by Max Brand
So said Torridon, in his despair.
And then came a voice at his ear like the flutter of the wind: “Oh, Paul, heaven forgive you if you throw yourself away for me. Your life is more than my life. If you live, my soul will watch you, dear. Paul, Paul, let me go!”
He merely clutched one of the hands that she was trying to withdraw from around him. And he drew the pistol, which he had reloaded as he rode up to her from the river. It was pitifully short in range. They could circle and kill him from a distance. But at least one bullet from it would keep Nancy from them.
The time was not long.
Now, looking over his shoulder, he saw their line extending from side to side as they rushed up on him. They had had their lesson in the killing of the two headlong young warriors, and no practiced brave would throw away a single chance of safety. They saw that their prey was in their grasp, and they were aiming at a circle in which they would net him.
The fastest horses went to either flank, surging gradually forward. The slower remained behind, and one of those was Standing Bull. Torridon felt that he could almost see that face, transformed with greedy passion.
Already the flank horses were drawing up to a level with them, and the braves in the lead, looking inward, regarded Torridon with steady glances.
Though from a distance, though in the dusk of the day, he knew them. He knew their hearts.
He turned still farther in the saddle and kissed the lips of Nancy Brett. “Nan,” he murmured, “are you ready?”
“Ready,” she said.
“I’m going to stop Ashur and make him lie down. I’ll fight from behind him as well as I can. But if they rush me . . . the first shot . . .”
“Yes,” she said. And she opened her eyes more widely, and smiled at him without a trace of fear, without a trace of regret, as though to her, dying with him was more than life with any other.
So, in an agony of grief and of love, he looked into her eyes.
A rifle rang. A wild yell burst from behind them, from around them. And then Nancy was crying out in a loud, excited voice.
His own eyes were dim. He had to dash his hand against them before, looking where she pointed, he saw a riderless Indian pony, and the Cheyennes scattering this way and that.
Not fast enough, it seemed, for the gun spoke again, and Torridon saw Young Crow, veteran of many a war raid, peer of all horse thieves, slayer of three Pawnees in one terrible battle, throw up his arms and topple slowly from the saddle, and then roll in a cloud of dust.
The other five, swinging their mounts around, made off as fast as their ponies would bear them from the range of this terrible marksman.
But Torridon, through the thicker shadow that lay along the ground, had marked the flash of the rifle from the top of a rising swale of ground. And he turned to it with an hysteria of joy swelling in him. He tried to speak, but only weak, foolish laughter would bubble from his lips.
Nancy could say the word for him, and her voice was like a prayer of thankfulness: “Roger Lincoln. Roger Lincoln. Thank the heaven that sent him.”
XIII
As they swept up to the swale in the golden dusk, they saw Roger Lincoln rise from the grass on his knees and beckon them down to the ground. He wasted not a word on them, but, laying one rifle beside him, he began to load a second with rapid skill, all the while staring keenly through the dim light at the Cheyennes, who had wheeled together and were apparently consulting, though well out of rifle range.
Torridon and Nancy were on the ground before the big man stood up and greeted them. Even then he had barely a word for them, and the thanks that began to pour from the lips of the girl he hushed with a wave of his hand. He went on to the stallion and stood before him, hands clasped behind his back, and brows frowning.
“Here’s the weak spot,” said Roger Lincoln, “and it’s the very spot that I thought would be strong.”
He turned with an impatient exclamation and stared at Torridon. One would have thought that he was angry with him, and Torridon said feebly: “We started with Nancy on the best pony we could get, Roger. The pinto went lame, and Ashur has been carrying us both.”
“I could see that,” Roger Lincoln said tersely. “You,” he added sharply to the girl, “get on Comanche. Comanche, stand up!”
Out of the grass rose the famous silver mare, and beside her a tall brown gelding, the very make of speed—lean-headed, long of neck, with shoulders that promised ample power and a deep barrel—sure token of wind and heart.
“Take the brown,” said Lincoln to Torridon, “and lead Ashur. We have to cool him out, and it won’t do to let him stand.”
“And what will you do, Roger?”
“I’ll run.”
Nancy was about to protest, but Torridon himself silenced her.
“Lincoln knows best,” he said. “Do as he says.”
He helped her into the saddle. Roger Lincoln already was running lightly before them at a stride and pace that seemed to show that he intended a long jaunt. And he bore due north.
As Torridon sprang into the saddle on the gelding, he heard Nancy murmuring: “He’s furiously angry, Paul. What have we done?”
“He’s not angry, I hope,” said the boy. “But he’s thinking hard about how he can get us out of this trouble. There’s nothing else in his mind. Don’t doubt Roger Lincoln. Doubt me, sooner.”
He drew on the lead rope, and Ashur broke into a stumbling trot. He was very far spent indeed, with flagging ears and dull eyes. And as Torridon rode, he kept well turned in the saddle and talked continually to the great black.
