"Oh," he said, "that's all right, Hiram. One gun is enough. We'll draw lots, if you like, or you can have first shot. It's all the same to me."
"Huh!" the Trapper snorted. "Play-acting, eh?"
"Oh, yes," Storm sighed. "I'm just trying to play at being a man. That's all. Shall we draw lots?"
But if the trapper waited for that, the pain would master him. He hesitated.
"All right," said Storm. "Fire!"
"Of all the cold-blooded frawgs!"
"You'll need a touch of bear oil on that lock, Yank. It's 'ard on the draw."
Storm wanted that minute. He hoped it wasn't cowardly. Just one minute before—to serve in this life, or in another world?
"Oh, well," he said out loud, "it doesn't really matter. Aim low."
"I'm going to call your bluff!" cried No-man, and took aim. "Damn you! I'll call your bluff!"
"Too low," said Storm, "Hiram, that gun kicks!"
It did!
The recoil knocked the invalid head over heels against the wall of the tipi. Then he looked at the slow-drifting smoke as it swept upwards, and from behind came Storm's rather hysterical chuckle. "You'll catch it, Yank! A bullet hole through the skin of the lodge, a leak just over where she sleeps!"
No-man scrambled back to some sort of posture for defense, but when the smoke cleared he saw Storm still sitting, the Book clasped in his hands, a broad grin on his face.
"Still acting!" the trapper sneered, "showing off to yourself, eh? Of all the humbugs! Of all infernal hypocrites! I'll make you own to the sham! I'll——"
"Call my bluff!" cried Storm, exulting. "Try again. Aim lower. Ask Him to help. I always have to, 'cause I'm such a rotten bad shot."
"Ask the Devil!" cried No-man, wild with rage.
"Friend of yourn?" asked Storm, then with biting sarcasm: "Ask him then! You couldn't hit me with the muzzle against my ribs!"
"What'll you bet?"
"My burning-glass. You has always envied that."
"Agin what?"
"Your soul, Yank. My burning-glass to your soul, you daren't fire!"
"Done!"
Beside himself, cursing, raving, the trapper loaded, reviling the powder, wad, ramrod, gun, himself, and the Devil, then with a burst of frantic blasphemy, he advanced the weapon against Storm's ribs, and let fly. The lock snapped in the pan.
"You'd really ought," said Storm, "to have primed that pan. Why, Hiram, you didn't stand no chance."
The trapper flung the weapon out through the door of the tipi. "I ain't no crawler. And if you thinks you've won my soul, you're away off. It's done lost."
Storm laughed gayly. "That's all right, partner," said he; "we'll catch it!"
"Well"—No-man smiled at last—"it's up to you. You won. And I shorely loves the way you acts."
"Found! The very first thing is loving your enemy, specially when you hates him like poison as you does me. Shake 'ands on it."
Shamefacedly No-man shook hands with Storm.
"Mush. I'm getting mushy," said the trapper to himself. "Softer than a woman, plumb unmanly believing of things which ain't so. Sick, of course. But this man isn't no hypocrite. He don't scare none. He don't preach. His medicine is powerful strong too, by the way he's healing this yer wound. Now, if I don't roll my tail down to the nearest white men and have a fortnight's drunk—why, dammit, they'll have me saved. I'm off!"
He went, his hosts proclaiming so frequently and with such insistence how greatly they were relieved at his departure, that one might even think they needed some persuasion of proof they did not miss the fellow at all. Of course he had to earn his living as a trapper, and naturally must sell the season's takings, but why not trade with Two Bits? News came by various clients at the lodge that No-man was here or there, in all sorts of scrapes, trying to get himself killed in the most lunatic adventures among hostile tribes, yet with a charmed life. He hunted Death, so of course Death had to run away; always does if you chase him. He was trying to find a white man's camp and get a proper drunk, or so he told the Indians. Why was it, they wanted to know, that when by accident he came on a white man's trading camp, he ran away? Was he afraid of his own tribe, or was he ashamed to meet them? And why was it that, when the women made eyes at Hunt-the-girls, he always fled from the camps?
Then, dreading the very sight of the priestess, horribly afraid lest Storm should unman him altogether by making a Christian of him, the trapper came back to the tipi because he was lonely, homesick, hungry of heart, and desolate.
Always after that, when he went away for a season's trapping, No-man was full of pomp and ostentation to himself, as well as towards his hosts, about the big drunk he would have in the spring at the nearest trade house, how he was hitting civilization, what presents he was taking to the folks down East. Young America always proposes to do things, whereas the other white men are grown-ups content to let the accomplished deed speak for them. Still, it pleased the exile to dream ahead, and he found in that a satisfaction which would never come from a drunk realized, a visit to the civilization which he dared not face, a return to the home love he never would know again, or any other fair-appearing dead-sea fruit, which in his mouth would change to ashes. Rain said she hated the very sight of No-man, Storm proclaimed him a nuisance; yet they saw through him, their hearts ached because of the tragic emptiness of the life he faced with such gay valor, and when they expected his return to this, his only home, they certainly looked forward to his gossip.
While that sort of thing continued through six years, they might have realized, had they thought of it, how No-man would hardly be silent among the Indians. He had to make some sort of face, put up something, anything for appearances. Craving for sympathy, affection, respect, or even enmity, he could claim attention only in one way. He had no strength to boast of, no wealth to display, or power, or virtue, fame of deeds, or other merit save this: that his home was the sacred tipi, that his friends were the holy woman of the Blackfeet, and her husband the medicine man, Storm. He boasted of Rain's oracles and her miracles of healing as though they were given under his management. More and more the mountaineers and the warrior hordes of the plains regarded the sacred lodge as a place of pilgrimage. Yearly the Apse of Ice became more central to that Indian world which was swept by mysterious pestilence, ravaged by hopeless wars, appealing for guidance, and getting fire water.
III
As the work increased a guest lodge was set up for the use of the Indian pilgrims, who hunted and cooked for themselves. Only No-man was admitted to the sacred tipi, where his visits formed a pretext for a bit of meat now and again which Rain and Storm would share without too much offense to Hiawatha. Of course they knew that they were doing wrong—so much the better fun. Early in their life together the Spirit Guide showed them the life of an Indian tribe as seen from the astral plane. The slaughtering of the buffalo, the dressing of meat, and the feasting was all done in a cloud, a fetid mist caused by the fumes of blood. "Poor things," said Hiawatha, as he watched, "if they do not hunt they will lose their training for war, and the other tribes will rub them out. They eat flesh, they are strong, they have the intellect which leads them to slaughter and despoil their enemies, to lie, to steal, to cheat. Only the blood fumes cloud their intuition, fog their conscience, and take away from them that foreboding which warns the animals when there is danger. That Veil of Blood is the heaviest of all the seven which shut men out from Vision."
Of course that was all very true; but, on the other hand, the camas bulb is sweet enough to cloy, and though there is a great variety of wild vegetables and fruits, they are not an exciting diet. As to rainbow trout, they are very shy of holy anchorites.
But that was not the worst. Bears are unscrupulous: at certain seasons also vegetarians because meat is rather scarce. When Rain caught a grizzly raiding the holy tipi, her thrashings tickled him so nicely that he would fetch his wife to share the fun. The wood rats, a special nuisance in that district, the porcupines, squirrels, chipmunks, polecats, all shared Rain's views on diet, treating her supplies as a public larder. So great was their enthusiasm that she and Storm were like to starve to death, rather than relinquish their principles, but for the pilgrims who brought offerings of dried fruits or vegetables.
