“I shall go,” Standing Bull said with a grunt of anger.
“Stay where you are,” said White Thunder. “When Young Willow is angry, her talk is like the throwing of knives. Don’t pay any attention to it. We never do.”
“I am going to get some wood,” said Young Willow. “But today I have said something that a wise man would remember.”
She came hurrying from the lodge, and behind her was the laughter of White Thunder. Rushing Wind prepared to enter.
V
He found on entering that White Thunder and the girl were still chuckling over the departure of Young Willow in a rage, while Standing Bull sat impassively in the place of honor in the lodge, propped luxuriously against a backrest, his gaze fixed upon vacancy.
It came to the mind of Rushing Wind that there might be much in the warning that had just been given to White Thunder by the squaw, but both the girl and the white man seemed oblivious of any such thought. Rushing Wind greeted all within the house with ceremony. He was given a place. Nancy Brett, smiling as a hostess should, offered him meat from the great pot in the center of the teepee, and he ate of it, as in duty bound. Then a pipe was passed to him and he accepted it, after White Thunder had lit it. Standing Bull inquired after the fortune of the young brave in the prairie, and the latter said simply: “I saw many days of riding, and many days of prairie, and many days of blue sky. But I found nothing but buffalo.”
“Long journeys make good warriors,” said Standing Bull sententiously. “I, before long, if the medicine is good, will start against the Crows. I shall remember you, Rushing Wind.”
The young brave heard with eyes that sparkled. He was working his way up through the crowd of the younger warriors. Such a patron as White Thunder—and now the kindness of Standing Bull—promised him a future to which the doors stood wide.
“Now,” said White Thunder, “you are very welcome to us, Rushing Wind. But is there any special reason why you have come to me?”
“My father is sick,” said the young Cheyenne sadly. “It must be a very strong spirit that is harming him, because now there are ten rattles being shaken in his lodge, and still he grows sicker and sicker.”
White Thunder rose at once. “Come,” he said. “I shall go with you. I heard that your father would not have me near him. Otherwise, I should have offered to help long before.”
“His mind is gone now,” said the son, “and his eyes are in the other world. He cannot help but let you treat him.”
They came to the lodge and at the entrance flap the steam and heat and smoke from the interior boiled out into the face of Torridon. Inside, there was a wild tangle of figures, dancing in a crazy maze, raising a dust that thickened the haze, and chanting a howling dirge in unison.
“Listen,” said the son in admiration. “Is it not wonderful that all this medicine cannot make my father well?”
Torridon stepped back from the lodge. “Send those rascals away,” he said, flushing with anger. “Send them scampering. Clear every one of them out of the lodge. Then I will come in.”
Rushing Wind was in desperate woe at this request. He was fairly overcome with anguish at the thought that he might offend one of the great doctors now at work in the lodge.
He said eagerly to Torridon: “If one gun is good, two guns are better . . . if one doctor is good, two doctors are better.”
Torridon was too excited and angry to listen to this reasonable protest. He exclaimed again: “Send them out, Rushing Wind, or I’ll turn my back on your lodge! Send them out. I’ll tell you this much . . . they’re killing your father as surely as if they were firing bullets into him.”
Rushing Wind rolled his eyes wildly. But at length he hurried into the lodge and after a few moments the doctors began to issue forth, each puffing with his late efforts, each followed by a woman loaded down with rattles and animal masks, and other contraptions. They strode off, all turning baleful eyes upon Torridon as they went by. He had offended them before merely by the greatness of his superior medicine. But now he had interfered directly with their business, and they would never forget it, as he well knew.
He was in a gloomy state as he entered the lodge. Life in the Cheyenne community was dangerous enough already, but the professional hatred of these clever rascals would make it doubly so.
The women were on their feet when he came in, looking at him with doubt, awe, and fear in their eyes. He crossed at once to the sick man and saw that he was at death’s door. Most mightily, then, did Torridon wish that he possessed some real knowledge of medicine. Instead, he had only common sense to fall back upon to save this dying man.
He ordered Rushing Wind and the squaws to roll up the sides of the lodge and to open the entrance flap. There was a groan in response. The air, they told him, was fairly rich and reeking with purifications and charms. All these were now to be dissipated. All these high-priced favors were to be blown away.
He was adamant. The tent was opened and fresher wind blew the foulness away. Yet it was very hot. The sun was relentless. The breeze hardly stirred. Torridon made up his mind at once.
“The underwater spirits,” he said to Rushing Wind, “might help me to carry away the evil spirit that is in your father. He must be carried at once to the side of the river. Put two backrests together and then we will carry him. Let the women come after. They should bring robes, food, and plenty of skins to put up a little tent. Let this be done quickly.”
It was done quickly, with many frantic glances at the man of the lodge, as though they feared the veteran warrior would give up the ghost at any moment. Rushing Wind took the head of the litter. Torridon took the feet—and light enough was their burden. For the fever had wasted poor Black Beaver until he was a ghost of his powerful self.
They bore him from the camp and then up the river to a considerable distance, so that the merry sounds of the boys at the swimming pool floated only dimly to their ears, like the broken songs of birds. Here Torridon chose a place high on the bank between two lofty trees. The tent was put up with speed and skill. Cut branches made the foundation on which the bed was laid, and Black Beaver was made warm and comfortable.
He had begun to roll his head from side to side and mutter. Sometimes the muttering rose to a harsh shout.
“He is dying,” the younger squaw said, and fell on her knees beside the bed.
“Peace,” said Torridon, who was reasonably sure that she was right. “The underwater spirits are now trying to take the evil out of him. That is why he shouts and turns. Because there is a battle going on in his heart.”
He next asked what had been eaten by Black Beaver, and was told that for three days the warrior had refused everything, even the tenderest bits of roasted venison.
No wonder he was failing rapidly—a three-day fast, a burning fever, and a lodge choked with foul air and smoke!
Torridon had a broth cooked for the sick man. Then the head of Black Beaver was supported, and the broth poured down his throat. In the end the brave lay back with a groan. His eyes closed. Torridon thought that death actually had come. Silence fell on the watching group. But presently all could see that the sick man’s breast was rising and falling gently.
“That is good,” whispered Rushing Wind. “He sleeps. Oh, White Thunder, how mighty is your medicine. The others are nothing. All the other doctors are the rattling of dead leaves. You, alone, have power.”
Torridon sat down, cross-legged, under a tree and looked at the hushed squaws, at the tense face of Rushing Wind, and wondered at himself. All his amateur attempts at cures had been strangely successful. Those powerful frames of the Indians, toughened by a constant life in the open, seemed to need nothing but a quiet chance and no disturbance in order to fight off every ill that flesh is heir to. The torments of the doctors, felt Torridon, had killed more than unassisted disease could have done.