“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.
XIV
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.