Had there been seeds to start a garden without any birds or bears to inspect the produce, had there been eggs, milk, cheese, honey, groceries, or cereals, there were no merit in a meatless regimen; but housekeeping at the holy tipi was not without its worries.
Still, it is a verity that with rare exceptions prophets, seers, hermits, saints, monks, some sorts of clergy, all kinds of people as a whole who visit the spirit-realms must abstain from eating any creature which is able to look them in the eyes. The most carnal among us observe that rule with regard to dogs, cats, and horses.
Howbeit when No-man came on a visit, his fleshly lusts were a very good excuse for a lapse from grace which the anchorites were depraved enough to enjoy. It was he who contrived the animal-proof cavern with a rock door which finally solved the problem of the vegetarian larder.
Southward, astride of the Rocky Mountains, ranged the Absarokas, the Sparrowhawks, who were known to the whites as the Crows. For a decade or so one, if not both, of the Absaroka tribes had been ruled by a mulatto adventurer Jim Beckwourth. Under his leadership the hunters were skilled in getting, the women industrious in dressing bison robes. In trade they abstained from liquor and bought guns and ammunition. They made themselves dreaded in war, stole plenty of ponies, danced for scalps beyond all numbering, and were very careful not to kill a white man. When at last Beckwourth abandoned his wives and tribe, departing for California, a rival but minor trader began to prosper among the Absaroka. He claimed to be an Absaroka, called himself the Crow, but, like Jim Beckwourth, was part negro. I think he was half negro and half Mexican. Beginning in a small way, he traded for bison robes with liquor only. As his business grew he got all the Absaroka robes, but in return the people had nothing but alcohol. So the two tribes, the richest in the west, were reduced to poverty, their pony herds became an easy prey, their warriors a mere supply of scalps for the Blackfoot raiders. The Crow brought the nation to ruin.
At this stage in the Crow's progress, the chief medicine man of the Absaroka nation came to the holy lodge and sought Rain's counsel. She advised him to get consent of his National Council, then have the Crow's wagon burned, and the man himself expelled with a price on his head lest he should venture back again. The medicine man departed, and No-man, traveling in his company, learned from him the whole advice which Rain had given in secret.
For some months No-man kept the secret, but in the ensuing winter he came into partnership with another trapper, and to him he told this story, together with many others, to illustrate the power and influence of his friends at the holy lodge.
Now does our story follow the other trapper. He was Hugh Monroe, the son of a Scots colonel and of a French-Canadian mother, born at Montreal in 1799. At the age of fourteen he joined the Blackfoot nation, and earned a title of honor—Rising Wolf.
Friends of mine who knew Rising Wolf in his age, spoke of him as not very much to look at, a little wizened old man deeply sunburned. In 1842, at the age of 43 and the height of his powers, one must think of him as the head of an Indian household, and as a leader of the glorious Blackfoot chivalry, unrivaled among horsemen, hunters, and warriors.
In August with the tribe on the march, Rising Wolf rode one day with Many Horses, Head Chief of the Blackfoot nation. To him he repeated No-man's tale concerning the downfall of the Absarokas, the Crow as organizing their destruction, their chief medicine man as pilgrim to the holy lodge and Rain's advice for the deliverance of the people. Many Horses was not pleased. The rescue of his foes the Absarokas was not his policy or that of the Blackfoot Council. Rain, a Blackfoot woman, had done a grievous injury to her tribe.
To Rising Wolf, Rain seemed of less importance, not to be taken quite so seriously. She and her husband Storm were doubtless rogues, but not likely to influence events or to become a factor in Indian politics.
"I don't know," said Many Horses. "The faith of the people makes this woman and her husband powerful. Get me proof that they are frauds, and I can put a stop to any further mischief."
"Shall I go and see for myself?" asked Rising Wolf.
"Yes. But do not let the people think that I am sending you, or have a hand in this. An embassy to the holy lodge would give it too much importance."
"Rain's brother, Heap-of-dogs, wants me to dine with him."
The big chief chuckled. "A young man," said he, "newly admitted to serve in the Camp Police. The impudence! Why, all the chiefs' wives, including mine, would take the warpath. If you refused their feasts and dined with this young upstart, they'd dance your scalp, my friend. Take him as guide to the holy lodge, but as you love me, do not dine with him."
"I only said I'd think it over," answered Rising Wolf. "Indeed, he bores me. Haven't you noticed, Many Horses, that a young man or a young woman who goes in for being excessively beautiful, as this young spark does, is always the very dullest company? It's the plain fellows like you and me who have to be attractive with humor, wit or skill, learning or valor."
"How you do paint yourself!" The great chief loved a chance of poking fun at his counselor. "Now, don't blush. Your gifts are most becoming."
"Let me off, or I'll turn flatterer and sicken you. This Heap-of-dogs, Rain's brother, is really beautiful."
"A fop, as you say—a fop."
Rain says that white people will not understand her brother's name—Heap-of-dogs—unless it is explained.
So you must know that in Red Indian custom when a mother carries her new born baby into the sunshine, she looks about her, and the first thing she sees amusing or unusual suggests a name for her child.
Thus when Rain's mother, Thunder Feather, had been delivered of her firstborn child, her son, she went with him to the lodge door, and looked out at the sun-lit camp. And as it happened, the Stony Indians, come upon a visit, were pitching their tipis close by the tribal camp. But though the tribes were at peace, the dogs were at war, engaged in battle, all of a writhing heap.
So did Thunder Feather name her son Heap-of-dogs.
Rain's brother was strikingly handsome, a showy horseman, a dandy, a leader of fashion. Moreover, he shone with several different kinds of reflected glory, as son-in-law to a rich chief, as brother to the famous prophetess, and presently as guide to Rising Wolf. For this occasion he sported the top hat of a paleface chief, from which he had cut out the crown to use the thing as a sort of flowerpot from whence rose a bush of scalps. From his rump waved the tail of a horse. Large shaving glasses formed his necklace, which blazed in the sunshine, visible for miles to friends and enemies. As to the design of his face-paint, even Blackfoot society was surprised, ladies of our own tribes would have fainted with envy, and clocks would have stopped at the sight.
"Take off those mirrors," said Rising Wolf. "I don't want to be ambushed and scalped."
When this was done, they started, each with a wife to drive the baggage ponies and make camp, while the two men scouted ahead and killed meat for each day's provisions. They rode across the Rockies by way of Crow's Nest Pass, they forded the Upper Columbia below Lake Windermere, and they threaded the little trail up Toby Creek, this in the first week of a bright September. So, nearing the sources of Toby Creek in the heart of the Selkirk Range, they cantered through glades of bunch grass, by orchards of wild fruit and stately pine woods, with vistas now and then of glaciers at the head of the valley and snow-crowned walls against clear azure. The heights were bathed in a splendor of sunshine, but the vale in a mist of perfume where the organ of falling waters played for a choir of birds. The beauty of the place was overwhelming.
"You never told me," Rising Wolf complained, "that it would be like this."
"There are not words," answered Rain's brother, "or signs to tell with."
They passed through the herd, two hundred head of spotted and dappled ponies.
