There was no need for Standing Bull to repeat it. Instantly it was obeyed. Pistols, rifles, and all crashed their volley into the air. Wisps of smoke blew off in ragged flights. And then Torridon pointed to the south. A lofty thunderhead already was hanging in the sky.
“Swiftly, and more swiftly!” commanded Torridon. “Behold, there is the answer!”
Not until he made that gesture did a single eye glance away from him, and now all turned and beheld in the south the lofty shadow darkening the sky. There was a groan of wonder, and then followed an hysterical cry of joy. The rain was coming! Men and women held up their hands to it. Lips parted. People began to laugh.
Torridon felt a strange lifting of the heart. He waved his hand. There was instant, utter silence, save for the murmur of children, quickly hushed.
“Not clouds only,” cried Torridon, “but let there be rain, and let there be thunder and lightning!”
A sort of childish ecstasy had carried him away to these words. But now, across the rising forehead of the cloud, there was a glimmer and then a distinct streak of light.
Even the heart of Torridon was overwhelmed with awe. And from the Cheyennes there arose a cry so filled with fear that it was more like a lament than a rejoicing.
XII
There was not so much enthusiasm in Torridon that he failed to notice that none of the braves had reloaded their weapons. Quietly he loosed the rope that bound the mare to the stallion. Follow he hoped she would, but she must not act as an impediment when he attempted to bound the black stallion across the draw.
In the meantime, the Cheyennes were beginning to give over their silence. An increasing cry of wonder and awe and joy rose from them as the cloud swept closer. It seemed apparent that it was not merely a squall. Its lofty front was crowned with great towers of the most dazzling white, based on terraces of gray, and these, in turn, were solidly founded upon a huge thickness of heavy black, impenetrable, and yet rolled fiercely upon itself. The whole mass of vapor was in the wildest turmoil, boiling up from the bottom to the top, and sinking from the top to the bottom.
As it drew closer, it piled higher and higher into the central sky until it seemed to be occupying those spaces under the sun that the dimmest stars fill by night. Yet also it was so vast a burden that the air did not seem capable of supporting that storm, and the feet of it brushed the ground. Long arms of black were thrust down, and dun-colored mist clouded the face of the prairie.
The forward bulwark of the storm crossed the sun. At once semi-twilight took the place of what had been day, blazing hot and bright. At the same time, small streamers and flags broke away from the upper section of the cloud masses and darted like flung javelins across the heavens to the north—javelins of transparent and jewel-like white that the upper sun turned into separate walls of brilliance.
Heavier arms were flung after them, darker, heavier. The whole sky to the north began to be flecked with gray and with white splashes, and then the first breath of the wind reached the watchers. It came first with a gentle sighing, and then a puff that streamed out the mane of Ashur. He, like the hero that he was, faced this towering wall of dark with pricked ears and perfect complacence. Only once did he turn his head as if to see what went on in the face of his master.
That face Torridon maintained as well as he could in a grave, almost a threatening air of command. He felt like a futile child in the presence of the deity, but he saw that it was well for him to make these grown-up children imagine that he had indeed commanded the elements.
All the time he kept an authoritative hand raised, and now and again he lifted his voice in a harsh chant, something in the tone of the chants that he had heard among the Cheyennes, though the words that he supplied were the sheerest gibberish. Covertly he was watching the Indians of his guard.
They were overcome, like the rest of the multitude. Sometimes they glanced at him, as at the raiser of the winds, but the vast majority of their attention was given to the progress of the great cloud. They drew their robes close about them. They leaned forward, as though the weight of the storm already were beating upon them.
There was only one exception, and that was big Standing Bull. Calmly reloading his rifle and a pistol that he carried in a saddle holster, he then gave his entire attention not to the wind or the clouds, but to the bringer of the rain—to poor Torridon himself. And the latter felt that he would rather have bought the indifference of that one formidable warrior than the carelessness of all the rest of the guards who were around him. He was at least glad that Standing Bull dared not leave his place at the edge of the draw.
There was no doubt that the cloud was bringing copious rain with it. The mist above the face of the prairie now deepened. It became a thick wall, as impenetrable as any part of the storm, brushing the very surface of the ground, and presently Torridon could smell the acrid yet pleasant odor of rain, newly fallen upon the parched plains. The next moment his face was stung.
A cry of approbation and incredulous delight burst from the watchers as the first, rattling volley of the rain whipped them. It was as though they had taken the beginning of this to be merely a great picture, staged with vast effects of light and shadow, but perhaps as unreal as a painting on a buffalo robe. Now they saw and felt the actuality. At their feet the dust puffed up as the great drops hammered against the earth. Upon their heads and faces the volley struck. And with a universal gesture of praise and joy, they threw their arms up to the blackening sky.
The rain was indeed upon them. The overhanging coping of the cloud now was toppling down the northern sky, shutting the whole sky away, dimming the day to evening light, and now even this light grew yet fainter. Beyond the draw were some bushes. They disappeared from sight as a gray wall swept over them.
Torridon shrank. It was like the coming of a solid wave of water. And when the weight of the rain struck him, he gasped for breath; at once, all around him was in confusion, as the half-wild horses of the guard reared and plunged, but only vaguely could he see them—figures guessed at, things out of a dream.
The very voice of the multitude was more than half lost in the roar of the rain, like the roar of a waterfall—but the chant of exultation came in vague waves toward him, split across by the neighing of the frightened horses, as the huge bulk of the cloud itself was split across by the sudden spring of the lightning. It cracked the blackened sky across from zenith to horizon, and the thunder pealed instantly afterward. The earth shook with the sound, and the ears were made to ring.
But by that flash of the lightning, in spite of the rain curtains that streamed from the sky, Torridon was aware of Standing Bull, who at last had left his post and was making straight for him.
He was roused as out of a trance. It seemed to Torridon, in that excited moment, that heaven had indeed answered a prayer from his lips, and that now he was a craven and a fool if he allowed the opportunity to pass without taking advantage of it, no matter how slight it might be. So he called to Ashur, and the stallion quivered once, and then burst into a gallop. The silver mare, who had been crowding against the black horse as though for protection, veered far to the side, and then rushed after, whinnying. But Torridon held Ashur straight for the verge of the draw.
He had marked the place before. It was not, so far as he had been able to judge, the narrowest gap from bank to bank, but the nearer bank rounded off so as to offer a sure footing, and the farther bank was low, and rounded of edge, also—such a landing place as, if a horse slipped, would not hurl him on his back, but give him a chance to scramble up, cat-like.