In the meantime the medicine lodge was noisy every day with the incantations of the medicine men, making rain. But though they fasted, strained, and sweated copiously, still not a single black cloud would blow up over the horizon.
Something more than a drought was worrying Torridon. From the first he was allowed to walk about the village as he pleased, but when he asked to be allowed to mount the black stallion, Ashur, he was informed that the horse was very sick and could not be used. This, when with his own eyes he could see the big fellow galloping in the distance, the manifest king of the entire herd belonging to the tribe. When he asked for the gray mare, he was given the same response, although she led home the horse herd at night by a dozen lengths when they were raced in from the pasture grounds, Ashur, like a dutiful lord of his kind, ranging in the rear and hurrying on the laggards while the Indian boys yelled like demons.
He was to be forbidden the use of a horse, then. More than this, wherever he went, he could not make a step without close attendance. Two or three young braves were sure to spy him, and they loitered along in the vicinity, as though their own will conducted them. But after this had happened during several days, he began to understand that the Cheyennes were determined that this gift from Heammawihio should not escape from them if vigilance could prevent it.
To be sure his captivity was not heavy, but his heart was off yonder across the sunburned fields, hurrying toward Nancy Brett and Fort Kendry. He was held here, and who could tell when the kindness of his captors might be exchanged for quite another attitude?
Nervously he waited, and as the drought increased, the village grew more dusty, the faces of the Indians more solemn and sullen, just so much did the face of Nancy Brett grow clearer and dearer to him, and every day he sat with her as they had done once before, at the edge of the river where the crimson and golden forest rolled all its colors into the standing water.
On a day when he was walking past the edge of the village, with two or three braves loitering in his rear, he saw a youth of thirteen or fourteen dragging something on the ground by means of two long leather thongs over his shoulders, but, when he came closer, he saw that the thongs issued out of the shoulders. They actually were fastened to the flesh, and from either shoulder a stream of blood ran slowly down, blackening quickly with dust. Held by the rawhide thongs, a buffalo head was dragged behind the boy, who never ceased walking, although sometimes the fatigue or the misery of his constant pain made him stagger for a step or two.
“Why are you letting that boy torture himself to death?” asked Torridon of one of the braves.
“Do you think that he wants to remain a boy forever?” answered the brave curtly. “Is he to be a woman forever in the tribe? No, but a strong warrior who will go on the warpath and take scalps.”
“Can he take no scalps unless he does this?”
“If he is not braver than pain, if he is not patient and strong so that he can smile at trouble, who would want to ask him to go on the warpath?”
That answer had to content Torridon, although he had an almost irresistible impulse to cut those thongs and set the lad free. But who can free a man from self-inflicted torture?
He had hardly turned his back on that pitiful sight when he saw Standing Bull riding toward him, accompanied by no less a person than the great old chief, High Wolf. They came straight to him and High Wolf gave him a solemn greeting.
“Oh, my friend,” said High Wolf, “you have been among us many days. You have heard the medicine men working to bring the rain and they raise only a dry dust. You see the corn dying by the river, and the river itself is dead. How long will it be, White Thunder, before you take pity on us and bring us the rain?”
Torridon stared in bewilderment. “I know nothing of rain-making,” he said at last, with all the gravity that he could muster.
High Wolf shook his head. “You come from the Sky People,” he said, “where all these things are understood. Heammawihio will be angry with you if you let his people starve for lack of water. Come! Tell me when you will do something for us.”
Torridon looked at him helplessly, but out of that helplessness he began to evolve a thought.
Standing Bull had taken up the argument in the most direct fashion. “If you will not do it from kindness,” he said, “then we must put you in a lodge and keep you there. Let the Sky People come down and feed you and give you water. Or else, if you want anything from us, you must bring down a little rain.”
X
The face of Torridon grew pale indeed at this announcement. From the moment he first came among them, he had no expectation of these people, except that they would find death for him, and now that expectation was about to be fulfilled. Fire might be more terrible for a moment, but thirst would be an agony long drawn out. For three days, perhaps, he would lie in the lodge, and, unless fortune sent down the rain, he was a lost man. There was perhaps one slender hope.
He said to Standing Bulclass="underline" “Let you and I go a little way off and talk together.”
Standing Bull went readily enough. He even dismounted, and they stood together out of earshot of High Wolf, who had wrapped himself in his robe and turned his head impatiently toward the south, for from the south alone they could expect rain at this season, it appeared.
“My friend,” said Torridon to the brave, “I know that since you came back among your people and told them the great story about the Sky People and your trip to the clouds you have been looked up to as a wonderful man. But just in order to keep that reputation, are you going to see me starved to death?”
Standing Bull frowned. “Why would it be hard for you to bring us the rain?” he said. “When I lay in the shelter that you had given me, very sick, with fire always burning inside me, death kept coming up to my side like a shadow. But you only had to wave your hand, and death ran away again. You know that I should have died many times if you had not taken care of me. When you went away to hunt, I became sick and weak. When you came back, I always grew strong again. You have a stronger medicine than you need to make rain.” He uttered this odd argument with perfect conviction.
“Listen to me,” said Torridon desperately. “I found you by mere chance. It would have been easy for me to leave you to be washed away by the water. But I stayed with you. I took care of you. Because of that, you wanted me to come to your people. I came to the Cheyennes. Now you treat me as if I am a bad man. You take away my horses. When I walk, you send your warriors to watch me. And now you threaten to starve me to death unless I make rain. I cannot make rain. I know nothing about such things. In fact, no man can make rain. I speak with a straight tongue. Everything that I say is true.”
He paused, breathing hard, and the warrior frowned thoughtfully upon him.
“You were not sent to me from Heammawihio?” he asked soberly.
“I was sent to you by chance,” persisted Torridon. “I was wandering across the prairie. I had lost my way. I only happened to find you.”
“That,” said Standing Bull, “is the way that Heammawihio always works. Everything seems simple. He makes it seem so. But there is no such thing as chance. He watches everything. He sent you to me, though you did not know that you were sent.”