"We call Rain the Kutenai woman," said Heap-of-dogs, "because she likes the spotted ponies. How the herd grows!"
"Considering," answered Rising Wolf, "that every man in every tribe is a natural-born horse thief, have these ponies no fear of being run?"
"They know," said Rain's brother, "that they are the sacred herd. They expect us to get out of their way because they are important."
Now there opened out a glade commanding the head of the valley, and the eastward glaciers of the Apse. The westward glaciers were hidden by the altar hill on the right, a dark wall clothed with juniper and snow-crowned. At its base nestled the holy tipi and the guest lodge. As the custom was, the visitors dismounted, approaching the tents on foot. Both proved to be empty, but when a voice hailed them cheerily from overhead, they saw the priestess and her husband riding down the breakneck zigzag trail.
When Storm rode up and greeted him, Heap-of-dogs whispered behind his hand. "Brother Storm, there's going to be some fun."
"Rising Wolf," was Rain's greeting, "may the Sun bless you."
The white man saw in Rain's face the high cheekbones and pinched forehead of her people, free from face-paint though, aglow with health, and in a stern way almost beautiful. She moved with swift, savage grace, a creature of the wilds. Her smile was charming as she gave him welcome to her lodge, and asked Storm to make her brother comfortable. She lighted pipes for her white guest, Rising Wolf, and her brother Heap-of-dogs, and her husband Storm. Then she settled modestly in her place, on the woman's side of the hearth, confronting them.
"Certainly," the white man felt, "she has the manners of a lady, not of the conjurer, the professional charlatan."
According to Indian custom there was silence for a few minutes before they came to business. "You know my name, then?" said Rising Wolf.
Rain answered: "No-man, and my dear Storm, and Rising Wolf are the only Stonehearts in our country."
And the visitor had supposed he could pass for a Blackfoot! He had actually painted his face "for the mosquitos."
"It's much more comfortable," said Rain out loud, "in the fly season."
So she read his thoughts!
"Perhaps," he said with sharp suspicion, "you know what brings me?"
"Oh, of course." Rain counted on her fingers. "Seven suns ago, you rode with the big chief Many Horses, and you told him that my man and I are frauds."
"Rain counts coup!" cried her brother Heap-of-dogs, exultant. "Didn't I warn you?"
"So," Rising Wolf probed shrewdly, "Many Horses has sent a rider ahead to prepare you for this visit."
"Hyai yo! You think the head chief too good a sportsman!"
"I did," the white man retorted; "you read my mind."
"That is true, Rising Wolf," answered the priestess, amused by his chagrin. "You rode leading your painted war horse, who tried to plead, poor thing, that the trotting was bad for his wound."
"What do you mean?"
"That your war horse has an arrow point behind his off shoulder blade, but you mistake the lameness for cracked heel."
"The head chief said it was cracked heel, but, by Jove, you may be right! How on earth——"
"Not on earth," answered the priestess gently, "for you didn't see me riding your led horse, you didn't hear him pleading to me in his pain, you didn't remember the red stone arrow points when the Snake braves attacked you down at the Pisk'un. You will not believe until the red arrowhead works out to the skin, at Leaf Fall."
"So I'm put off," said Rising Wolf sarcastically, "until Leaf Fall for your proof!"
"My dear guest," Rain laughed at his ill-humor, "did I ask you to come? Did I seek your opinion? Will you judge me as you judged your horse?"
Rising Wolf thought deeply, and his was a quick intellect. If the Chief Many Horses had sent a messenger, the priestess might know that his charger was a piebald, lame in the off fore, but not of a red stone arrowhead behind the shoulderblade. Had the Snake warriors, who raided his camp beside the old buffalo trap, been here and told the story? Of course this must be some sort of cheap conjuring. Was Heap-of-dogs guiding Rain his sister in the sign talk, or how was the trick worked?
"Even cheap conjuring," Rain answered his unspoken thoughts once more, "is puzzling until one knows the trick."
Gentle her smile, and womanly her conduct, yet without the least offense she made him catch his breath, amazed, startled, almost frightened. Under the straight, strong brows her eyes were shadowed, but the glance was penetrating, looking right through him. By her smile she seemed to be sorry for him. And she was beautiful, pure, austere, making his lurking suspicion feel caddish.
"Many Horses is not pleased," she said, "that his enemies the Absaroka are being rescued, that the Crow is to be driven from their camps, that the fire water shall not destroy them any more. Are the Blackfeet afraid lest their enemies be fit for war? Is Many Horses frightened? Are you turned coward?"
Then Rising Wolf knew that Many Horses had sent no messenger. This witch had powers beyond all things possible.
"Poor Doggie!" she whispered. His father had called him that far back in childhood, a nickname forgotten these forty years.
"Your father," said Rain, "sends you that token."
Nobody in the West knew who his father was, but in quaint, broken English, unable to pronounce the letters l and r, "Co'on'ee Mon'oe," she said.
"Colonel Monroe," said Rising Wolf. "Where is he?"
"At the small Stoneheart town under the hill by the river where foam of the long falls rides on the salty water."
"Name the town."
"Names do not make thoughts easily," said Rain.
"What is my father's message?"
"In three suns, his spirit will pass over the Wolf Trail."
Rising Wolf jumped to his feet. "I must go quick," he cried.
"Sit down ... think. How far can you ride your animal in three suns?"
That was true.
"You would like to be with your father this evening?"
"Impossible!"
"Poor Stoneheart!" said Rain pitifully. "You refuse to see, you refuse to hear, you refuse to know. You make yourself just like a stone which cannot see, or hear, or feel, or know anything at all. So if I took you to Mont-re-al—I read the word in your mind—you would come back from the dream saying it was a dream, not real. The woman is a fraud and plays tricks. You only want to prove that you are right—and show me up. Your heart is bad to my man and to me. You fool my brother to bring you here, and think that is so clever. I am sorry for you, my poor little enemy!"
"You don't mince your words."
"I am frank to your face as you were behind my back when you told Many Horses that my man and I do our conjuring for the presents we get, the ponies."
"I saw a couple of hundred."
"We have three hundred. Take them, all of them. Four ponies will break back here when my love calls them. They are mine. The rest you shall take to the head chief as a gift to the poor of your village."
"Why didn't you do this before?"
"Why should we? Nobody before has doubted us. As you told my brother here, all other men except yourself are horse thieves. Any Indian, as he told you, caught with the sacred herd, would be burned by my people. But, as you are not a horse thief, you are safe. What! surely you are not frightened? You? who are so brave!"
"Because I'm your enemy," said Rising Wolf, "you've set a trap to get me burned!"
"My brother Heap-of-dogs shall ride ahead with my message for the Chief Many Horses. The head chief himself shall send herders to help you. Then you will be praised for the gift you bring to the poor. And you like praise."
"Damned clever," said Rising Wolf, "perfectly convincing, and devilish subtle. And why do you want to win me over?"
"Is this the moment for telling?" asked Rain. "Should we not win you first?"
"A common woman," the man was thinking, "would have bargained with her horses. She is at least a lady. And she claims that father is dying. Suppose it were true! After all, I don't think she means any harm, or that I'm frightened."
"Please," he said, "will you take me to my father?"
"Not while your heart is bad."
"Why not?"
