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.
XV
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.