by Max Brand
The northern branch of the stream here swung off sharply to the right; the southern branch pointed almost due west, and this was the one that Torridon determined to take as his guide in these blind wanderings. So he rode down the steep bank of the gulley and crossed both streams above the fork.
He regarded the upstream face of the island with curiosity. It was cracked across and written upon with long indentations. The soil of which it was composed seemed falling slowly apart and waiting for only one more thrust of winter to tumble it into a complete ruin.
Drawn by his curiosity, he climbed to the top of the bank and there he clutched his rifle to his shoulder. For he saw a man dressed in the full regalia of an Indian of the warpath stretched on his side beneath the shadow of the two trees. Beside him stood a water bottle, a bow, and a sheath of arrows. His head was pillowed on a small bank of earth, apparently heaped up by him to serve for that particular purpose.
Torridon moved nearer, paused, and again examined the prostrate man with care.
There was no movement, he thought at first, and he had come to the determination that the fellow must be dead, when, observing narrowly, it seemed to Torridon that the elbow of the man moved a little. He looked again, and made sure that the Indian was only sleeping, and that the elbow was raised or lowered a trifle by his breathing.
Through this time he heard from behind him, to the north and west, a rumbling as of thunder, but thunder in the great distance, and now it seemed to Torridon that he was afraid to look behind him, as though friends of this sleeper were rushing upon him with many horses, ready to overwhelm him. This thunder was the beating of the hoofs.
It was a foolish fancy. But Torridon did not know what to do. A man armed and well dressed could not be in any great need, although it appeared that this warrior was extremely pinched of face—which might have been a mere characteristic of an unhealthy Indian. However, he was a native of the plains, and therefore he safely could be left to them.
Torridon gave up all thought of waking the sleeper or of offering him any succor. What concerned him was only to retreat as softly as possible by the way in which he had come. Yet a silent retreat would not be easy. There were sticks and stones that might stir under his foot. Once wakened, the Indian would be sure to look about for the cause of the disturbance, and Torridon, perhaps halfway down the bank, would receive a bullet in the back. Then what could he do? He had two horses to manage, now left in the little gorge, and sure to make noise as they went on over the stones and pebbles.
There was only one safe alternative, and that was to shoot the sleeper. It seemed to Torridon that, had Roger Lincoln been in a similar position, he simply would have roused the fellow with a call, allowed him to arm himself, and then have put a bullet through his brain. That was Roger Lincoln, the invincible warrior. But what of himself, the novice of the plains?
He bit his lip with vexation and trouble, and then, stepping a little to one side, he saw with amazement that the prostrate man was not asleep at all.
His eyes were wide open, and he stared before him. Far in the distance, the noise of thunder rolled swiftly upon them. And now the red man stretched a hand before him, toward the north, which was the side to which he faced, and broke into a loud chant.
Torridon felt either that he was in the presence of a madman, or that his own wits had gone wrong.
III
At the first loud words of that song, as though in answer to them, the gray mare, Comanche, and the tall, black stallion rushed up onto the narrow island, snorting with terror. Ashur, as by instinct, made straight for his master. The mare crowded at his side.
At that the voice of the prostrate Indian was raised to a higher key, and, although the words were perfectly unknown to Torridon, he could not help feeling in them terror and exultation combined. For the whole body of the Indian was now pulsing with emotion.
Now the thunder grew, and, glancing back over his shoulder, Torridon at last saw the cause of it. He saw a steep wall of water plunging down the northern branch of the river, while the southern fork remained as dry as ever, only a small trickle of water meandering through the center of the bed of sand and pebbles and boulders.
He could remember that in the many tales of Roger Lincoln there had been descriptions of just such floods as this, caused by heavy rainfall in the hills, when the heavens sometimes opened and let down the water in sheets. Sweeping into the courses, sluiced off the naked brown hills, those waters then began a headlong descent, sometimes smashing open beaver dams and adding the treasures of those waters to the original flood.
Among such phenomena this must have been a giant, for the strong gorge was crowded with the water almost to its brim. Out of the frothing current whole trees were flung up, like the arms of a hidden giant rejoicing in his strength, and, as the wave plunged on its way, it sliced away the banks on either side, so that a continual swath of trees was toppling inward as though brought down by a pair of incredible scythes.
Whether madman or monster, the prostrate Indian was a human being. What would happen to this tottering little island when the vast wall of water struck it? Already, at the thunderous coming of the flood, the trees trembled; a fissure was opened inside the big tree that leaned out from the bank toward the north.
Torridon caught the sleeper by the naked shoulder and shook him. Under his hand he felt the flesh cold as earth, and covered with an icy damp. And though he shouted and pointed toward the rush of water, the other would not stir. He merely cast out both hands before him and began to shout his chant more loudly than ever.
And then the water struck. There was an instant visible and audible blow. It shook Torridon so that he almost fell, and the gray mare was flung to her knees. The big tree at the side of the island lurched halfway to a fall, with a sound like the tearing of strong canvas in the hands of a giant as the roots were snapped.