"Because your coming would spoil your father's peace while he is dying. So I will take you in your dream to see other people until your heart is good. Who would you like to see?"
"Adventurers, fellows like me. I understand them best."
The French-Canadian mother side of Rising Wolf was very superstitious, had to be bitted severely, and reined hard lest it run away with the pawky Monroe strain in his character. Now, both his womanly intuition and his Scots intellect were leagued together against the noble pig-headed tenacity of his Indian training.
"I won't be fooled," he said all through that afternoon, while he held himself proudly aloof from Rain and haunted Storm like a peevish ghost to show his independence. Storm would tell him nothing, but went fishing with Rain's brother Heap-of-dogs. Like all good Blackfeet, Heap-of-dogs despised fish as unclean, but being a sportsman found that rainbow trouts were rather good fun. Neither Heap-of-dogs nor Storm took heed of Rising Wolf and his worries; indeed the Indian's mind was set upon his fond ambition to get Storm's golden scalp as a trophy of war. But Rain objected.
At sundown, fagged in mind and body, Rising Wolf lay down in the guest lodge bidding the squaws keep quiet while he had a nap. Afterwards he swore that he went down to the bathing pool, where Rain came behind him, placing her forefinger just between his eyes, and bidding him look at the light on the still water. "We never moved an inch." So he told the woman. "And all the time I could hear the roar of the falls. Only the sound through the pines was more like the sough of wind. It was lifting the snow as it drove across the rocks, a sort of whirling blizzard, so it was only between the gusts that I saw the old fellow up on top of the crag. The young chap was close by, small, frail, with the fringes of his buckskin shirt snapping like whip crackers. He was blown off his feet once or twice, but he scrambled up at last with a little bundle which he reached out to the man on top. It blew out on the wind, a flag, the Yankee flag, and the man waved it, shouting. Both of 'em were cheering like mad."
"Who are they?" asked Rising Wolf.
"The boy," said Rain, "is called Kit, Kit Carson, I think. The man's name is Fremont. They're sent by the Big Father to find a trail to the Oregon; but they've climbed up a peak of the World Spine to plant—they call it Old Glory! Say a prayer with me, Rising Wolf, for these men and for their flag."
"Why should I?"
"It helps them."
"To steal Oregon, eh? I'll see 'em damned first."
"Oregon," said Rain, "is here."
The snow had vanished, and they looked down at the Columbia, all flame red, snaking through lava fields. Up beyond the broken brown hills loomed blue forest, and high above that was a volcano blazing, whose immense eruption filled the sky with light, as of a burning world.
"Storm likes that," said the priestess. "So I thought it might please you. He calls the mountain Saint Helens. I don't like it at all. I think it's dreadful. The tribes on the coast are packing up smoked salmon, for a move to the next world, poor things. My man says that even the Stonehearts at Fort Vancouver are getting frightened. They call it 'Day-of-judgment.'"
"Ah! That's it," the white man was thinking; "she's got a professional manner, just like a medicine man or a war chief teaching. I wonder if the angels have a professional manner."
"If you only saw one!" said Rain's mind. "The dogs and the ponies can see. Why is this poor thing blinded by his conceit!"
"Humph!" said Rising Wolf. "Am I so bad as all that?"
"Your spirit-power," Rain answered, "is like a spent torch, which flickers, then smokes and then flares, nearly dead. Sun Spirit, help him!"
They were flashing southward, the sunset glow abreast upon their right, where violet cumuli, like mountain ranges, broke to reveal cirrii of molten ruby against clear orange sky. As they came down into the lower earth mist, that radiance glowed warmly upon the face of an adobe wall upon their left, with prickly pear bush on the parapet dark green against the upward sweep of the advancing night.
"We are in Mexico," said Rain.
In front of this wall facing the afterglow stood a long line of men on parade, at open intervals three feet apart. Ragged, unshaven, famished, they were gay with a forced cheerfulness, passing jokes one to another in derision of a group of officers, Mexicans.
"That general," said Rain, "is the wicked President Santa Ana. Years ago, in a dream like this, Storm saw him at the siege of Alamo, when Bowie, Travis, and so many heroes fell, and dear Davy Crockett."
The Mexican General Staff was attended by a squad of half-clad soldiers, who shuffled their dusty sandals, halting to order in front of each in turn of the American prisoners. To each of these captured filibusters, when his turn came, there was tendered a sack from which he was required to take one bean, and hold it up for inspection. If it proved to be a white bean, he lived. If it was a black bean, the firing party, moving in drill time, got ready, presented, loaded, fired, then left the quivering body in its blood, to shoulder arms, and march one full pace right in readiness for the next murder. The Americans were jeering at their uncouth movements.
"My man is here," said Rain. "Of course, they cannot see him. Look."
Amid the disheveled company Storm stood out clean. His golden mane and tawny dress looked crisp, fresh, strangely luminous, his face, from which the beard hairs had been plucked in the Indian manner, was that of a mighty chief, commanding, sternly beautiful as he stood wrapped in prayer. In his arms he held the prisoner next for death, supporting him. The fusillade rang out, and as the smoke cleared Rising Wolf saw the crumpled body sag down with that queer empty look he had noticed so often in men newly dead.
But the prisoner released, the man, the spirit himself, stood as before, supported in Storm's arms, rather bewildered than hurt. "It wasn't so very bad?" Storm whispered to him.
"Why," answered the American, "you don't say I'm dead?"
"There is no death," said Storm, "except for your poor body. Come away; here is your mother waiting to take you home."
Rain pointed out the prisoner next for trial, young Crittenden. "He isn't old enough to go on the war trail," she said. "A boy, and such a dear lad! O Rising Wolf, this will awaken your soul—or your soul is dead. My man and I pray for him. Oh, can't you say one little prayer?"
Crittenden drew a white bean, so Rain's prayer was answered.
"I am glad of that," said Rising Wolf. "He seems a decent lad."
Crittenden gave his white bean to the middle-aged man who stood next upon his left. "You have a wife and children," he was saying, his tongue so dried by fear that he could scarcely speak. "I haven't. I can afford to risk another chance."
"O Mighty Power," Rain cried, "O Morning Star, Son of the All-Father, help him! Help him!"
Storm came behind Crittenden, trying to guide his hand. "Rain," he shouted, "help me to guide his hand! Quick!"
Crittenden put his hand into the bag.
"Help him!" cried Rising Wolf. "Oh, I do wish I could help!"
"Your first prayer, answered!" said Rain, as Crittenden held up a white bean.
For some time after that Rising Wolf joined his wishes to the prayers of Rain and Storm for those who were murdered or for those who lived. Then Storm was left to the duty, while the priestess led the white adventurer upon another quest.
"How do you find your way?" asked Rising Wolf, as they went southward into deepening twilight, guided now for vast distances by the heights upon their left, of the white Andes.
"My secret helper," answered the priestess, "tells me the names and the places. Then I just wish, and I am there. Pray now for those in peril." The southern ocean lay beneath, lashed by an icy hurricane. Through the gray dusk loomed icebergs spectral and enormous above the black white-capped ranges of seas mountainous. There, like poor ghosts half seen amid the level driving snow, two ice-clad ships fled under bare poles eastward.
"What ships?" asked Rising Wolf.
"TheErebusand theTerror," answered Rain, "and they are so frightened!"
