She, as was right, tended the hunter. The fragrance of coffee made the air sweet and pungent. There was the scent of frying venison, and the meat hissed and snapped as the heat seared it. Bread was brought forth. It glistened white as snow as the knife of the girl divided it. She laid the food before the hunter. The mouth of Standing Bull watered and he swallowed hard.
Swiftly the hunter ate, and hugely. Like a starved brave returned from the arduous warpath he devoured his food. Then he leaned back in his chair and lit a pipe.
Oh, white man, are there no spirits in your world? Without ceremony, brutally, crudely, he filled and lit the pipe. He leaned back in his chair, chewing the short stem, shifting it from side to side in his white, strong teeth. As he smoked, he talked. The girl was washing dishes again. Tobacco smoke filled the air. A heavy, thick, sweet odor, unlike that of Indian tobacco.
The hunter drew the smoke into his lungs. It poured forth at his mouth and his nose as he talked. His words became living images in smoke. They rose and melted slowly and flattened against the ceiling.
Standing Bull watched, fascinated. He felt the muscles tightening along his spine. He bristled as a dog bristles, when a strange animal comes near. And Standing Bull, out of instinct, fumbled the haft of his big hunting knife. That rough blond scalp would look very good in the lodge.
The man inside now spoke and beckoned, and the girl stood before him. Was she his daughter? Was she his youngest squaw?
No, the white man kept only one squaw, for in all things his ways were the ways of ignorance. It was even said—a wonder not to be believed—that sometimes he helped the women in their work around the lodge.
Now the girl stood before the big man. He put out his hand and laid it on her head, and her head bowed a little, as though under a weight.
He spoke to her. His rough voice was softened. His gesture indicated that he talked of some far thing. He shook his head and denied that far thing. Then he appeared to argue. He talked with gestures of both hands. He was eager. Almost he was appealing.
To all of this talk the girl replied with short answers. A brief word. A syllable. Presently tears began to run down from her eyes. They fell on her round, bare arms. They fell on her hands, which were folded together. She was not talking at all, and indeed she did not seem even to be hearing what the big hunter said. Her eyes looked off at that distant thing of which they had been speaking before. They were sad eyes. They were like blue smoke. Looking at them, Standing Bull sighed a little.
Suddenly the white hunter jumped up from the table and threw his hands above his head. Standing Bull grinned, for he expected the blow to fall on the girl, but, instead, the white man struck his own head and then rushed from the room.
But still the young squaw paid no attention. She was still looking into the distance, still weeping. She sank into a chair. Her head fell against the wall. Her eyes closed. She wept no longer. She was as one who grief has sickened past tears.
Then by revelation Standing Bull knew what he should have known before. This was the girl.
Dim of eye she was now, but it is happiness that lights a woman, as fire lights a branch and the branch lights the forest. She wept, and she was in sorrow for the sake of a man who was far away, and that man was White Thunder. It was all clear, clearer than any story told in pictures, as though an old sage were at hand to explain their meaning.
Standing Bull slipped away through the woods and rejoined his anxious companions. He came among them with a glistening eye, but he said not a word. Much that was done on distant trails was better left untold until one returned to the village. For what was described on the trail, that was remembered, but what was unnamed at the time, afterward could be expanded.
He closed his eyes. He was regardless of the smoke from the fire that was pouring into his face. Somehow, he would be able to turn this night’s adventure and the real peril he had endured into a story of some worth. He was sure of that, if only he could have patience. He would invent; it needs time to search the spirit.
Then, by dim degrees, his thoughts turned back to the white girls. He tried to think of the one of the dancing eyes. But instead, all that he had in mind was the eyes of the other, like blue smoke, covered with sorrow.
He wondered greatly how she would appear if she saw White Thunder. Was not White Thunder just as the girl? There was a veil over his eyes, also. Partly of thought and magic, partly of grief.
Standing Bull no longer wondered that his friend the white magician sorrowed for this girl. He was himself beginning to understand that there is other beauty than that found in red skins. The taste of it, like the taste of a strange and delightful food, entered the soul of Standing Bull.
He stood up. Rather, he leaped to his feet with a grunt that startled his companions out of slumber.
“What is wrong?” asked Red Shirt.
“Nothing,” said the leader. “But the fire is all smoke, and the evil ghosts are throwing it into my face.”
XIII
Big Samuel Brett hardly had settled to his second pipe and the narration of the day’s hunting when a hand struck at the door. He went to open it, cautiously, one hand ready to thrust it home again and the other hand occupied with his rifle.
“It’s Roger Lincoln,” said a voice from the rain.
The door twitched wide, instantly, and Roger Lincoln came in, glistening with the wet, his deerskins soaked through and blackened.
“You been swimming in it, it looks like,” said Samuel Brett. “Come in and dry yourself out at the stove.”
Roger Lincoln waved his hand. “I’ve been stalking,” he said.
“Deer?”
“Indians.”
Brett whistled. His eyes widened, and then drew into the shadows of his brows. “Where?”
“The trail came here.”
“To Fort Kendry?”
“To your house.”
“It’s that darned drunk Crow with the crooked nose,” suggested Samuel Brett.
“It’s a tall Cheyenne by the name of Standing Bull. He was watching through your door.”
“I got nothing to do with the Cheyennes. Never traded with them, worse luck,” said Brett.
“They want something to do with you, however. That fellow was very curious.”
“Every Indian is half wolf,” said Brett easily. “They gotta go snoopin’ and sniffin’ around. Why didn’t you collar him?”
“My hands are off that gang until they leave the fort. I’ve told them so. After they start, the knife is out.”
“With the Cheyennes? You could’ve picked an easier job. Ah, then I understand. It’s young Torridon?”
“It is.”
The face of Samuel Brett darkened. “You’re wrong again, Lincoln. There never was a Torridon that wasn’t a snake and deserved to be treated the same as a snake. And if . . .”
The hand of Lincoln was raised again, and Brett shrugged his shoulders.
“I shouldn’t talk that way. I’ve tried to argue you out of it before, Roger. But if the kid showed a white face to you, he’ll show a black face before you’re through with him. I know the breed.”
“Perhaps you do,” said Roger Lincoln a little coldly. “But I’ve not stopped in to talk about Torridon. I’ve come to tell you that a hard-headed, hard-handed Cheyenne brave is watching you. Why, I don’t know, but I don’t think he’s going to do you much good. Man, watch your house!”
He said it with gravity, and the other nodded assent.
“I’ll get Murphy’s dog, tomorrow, and keep it around. He’s a man-eater, that brute. And Pat offered him to me.”
“Take the dog by all means . . . and sleep light. Good bye.”
He was gone, in spite of the hospitable protests of Brett. The door closed. Roger Lincoln went back toward his house with a mind filled with misgivings.