by Max Brand
Torridon stared in bewilderment. “I know nothing of rain-making,” he said at last, with all the gravity that he could muster.
High Wolf shook his head. “You come from the Sky People,” he said, “where all these things are understood. Heammawihio will be angry with you if you let his people starve for lack of water. Come! Tell me when you will do something for us.”
Torridon looked at him helplessly, but out of that helplessness he began to evolve a thought.
Standing Bull had taken up the argument in the most direct fashion. “If you will not do it from kindness,” he said, “then we must put you in a lodge and keep you there. Let the Sky People come down and feed you and give you water. Or else, if you want anything from us, you must bring down a little rain.”
X
The face of Torridon grew pale indeed at this announcement. From the moment he first came among them, he had no expectation of these people, except that they would find death for him, and now that expectation was about to be fulfilled. Fire might be more terrible for a moment, but thirst would be an agony long drawn out. For three days, perhaps, he would lie in the lodge, and, unless fortune sent down the rain, he was a lost man. There was perhaps one slender hope.
He said to Standing Bull: “Let you and I go a little way off and talk together.”
Standing Bull went readily enough. He even dismounted, and they stood together out of earshot of High Wolf, who had wrapped himself in his robe and turned his head impatiently toward the south, for from the south alone they could expect rain at this season, it appeared.
“My friend,” said Torridon to the brave, “I know that since you came back among your people and told them the great story about the Sky People and your trip to the clouds you have been looked up to as a wonderful man. But just in order to keep that reputation, are you going to see me starved to death?”
Standing Bull frowned. “Why would it be hard for you to bring us the rain?” he said. “When I lay in the shelter that you had given me, very sick, with fire always burning inside me, death kept coming up to my side like a shadow. But you only had to wave your hand, and death ran away again. You know that I should have died many times if you had not taken care of me. When you went away to hunt, I became sick and weak. When you came back, I always grew strong again. You have a stronger medicine than you need to make rain.” He uttered this odd argument with perfect conviction.
“Listen to me,” said Torridon desperately. “I found you by mere chance. It would have been easy for me to leave you to be washed away by the water. But I stayed with you. I took care of you. Because of that, you wanted me to come to your people. I came to the Cheyennes. Now you treat me as if I am a bad man. You take away my horses. When I walk, you send your warriors to watch me. And now you threaten to starve me to death unless I make rain. I cannot make rain. I know nothing about such things. In fact, no man can make rain. I speak with a straight tongue. Everything that I say is true.”
He paused, breathing hard, and the warrior frowned thoughtfully upon him.
“You were not sent to me from Heammawihio?” he asked soberly.
“I was sent to you by chance,” persisted Torridon. “I was wandering across the prairie. I had lost my way. I only happened to find you.”
“That,” said Standing Bull, “is the way that Heammawihio always works. Everything seems simple. He makes it seem so. But there is no such thing as chance. He watches everything. He sent you to me, though you did not know that you were sent.”
“Suppose that he sent me to you,” argued Torridon, abandoning hopelessly one part of his argument, “does that show that I can make rain?”
“Friend,” said the Cheyenne gently, “I went out to do some good thing for my people and for myself. I prayed to the Sky People. They sent me you. Well, you have done something for me. You have answered that part of my prayer. Because of that I am your friend. My blood is your blood. My lodge is your lodge, and my weapons are your weapons.” He said this with a voice not raised, but deepened and trembling with emotion. Then he went on: “You have given back my life to me, White Thunder. You had cool hands. You killed the fire inside me. So I had one half of my prayer granted to me. Now I ask you to grant me the other half. You have done much for me. But what am I? I am only one man. All my people now are in trouble. I wish you to do good to them. Why do you shake your head? Why are you angry with me? Why do you make me sad, my brother? The great chief is very angry because you do nothing for us. Now, even if I wanted to, I could not take you away. He knows that you have great power.”
Torridon grew paler than ever, and sweat burst out on his forehead.
Seeing this, the Cheyenne continued more gently than ever: “You do not need to make a great rain. Only a few drops to show that you are trying to help us. Or only bring the clouds across the face of the sky . . . then our own wise men can make medicine that will bring down the rain out of the clouds.”
There was no answer to make to this last appeal, and Torridon knew it. He had made an effort through persuasion and that effort had failed signally. Now he reverted to a thought that had been forming in his mind since he was first challenged. He turned to Standing Bull as a cloud of dust enveloped them, for the wind, which had been hanging for ten days in the north, now was shifting suddenly to the south.
“Let us go back to High Wolf. I shall talk with him.”
Anxiously Standing Bull led him back to the impatient old war leader, whose lips were working as he regarded the white man.
“I have talked to Standing Bull, my friend,” said Torridon. “He tells me that I must really try to make the rain come. Very well, I shall do my best.”
At these words a smile, half delighted and half grim, came upon the face of the old man. “To make that medicine,” he said, “tell us what you need. We have horses and dogs to sacrifice. Also, we have painted robes and many other good things, and everything that the medicine men can bring to you from their lodges you shall have . . . rattles and masks, and everything that you wish.”