The ships passed into the night, and Rain's prayer went with them.
"I always help them a little at evening prayer," she said.
But Rising Wolf was troubled. "You do a hard day's work; then travel ten thousand miles to pray for people in danger, and that when you're dead tired."
"Dead tired? Oh dear, no. Are you?"
"Well, fact is, I'm not."
"How you get things mixed up! Of course our animals are tired, which we washed, fed, watered, rode to a finish, then washed, fed, and watered all over again before we put them to rest. But we left our animals asleep. We are not the horses, but the riders, the mounted Spirits of the Heavens. We are free, we use the free will which white men talk so much about, and know so little."
"Free will? What do you mean?"
"I'm free, dear man. I will to be in a country called Tahiti, at the hut of the Queen Pomare. Look!"
The dusk was taking form within a large grass hut, where there seemed to be many persons, women, asleep on the floor. The sudden flinging open of a door filled the place with the hot splendor of a tropic day. Outside, the cocoa palms were streaming in the breeze above the coral reefs and the leaping diamond-glittering surf.
A man stood in the doorway, seen darkly against the blaze, his white uniform heavily laced, braided and hung with cords of gold across the shoulders. His gestures and his speech were French and full of studied deliberate insult, addressed to a woman who sat up on the mats, while she suckled a new-born baby at her breast. She was lithe, tawny, fierce, tigerishly regal, and in a royal rage as she stood up to confront this bully.
"Admiral," she answered him, holding out her baby that he might see, "this is the prince you have robbed of his kingdom, this is my son, the king who shall avenge me against your people. Now"—with a sweeping gesture of her arm, Pomare pointed away through the door to the sun and the leap of the crested seas—"get out!" she hissed, "or I'll have you thrown to the sharks. They love a cur. I don't."
"Poor thing!" Rain muttered. "So she has lost her kingdom after all, to the cruel Stonehearts. What do you think of that man who could bully a woman in labor?"
From Tahiti westward Rain showed her pupil the wide immensity of the Coral Sea which, like the sky at night, glitters with far-flung constellations, though these are of ring-shaped palm groves and white beach, set in a riot of surf. Beyond that gleamed the Indies; and, crossing a forest continent, they came to a bay in Sarawak where a white schooner yacht rolled in the anchorage. The white man was puzzled by Rain's Blackfoot accent, which gave a funny twist to "Rajah Brooke."
"He is the new king of all this land," said Rain. "He is ever so busy shooting robbers, saving English sailors who are war slaves of the chiefs, opening old mines of stuff called diamonds and gold, which is not to eat, or to wear, or to keep the tipi warm."
Under the poop awnings Brooke of Sarawak sat at a table writing.
"He makes the power-message every day for his old mother. Peep over his shoulder and tell me. No? Of course—you say you are a chief. But what is the use of being a chief, a gent-le-man, when nobody can see you. Oh, do look!"
Gentleman though he was, being greatly tempted, Rising Wolf took one step, and read the words to Rain. "'I breathe peace,' he writes, 'and comfort to all who obey; and wrath and fury to the evil-doer.'"
"His medicine," said Rain, "is very strong this day; but sometimes my man or I must nurse him through the fever. Now he thinks about his friend whose name is so hard to say—Captainharry Keppel. We will go, see."
In Malacca Strait they found Harry Keppel's ship, H.M.S.Dido, having a fight with a number of pirate junks, one being afire and sinking. "I like fights best," said Rain, "don't you?"
"But I thought you set up as a holy woman!"
"That's to help my man, and other people, but I'm really and truly bad most of the time. Storm likes you, for instance, but I've always thought you hateful."
"We never met until yesterday!"
Rain chuckled. "Why, we've looked after you for years. My Secret Helper told me I must train myself by praying for some one I hated, so I took you. Then of course I had to help that other Stoneheart, No-man, who is poison. I loathe you both—like fruits and vegetables."
They had crossed a broad haze of the midday heat, but now above the mist descried a broken sea of mountains, a storm of rock, which was called Afghanistan. Far to the left, fain in the distance rose a rock platform, old Herat. Beyond lay Persia whose king, the Shah-in-Shah, had lately laid siege with seventy thousand men, to the rock fortress. "The Afghans there," said Rain, "were yelping coyotes until the young spy came. He made them mountain lions."
"Who is the young spy?"
Eldred Pottinger was his name, but in Rain's telling the words were not much like that. While Pottinger was busy saving Herat from the Persians, a British field force had conquered Afghanistan. But there arose an Afghan chief named Akbar, who brought about a revolt against the British. It burst like a volcano, and the British leaders lost their heads. Their army was caught in the Khyber, and only one man escaped, a Doctor Brydon. Rain had held him steady on his dying horse until he crossed the Indian boundary to Fort Jellalabad. She told the story next of General Sale, and his young warriors cut off in Afghanistan, corralled by Akbar's army. During three whole moons under fire they built the walls of their stronghold; then on the ninetieth day an earthquake knocked their fortress flat, and left them at Akbar's mercy. "That," said Rain, "is when I learned what prayers can do. Oh, if you had seen the chief Havelock with his young men charge, stampeding Akbar's tribes—like dust before a cyclone!
"See, Stoneheart, yonder, far in the north, is Kohistan. There was the young spy with his regiment of the Ghoorka tribe, fighting his way southward. He was wounded and nearly dead. He had five warriors left when he came to the gates of Cabul."
"Five men!"
"Then," answered Rain, "but now! See, all along this roadside, the regiments of his Afghan army camped, asleep through the heat of the day, until his trumpets call at sundown. See here, outside this little wayside fort, are forty great chiefs and medicine men of his Council.
"Where is the young spy?"
"That shabby Afghan sitting half asleep in the shadow of the gate."
"You say he raised and leads an army?"
"Yes, these Afghan tribesmen think that he is a sort of god. He leads them against Akbar, their own king."
"This is a man indeed!"
Rain showed him the courtyard of the fort, full of poor ragged women and children, Lady Sale, the British General's wife, Lady McNaughten, the wives of many soldiers. The women of the fallen government and the dead army were all rescued, they and their children, by the spy who sat asleep there in the gateway.
"Listen!" said Rain, as they stood on the wall of the fort. Somewhere, far away in the heat haze, there was a tiny broken thread of music. First one and then another, the women and the children stirred in their sleep, awakened in sudden terror, then sat up, wondering, to listen, straining to catch the distant sound again, for an old, old Scottish melody rang softly in the cañons, "Oh, but ye've been lang a-comin'!"
Now they were all afoot, swarming across the courtyard to the gate. Lady McNaughten, rousing the spy, cried, "Major Pottinger, don't you hear? Oh, can't you hear? A band is playing somewhere!"
Pottinger rose to his feet, swaying with weariness as he stared down the pass, intent to catch the sound; and then he also heard.
"Oh, but ye've been lang a-comin'!"
Pottinger called his General Staff about him, giving brisk orders. His bugler was sounding the "Alert," then the "Assembly," and trumpet after trumpet took the echo far off into the haze.
Then the head of the British relief column came swinging round a shoulder of the cliffs, and Lady Sale ran, shouting, to join her husband.
Rain cried a little, then brushed her eyes with her sleeve. "Finished," she said. "I have worked for our dear spy three snows now, and he needs no more help." She turned upon her pupil.