The last of life seemed to be flickering in the glazing eyes of the stallion, but under the voice of his master that light grew brighter in pulses. The jog trot, also, seemed better for him than merely standing. But still he was very far done, and his hoofs struck the ground, shambling and uncertain, as though they moved by a volition of their own and without the will of the horse. And it seemed to Torridon, as he looked back at the fine head of the horse, that, rather than abandon Ashur, he would stay behind and fight the Cheyennes, single-handed.
The Indians, in the meantime, had spread far and wide across the plain, their five figures gradually dying in the dusk of the day, while Roger Lincoln still ran before Torridon and the girl with a tireless step.
They went on for nearly an hour. The dusk thickened. The last pale glow finished in the west, and then there was darkness, utter and absolute.
Roger Lincoln whirled and stopped the cavalcade. “How is Ashur?” was his first question.
“Tired, tired, Roger. He shambles like a cow.”
The scout spent a moment at the side of the stallion and then said briefly: “He’s only half a step from a dead horse. Here’s a blanket on the ground. Can you make him lie on that?”
The stallion obeyed. Even in the darkness, Torridon could see the knees of Ashur shake violently as his weight came heavily on them.
Lincoln flung another robe over the big black. “Do you know how to rub down a horse, Paul?”
“I know.”
“Work on his shoulders and chest. I’ll take care of the hindquarters. You, Nancy, take the head. Rub with a wisp of that grass. We have to keep his circulation going.”
He made his own two horses lie down. He had chosen a little depression in the surface of the level prairie. That faint declination of the ground and the height of the grass that grew thickly around it gave them some shelter if the Indians should attempt to spot them against the skyline of the stars. But, at the same time, it allowed the Cheyennes to creep up unobserved in turn. In a way, they had blinded themselves and were now trusting to sheer chance to keep them out of the way of those keen hunters.
But even Nancy knew well enough what this work meant. With two horses they never could escape from those bloodhounds of the plains. With Ashur once again on his feet and capable of his matchless gallop, they had at least a fighting chance.
So all three fell to work in silence, only broken when Roger
Lincoln, pausing to allow his aching arms a chance of recuperation, murmured: “When I remember how Ashur pitched me into the middle of the sky . . . and then tried to catch me with his teeth . . .” He laughed softly. And then he added: “But that shaking up was worthwhile. I never would have known you, Paul, except for it.”
This was all he said by way of welcoming them. Nancy, from the first, might have been a figure of wood to him, so little attention did he pay to her, but gradually she came to understand. All the heart of that hero of the frontier was bent upon the great task before him. He had no time for amenities. But all the more strongly she began to feel that every drop of blood in his veins was given to the task he had undertaken. He would die most willingly to do the thing he had in hand.
“Hush,” whispered Roger Lincoln suddenly. It was the ghost of a hiss, rather than a word.
They stopped working. Dimly Torridon saw Lincoln reach for his rifle and gradually bring it into position. He himself drew his pistol. They waited endless moments with thundering hearts. Then something stirred through the grass, and against the stars, not ten yards from them, Torridon saw two riders looming, the faint night light glistening on their balanced rifles. But when he raised his pistol, a hand of iron gripped his arm. He waited. For an eternity, the two Indians sat their horses side-by-side. Torridon could see them turning their heads. They were so near that he could hear the swish of the rising wind through the tails of their horses. And he prayed with all his might that none of the horses might make a sound, a snort, or the least noise of tearing at the grass.
That prayer was granted. Softly as they had come, the pair of ghostly forms moved away again. And at an almost mute signal, the fugitives resumed their work on the stallion.
It seemed to Torridon’s trembling touch that the flabby texture of the shoulder muscles had been changing—that the old feeling, like cables of India rubber, was beginning to return to them.
He whispered softly to Roger Lincoln: “I think Ashur could go on now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Almost.”
“Make sure if you can.”
Torridon whispered.
At the mere hiss of sound, the black stallion jerked up his head from the hands of Nancy. “Yes!” Torridon said joyously.
They stood back, and, at Torridon’s murmured command, the stallion rose. The other two horses got up, unbidden, and it seemed now to Paul Torridon that they had risen from the warm, secure darkness of the grass to stand among the very stars. Surely someone of those prowling Cheyennes could not fail to see them.
Roger Lincoln was speaking quietly: “The whole crew of Cheyennes are spilled around us over the plain. They may stumble on us in the dark, and, if they do, nothing can keep them from cutting our throats. I think those red men see in the dark, like cats. But, in the meantime, they’re spreading their nets for us. I propose to head back straight south, march at a walk for a couple of hours, and then swing toward the west for an hour, then back again toward the north. We may be running our heads into the lion’s mouth. If you don’t agree to this, we’ll try something else. But I think that by this time you’d find more of them to the north than to the south.”
It seemed almost rashly bold counsel to Torridon, but he dared not question the wisdom of Roger Lincoln, so often proved—and in times all as perilous as this one. He merely murmured to Nancy: “Have you strength to go on?”
“For days and days,” she said. “It’s no longer terrible . . . it’s a glorious game.”
It stunned Torridon to hear her. She, slender as a child and hardly larger, was making of this a game, while his own nerves were chafed to the breaking point.
But he believed her. There was the wavering note of ecstasy in that whisper of hers. And, after all, she came of wild blood, strong blood—the blood of the clan of Brett.