“Brother,” said Torridon, delighted with this speech, “is it true that I was sent down from the clouds?”
“It is true,” said the chief, staring earnestly at Torridon’s face as though he wished to make surety a little more sure.
“Well, then,” went on Torridon, “if the Sky People are willing to grant my prayer, they need only to hear my voice and to see and recognize me.”
“Good,” said High Wolf. “I know that great things often are simply done. It is not always the largest war party that brings home the most scalps or the most horses. Can we give you nothing?”
“Nothing,” said Torridon. “Only give me what I brought to your city. I had some weapons, and a pack, and two horses.”
Standing Bull exclaimed suddenly. Torridon dared not look at the warrior, who now cried: “High Wolf, this man has two horses that are as fast as the wind! Once he has them how could he be caught if he wished to run away?”
“That is true, also,” remarked the chief. “And why should you need the two horses, my friend?”
“Tell me,” said Torridon, his heart beating fast, but his face sedulously kept calm, “in what way I was sent down from the clouds?”
“With Standing Bull. Is not that true?”
“That is true, of course. But did we come on foot?”
“No, you had two horses.”
“Therefore I must have them again.”
“Why, brother?”
“Because how will they know me? It is a long distance to the Sky People. They are the ones who must send the rain, are they not?”
“Yes, that is true, of course.”
Delighted that his trend of thought was accepted this far, Torridon went on: “If I stand and cry from the midst of the prairie, then it is only a small sound that will come up to their ears.”
“Not if the right words are used,” said the chief instantly, as one sure of himself.
“I myself,” said Torridon, “have sat o
n the clouds and heard the Cheyennes crying out for pity, and even when the whole tribe was crying out together, and the medicine men were shaking their rattles, and the horses were neighing, the sound came up to my ear as faint and as small as the hum of a bee, half lost in the wind.”
The circumstantial nature of this account opened the eyes of the chief. He waited.
“But when I heard that small sound and looked down I could recognize the whole tribe. Now if they heard my small voice, they would look down and say it is the voice of White Thunder. Then they would call one another and say . . . ‘Is not that White Thunder calling to us?’ And the others would come and look and say . . . ‘It sounds like his voice, but it cannot be he. We sent him off with two horses, one white and one black, so that we could know him easily. But now he has neither of the two.’”
Broke in Standing Bull: “They would simply think that you had lost them.”
“How could I lose them?” answered Torridon, smiling. “I have done nothing but good to the Cheyennes, and the Sky People know it. They would never think that the Cheyennes could have taken my horses away from me.”
Standing Bull bit his lip. He was silenced for the moment but he was far from convinced. Then the war chief said quietly: “What White Thunder says has a good sound to my ears. We will let him have the two horses to ride out where the Sky People may see him and Heammawihio may hear his voice.”
“You will never see him again,” said Standing Bull. “He will go to Fort Kendry like a bird through the air.”
“No.” The chief smiled. “The truth is that, when we send him out, we will not send him alone.”
“What will you do?”
“We will send twenty braves to be around him, and all the rest of the people will be not far off to watch.”
Torridon blinked. It was a mortal blow to his plan, which had been exceedingly simple once he had the matchless power of Ashur beneath him. “High Wolf!” he exclaimed. “What are you thinking of? To send me out, and surround me with a crowd so that Heammawihio will not be able to pick me out from the crowd?”
“I have said the thing that seems to me good,” responded High Wolf. “No man can do better than his best. Now, White Thunder, go and make yourself ready to call the clouds over the sky. Standing Bull, you will bring in the two horses, the black and the silver. I shall prepare the twenty warriors to go with the rain maker.”
XI
The first hope that had sprung so high in the heart of Torridon was half eclipsed by the announcement of the powerful escort in the midst of which he should have to work. But once on the back of Ashur, given half a chance to break free, he would take that chance and depend upon the dizzy speed of the great stallion to make the bullets of the Indians miss if they fired upon him. He felt that he had a faint opportunity left, and the process of the festival might offer him a ghost of a chance.
He went back to the village with the south wind so strongly against him that he had to lean to meet it. Through staggering gusts he advanced down the street of the town. The men were pouring out from their lodges. He felt their eyes upon him already with awe. And presently he made out one of their murmurs: “Already he has put the wind in the south. This is to have a real medicine.”
“He does not have a medicine,” answered another. “He is medicine himself. He is not a mere man. He is neither white nor red.”
Torridon, facing that freshening wind, could not help remembering what he had heard over and over again during the past ten days: that the rain wind was the south wind. He looked with a sudden and frantic hope toward the horizon, but his heart fell again when he saw that all was burnished clear and clean.
He went back to the lodge of Standing Bull and there he made up his pack as it had been when he arrived. Other possessions were shifted about with perfect disregard of ownership, in many cases, but his things had been left alone with an almost superstitious regard. He took his rifle and cleaned and loaded it afresh. He saw to his two double-barreled pistols—the real pride of his life—and so he made himself ready to depart.
All this was done in the midst of a great bustling that spread through the entire camp, and finally Standing Bull called to him from without that the horses were ready.