"And you?" Rising Wolf felt as though Rain's eyes were burning him. "Your soul," she said, "has come alive so quickly."
They were crossing the evening westward into the night and Rain drove her lesson home to the white man's heart:
"Faith in all that is good is the soul's life, like sunshine to a plant, but doubt is the bleak wind which stops its growth, denial the frost which nips and withers it."
"I believe in you."
"The messenger is bad," she answered, "but the message is true, and He who sends it expects you to obey. Now, if I take you to your father, what sort of comfort do you bring to his bedside? Ah, you still dread death!"
"I do."
"A sore thing, parting with one's horse, eh?"
"It is all that."
"—with the animal one has ridden so hard, and loved so dearly."
"Aye, Rain. You love a horse as much as I do."
"Did it break your heart to leave your tired animal there in the guest lodge when you came with me?"
"You mean my body? No."
"See. There below us is the Atlantic, lit by the moonrise."
"So it is. Then we've been nearly round the earth. What an immense adventure!"
"And yet you grudge your father this adventure?"
"Oh, but he's dying."
"Dying into a bigger adventure than ours, in bigger and more splendid worlds. Do you grudge him that? Shame on you!"
He saw America lift above the sky line, and presently the Gulf of St. Lawrence narrowed to the river. There was the citadel of Quebec, yonder his native Montreal, the familiar maple trees, the garden, the old house with its green shutters, the open windows. "See," said Rain, "I leave you now. My dear man, Storm, is waiting, to take you to your father."
The night was hot and the windows thrown wide open, the moonlight falling through the maples cast the shadows of their delicately pointed leaves, like dark stars, on the floor and on the white bed where old Monroe lay dying.
"'For this my son,'" he said in his dream, "was dead, and is alive again, was lost, and is found. It's been such a long time, Doggie. I'm frightened, too, although you needn't tell my brother officers."
"What is it makes you frightened, sir?" asked Rising Wolf.
"To lie in the earth while the worms crawl and bite me. I can't say I like the idea, Doggie. And when they've finished, I won't be exactly nice for the Last Parade."
"I've a friend outside, sir, waiting, sort of angel, knows all about it. Will you see him?"
"Three days, Doggie, since I shaved my chin, or brushed my whiskers. I've had men flogged for less, much less."
"Draw the sheet up to your mouth, sir. There, you look fine. Storm!"
Storm knelt beside him.
"Oh, it's you!" said the old man. "But, Doggie, this is the fellow I sent to fetch you. He doesn't know a platoon from a quarter guard."
"I don't," said Storm cheerily, "but I use worm for bait."
"Hoo! What a despicable way of fishing."
"No flies," the Colonel's son explained.
"If a worm wanted," said Storm, "to eat me, and if he was old Boneyparte himself, he'd need to run like a jack rabbit, or fly like a bird before he got a bite."
The colonel nodded.
"I'm not frightened of worms, and you're no more scared of 'em than you was of Boney. They're welcome to my animal body, after I've finished with it."
"Finished with it?"
"Well, there's a natural body, and there's a spiritual body, isn't there?"
"That's quoting Authority. That's as good as Queen's Regulations."
"Better," said Storm. "Won't be monkeyed with by the War Office. I've heard soldiers growsing before now."
"Bravo! Excellent!"
"Well, the worms get the natural body, and the angels get the spiritual body."
"We shall rise in our bodies at the Last Day. That's Authority too."
"Yes, if it says 'in our animal bodies.' I've seen some I'd hate to repair if I was the carpenter."
The colonel chuckled. "Well," he said, "there's sense in that. Go on."
"Soldiers tell me," said Storm, "that each regiment has a battalion at home feeding one oversea."
"With drafts, yes."
"Yours, Colonel, if I've got it correct, sent out a lot of drafts, one time and another."
"That's true."
"Drafts from Torres Vedras, Fuentes d'Onoro, Talavera, Toulouse, Quatre Bras, Waterloo——"
"Hold on. We lost men, a lot of men in those engagements, but——"
"Drafts," said Storm. "I've met the Other Battalion, and they say they'll be jolly glad to welcome good old—well, they called you 'Old Cat's Whiskers.'"
"They did, eh? Beastly cheek!"
"They say you'll have seniority, whatever that means."
"It means taking command, I say, young Angel, or whatever you call yourself—are they on active service?"
"Yes."
"Who's the enemy?"
"Devils."
"Is it like that, Angel?" answered the colonel, radiant. "Doggie," he turned to his son, "seem's you've found a new master. Follow him, my son, when I am gone."
"I will," said Rising Wolf.
For hours he kept vigil at his father's bedside, each in his dream comforted by the other's presence, although the old man did not speak again.
Hugh Monroe thought of this night's great journey round the planet, made at a speed he reckoned of about four thousand miles an hour, by sheer will power of the woman he had slandered. He had dared to call Rain a charlatan!
He who called himself adventurer had met Kit Carson, Fremont, and Crittenden, Brooke the King of Sarawak, Harry Keppel, and greatest of them all young Eldred Pottinger the spy. Their very names were new to him. "And what am I?" he moaned, "compared with the least of these!"
His world had seemed enormous, limitless, his influence powerful, yet his own father had told him, Rising Wolf, white leader of the Blackfeet, to be Storm's dog!
Then Rising Wolf awakened from his dream, to find himself in the guest lodge, and through the open doorway saw the rose flush of the sunrise lighting the pinnacles of the Apse of Ice. Rain sat beside him, her hand upon his forehead. "Remember!" she was whispering—"remember!"
"He called me Doggie," answered Rising Wolf. "Storm's dog. I shall remember. While I live, I shall remember."
So far back as the year 1813, Hugh Monroe had been apprenticed to the Hudson's Bay Company, and posted to a fort at the headwaters of the Saskatchewan. The three tribes of the Blackfoot nation, the Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans, brought their trade to that post, where the trader in charge had misgivings, lest presently they be misled into dealing with the Americans, whose hearts were bad and their goods inferior. So, one of the three tribes being at the fort, the trader detailed young Monroe to join them, travel and live with the people, win their confidence, and steer them judiciously lest evil communications of the American Fur Company corrupt the good manners of the Blackfoot nation.
A few days out on the trail southward the chiefs, with whom young Monroe was riding, came in an afternoon to the brow of the prairie, overlooking a meadow where the tribal camp would be pitched for the night halt. They dismounted to sit on the hill, watching the procession file past, and one of the chiefs had trouble with flint, steel, and tinder, kindling a pipe which would not light.
The lad took the pipe, and held a burning-glass in focus until the tobacco kindled. Not perceiving the lens, but supposing that the Stoneheart had the direct aid of their Sun God, the chiefs hailed the event as a miracle, and Hugh Monroe as a great medicine man. He was given a name of honor—Rising Wolf. Long afterwards, though hand mirrors came into general use for signaling, and the burning-glass for kindling a camp fire, this Rising Wolf's reputed sun power, which was really common sense, continued to give his voice weight in the Blackfoot Council. As time went by he married into the tribe, became the father of a family, and continued among the people, for a matter of sixty years. He was eighty-five years old when his life ended, and in his memory one of the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains is named Mount Rising Wolf.