The whole forward point of the land was torn away, and huge arms of yellow spray leaped fifty or a hundred feet in the air. The rain of their descent drenched horse and man, and the air was filled with a sort of brownish mist so that Torridon could see only dimly what followed.
He was sure of death, but he yearned to see death coming clearly.
Then, at his very side, the whole edge of the island went down. Vast froth was boiling at his feet as he staggered back against the side of Ashur. Out of the maddening waters a tree trunk, stripped of its branches in the ceaseless mill of the tumbling flood, was shot up, javelin-wise—a ton-weight javelin—flung lightly through the air. It rose, it towered above them, and it fell with a mighty crash—upon the motionless Indian, as Torridon thought in his first horror. But then he saw that the still quivering trunk lay at the head of the red man, its dripping side mere inches away from the skull that it would have crushed like an egg.
And the wall of water was gone. Its thunder departed into the distance with the speed of a galloping horse, and, behind it, it left the gorge with a rushing current. The air cleared from the mist. In those currents Torridon could see boulders spinning near the surface like corks. He was more amazed and bewildered by the force in that after-current than he had been by the face and forefront of the flood.
Yet that storm of water decreased with wonderful rapidity. In a few moments the gorge was hardly ankle-deep with a sliding, bubbling stream, and the wet, raw edges of the ravine dripped into the currents.
Then Torridon could look around him, and he saw that they stood on a little platform barely large enough to accommodate the two humans and the two horses. In the very center stood one thick-trunked tree, and doubtless its ancient roots, reaching far down, had been the one anchor that the moving waters had been unable to wrench away. Otherwise, man and horse must have gone down like straws in that dreadful mill.
The Indian now rose, though with great effort. He staggered, and had to lean a shoulder against the trunk of the tree. Then he threw up both his hands and burst into a chant louder than any he had uttered before. He seemed to be half mad with joy
. Sometimes in the midst of his strange singing, laughter swelled in his throat. Tears of extreme joy shone in his eyes.
Torridon would have put the fellow down as a hopeless madman, but something in that ecstatic voice and in the raised head told him that the warrior was speaking to his creator. It was like a war song of triumph, it was also like a great prayer and a thanksgiving.
As for the meaning, Torridon had no clue, but he waited, determined to be wary and cautious.
Never take your eyes from a hostile, night or day, Roger Lincoln had said. He’ll count coup on you while you’re asleep, and take a scalp, even if he can’t get a hundred yards away before vengeance overtakes him.
When the song of the Indian ended, it seemed as though life had ended in him, also. He slid down the trunk of the tree until he lay crumpled at its base. His eyes were open and glaring; there was a faint froth on his lips. Torridon assured himself that the fellow was dead. But when he felt above the heart of the red man, he was aware of a faint pulsation, feeble, and very rapid and uneven. The body that had been so clammy to the touch was now burning with feverish heat. He was not dead, but he was very sick.
Torridon looked from their crumbling island across the long leagues of prairie that stretched on either side of the trees fringing the watercourse.
The temptation was plain in him to be away from this place and turn his back on the sick man. He knew nothing about such matters, but even a child could have told that, left unassisted, the other would die before the sun went down.
Then strong conscience took hold on Torridon. He set his teeth and looked about him, determined to fight off that death if he could. If he had been but six months on the plains, he might have had another viewpoint, filled with the prejudices of the trappers and hunters of the frontier, but to him now this was simply a human being with skin that was not white.
First of all he must get the man from the island, and that would not be easy. Then for a safer place to which to take him.
He went down to explore, the stallion and the mare slipping and stumbling after him down the sheer side of the bluff. From the bed of the stream he turned up the southern fork, and he had not gone a hundred yards before he discovered what he wanted—an opening among big trees on its bank, with a promise of present shelter.
He returned to the island, the two horses following close at his heels. The terror through which they had passed was still upon them. No doubt they felt that only the mysterious wisdom of the human had saved them from being caught into the whirl of the waters. Now they crowded at the heels of their protector. He had to wave them back as he climbed up the slope again.
He found the red man totally unconscious now. It was a limp body that he took into his arms and half carried, half dragged to the verge of the descent. There followed Herculean labor, getting his burden down to the level, but once there the task was much easier. He managed to fold the Indian like a half-filled sack over the back of the mare, because she was lower, and because Ashur no doubt would have bucked off such a burden as often as it was entrusted to him.
But Comanche went cheerfully along under this burden, and she climbed the bank of the southern fork and so brought the sick man to a new home.
The Indian had recovered a little from his trance. The violent jarring and hauling that he had received started him raving. And as Torridon lifted him from the back of the mare, the red man uttered a howl like the bay of a hunting wolf. Torridon almost let his burden fall as he heard that dreadful cry, but afterward the other lay still on the grass, muttering rapidly, his eyes closed or rolling wildly when they opened.
First of all he was dragged onto a blanket. Then with all the haste he could, Torridon prepared a bed of branches, made deep and soft as springs, and covered the top with soft sprigs of green. On this he heaved the Indian with difficulty, for the man was of a big frame, although greatly wasted.