He stepped through the flap of the tent. The silver beauty and the black were there—Comanche, the mare, looking wild-eyed from her long course of freedom in the open fields, and the stallion ten times more so. But they came like dogs to a master.
A little crowd gathered—the children pressing close, the braves remaining at a more dignified distance—but all eaten with curiosity to see the manner in which the man from the sky would handle these horses from the sky. Apparently they saw enough to stir them. Murmurs of delight and wonder rose from them. Their own animals were not trained to be pets, but to be efficient tools in time of need. Caresses were not lavished on them, and the vast majority were merely wild horses that had been caught, knowing no master except sheer force.
When he took the lead rope from the neck of the silver mare, they spread out their arms to keep her from bolting away, and there were murmurs of wonder when Torridon merely turned his back on her. That murmur grew into pleasant laughter when big Ashur actually strode after his master into the tent. So Torridon carried out all his possessions.
Standing Bull bit his lip as he watched. “Do the Sky People need to see all these things?” he asked.
“They see small and they see big,” said Torridon. “Shall I have them say to one another . . . ‘That is not White Thunder, but only a man who has stolen his horses?’”
To this, Standing Bull made no rejoinder, but his brow remained dark with suspicion. And he prominently added his finest rifle to his equipment as he stood beside the best of his own horses.
The saddling was done with much care by Torridon. He saw to it that the cinches were well secured, and that the packs were strapped on stoutly. Owl Woman helped, as in duty bound, in all this work. At last the bridles were on. The mare was secured to the stallion’s saddle by a lead rope, and then Torridon spoke. At once Ashur dropped upon one knee, almost like a human being making a curtsy, and Torridon stepped easily into the saddle, while the little boys and girls cried out in delight to one another.
Another word and Ashur rose. In his joy he rose sheer up on his hind legs, dropped lightly forward, and leaped high into the air. But Torridon knew these maneuvers. They looked wild and frantic enough to a bystander. As a matter of fact every leap and check was executed with a cat-like softness and grace. It was a sort of system of play, long established between them. Not a morning passed that did not see such gamboling. The silver mare neighed and shook her head, but followed cheerfully beside them, for she understood, also, that it was play.
But the Indians looked on with alarm and wonder. “Aha!” they cried in the hearing of Torridon. “Look! There is a man who can ride a horse. Look at that, my friend!”
“Yes, but that horse has no feet. He has wings, only we cannot see them.”
Whatever their admiration, they did not allow Torridon to proceed unescorted. High Wolf, properly enough, had given charge of the guard of honor to big Standing Bull, and that warrior took harsh command of the selected men. He had picked a score of the best mounted, most savage warriors of the tribe, and these closed in around Torridon, behind, before, and to either side, as he issued from the camp.
Behind them came a group of medicine men, hideously masked as bears, wolves, devils, fantastically draped, carrying noisy rattles. Behind these, in turn, High Wolf rode alone, and after him the rest of the tribe, following no order whatever, men, women, and children, confusedly together, rushed from the village and spread themselves out over the flat.
Well out in the open, Standing Bull led the way to a small plateau, circumscribed by a narrow and steep-sided ravine, or draw. The ground that it enclosed was almost like an island. Here Standing Bull directed that the ceremony should take place. Torridon groaned inwardly. With the throat of this high island choked wi
th men, the only escape would be to leap a horse across the mouth of the ravine, and that was a spring of such dimension that even Ashur well might fail in the effort.
“Now, White Thunder,” said Standing Bull, “we see that you already have called the wind from the right corner of the sky. We know that you can make that wind carry thousands of clouds over us if you speak to the Sky People. Then speak to them, and tell them to have pity on the Cheyennes.”
“Keep back from me,” said Torridon. “All keep far back from me. Have your guns ready,” he added after a moment. “Let every rifle and pistol be charged.”
Standing Bull looked curiously at him. It was not the sort of request that he had expected. But he repeated the order, and the few warriors who had not already loaded their weapons immediately obeyed the suggestion.
They drew back to the verge of the little plateau. Torridon was left in the center, surrounded by potential enemies, and feeling half desperate and half foolish, like one who is a charlatan against his will. However, something had to be done. He looked anxiously toward the south, for he had hoped that perhaps this favorable wind might bring up clouds enough to cause some slight excitement. However, there was not so much as a shadow along the southern horizon. Not a trace of vapor was floating in all the wide, hot face of the sky. Torridon sighed.
In the meantime, all those hungrily expectant eyes were fixed upon him. He must do something, if only to kill time. He made the stallion kneel, and, scooping up a handful of dust, he raised his hand high, and released the dust in a long, thin streamer down the wind.
The voice of a medicine man shouted in the distance: “See it and look down, oh, Sky People!”
Torridon raised the other arm and for a long time stared at the pale, empty vault of the heavens above him.
“Oh, God,” said Torridon in a trembling voice, and in English, “if there is a God, help me. I don’t know what to do.”
A mighty hush had dropped upon the assembly. Their eyes were riveted with tremendous concentration upon him. In the distance he could see women holding up their frightened children on high that they might have a better view. A child screamed. The cry was stifled in its midst.