It would be difficult to find a criticism of the holy lodge more sane, temperate, and impartial than that of the gentle adventurer. Without the slightest doubt as to their power, he spoke of the seers as cranks. "Seems to me," he said in after-years, "the offense of a crank is not that he is right, but that his rectitude puts other folk in the wrong. And as cranks, the seers were so damned aggravating."
Thus one may be a vegetarian without malice, in so far as one is opposed on principle to uric acid in the blood. Or one may prefer, quite reasonably, the gift of vision to the juiciest buffalo steak. There is no harm in claiming merit for a meatless diet approved by sound physicians on the one part, by mystics on the other. Offense only begins when one calls one's friends foul feeders even as pigs and dogs, or taunts the neighbors with the suggestion that eaters of rabbits are quite capable of devouring the baby. An enthusiast without the restraint of common sense or the slightest fear of consequences, Rain commended the vegetarian tenets to Red Indians who must train themselves in hunting, live by the chase, and migrate with the game on pain of being starved in peace, or rudely scalped in war. So much said Rising Wolf outright, but the priestess, very calm and aloof, observed that he was quite ignorant without being at all clever. Yet the adventurer knew, as Rain did not, how lewd, frivolous young savages in the camps make no end of fun out of the vegetarian doctrine, while Many Horses and other chiefs used to say that the sacred woman was becoming a holy nuisance.
If Rain led, Storm was a close follower. Having sacrificed his gun, and afterwards his wife's bow and arrows to the Sun Spirit, he began to observe that the vicinity of the holy lodge was looked upon by the birds and the beasts as a sanctuary. He loved them. They trusted him. They let him witness all sorts of their affairs, and their ceremonies, such as the small bird's jig in lugging the rest of a worm out of the ground, or the bear's height mark scored on a tree trunk from time to time as he grows, the field mouse dance, or ructions at porcupine lodge. Many animals with a sense of humor would come to hear him sing "Tom Bowling," or, with much gravity and deportment, play at congregation while he preached.
Unhappily there settled in the neighborhood a family of cougars who proceeded, without regard to doctrine or respect for the holy man, to eat their way through his parishioners.
Much prayer guided a very strenuous hunting, until at last, far up in the fells, Storm came one afternoon to the residence of the cougar family; and, firmly resolved to slay the parents, he fell in love with their delightful kittens. The result was a misunderstanding, because the father and mother on their return from hunting supposed Storm to be molesting the babies. Their combined rush felled him. Either of these nine-foot cats could have finished the business, but that the cave was rather small, they got in each other's way, and he found time to draw his hunting knife. The scrimmage was frantic, a whirling fury, so that when at last the man dispatched them both, he fainted from loss of blood.
Rain saw the affair in a vision, and by hard riding reached the scene in time to save her husband from bleeding to death. She loaded him on her pony, got him to camp, and kept him alive by her strong spiritual power; but the wounds, being poisonous, festered. Storm was long in delirium, weak when he rallied, slow in recovery. Afterwards he walked rather lame, and had also a deep scratch which won for him among the Blackfeet the sacred name of Scarface.
So far as critic Rising Wolf, who found Storm an invalid on his second visit, could see, no harm whatever; but presently, when Storm felt well enough, that seer put up crosses, a big one in front of the holy lodge and little ones five miles east and five miles west at the trail side, to mark the limits of sanctuary for all wild creatures. A pilgrim must lay down his arms at the foot of the boundary cross, or was sent back an hour's journey to do so before either Rain or Storm would give an audience.
Ingenious visitors would evade the extra ride by lying; but Storm, who would read their thoughts, would then deny to liars that sanctuary which was freely given to mountain sheep and goats, elk, caribou, deer, the beaver, and the bears.
Now it so happened that Two-shakes, and Worm-in-the-bud, warriors of the Snake tribes, riding on a knight-errantry to this far country, learned by the sign talk from some friendly Crows about this Truce-of-God in the northern mountains. They came afoot over the hills until they looked down into the valley, where they descried two tipis beside the sanctuary cross upon the eastward trail. Quite naturally they mistook this cross for the one which stood before the holy tipi and the guest lodge. They supposed that they would get for a trophy of war Storm's famous golden hair, by long odds the finest scalp in the known world.
Their surprise attack just before dawn of a winter morning was quite a success, for the knights-errant counted coups on the scalps of Four Bears, chief of the East Kutenais, Sings-all-night, the eminent medicine man, his famous medicine pipe, Mrs. Four Bears, whose name was Weeping Tit, Mrs. Sings-all-night, whose name was Back-hair-parted, and her little boy, whose name was Dark-in-places. When day broke it was a bitter disappointment for the Snake braves that Storm's hair was not included in the treasure; but they consoled themselves with two guns, many robes, and a nice bunch of spotted ponies. While they drove long and hard it was their misfortune to leave tracks in the telltale snow, whereby they were traced, overtaken, and captured alive by the East Kutenais, who burned them with much pomp and circumstance at the mouth of Wild Horse Creek.
Afterwards the story ran like fire through the tribes that Four Bears and Sings-all-night had lied to Storm concerning the deposit of their weapons at the east cross, that he refused to receive them as pilgrims and had barred sanctuary. Their fate most terribly enhanced Storm's reputation and made the pilgrims meek.
In modern national parks, where there is truce for the animals, they become self-conscious, show themselves off with ostentation, are disposed as residents to look down upon mere tourists. So, under Storm's protection, did that bornposeurthe big-horn, that low comedian the bear, and even the porcupine who in the wilds flies for his life from man at a mile an hour. The skunk, of course, has right of way on all trails, so that men, grizzlies, cougars, even the lordly elk must step aside to let his lordship pass disdainfully by; but that all the animals should expect the polecat's honors was gall and wormwood to free-born warriors. When, as critic Rising Wolf mentioned the subject, Storm seemed a little truculent, and said it served them right. "I've been thirty years among 'em," answered Rising Wolf, "but you may know more than I do. I only warn you—don't make enemies for fun."
When Rising Wolf, on first meeting the seers, accused them of avarice, they gave away their ponies, robes, everything they possessed that was worth having. It was typically Indian. A squaw in mourning for an uncle, a cousin, or a brother, without consulting her husband, may present the whole of his property to the poor. Surely nobody could be more generous than that. An Indian gives in a very large-hearted way, and nothing grieves, hurts, or insults him as much as a refusal to accept his present; but the seers, having stripped themselves to bare necessities, would now accept from the pilgrims nothing whatever except a little dried fruit, a few wild vegetables, or a catch of trout. The sick restored to health, the mourners comforted, the men in grave dilemmas shown the way, found all their gifts declined. They were dishonored. Their gratitude turned sour.
All this they would reveal to their tribal medicine men, who earned a living, supporting wives and families on the fees received in their practice. To such professionals, any magician who wrought cures for love was worse than amateurish. He was a menace. Not that the medicine man said anything outright, or exposed himself to a suspicion of jealousy by using such words as unprofessional, cheat, charlatan, black-leg, unorthodox. Only he would hint.
"String halt? Dear, dear! To get as lame as all that the horse must have been on high, rough, broken ground. Been in the mountains lately?"
"So you don't like the weather? Well, well, the Thunder Bird, and the Spirits of the Storm, and the Rain, have a deal to answer for."
"A war party ambushed? Tut, tut, very curious, very odd indeed. Now, if they'd mentioned their plans to a neutral, one who meets the enemy, and tells him about our raids, why, of course, of course! But no! That's quite out of the question. Quite. Odd, though, how many warriors we lose just after they've gone on pilgrimage."