Then there was a shelter to be erected. Torridon had seen enough woodcraft to know something about how it should be built. He had with him a strong hatchet. Rather, it was a broad axe-head, set upon a short haft, and with this he soon felled a number of saplings. The bed he had built close to the trunk of a big and spreading tree. He found a great fallen branch, dead for so long that it was greatly lightened in weight, but still tough and strong. Some fallen limbs rot at once; in others the wood is merely cured. It was all he could do to work the branch near the chosen spot and then to raise its lighter end and lodge it in the fork of the sheltering tree.
This branch now became his ridgepole. Against it he laid the saplings, and in a surprisingly short time he had a comparatively secure shelter. Afterward, when he had more leisure, he could complete the structure with some sort of thatching. In the meantime he had a place that would shield the sick man from the night air.
It was dark when all this had been done, yet he worked on, taking off the packs, arranging the contents within the tent house, and then preparing food.
For his own part, he was ravenously hungry, but when he made a broth of the jerked venison and offered it at the lips of the sick man, the latter clenched his teeth and refused all sustenance. Torridon heaved a cruel sigh of relief. It might be that he would be freed from his captivity by the immediate death of the red man.
IV
That early hope was not fulfilled. For three days the Indian raved and raged and muttered day and night. For a week after that his fever was still high. And then it left him.
If left him a helpless wreck, a ghost of a man. His belly clove against his spine. Deep purple hollows lay between the ribs. His face was shrunken mortally. With his sunken eyes and his great arch of a nose and his projecting chin he looked like a cartoon of a predatory monster. But his wits had returned to him. He lay on the bed and rolled his eyes toward Torridon, and there was, for the first time, sense and life in that glance.
Torridon was enormously cheered. He fell to work with all his might to complete the task that he had pushed forward so far and so well. He had arranged small snares. Each day, out of them he took rabbits and small birds, and he cooked little broths and then stronger stews, and the red man ate and gained slowly in strength.
Torridon knew something about the care of fever patients. At least that they must be fed only a little at a time. Certainly he overdid caution and delayed the recovery of the red man’s strength, but every step forward was a sure step, and never once did the convalescent beg for more food, even when there was a raging fire of hunger in his eyes.
Weeks passed before he could sit up; a long time before he could stand; many days before he could walk; many more before he could ride.
But that was not an empty time for either of them.
He who is raised with a book in his hand comes to need mental occupation as much as he needs food. As for the hunting, it was easily done. Much game followed the course of the stream, up and down. The work around the camp was small, likewise, and, when the brain of the sick man cleared, Torridon spent the remainder of each day with him. And since talk was impossible until he had mastered the language, he set about the study of it.
Never did student make such progress. He himself had been a schoolteacher for four years, cudgeling information into the dull heads of the Bretts. Now he had himself for a pupil and he drove himself remorselessly. He wrote down every word that he heard and memorized it, going patiently over and over the list. There were many sounds that were hard to duplicate with the alphabet. For those sounds he invented symbols. And as he progressed in his talk, he still kept paper at hand and jotted down the corrections that the convalescent red man made.
And, before long, talk could flow freely between them, particularly since, in their conversation, the red man did most of the speaking. For he had much to say, and furthermore he knew how to say it.
His name was Standing Bull. He was a Cheyenne warrior. In the lodge at home he had two wives and three children. He was young, and he was rising in his tribe, and then trouble came to him. He explained it to Torridon as follows
.
Eleven times he had been on the warpath. On these excursions he had been very successful. He had brought back many horses, forty or fifty, according to varying counts, for the narrator seemingly allowed himself some latitude. But, more than horses, he had taken three scalps, and he had counted no fewer than eight coups. Of this he was enormously proud.
“What is a coup?” asked Torridon, very curious.
“A child with a gun may take the life of a strong warrior from a distance,” said the Cheyenne, “or a child with a bow may shoot from the darkness and kill a chief. But when a coup is counted it is different. I charge in a battle. I see an enemy. I have a charge in my rifle, but I do not shoot. No, instead of that I keep the bullet in my gun. I rush my enemy. He fires at me. I stoop and the bullet flies over my head. He snatches out a knife. I swerve away from it, and, reaching from my horse, I touch him with my coup stick. It is greater than the killing or the scalping of him.”
“But why?” persisted Torridon. “If you kill him, then there is one less enemy for you and your people. That is a great advantage. You may say that it proves you are a greater warrior than the other man.”
“That is true.” The Cheyenne smiled. “The white men are wise and do clever things. They do many things that the Indian cannot do. The Indian cannot make guns, for instance. Well, still Heammawihio gives the red man some gifts that he does not give to the white man. He gives him understanding of many things. That is only right and fair. You would not want the white man to have all the understanding, White Thunder?”
That was the name he had given to Torridon, because, apparently, he had come into the life of the Cheyenne with a white face, and on the wings of the thundering rush of water that so nearly carried them all into another life.
“No,” agreed Torridon. “Of course the Indians have understanding.”
“And the most important thing of all is the counting of coups.”
“How can that be?” said Torridon, amazed.