Wrapped in his blanket, Torridon lay long awake, staring at the distant, cold shining of the stars. He felt weak and small. It was not the cold of the night that made him tremble. And he wished, with closed, aching eyes, for the end of tomorrow, whatever it might bring.
He slept and dreamed that the attack took place and that he himself rode in the forefront, shouting, and that in the village he was slaughtering more than all the rest—slaughtering women and children, until the iron hand of a Dakota warrior fell on his throat. He wakened, half choking. There was a touch on his shoulder.
It was Rising Hawk. All around him stood the shadowy forms of the warriors. The horses had been brought in, soundlessly.
“What has happened?” asked Rising Hawk.
“There is danger,” panted Torridon.
“Aye, White Thunder,” said the chief. “There is danger. Last night you would not let us strike. Now the time has passed. The Dakota boy has escaped and gone to warn his people. What medicine have you now to give us a victory, White Thunder? Or rather, after all our work, what medicine have you that will take us safely home?”
Torridon staggered to his feet. Across the sky was stretched a thin, high-riding mist. Behind it rode a young moon. Everything could be half seen—the tall, ragged rocks at the sides of the ravine, the tall gloomy forms of the Cheyennes.
He thought he could see, too, the arrival of the Dakota boy at the village, the mustering of the warriors, and then what? According to the plan that had been made and that the boy could not have failed to know, the Cheyennes were to wait until morning to attack. What band of Dakotas could hear this plan without determining on a counterstroke? No, they were already out and coming, moving swiftly and softly across the plain—on foot, perhaps, to make sure of greater noiselessness. And then the Sioux would come to the mouth of the ravine—perhaps they were here already, and creeping up, rifles ready, murder in their savage hearts!
Torridon looked wildly around him. How should they escape? The walls went up like perfect cliffs. No horse could mount them. And if the men saved themselves, they would be saved only for the moment. On foot, this vast distance from home, they would be hunted down and speared, like starved wolves.
“What are we to do?” asked Rising Hawk more harshly. “Do you tremble, maker of medicine?”
Bitterness and mockery was in his voice, and Torridon said in husky answer: “Leave the horses here . . . go down the ravine . . . every man softly . . . every man softly. Do you hear me, Rising Hawk?”
“I hear,” said the war chief. “Are we to leave our horses and have them caught . . . while we . . . ?”
That was not the thought in the mind of Torridon, but suppose that they tried to move from the valley on horseback, and gave to the Sioux the huge targets of man and horse together? So he thought and he insisted almost angrily: “Leave the horses here with the boys. Move out with the rifles. Quickly, quickly, Rising Hawk!”
“It was at dawn that we were to take scalps,” the chief reminded him with a voice like a snarl. “Now we shall be lucky if we save our own.”
Nevertheless, he gave the order, and they moved down the cañon slowly, softly. The warriors were both angry and nervous—angry because after all their march they now appeared to be turned back with but a single scalp, nervous because they dreaded any move, no matter how short, without their horses under them.
They passed down the ravine—Torridon in the rear, stumbling, making more noise than all the rest of that shadowy party, for his knees were very loose and wobbly beneath him. Yet they gained the mouth of the ravine unhindered. Not a shot had been fired against them, and the way home across the prairie was open.
He could have shouted for joy, but he was withheld by the fierce rush of another thought upon him. Somewhere across the dimness of the moonshine, surely the Sioux were advancing with all their warriors—their boys left at home with the old men and the women to keep guard against the chance of any counterstroke. So they were coming, or else they were unworthy of the name that they gained in generations of fierce campaigning until all their kind upon the plains trembled at the dreadful name of the Dakotas. Tribe after tribe they had thinned to the verge of extinction; tribe after tribe they had thrust west and south. Their pride and their courage and their self-belief were all equally great.
So they would surely come, to rush the Cheyennes in the throat of the valley. They would come hastily, though silently. Once they closed the mouth of that ravine, the Cheyennes to the last man were theirs, and they would make even the late crushing victory of the great Spotted Antelope seem like child’s play compared with the slaughter that they would make among the rocks.
So thought Torridon, and then he saw the great opportunity. No rushing of a village. No butchery of women and children. But a stroke of war!
It lay before him so clearly that already he seemed to see the dark figures trooping. He found Rising Hawk.
“Half on each side of the ravine, among the rocks . . . scatter the men, Rising Hawk,” he advised. “Then wait and wait. The Dakotas are sure to come. They come to trap us, and they will be trapped like fish in a net. Every Cheyenne will be drenched with blood, and there will be scalps in every teepee.”
Rising Hawk hesitated, not from doubt, but because the incoming of that thought numbed him with pleasure. He gave the orders instantly, and the idea spread like fire through the ranks. Despite all discipline and the necessity of silence, a grim murmur ran among the braves. They split into two sections. One rolled to the eastern side of the valley, the other rolled to the western side, and in a trice all sight and sound of them had disappeared among the shrubs, among the splintered rocks.
Even Torridon could hardly believe that the ground was alive with such a dreadful little host of trained fighters. But up the valley, from the place where the boys still kept the horses, there was occasionally the sound of a hoof striking against a rock, or the distinct noise of a snort or a cough, as one of the grazing animals sniffed dust up his nostrils.
And now only time could ripen the tragedy and bring it to perfection. But as he lay, he heard a whisper of one warrior to another: “We cannot fail. How can we fail? The Sky People fight for us. They will lead our bullets into the hearts of the Sioux. Hai! We have strong medicine with us this night.”
Torridon found his lips stretching into a stiff and painful smile, and his heart was hot and glad. He had hunted beasts before this day. Now he was a hunter of humans, and his veins were running with hot wine.
VII
The moon was westering fast. The light it cast seemed to grow dimmer, but this was only in seeming and not in fact, for the sky was mottled with a patterning of broken clouds, and in the distance the curve of the river was beginning to be visible, like a streak of smoke across the lower ground.
Torridon began to take sights with his rifle, aiming at rocks on the farther side of the valley, shifting to shadowy bushes, and promising himself that it would be difficult work to strike a target by such a light as this. A light that constantly changed. Yes, when he looked now down toward the river, he saw that it was no longer a strip of smoke, but a width of dull, tarnished silver. Then he understood, the dawn was coming.
He was cold and stiff with lying in one place. Dew clogged his hair and moistened the tips of his ears. But wild excitement made him forget such minor evils. The dawn was coming, the light slowly, slowly, was freshening—and then suddenly out of the lowlands came a troop of figures!
They were like black, striding giants through the ground mist. And, he could see, faintly, the shimmer of light on their rifles. They had taken long, long to come, but now they were coming swiftly.