Were the traders overcharging for their goods? "Why, what can you expect? We depart from the faith of our fathers to pick up every wind of heresy which blows about in the mountains, and yet you complain because your medicine goes bad!"
Were there scandals among the women. "Ah! How different in the days of our mothers, when there were no magicians calling up evil spirits!"
"It seems ungracious," said Rising Wolf in after years, recalling old events. "I don't want to set myself up as a critic of saints, for Rain and Storm were saints, and I'm no more than a sinner. Many a time when they would get a meal for the pilgrims, they went hungry themselves because there was nothing left to eat. They'd be up all night with people sick or in trouble. They never showed a sign of peevishness, or said an ill word of anybody. Both of them worked what one has to call miracles. They had far-reaching influence among the tribes, always used for the good of others. There was no trace of sham or trickery, but everything straightforward, unpretentious, real. Rain was really a very beautiful woman, and she would charm a bird off a tree. Storm was good-looking, too, in his way, a matter of coloring with his fierce blue eyes and that gorgeous mane of hair. Of course he had a slight truculence, a bit of defiance about him which choked one off until one knew him better. You know he began as a sailor before the mast, and his people, I take it, were in very humble life; but 'pon my soul he was a damned sight more like some duke. I never met one, but I mean what I think a duke ought to be like, with the grand air, the simple direct manners, the courtesies, the thoughtfulness for everybody which goes only with real thoroughbreds. The pilgrims just worshiped them—at the time; and yet when they went away, out of the glamour so to speak, they'd feel they'd been talked down to, their self-respect bruised, their plumes a little rumpled. There was the bend in the arrow.
"You mark my words. This human species runs in herds. If we forsake the herd life to run apart, we get out of focus like a burning-glass at the wrong distance, we see ourselves in the wrong proportion—not enough world, too much me. When the trouble came, the average human person helped by these big saints wanted to see them taken down a peg or two. Of course the tribes were shocked and all that, but human people rather enjoy a sensation. And if Rain and Storm were so mighty powerful, why didn't they help themselves? After all, it was their business to work wonders."
Rising Wolf paid four visits to the holy lodge, the first to expose fraud, the other times to seek advice in his own troubles. Of wider experience than any Indian, a deeper man than most and very shrewd, he had for thirty years kept almost the whole of the Blackfoot trade in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company; and thanks to him, this nation, for all its alleged ferocity, shed no white man's blood.
"They're gentlefolk," said he, "that's all. One only needs a little tact, and it would take a downright cad to quarrel with such fellows as Many Horses." Indian names wear out, and are discarded about as frequently as we change hats, but among the young bucks of that period were chiefs, now remembered by whites and Indians alike with kindly reverence as Crowfoot, Mad Wolf, and Brings-down-the-sun. In any land or age such men would have been distinguished as very perfect and most gentle knights, but there were hundreds of men worthy to ride with these.
Sooner or later, inevitably as the tide marches from neap to flood, the waves of American settlement must lap the upper plains, and pioneers find their way into the hunting grounds of the Blackfeet. "Kill one," said Rising Wolf to the Council, "and a thousand will come to the funeral."
The first American to secure a foothold among the Blackfeet was the Crow, a mulatto, and according to one version of the story an escaped slave. Other accounts allow for his being part negro, but for the rest a Mexican Indian. Certainly he had a touch of the Spaniard in his manner. He would make a statement, and finish it with a query—"Yes?" "No?" He would commence a sentence in words and end it with a gesture. The fellow passed himself off as an Indian, an authentic Absaroka warrior with three Crow wives and a litter of children; and he was known to the tribes as the Crow. Rising Wolf described him as a big, lusty, hearty, jovial ruffian, lavish with gifts, fond of display, hail-fellow-well-met with the chiefs, a braggart, a monstrous liar, without fear; and, under that surface of him, subtle, sinuous, fork-tongued, secret, deadly.
When Rain advised the chief medicine man of the Absaroka, had she been a little thoughtful of her own benefit, she might have foreseen the calling together of the Absaroka Council, the delivery of her message to the chiefs, and the conveyance of every word with embellishments to the Crow for his information and action. The Blackfoot priestess was not worldly-wise. The Crow was all that. He went to the chiefs in council and called them a pack of fools. "You wanted fire water," said he, "and I delivered the goods. You did not engage me to ruin your enemies the Blackfeet. It would have paid me just as well to ruin them."
They asked him what he meant.
"I am the Devil's merchant," he explained. "The Devil pays me pretty good money for bringing destruction to silly Indian tribes. How much will you pay me to go and ruin the Blackfeet, as I ruined you?"
"If the white man's Devil pays you," asked the chief, "why should we hire you?"
"All right," said the Crow. "I guess I can put up the same goods for your allies, the Snakes. I don't run half the risk there that I would with the Blackfeet."
The head chief lost his temper. "We'll burn this trader's wagons, share his ponies, and put a price on his scalp. Then he can go to the Devil."
"Of course," observed the Crow, "all traders will know how you kept faith with me, and what to expect if they come with trade goods to your camps. May the Blackfeet," he added piously, "drive off the rest of your ponies, scalp the rest of your braves, enslave your women, butcher your children, and blot out your camp fires. They will too. My medicine says they're coming, and your rotten tribes are in poor shape to meet them."
In the end the Absaroka Council hired the Crow to ruin the Blackfeet. Afterwards, he said, he would marry that Blackfoot priestess. Rain should be his squaw.
The Crow bragged of such intentions at Fort Benton, well within earshot of the Blackfoot tribes. His talk was cynical, pungent enough to be repeated, to pass into the general gossip of the Blackfoot country, with comments on Rain's character to spice the scandal, and derision of the old-fashioned Hudson's Bay Company which could hardly fail to reach the ears of Rising Wolf. The Blackfeet were interested, amused, and curious to see this trader who advertised so boldly, who was going to undersell the Company, blacken the face of Rising Wolf, and take Rain the sacred woman down a peg or two. As to their pending ruin, all the surrounding nations would threaten as much or more when the mood took them. Threatened tribes live long.
The Blackfoot nation was blind to any danger. Rising Wolf alone saw the extent and nature of the peril. For once he lost his head. Where tact and humor would have won for him the exclusion of the Crow from the Blackfoot villages, he went raving before the Council, pleading with the Blackfoot chiefs for the mulatto's death. That was a blunder. By seeking the murder of a rival trader he put himself in the wrong, meeting his first rebuff from Many Horses, who told him curtly to do his own killings. To give Rising Wolf justice, he challenged the Crow, a man four times his size, to fight with any weapons—this in presence of the Blackfoot Council. "That's all right," was the Crow's cheery rejoinder. "I reckon I name the weapon—cannon, loaded with buffalo horns!"
The white adventurer failed to meet with jest the gale of laughter which presently drove him out of camp, leaving the Crow in possession. And the Crow was clever, distributing to the Blackfoot chiefs and medicine men gifts of axes and guns, of scarlet cloth and beads, every treasure the heart of man could covet, silks for the women, toys for the children, liquor by the keg. The Crow offered subsidy to every important leader, so long as he traded in safety with the Blackfoot nation. That night he had a wagon load of robes and a tribe drunk.