Torridon, hearing those warnings in the old days, had come to feel that red men were men in form only. And these warnings had been reinforced by stories of midnight massacres, rum-inspired outpourings of murder and cruelty and frightfulness. And all these tales rolled up in his mind and he believed them all when he looked upon the terrible form and face of the Cheyenne.
The very voice of the warrior was like a roll of drums, a heavy bass that reverberated. And when Standing Bull stood outside the tent and shouted with joy because of the goodness of the sun as it burned upon his thin face, Torridon shook as though thunder had pealed in his ear.
At last a day came when the warrior was seen walking beside Ashur, while the latter regarded him cautiously from a corner of his eye.
“Tell me, brother, which horse shall I ride when we go back to my people?”
“Which will you have, Standing Bull?”
“The gray horse is a strong and a wonderful horse. She runs as fast as leaping lightning, but she is not like the black stallion. Only to sit on his back across the plains to the teepees of my people . . .”
Torridon smiled. “The black horse is like black thunder. He is full of strength and wickedness, Standing Bull.”
“Good,” said the warrior. “Saddle him and you will see that I fit the saddle.”
It was his way of saying that no horse could throw him. Torridon half believed that he was right, and he was worried. Once the brave felt the magic of Ashur beneath him, would he be persuaded, except by a greater force than Torridon could show, to part from the stallion?
However, now he was committed, and he saddled Ashur with care, and lengthened the stirrups to fit the great legs of the chief. He stood at the head of the horse and watched the Cheyenne leap into his seat.
“Now,” said Standing Bull.
Ashur crouched like a cat.
“Be wary,” warned Torridon, and stepped back.
Wary was the other.
Nobly, nobly, in another day, Roger Lincoln had sat on the back of that same Ashur, until flung senseless to the ground. The Cheyenne rode in another manner. He was like a panther clutching the back of a wounded bull. And it seemed to Torridon that Ashur had found a master of sheer force at last.
Yet there was an undiscovered spirit in the stallion. He seemed to expand in size, in force, as the seconds flew. He grew a flashing black monster, more in the air than on the ground. And at last, out of a whirl of bucking, out of a dizzy spinning, the Cheyenne emerged headfirst through the cloud of dust, rolled over and over, and then lurched drunkenly to his feet. Blood was running from ears, nose, mouth. But he laughed.
“It is true,” he said. “Heammawihio has made such a horse for only one man. Take him, my brother. I am smaller, now. I shall sit on the gray mare.”
And he laughed again, in the most perfect good nature.
VI
This was the reason that, when they started back over the plains for the Cheyenne village, the Indian was on the gray mare, Comanche. He was hugely delighted with her, and, taking her for a racing course in the most headlong style, he came plunging back to Torridon and assured him that there was nothing among the horses of the Cheyennes that could keep pace with her. He even invited Torridon to race the stallion against the gray, but Torridon put off the suggestion.
He was very willing to believe that Standing Bull felt great obligations to him as a deliverer in time of need, but he could not help remembering the many tales of Roger Lincoln, and sometimes the warrior looked at Ashur with such glittering eyes that Torridon almost felt a knife planted in the small of his back. So he refused to race against the mare, and, when Standing Bull let her stretch away faster and faster—when they were cantering side-by-side—he allowed the mare to go off into the lead and refused to let Ashur measure strides with her.
Eventually Standing Bull gave up his curiosity. Instead, he returned to the tale of the thing that had sent him out to lie on the island by the side of the river. Several times before he had begun the narration, but always had broken off, letting himself be diverted from the point of his talk like a man who is unwilling to tell of things that are too unpleasant.
What had happened, as Torridon eventually found out, was that Standing Bull, in the midst of his rising glory as a fighter, had returned with a war party and found a party of Sioux blocking their way. In the skirmish that followed, all was going well until Standing Bull, giving way to an ecstasy of battle glory, charged in among the Dakotas and tried to count coup on one of the chief braves among the Sioux.
He almost had succeeded, and he grew tense with grief and trouble when he recalled that he had been so close to endless glory. But the Sioux had swayed from the charge and managed to reach the head of Standing Bull with a stroke with the butt end of his rifle. It floored Standing Bull.
When he came to, he found the Dakotas had been forced to retreat before they had a chance to take his scalp or settle him with a knife thrust. But by the time the singing was gone out of his head, he discovered that he had lost that which was more precious to him than the very hair on his head—his medicine bag. He and all the party had searched the ground where the battle was fought. They had scanned every crevice. But the bag was gone and poor Standing Bull was in a frightful state of mind.
“But what is a medicine bag?” asked Torridon.
“The soul of a brave,” said the warrior, and would not explain any further.
However, Torridon in the past had heard enough references to the medicine bag to make him understand that the Indians actually felt the immaterial soul of a warrior was connected with his medicine bag.
With his soul gone from him, Standing Bull found that all his former achievements were looked upon as lost with the medicine bag. He would not be accepted as a member of a war party. His voice would not be heard in the council. And he determined that something desperate must be undertaken in order to change the condition of his life.
The medicine men and the wise sages of the tribe could not advise him. He determined, therefore, to leave the tribe and go forth to make new medicine with the help of the spirits. As a young man goes to consult the future, so Standing Bull went out to lie in danger until a sign was given to him. He had selected the little island where the river forked. It was considered an enchanted spot. Here he lay for four days, never turning from his right side. At last came the thunder of the water; the white man and the two horses rushed up to him, and Standing Bull’s soul was filled with joy, for he felt that this was indeed a direct sign from heaven.
To Torridon this story seemed at once amusing, pathetic, and worthy of inspiring fear. He could understand, after he had heard it, that attitude of the Cheyenne toward him, as though he were a personal possession of Standing Bull, and all that he had with him a part of the property of the brave. Heaven had brought him to Standing Bull. Therefore, being from heaven, he must be treated with respect, consideration, gentleness, but at the same time he belonged to Standing Bull. He had been given to Standing Bull in a dream straight from heaven, a dream so powerful that it had not faded as other visions are apt to fade, but had materialized into flesh and blood and iron.
It was easy, too, to understand why Standing Bull had disliked the thought that Torridon wanted to go to Fort Kendry. Furthermore, it was not really right that a man from heaven should want to go to any place other than the abode of the brave to whom he had been sent as a material dream.
It made a situation so ludicrous that Torridon could have burst into laughter. It made a situation so grave that he was ready to quake with fear. He had serious thoughts of making an attack upon his companion, and then riding off to take his chance on the prairie, but the prairie to him was as unknown as the uncharted sea, and, besides, to attack the warrior would have been no less difficult than to attack a wolf. He slept with one eye open; he was ever on the alert, and Torridon began to submit to his fate with a growing apprehension of what it might lead him to.