The third day he found the stream diminishing rapidly in size. And before noon he came to another forking. Once more he paused to consider his course. At the junction of the two streams high water had carved off the point of land and left there a little triangular island, with one of two trees supported on it, a willow, and an oak, half of whose roots had been washed bare, so that the trunk sagged perceptibly to the north and seemed in danger of being carried away in the floods of the next winter.
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.