I jogged out that little letter and went out to White Smoke. He began to talk the moment he heard my footstep, whinnying no louder than a whisper. I led the monster out - sixteen hands and three inches of shimmering beauty and wonderful strength. Have you seen a colt frolic around its dam? That was the way White Smoke frolicked around me. At last I had to speak sternly. He stopped before me as meek as a frightened child, and I saddled and bridled him. It was broad, warm morning by this time. Instead of breakfast I drew my belt a bit tighter, as one learned to do on the prairies, and left the fort at once. I went straight up the river bank for some distance, because it took me fairly straight in the home direction, and, besides, I wanted to enjoy the trees near the water. When one has lived years on the prairies, real trees mean more man food and drink.
I went through them with my head bent back, watching the sun work through the leaves, listening to the stir of the wind, watching a squirrel working here and a blue jay watching there. The jay rose suddenly and hovered, scolding bitterly. The next moment I turned a corner of the trail and came straight upon Kearney and his daughter.
She looked at me as though a snake had writhed across her path, and cried out: “Now, Dad, be careful… please!”
“Damn care,” said Kearney. “I have him alone, now.”
He rode straight up to me, drawing himself up straighter and straighter. He was much taller than I, but White Smoke’s sixteen hands and three inches gave me a shade of an advantage over him.
“Dorset,” he said, “yesterday you insulted me grossly. A gentleman cannot put up with such a remark. I want your apology on the spot.”
He was one of those handsome men whose jowls grow a little too fat as years increase. The rest of his face turned very red; but his lower fat cheeks were white. I saw that; I saw that he was fingering the butt of a revolver of the latest make. I also saw the frightened face of the girl in the background.
“Mister Kearney,” I said, “I’m not a peace lover, but I’m trying to keep the peace now. Will you let me pass?”
He took that remark in just the wrong way. I suppose there was a bit of the bully in him as there is apt to be in pompous men. He said with a sneer: “I presume that Chuck Morris has whipped you out of the town, if you dared to meet him. Now, sir, you will either fight or be whipped again.”
He leaned out as he spoke and flashed his riding whip across my face. The very end of the lash was knotted, and that knot flicked away the skin and allowed a trickle of crimson to run down. I still have the scar, like a tiny silver freckle on the skin. I look at it in the mirror and it makes my gray, wrinkled, lean face fade away and puts in its place the savage features and the wild black eyes of the Lew Dorset of those days.
He had reached a bit too far. Before he could recover, I was at him. I caught the wrist that held the whip. I caught the other wrist as it snapped the revolver out of the holster. I felt my fingers crush through the flesh to the bone, while a spasm of pain twisted his mouth. Whip and gun fell to the earth, and the girl’s cry came tingling in my ears in the nick of time.
I saw what I was doing and released him instantly. “You have a daughter,” I said. “That is the reason you are still alive.”
Then I pressed straight past them both, with the picture of Mary Kearney’s terror gathered into my mind. I let White Smoke take his own way, which was the way of the wind. A little later we were out of the trees and on the open prairie, treading softly in the three-inch buffalo grass that grew as thick as hair on a dog’s back.
The red weal of the whip stroke faded before I reached the Sioux, and there was only the healing scar that flecked my temple when, ten days later, I came in view of the village. It was still a full mile away when a young brave, who was riding post, saw me and knew the flash of White Smoke. He came toward me with a shout, lifting his hand in token of friendship. By his side I rode into the camp, and he gave me the news as he went. They were gathering their forces for another attempt upon the Pawnees, for Bald Eagle, in a rage at the loss of White Smoke, had struck a recent blow that cost the lives of more than a hundred Sioux warriors. Standing Bear was to take the warpath and close with Bald Eagle if he could.
I could not have heard more welcome news. Ever since the moment when Bald Eagle had seized on me as his prisoner, instead of freeing Sitting Wolf in exchange for Two Feather, I had wanted to get back at him. Besides, I was in a frame of mind that demanded action. I dreaded to be alone, for when I was alone a thousand ugly thoughts took hold on me - and the blue eyes of Mary Kearney looked into my mind. What lay before me I did not know. I only knew that I was afraid of myself - mortally afraid that I should be untrue to Chuck Morris.
I went first to the teepee of Three Buck Elk and found Sitting Wolf with his father and mother. It was like stepping into the heart of my own family. Every soul in that teepee was mine, twice bought because I had saved the son of the family twice. Three Buck Elk seated me in his own place, gave me his own pipe, then left the place, and brought back Standing Bear, while Sitting Wolf and I were chattering. He was hugely excited about the proposed expedition. They planned to start in a day or two.
When Standing Bear came in, the old fellow went to the point at once. All the preparations had been made. Eight hundred braves, he said, were ready to take the trail today - if I thought fit. I certainly was astonished when he said this.
“Standing Bear,” I said, “I am a young man, and a young man has hands, but no brains. I shall follow you where you and your brother lead me.”
“The Dakotas,” he answered me, “have met Bald Eagle many times, and many times he has taken their scalps, made them weeping children, and sent them running like dogs before wolves across the prairies. Only one man has met Bald Eagle and come away from him alive, and with more than he took to him. That man is Black Bear. Standing Bear has ridden many times at the head of the warriors. His name was once a terror to the Pawnees. But now he is no more to them than an old toothless woman. You, Brother, shall lead us!”
It was a compliment of such a size that I had to pause a moment before I digested it. But now that the actual power was put into my hands, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. Bald Eagle, in fact, had taught me.
I said: “Then we shall not ride today or tomorrow.”
He nodded. “That is good. But why will my brother keep us here? The Pawnees laugh when they hear the name of the Sioux now.”
“Because the Sioux have become weak and foolish. Their eyes are no longer straight, and their hands tremble.”
His eyes flashed at that, and Sitting Wolf stirred in his place with a grunt.
I said: “I will prove it. Call to me the twenty braves who are surest with a rifle in their hands.”
It was done. I took them with their guns out of the camp. I had a boy cut a calf from the herd of cows and send it scampering out on the plain, and then I told them to kill it. Every one of the twenty fired - and the calf still scampered away.
“It is too far,” frowned Standing Bear.
“Look,” I said, “when the Sioux hunt, they steal up on their game, or they ride around the stupid, slow buffalo. They come so close that a child cannot miss. But the Pawnees do not stand like fools to be killed. They are farther away than the calf, and they run faster. The Sioux must learn to shoot like men before they can fight like men.” I went on: “When the prairie burns in the dry autumn, how do we fight the fire?”
“By starting other fires to burn against it,” he said.