“And there is the knife,” said Torridon. He took it again from his belt, and, with a little flick of the wrist that he had learned from Rising Hawk, he drove it half the length of its blade into the ground before their companion.
Then he rose to attempt the venture. On the edge of the bank he took off his clothes. White as polished marble he flashed beneath that strong sun. The wind blew his hair aside, and he laughed with pleasure at the cool touch of the air and the angry hand of the sun.
The Indians looked significantly at one another, partly admiring and partly in contempt. The Cheyennes were huge specimens of manhood. He was of small account who stood under six feet in height, and they had shoulders and limbs to match, but Torridon was made slenderly, tapering and graceful. He was fast of foot, the Indian youth knew. How would he appear in the water?
He did not leave them long in doubt. He merely paused to adjust a headband that would bind his unbarbered hair. Then he dived from the bank.
There was only a slight sound as he took the water. Then, through the black shadow of the pool under the bank, they saw him rise glimmering. He struck out through the current. It was true that he had not the might of arm that many of them possessed. But neither did he have their bulk to drag through the water, and he used the stroke that Roger Lincoln, that flawless hero of the plain, had taught him.
“It’s only in the brain that you can beat an Indian,” Roger Lincoln had been fond of saying. And he had taught Torridon many things as they voyaged over the plains together. A most unreceptive mind had dreamy Paul Torridon for woodcraft or for the arts of hunting, but at least he could learn the craft of swimming from a perfect master.
He glided rapidly through the water, now, lying face down, rolling a little from side to side to breathe, and the long strokes of the arms and the thrashing feet carried him rapidly through the stream.
He could hear them on the bank behind him calling: “Hai! He is being pulled by a string!”
He swerved past a reaching rock, stepped on another, and leaped onto the farther bank. There he wrung the water from his long hair and waved a flashing arm.
“Ashur!” he called.
The black stallion was already at the brink of the stream, looking wistfully after his master. At this call, he advanced his forehoofs into the water and sniffed at it, but immediately he withdrew and bounded away, throwing his heels into the air.
The wagerer shouted with triumph: “The knife is mine, White Thunder!”
Torridon made no reply. He sat down, dripping on the bank, and seemed more interested in the flight of a hawk that was swinging lower and lower through the sky above them.
“Come back, White Thunder!” cried the brave. “You see he never will take the water!”
Now for an answer, Torridon raised an arm and pointed. He was more than half ashamed of himself to resort to such trickery and sham. But, after all, these people had forced the role of medicine man upon him quite against his will. They had dressed him up in fake garments of mystery; they had stolen him away from the girl he loved and from his best of friends. It was hardly more than fair that they should be called upon to take something for which they were even asking. So he pointed at the descending hawk, as though it were a symbol sent down to him from the Sky People, who were so eternally on the tongues of the Cheyennes.
It made a great sensation among the three braves. Torridon saw them pointing and whispering together, and he with whom Torridon had made the wager hastily caught up a handful of pebbles and sand and began to shift them from hand to hand, blowing strongly on them—making medicine against the medicine maker.
Torridon laughed. They would take that laughter for invincible scorn of them. As a matter of fact, it was pure amusement and good nature. Of Ashur he had had no doubt from the first.
Now, indeed, the black horse returned to the edge of the water. He sent one whinny of complaint across to his master, and straightway he plunged in. Torridon was very confident. Out here on the plains the rivers were few and far between. They were apt to be comparatively still, also. But where Ashur was raised, two stormy creeks had cut the grazing lands, and the horse that aspired to the richer, farther pastures had to cross them both. From colthood Ashur had been a master of the difficult craft.
He came swiftly, snorting the froth and water from his nostrils, so low did he carry his head, stretching it forth over the surface. A smooth, strong glide of water seized him and dropped him through a narrow passage between reaching rocks. That instant the heart of Torridon stood still and he regretted the bet. But now Ashur came again, more strongly than ever, pricking his little ears in recognition of the master who waited for him. A moment more and his forehoofs grounded. He climbed out, shook himself, and then, leaping to the side of Torridon, he turned and cast back at the young warriors a ringing neigh of almost human defiance.
III
A shout of mingled wonder and applause came across the water to Torridon, but he had turned his head toward the plains that stretched off to the north. Naked as he was, weaponless, for an instant he was on the verge of throwing himself on the back of Ashur and flying away into the wilderness. But when he looked back to the farther shore, he saw that three rifles were gripped in three ready pairs of hands. It was their business to watch him, and watch him they would—aye, and scalp him gladly if the worst came to the worst!
He abandoned his thought with a sigh, and then swam back to the waiting three. Ashur followed him obediently, his nose in the little smother of water raised by the kicking heels of his master. The rocks reached for the fine horse again, and in vain, and Torridon stood again with his guards, whipping the water from his body with the edge of his hand, laughing and panting.
“Look!” cried the youngest of the three warriors suddenly, but in a voice muffled with awe. “He has brought down the power from the clouds, and now he is going back again!”
He pointed, and Torridon, turning his head, saw that the hawk was rising even more swiftly than it had descended. He laughed again to himself. No doubt this tale, liberally reinforced by the imaginations of the three, would soon be circling the village and adding to the great stock of folly and lies that already circulated about him among the Cheyennes.
The eldest of the trio took up his rifle and laid it at Torridon’s feet.
“When I made the bet,” he said, “I forgot that you could command the air spirits out of their places. Of course they made the horse light and showed him where to swim through the rocks.”
“I saw a ripple go before him,” said the youngest of the three gravely. “Of course something invisible was stopping the current to let the horse through. This is a great wonder. I, who did not see the making of the rain, at last have seen this.”
Torridon dressed quickly. There was not much dressing to do, for he was equipped like any other young Cheyenne in breechclout, leggings, and a shirt. There were distinctions, for the leather was the softest of deerskin, white as snow, and worked over in delicate designs with beads and porcupine quills, while the outer fringe of the leggings was enriched with glittering beads and even some spurious hoofs of buffalo, polished highly. He put on his moccasins first, and stepped into the rest of his apparel, after wriggling into the tightly fitted shirt. Then he sat down and began to dry his hair, by spreading it to the sun and the wind.
The three regarded him with profoundest silence. They had seen such things that it was well to be quiet for a time, and rehearse the affairs in their own minds. Afterward, even the elders would be glad to invite them to feasts and let them talk of the prodigies that White Thunder on this day had performed. One of them had turned the hawk into an eagle, already, in his mind’s eye. And another had made out the form of the water spirit that drew the stallion through the river.