight. I’m no longer Paul. I’m just a Torridon. Well . . . what did they do to my people before me?”
Jack sighed and shook his massive head. “I don’t know, Paul,” he said. “How do you know? It was a fair fight, I think.”
“That’s what the Bretts say.”
“John Brett wouldn’t lie.”
“I’m afraid to ask him. Suppose he has to tell me an ugly story? Then what would happen after that? He’d know that I hated him. He’d be suspicious. The first time I moved . . . that would be an end of me.”
“But how can you stand it?” cried Jack. “Ain’t you gonna try to find out?”
“Someday.” Paul nodded.
“Well,” said Jack, “you’re . . . patient.”
And Torridon knew that an uglier word had been in the mind of his big friend.
VI
Yet it seemed to Paul the wise thing to wait and let time bring its own decision. Vaguely, little by little, he could feel manhood coming upon him. He could feel a strength—not the strength of a Brett—garbing him.
And at last that strength was revealed to all the clan and to him, as well.
Ashur, the beginning of his rise in the world, was the turning point again.
For John Brett, anxious that his chosen horse should grow great and strong, had refused to allow so much as a strap to be put on it until it came to its third year. And now, three years and more in age, he at last summoned the best rider he could find and bade him try out the colt.
Of course that was Roger Lincoln.
The great man came riding upon a lofty horse with rich wampum braided into its mane and tail. His own hair was free to flow down over his shoulders. He did not have a hat on his head. A crimson band around his forehead held the hair from fluttering into his eyes. Over his shoulder was a painted buffalo robe of price. He wore a splendid suit of antelope leather, beaded over almost its entire surface. His moccasins were miracles of Indian art.
Even when Paul Torridon saw him in the distance, with half a dozen fences in between to obscure him, he recognized Roger Lincoln by the many descriptions that he had heard of that glorious hero. For Roger Lincoln was a king of the prairies, far West, and a true lord of the mind. Indian or white man, all were captivated by his mien, his grace, his dauntless heroism.
It was very lucky that John Brett could find him. Nine-tenths of his days were spent on the distant plains, but now he was back on one of his rare visits.
All the Bretts were on hand to see the breaking of Ashur.
That great event was to take place at 10:00 a.m. Hours before, the clan began to assemble at the house of John Brett and then poured out into the pasture. So the whole crowd turned when the coming of Roger Lincoln was announced.
He did not turn up the road. He came straight toward the pasture, jumping his horse over the fences on the way. It was a wonderful gray mare. Everyone knew the story of how Roger Lincoln journeyed far south to the land of the Comanches and captured that mare, the pride of its horse-loving nation. It was not overly tall, but it carried the weight of big Roger Lincoln like the merest feather, and winged its way over the fences—Roger Lincoln sitting handsomely at ease, his head high, his buffalo robe flaunting out behind him.
He seemed to be regarding distant things upon the horizon, paying no attention to the obstacles in his path.
So he came up to the pasture and leaped to the ground. With one hand he held the robe, flung gracefully about him. The other hand, his famous right hand, he offered to John Brett and to all the rest of the clan in turn, without making the slightest exception. He even paid that attention to tiny Miriam, two years old, as she backed against the knees of her mother and stared in fear at the tall stranger.
Paul Torridon followed that progress with interest. Everyone seemed altered as by a touch of witchcraft at the coming of Roger Lincoln. The women seemed rudely made, ugly, clumsy, as he stood before them. The men, one after another, turned to heavy louts. Even Jack Brett, so tall, so handsome, so mighty of shoulder, seemed a staring, stupid boy in contrast with this bright Achilles of the plains.
There were only two exceptions, for even the coming of Roger Lincoln could not dim the fierce presence of John Brett, the patriarch and lawgiver. And when the hero came to Nancy Brett, although she was a small girl in her seventeenth year, she seemed to grow taller, older, more beautiful. Torridon himself, as he afterward knew, was seeing her for the first time, that instant. He had always felt, before, that she was a little too proud, too calm, too self-contained. If she were kind and gentle, often it was merely because she had set herself a high standard, and, for the sake of her own self-respect, she would not fall beneath that level. She was judicious, grave; there was nothing emotional about her, nothing free, easy, carefree.
But on this lovely day, when she took the hand of Roger Lincoln and smiled up into his handsome face, Torridon saw that there was an inner soul in Nancy such as he never had guessed at.
He was full of the wonder of this when Roger Lincoln approached him.
Of all the people gathered, Torridon was the only one that Roger Lincoln did not notice, and this was not because of any lack of courtesy on his part, but because Torridon was utterly overshadowed by the stallion.
He had been given the task of holding Ashur, and for a very good reason. The horse was not used to others. He had been treated with such scrupulous and almost frightened reverence by the rest of the clan, since the moment of his foaling, that no one dared to take liberties with him, fondle his arched neck, rub his forehead between his gleaming eyes. But Torridon had begun in the beginning. He had made his way with sugar and apples and carrots. It was he who groomed the proud young beauty every morning before he went to the school. It was he who whistled Ashur in from the pasture in the evening.
This morning, therefore, what more natural than that he should put the saddle on Ashur, and slip the bit between his teeth. He had taken Ashur by the forelock and pulled down his lofty head, so that the ear stalls could be slipped into place.
Now, as the crowd gathered, it was Torridon who stood at the head of the stallion. He kept some wisps of grass with which to wipe away the froth that came as Ashur, growing excited in the presence of such numbers, champed at the bit and frothed.
And while the observers circled and stared and wondered and admired this descendant of coal-black Nineveh, sometimes Ashur, wearied of them all, would close his eyes and flatten his ears, and thrust his nuzzle strongly against the breast of his keeper. At other times, however, he amused himself biting the back of Torridon’s hands. Sometimes he would catch the boy by the wrist and press harder and harder, mischievously dealing out pain until Torridon cried out in pretended agony. Then Ashur would throw up his glorious head, with upper lip stiffly distended, eyes wild, as though he expected a blow in repayment.
They were full of understanding of one another. For three years, they had known one another every day.
So it was only natural that Roger Lincoln, having made his circle of the crowd, when he came to the bright presence of the young stallion should not notice the youngster who stood at the head of the horse.