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.