XI
The Indian boys were plunging into the river when Erskine appeared atthe opening of the old chief's tent next morning, and when they came outicicles were clinging to their hair. He had forgotten the custom and heshrugged his shoulders at his mother's inquiring look. But the nextmorning when Crooked Lightning's son Black Wolf passed him with ataunting smile he changed his mind.
"Wait!" he said. He turned, stripped quickly to a breech-clout, pointedto a beech down and across the river, challenging Black Wolf to a race.Together they plunged in and the boy's white body clove through thewater like the arrow that he was. At the beech he whipped about to meetthe angry face of his competitor ten yards behind. Half-way back he wasmore than twenty yards ahead when he heard a strangled cry. Perhaps itwas a ruse to cover the humiliation of defeat, but when he saw bucksrushing for the river-bank he knew that the icy water had brought acramp to Black Wolf, so he turned, caught the lad by his topknot, towedhim shoreward, dropped him contemptuously, and stalked back to his tent.The girl Early Morn stood smiling at her lodge and her eyes followed hiswhite figure until it disappeared. His mother had built a fire for him,and the old chief looked pleased and proud.
"My spirit shall not pass," he said, and straightway he rose anddressed, and to the astonishment of the tribe emerged from his tent andwalked firmly about the village until he found Crooked Lightning.
"You would have Black Wolf chief," he said. "Very well. We shall see whocan show the better right--your son or White Arrow"--a challenge that sentCrooked Lightning to brood awhile in his tent, and then secretly toconsult the prophet.
Later the old chief talked long to White Arrow. The prophet, he said,had been with them but a little while. He claimed that the Great Spirithad made revelations to him alone. What manner of man was he, questionedthe boy--did he have ponies and pelts and jerked meat?
"He is poor," said the chief. "He has only a wife and children and thetribe feeds him."
White Arrow himself grunted--it was the first sign of his old lifestirring within him.
"Why should the Great Spirit pick out such a man to favor?" he asked.The chief shook his head.
"He makes muzzi-neen for the young men, shows them where to find gameand they find it."
"But game is plentiful," persisted the lad.
"You will hear him drumming in the woods at night."
"I heard him last night and I thought he was a fool to frighten the gameaway."
"Crooked Lightning has found much favor with him, and in turn with theothers, so that I have not thought it wise to tell Crooked Lightningthat he must go. He has stirred up the young men against me--and againstyou. They were waiting for me to die." The boy looked thoughtful and thechief waited. He had not reached the aim of his speech and there was noneed to put it in words, for White Arrow understood.
"I will show them," he said quietly.
When the two appeared outside, many braves had gathered, for the wholevillage knew what was in the wind. Should it be a horse-race first?Crooked Lightning looked at the boy's thoroughbred and shook hishead--Indian ponies would as well try to outrun an arrow, a bullet, ahurricane.
A foot-race? The old chief smiled when Crooked Lightning shook his headagain--no brave in the tribe even could match the speed that gave the ladhis name. The bow and arrow, the rifle, the tomahawk? Perhaps thepole-dance of the Sioux? The last suggestion seemed to make CrookedLightning angry, for a rumor was that Crooked Lightning was a renegadeSioux and had been shamed from the tribe because of his evasion of thatsame pole-dance. Old Kahtoo had humor as well as sarcasm. Tomahawks andbows and arrows were brought out. Black Wolf was half a head shorter,but stocky and powerfully built. White Arrow's sinews had strengthened,but he had scarcely used bow and tomahawk since he had left the tribe.His tomahawk whistled more swiftly through the air and buried itselfdeeper into the tree, and his arrows flashed faster and were harder topull out. He had the power but not the practice, and Black Wolf won withgreat ease. When they came to the rifle, Black Wolf was out of the game,for never a bull's-eye did White Arrow miss.
"To-morrow," said the old chief, "they shall hunt. Each shall take hisbow and the same number of arrows at sunrise and return at sundown....The next day they shall do the same with the rifle. It is enough forto-day."
The first snow fell that night, and at dawn the two lads startedout--each with a bow and a dozen arrows. Erskine's woodcraft had notsuffered and the night's story of the wilderness was as plain to hiskeen eyes as a printed page. Nothing escaped them, no matter how minutethe signs. Across the patch where corn had been planted, field-mice hadleft tracks like stitched seams. Crows had been after crawfish along theedge of the stream and a mink after minnows. A muskrat had crossed theswamp beyond. In the woods, wind-blown leaves had dotted and dashed thesnow like a stenographer's notebook. Here a squirrel had leaped along,his tail showing occasionally in the snow, and there was thefour-pointed, triangle-track of a cottontail. The wide-spreading toes ofa coon had made this tracery; moles had made these snowy ridges overtheir galleries, and this long line of stitched tracks was the trail ofthe fearless skunk which came to a sudden end in fur, feathers, andbones where the great horned owl had swooped down on him, the onlycreature that seems not to mind his smell. Here was the print of apheasant's wing, and buds and bits of twigs on the snow were thescattered remnants of his breakfast. Here was the spring hole that neverfreezes--the drinking-cup for the little folks of the woods. Here a hawkhad been after a rabbit, and the lengthening distance between histriangles showed how he had speeded up in flight. He had scudded underthick briers and probably had gotten away. But where was the big game?For two hours he tramped swiftly, but never sign of deer, elk, bear, orbuffalo.
And then an hour later he heard a snort from a thick copse and the crashof an unseen body in flight through the brush, and he loped after itstracks.
Black Wolf came in at sunset with a bear cub which he had found feedingapart from its mother. He was triumphant, and Crooked Lightning wasscornful when White Arrow appeared empty-handed. His left wrist wasbruised and swollen, and there was a gash the length of his forearm.
"Follow my tracks back," he said, "until you come to the kill." With awhoop two Indians bounded away and in an hour returned with a buck.
"I ran him down," said White Arrow, "and killed him with the knife. Hehorned me," and went into his tent.
The bruised wrist and wounded forearm made no matter, for the rifle wasthe weapon next day--but White Arrow went another way to look for game.Each had twelve bullets. Black Wolf came in with a deer and one bullet.White Arrow told them where they could find a deer, a bear, a buffalo,and an elk, and he showed eight bullets in the palm of his hand. And henoted now that the Indian girl was always an intent observer of eachcontest, and that she always went swiftly back to her tent to tell hisdeeds to the white woman within.
There was a feast and a dance that night, and Kahtoo could have gone tohis fathers and left the lad, young as he was, as chief, but not yet washe ready, and Crooked Lightning, too, bided his time.