The thunder burst on them again, with lightning roving wildly through the noise, and, by that burst of light, he saw Standing Bull at the full gallop after him, guiding his horse with his knees, and his rifle raised with both hands.
“Ashur!” shouted Torridon.
And the good horse acknowledged the cry by hurling himself forward at full speed. They reached the edge of the draw. Excited voices shouted from either side, and it seemed to Torridon that hands were reached out to snare him, but now Ashur was away into the air, leaping without hesitation or fear, and flinging himself boldly over the gap.
What a gulf of sullen dark it was beneath them! And already the torrents of the rain had marked the stony bottom with little pools of water, like glimmering silver. They shot high up, they hung in mid-air without moving forward, as it seemed to Torridon, and then they landed with a jar on the farther bank.
Sick at heart, he felt the quarters of the stallion slip away beneath him. But Ashur recovered himself like a monster cat. He scrambled, found a footing, and lurched away across the prairie, while Torridon turned back with a savage exultation in his heart. Now let them follow if they dared.
They dared not.
On the brink behind him, he saw the great form of Standing Bull, with a rifle couched in the hollow of his shoulder. A pressure of the knee made Ashur bound to one side like a man dodging, and that instant the rifle spat fire. The bullet went wide. Not even the sing of it came close to Torridon’s ear. Still he looked back and saw the silver mare, brilliant and beautiful even in this rain-clouded light, hesitate on the verge of the chasm and then pitch forward into it.
XIII
It robbed him of half the pleasure of his escape. There was nothing beneath the sun that Roger Lincoln prized more than this splendid creature, and Torridon little liked the thought of some day facing him and confessing that he had come away and left Comanche behind him.
But now he must ride hard. There was faint danger for the moment, but when the rain lifted, if it proved to be merely a passing squall, then he might well come within range of some of their accurate rifles. And with that weapon he himself was so useless that he could not well keep them at long distance.
So he struck out a straight course to the north. He had made what inquiries he could while he was among the Cheyennes, and he had it vaguely in mind that Fort Kendry must be somewhere to the edge of the northern and eastern horizon.
“Four days and four nights,” they had said, “on the warpath. Six days traveling on a hunt.”
That was eloquent. He determined that he must keep steadily on by the North Star for four days and nights. Certainly Ashur could do as much in that time as the sturdiest Indian ponies that ever bestrode the prairies. Having made his point, he then would venture one day to the right, and, turning back, he would go straight for two days. If still Fort Kendry was not in sight, he trusted that he would be able to circle and cut for trail until he found some path that would lead him into the frontier post. That is to say, unless what he had gathered from half a dozen sources among the Cheyennes had not been all one parcel of complicated lying.
He laid his course with greater and greater temporary confidence. It was true that the first blast and fury of the wind and the rain had diminished, but, although it lifted, he could not see a sign of a horseman behind him. The rain developed into an ordinary pelting storm, not heavy enough to damage the corn, but certainly enough to give it the soaking it required.
Perhaps sheer gratitude in the breasts of the majority would prevent them from allowing a party in pursuit to start after him. But he sighed and doubted that. And then his heart swelled as he remembered that Standing Bull deliberately had fired after him. Surely in all the annals of mankind there had been no deed of more foul ingratitude. Yet, in a way, he understood. In the confused brain of Standing Bull, he appeared as a gift from heaven. The gift had no right to take wings and remove itself. Furthermore, the more valuable a gift had he proved himself—if he could cure the sick and bring the rain—the more bitterly was his loss to be regretted. No doubt, he tried to assure himself, Standing Bull had fired at Ashur, and not at Ashur’s rider.
Now that he had made peace with his conception of the warrior, he felt a certain touch of kindness for the Cheyennes. Those upon whom we have lavished our kindness are always those upon whom we shower our most pleasant recollections. And Torridon felt that he had been drinking deep of real life from the instant when he first encountered the prostrate dreamer on the river island.
He told himself that he had been a boy before, but now he was a man, and a real man. Turning his head, then, from this reverie, he was aware of a streak of gray moving across the plain. He turned back with a shout of wonder and joy, and then through the rain mist she came on bravely, tossing her head and whinnying—Comanche herself!
To Torridon, it was like the coming of a welcome and long-trusted friend. For such she was. And if he never had been able to establish in her the same sort of electric understanding that existed between him and the stallion, at least she would come when she was called, follow at his heels like a dog, and do many pretty and foolish tricks, such as sitting down and begging like a dog, with a lifted foreleg. She did a frantic circle around them, slipping in the mud as she turned, and neighing again in her rejoicing.
Then she came up beside them. Torridon could see mud on the saddle, which proved that she had rolled in the bottom of the draw. But perhaps that tumble had been the means of saving her neck. At any rate, she was unharmed, and, when the rain had sluiced the mud from her, she would be as good as new.
He changed to her at once—Ashur had borne the brunt of the fast running during the escape—and pressed along the course. Into his mind, now, flashed a picture of what he had been in the first dreary days after the loss of Roger Lincoln. He had been crushed with despair, totally overwhelmed with loneliness. Now the two horses were to him like two friends, and almost filling the place of humans. Half the terror was departed from the prairies. And if he could not find his goal, he felt that he could endure hunger with calm, and trust to the luck of the hunt to find game. He was far from expert with the rifle, but still he was much improved. He had an excellent weapon, and he had an ample store of ammunition.
That first day was a hungry and miserable one, but, in place of food and of warmth, he had the delicious sense of freedom. Though he scanned the horizon painfully again and again, he had no sight of any living thing, and he made up his mind that the Cheyennes, knowing how peerlessly he was mounted, had determined not to follow in chase.
He found no tree or even a bush large enough to give shelter, when the dark day suddenly grew blacker with the evening. The best that he could do was to make a pile of the packs and then roll in a damp blanket on the lee side of the pile. A wet couch, but nevertheless his sleep was deep.
Once or twice he roused himself, always to find that the rain was pattering in his face. With vague trouble he wondered if this exposure would bring fever on him, but afterward he slept well again, and, when he wakened, it was because of the low, anxious whinny of Ashur.
He looked up. The great, black horse was standing beside him as though on guard, and Torridon sat up in the gray of the morning. The sky was still solid gray with rain clouds, but those clouds were riding high and the horizon was much enlarged since the low and misty weather of the day before. The stallion was pointing his head to the east, his ears quivering back and forth in obvious anxiety, and Torridon stared long at that spot. It was not until he had stood up that he discovered, in the gray, faint distance, faintly moving forms, barely distinguishable.