He made a pause and began to eat heartily of the roasted tongue. The Cheyenne imitated that good example, and though he was a smaller man by far than Roger Lincoln, and though the white man had fasted the longer of the two, yet the Indian fairly ate two pounds for the one of his captor.
At last, Roger Lincoln pushed back a little from the fire. He filled a short-stemmed pipe and began to smoke strong tobacco. The Indian, however, took out a bowl of red catlinite, which he filled with a mixture, always holding the stem up as he worked. Then he lighted the tobacco and flavoring herbs with a coal from the little dying fire and began to smoke, after first blowing, as it were, libations to the spirit world.
Neither of them spoke until after a few minutes. Then Roger Lincoln said: “How did the girl come to the village?”
“She was very tired.”
“Was she taken to the teepee of White Thunder?”
“Yes.”
“How did he receive her?”
“In his arms. He . . .” The Cheyenne paused. And Roger Lincoln was silent, frowning with a desperate blackness at the sky before him.
“He received her, also,” said Rushing Wind, “with tears.”
His face was actually puckered with emotion as he said this. Plainly he could hardly connect the word tears with the word man and control his disgust. A flicker of contempt went over the face of Roger Lincoln, also. Men told their stories of how Roger Lincoln, on a time, had been tormented almost to death by a party of Crows, and how he had laughed at them and reviled them with scorn, heedless of his pain, until he was rescued by the luckiest of chances. So, being such a man as he was, he could not help that touch of scorn appearing in his face. However, he came instantly to the defense of his absent friend.
“No man can have all the strength in the world,” he said.
“It is true,” said the Cheyenne earnestly. “I would not have White Thunder think that I have spoken with scorn about him.”
He glanced upward with awe and trouble in his face, as though he feared that a circling buzzard far above them might be an emissary sent by the medicine man to spy upon his words.
“However,” said the Cheyenne, “everything is as I have told you. She began to wake up and hold out her arms to him. She was tired but happy.”
“So,” said the hunter. Then he kept silence, being deep in thought. At last he went on in a changed and gruffer voice: “He took her into his teepee?”
“Yes.”
“He has kept her there ever since?”
“Yes.”
Roger Lincoln exclaimed with something between disgust, impatience, and anger: “Then he has taken her as his wife, as an Indian takes a wife?”
At this, the Cheyenne shook his head.
“Who is to understand the ways of people who are guided by the spirits and the Sky People?” he said naïvely. “I, at least, cannot understand them.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It is a big lodge,” said the young warrior. “There is no whiter or finer lodge in all the camp of the Cheyennes. And now one part of it is walled off with curtains of deer skin from another part. And when they sleep, the girl goes into one side as though it were a separate lodge, and White Thunder goes into another part.”
The light reappeared in the eye of Roger Lincoln. “A good lad!” he exclaimed. “I had written him down a good lad. I would have wagered my blood on him.”
“Ha?” grunted Rushing Wind. “Then is this a mystery which you, also, understand?”
III
They stared for a moment at one another. But, since it was not the first time in the life of either that he had been aware of the great difference and distinction between the viewpoint of red man and white, they passed on in their conversation, Roger Lincoln taking the lead.
“The girl is now happy?” he asked. “Or does she sit and weep?”
“Weep?” said the Indian. “Why should a woman weep when she has become the squaw of a great medicine man such as White Thunder? No, she is singing and laughing all day long.”
The white man smiled a little.
“Besides,” said the Cheyenne, “she does little work. Her hands are not as big as my two fingers. Young Willow still keeps the lodge for White Thunder.”
“And what of White Thunder himself? Is he happy, also?”
“He is more happy than he was,” said the boy. “He is able to ride out now on the great black horse.”
“Is he free, then?”
“Yes. He is not guarded except when the girl rides out with him. But when she is left behind in the lodge, the chiefs know that he will not go far.”
“How far does he go?”
“Sometimes he is gone in the morning and when he comes back in the evening even the black horse is tired.”
“There is no other horse like that one,” admitted Roger Lincoln. “Though there was a time when I thought that Comanche was the swiftest foot on the prairie.” He pointed to her and she, hearing her name and marking the gesture, came forward fearlessly, gently toward her master.
“It is plain that White Thunder put a spirit in her when he had her,” said Rushing Wind. “She also understands man talk, as the black horse does.”
“Does the black horse understand man talk?” queried Roger Lincoln, suppressing a smile.
“Perfectly,” said the Cheyenne in all seriousness. “So well does the stallion understand, that he repeated to his master what the herd boys said to one another when they were out watching the horse.” He began to fill his pipe again, observing the same careful formula as before.
“Ah, then,” said Roger Lincoln, “people must be careful of what they say in front of this clever horse.”
“As much so,” replied the Cheyenne, “as if it were his master that listened. The tall brave with the scarred face, Walking Horse, said when he was near the big stallion that he thought White Thunder was a coward and not a good man. Not a week later Walking Horse’s son fell sick and would have died. But Walking Horse took the boy and went to the lodge of White Thunder. He confessed his fault and asked for pardon, and begged White Thunder not to take away the life of his boy. So White Thunder kept the boy in his own lodge and made big medicine, and in a few days the boy could run home. Then Walking Horse gave White Thunder many good robes, and ten fine horses from his herd.”
“By this I see,” said Roger Lincoln, “that my good friend, White Thunder, is growing rich.”
“He would be,” replied the young brave, “the richest man who ever walked or rode among the Cheyennes. But what is wealth to him? It runs through his fingers. He gives to the poor of the tribe. He mounts the poor warriors from his horse herd and lets them keep the horses. His lodge is open to the hungry. What is wealth to him? He can ask more from the Sky People if there should be need.”
This speech he made with perfect simplicity and openness of manner, and Roger Lincoln, watching narrowly, nodded his head.
“But still White Thunder is not happy?” he said.
“It is true that often he looks toward the horizon,” was the answer.
“Then let me speak the truth. Has this medicine man great power?”
“That we all have seen.”
“Has he struck down even the Dakotas with his wisdom?”
“And they turn aside, now, from our war trails,” said the youth with a smile of savage triumph. “They are familiar with the medicine of White Thunder, and they do not wish to anger him again. They have not tried to strike us since the last battle. Even Spotted Antelope cannot find braves to follow him south against our lodges. They know that the birds of White Thunder would watch them coming.”