So they voyaged across the plains. The weather was clear. Sometimes little clouds of purest crystal white, filled with brilliance, blew rapidly across the sky; otherwise it was washed clear. And all day the heat was blinding and burning in its intensity, and the face of the plains quivered with the heat waves that danced endlessly upward. Often from the burning of the sun against his shoulders, Torridon groaned, and then his big companion would look sharply at him.
“Speak louder, louder, brother,” he would say. “When the spirits wish to use your tongue, speak with a loud voice, so that I may hear.”
Torridon would shake his head and declare that it was only the heat of the sun, but, when he said this, Standing Bull merely smiled a little, secret smile, as though he knew a great deal, and would not press the subject with too many questions. He was willing to be patient with his strange captive.
In the heart of Torridon there was that mingled fear and curious expectancy that filled the old explorers, sailing for the first time through unknown seas, and he turned pale when, on a day, Standing Bull raised his arm and pointed into the eye of the sun. Beneath the sun, like a thickening of the horizon mist, thin clouds were rising—smoke!
“It is there,” said Standing Bull. “Presently we shall see our people.”
The confusion in the Cheyenne’s mind was revealed by that speech. In part he looked on Torridon simply as a white man. In part, the white man was a messenger from heaven, a bringer of luck and medicine to him. And, in part, Torridon was actually a Cheyenne himself, because he had been sent down by the Great Spirit to that tribe.
To a logical and educated mind the three points of view would have been impossible, of course. But Standing Bull could separate the three thoughts. He used them one by one and looked upon his companion in the fashion that was most convenient at the moment.
Presently Standing Bull checked the gray mare. He gestured before him where arose a few swellings of the ground. “Shall I cross the hills and ride in to the village?” he asked.
“You know what is best to do,” said Torridon.
The warrior exclaimed impatiently: “Why do you keep back your knowledge, White Thunder? Do you wish to do me harm? Or do you think that Standing Bull is a fool? No, no! I am not a fool. I know that you have understanding of everything. Otherwise, why did Heammawihio send you to me? Now, be kind to me and tell me what I should do?”
Torridon half closed his eyes. But he saw that it was useless to argue and protest. To Standing Bull he was a miraculous creature. He consulted, therefore, his own disinclination to go into the Cheyenne village.
“We should wait here,” he said at last.
The brave smiled with satisfaction. “They will come out to find me, will they not?” he said. “They will come out and escort me into the city? They will give me honor, White Thunder?”
“They will.” Torridon sighed.
Standing Bull in a vast excitement dismounted, took out his paints, and straightway began to blacken his face. Next he brushed out the mane and the tail of the gray mare. He rubbed away the dust that covered the bead and quillwork on his moccasins and leggings. He combed out his long hair over his shoulders, and he began to put added touches of improvement, such as streaks of paint on his brawny arms. In a few moments he was a brilliant and terrible form, and Torridon looked upon him with awe.
“My heart is filled with impatience, White Thunder!” exclaimed the brave. “Send them out to me soon!”
He hardly had spoken when a boy riding without a saddle galloped a horse over the verge of the hill, swept toward them, and then with a sudden shout wheeled his horse and rushed away. Standing Bull could not speak. He was throttled by emotion and literally bared his teeth like a wolf as he waited.
He was on his horse again, wrapped in his buffalo robe, magnificent and grim, when a cavalcade of half a dozen warriors came over the hill and galloped toward them. The Cheyennes spread out suddenly in a fan, and with a war yell they charged. Torridon glanced at his companion, but he saw a faint smile on the lips of Standing Bull—a smile which that hero was struggling to suppress.
A rush of horsemen, a sweeping cloud of dust, and then they wheeled and came up. Keen glances they flung at Torridon; he felt his scalp prickling on his head.
“Brother!” cried a magnificent youth who seemed the leader of the six riders. “You come with your face blackened. Have you taken a scalp with no harm to yourself? And have you brought this prisoner back with you?”
“Rising Hawk,” said the other, “I have been on such a trail as no Cheyenne ever walked or rode before. But this is not the time to speak of it. There is medicine to be made before another word can pass my lips.”
VII
There was a murmur of eager contentment among the others. They seemed to accept the fact that this was a mystery about to be carried into their encampment. Four remained as a sort of guard of honor; two raced their horses off over the hill, and by the time that Torridon with the others had climbed to the crest, there was a stream of rapid riders swinging out toward him.
He saw a village of lofty teepees that flashed clean as metal against the sun, and between them and the village was a river, fallen very low. The flats on either side of the stream were covered with corn, but so dust-sprinkled that it was hardly visible to the eye at the first glance. Only by the margin of the stream was it a strong green, as though there it had been irrigated.
Out from the big circle of the village riders were breaking—men, women, boys, little girls. Each horse, as it struck the shallow stream, sent a white dash of spray flying high, and then the rider lurched on up the nearer bank.
Torridon felt that the end of the world was flying upon him. The riders came in a vast tide of noise, with arms brandished. Guns exploded. Wild whoops cut at his ears. And around him poured the tribe.
A huge warrior, naked to the waist, drove straight at him with axe lifted, the sun flashing on it. That flash glanced in the very eyes of Torridon. But the blow was not driven home. The brave went on by with a war yell that stunned the brain of Torridon, and in place of the axe wielder, a spearsman was galloping, bent low over the mane of his horse, and with his lance point leveled at the breast of the white man. This time, surely, the steel would slide home through his breast. No, at the last instant the point was raised, glanced over his shoulder, and another terrible cry dinned in his ears. A procession of terrible forms rushed against him and went by, leaving him untouched. Then a naked boy was dancing beside him, threatening him with a knife whose blade was at least a foot long, and sharpened to an airy edge.
Torridon felt that devils had flooded the world. He would have shrunk from this terrible peril, but his nerves were as numb as though paralyzed.
He heard the exultant voice of Standing Bull beside him: “My brother is fearless. He who has ridden down from the sky on the white thunder, what would make him tremble on the earth?”
He could not answer this friendly and proud remark. If he opened his lips, he felt that a scream would come from them.
The riders had formed in a vast, irregularly eddying circle. Dust clouds boiled up. Through the dust he saw the frantic shapes gleaming, men like polished forms of bronze, terrible in action.
And slowly they moved on—they were the focus and the center of the storm. They crossed the creek. They entered the village. They were pushing through solid masses of horses, men, dogs that writhed away before them and closed again behind. The heat became intense. Dust choked Torridon. A knife thrust between the ribs would have been a happy ending to this prologue of terror and burning sun and confusion.