Rising Hawk, however, greeted the white man courteously. Torridon mounted. They rode on from the camp. The warriors fell in behind them. Children and young braves rushed out to see them pass, and so the procession grew.
At the edge of the camp, they broke into a gallop. Young boys, yelling like demons, rushed bareback before and behind them, and whirled around them like leaves in a wind. And so they were escorted as far as the verge of the river. Up its bank they passed until they came to the ford, crossed this, and at last they were committed to the width of the prairies.
Torridon turned in the saddle, on the farther bank, and looked across the stream and back to the distant village. He felt almost a touch of homesickness in seeing it thus. Anything was preferable to that grim expedition against so dangerous a foe as the Sioux. But the dice had been cast and he was committed. Even so, he could not help considering a sudden break away from the Cheyennes, and then trusting to the speed of the black stallion to take him safely out of range of the pursuing bullets.
His honor held him, albeit by a single thread, and he remained trailing at the rear of the party, full of his thoughts.
A horseman dropped back beside him. It was Rushing Wind, his late guard, who was pointing an excited hand at the sky.
“Look, White Thunder, already your thoughts are answered by the Sky People. They have sent down their messenger to give you good fortune again!”
Torridon followed the direction of the pointing arm and saw that a hawk was circling slowly above them, keeping pace with the progress of the party. He forced back a melancholy smile from his lips.
But in the meantime, every brave in the party had taken note of that hanging hawk against the sky, and the same thought seemed to fill every breast. Their eyes flashed. Rising Hawk could not keep from raising his long lance and shaking it victoriously against the sky, and the braves went onward with a great gaiety of demeanor. Already they had forgotten the recent crushing defeat that the Sioux had inflicted upon their nation. They were as full of confidence as a body of children at play.
VI
As though the sting of the wound in his arm was a constant spur, they went north like the wind, with Rising Hawk constantly urging them to greater efforts. A dozen horses dropped dead under the fierce riding. That was in the early days, and the rest grew thin, but wonderfully hard and fit, and the boys were easily able to keep the horse herd within striking distance of the riders. Torridon spared Ashur every other day. But even those alternate journeys on random ponies hardly were necessary, for Ashur was laughing at the miles. All his running under Torridon or with the herd barely had sufficed to thumb a little of the flesh off his ribs and cut the line of his belly a little harder and higher. But on the days when he ranged with the herd, the Indian boys were happy. There were four of them, like four young winged imps, ever flying here and there, merciless to the steeds, slaves to the braves on the warpath. But when Ashur ran with the herd, their work was nothing. He ranged back and forth at the rear of the trotting ponies. He guarded and guided them like sheep, and they feared him and respected him. He was a king among them.
His size, his grandeur, his lofty air and matchless speed made Torridon feel every day more keenly his own lack of force of hand. He was as no one in the party. Surely, in battle, the least of all the warriors would do far more than he.
In the day he was little regarded, but in the evening, after food, Rising Hawk and the chief men of the party were sure to draw close to him and discuss plans and futures. He was very reticent. He had been forced to promise them good fortune. If that good fortune did not develop, he would get his throat cut as a reward for his false prophecy. In the meantime, he would not speak more, except enigmatic sentences.
And so they came, at last, among the big, bleak, northern hills. They had seen nothing of the famous Spotted Antelope, whose party was rumored to be south by the river, waiting to intercept their passage. But the river was many days behind them. They had plunged for four days through the very heart of the Dakota lands, unspied. But on the fifth day they rode over a ridge and came swooping down on four horses and two men at the edge of a creek. So infinitely distant were these Sioux from any thought of danger that they could not believe their eyes until this mysterious Cheyenne charge had scooped them up and made them safe prisoners.
The coups were duly counted, the scalps were promised, but then Rising Hawk determined to extract what information he could from the prisoners.
The first was a stalwart brave of forty-five, hard as iron. He did not stir an eye or abate his contemptuous smile while splinters were driven under his nails and then set on fire. Torridon, transfixed with horror and fear, saw the Cheyennes prepared to take sterner measures and could not stand it. He snatched his pistol out and sent a bullet through the poor fellow’s brain.
He half expected that the Cheyennes, their cruel taste once sharpened, would rush on him in a body. To his amazement, they took not the slightest heed of his action. They merely ripped the scalp away from the dead man and turned to the second prisoner. He had borne up as calmly as the other until this moment, but it appeared that the slaughtered warrior was his father. Now his nerves gave way. He was only a lad of fourteen or fifteen, early on the warpath. In another moment he was groaning forth answers to the questions of Rising Hawk.
It was true that Spotted Antelope was far away to the south and not expected for many days. In the meantime, the Sioux village for which the march was aimed had been shifted from its old site to one a little more southerly, among the lower hills, between two shallow streams of water. It was a scant half-day’s march distant. There was no dream of danger threatening among the villagers. They felt that Spotted Antelope was an ample shield between them and the Cheyennes. In conclusion, the youth begged a knife thrust that would end his wretched life, since he had proved a coward and betrayed his people.
Even that mercy was denied him. Rising Hawk felt that something more could be gained, perhaps, from this glib talker. For now, all was as he wished. There were some sixty or seventy braves within the village. One rush should carry it, and, after that, there would be the scalps of women and children—cheaply taken, and just as valuable as the scalps of matured warriors.
They pushed on until the evening. Rising Hawk himself, riding in advance, spied on the enemy from the crest of a hill and came back with the report that the Sioux were in their hands. All the village was preparing for the night; the horses were being driven in in the most leisurely fashion. Should they not attack now and overwhelm that town with a single rush?
They turned to Torridon for an answer. He answered with simply an instinct to delay the horror that seemed sure to come. Let them rest throughout the night. They were weary, now, from the long march. In the morning they would be fresh, and the Sioux would be cold with sleep. In the gray dawn the blow should be struck. Rising Hawk submitted to this advice with some grumbling, but he did not make any appeals. It was felt that the mighty medicine of Torridon alone was worthy of credit for having brought them undetected into the heart of the enemy’s country, and he was looked upon with great respect.
They pitched their camp at the throat of a blind cañon. It ran straight in toward the heart of the higher hills, and, around the first bend, they camped for the night. The cañon was a pocket that would conceal them from the foe. In the morning they would break out and slaughter!