He remembered them now, like so many pictures of giants, striding across his mind, and he told himself that if she lacked their physical size, all the more heart was hers. So she had borne herself among the Cheyennes at the village cheerfully, with a high head, smiling in their faces. And Torridon felt himself growing smaller and smaller in his soul. Roger Lincoln had a right to such a woman as this. But he, Paul Torridon, what claim had he?
They led their horses. Comanche was blanketed lest her silver coat should reach the eye of the enemy, and so they started on that southward march.
XIV
It was an evil time for reflections of any kind. They marched steadily to the south, Lincoln first, Nancy next, and Torridon as the rear guard, his pistol in his hand. Ashur undoubtedly was recovering from the terrible strain of his journey under the double burden. His head was beginning to be held high, and, when they halted once or twice, Torridon felt the flanks and found them firm, no longer drawn by exhaustion. It doubled the courage of Torridon to note these signs.
They marched on for the greater part of an hour, and then a sudden voice cried at them: “Who is that?”
A great, harsh voice in Cheyenne!
Rising from the ground to their right, Torridon saw several Indians, faint against the stars. He himself had no voice, but that of Roger Lincoln made a growling answer: “Standing Bull. Scatter to the west. They are not in the north.”
“It is Standing Bull,” one of the Indians said in a plainly audible voice.
“How could it be?” said another. “I left Standing Bull only a little while ago, and he was on a fresh horse. Why should he be walking now?”
“Mount,” said the soft voice of Roger Lincoln.
And the three of them were instantly in the saddle. The moment Torridon was on the back of the stallion he knew that once more all was well with the great black horse.
“Standing Bull!” called one of the Cheyennes.
Roger Lincoln rode calmly on, still at a walk.
“Look! Look!” cried the Cheyenne who as yet had not spoken. “That is the great horse of White Thunder. There is no other in the world with a neck and head like that!”
Torridon had had a flash of the outline against the stars, and the Indians charged with a yell the next instant. He had a glimpse of Nancy slipping forward on the neck of her horse. He saw the long rifle of Lincoln glimmer at his shoulder, but for his own part he had something better than a rifle to work with. Light in hand, easily aimed, he was as confident of the pistol as though he held two lives in his palm. And a sort of wild ecstasy ran through Torridon. He never had felt it before, but it was as though Indian blood had stolen into his veins, for, swerving the big stallion to the right, he drove him straight at the charging men.
He fired—a tossing head of a horse received the bullet, and down went pony and rider—the Cheyenne with a whoop of rage and dismay. He fired again, and there was an answering half-stifled yell of pain.
There were five in the party. They split to either side before this death-dealing magician.
“White Thunder!” he heard the cry. “The Sky People are fighting at his side!”
And they scattered over the plain.
Torridon found Ashur galloping on, like a set of springs beneath him. Roger Lincoln was ranging on his left side, Nancy on his right. And vaguely he was aware that the great Roger Lincoln had missed his target with the rifle. A long tongue of flame had spurted from the muzzle of the gun, but of the five Cheyennes, only two had fallen.
“Northwest, northwest!” called Lincoln, and swung his horse in that direction.
No doubt the Cheyennes would spread the report that the party was trying to drive south.
Lincoln pulled down from a gallop—a steady jog that would shuffle the miles behind them without exhausting the horses. Plainly he expected more trouble when the morning came, if not before.
But all through that night there was not a sound of a Cheyenne; there was not a sight of them. The gray of the dawn came. They saw one another as black silhouettes. Then features became visible. But first of all they regarded the horses. Ashur, wonderfully recovered, seemed as light as a feather.
Comanche was in fine fettle, too, but the gelding that Roger Lincoln rode plainly showed the strain under which it had been traveling. There was now the weak link in the chain.
They came to a thin rivulet. There was only a trickle of water, but they found a fairly deep pool, and there they halted. Much work lay before them before they gained the safety of Fort Kendry.
They washed the legs and bellies of the horses, the men doing the labor while Nancy was sharply commanded by Lincoln to lie down on a blanket that he stretched out for her. Flat on her back he made her lie, her arms stretched wide.
She smiled for a time at the gray sky. A moment later her eyes were closed in sleep.
Torridon, worried, would have wakened her, but Lincoln forbade it.
“If we could make Fort Kendry today,” he said, “it would be worthwhile. But we cannot. It’s a long march. She has to rest.”
“The Cheyennes will never rest on this trail,” Torridon assured him. “They’ll ride on it like madmen. Roger, they’ve had six men shot down, and four of them, I think, are dead or nearly dead. Their pride will be boiling.”
“They’ll never stop,” agreed Lincoln, “and they’ll never rest as long as they can make their horses stagger on. But we can’t go on at this rate, unless we determine to leave Nancy behind us. Help me make a shade over her eyes. Let her sleep as long as she will.”
Over two ramrods and a stick they stretched a blanket, and in that shadow Nancy still slept while the sun rose higher and the world was drenched in white, hot light.
The brown gelding and the mare were lying down. Ashur was busily cropping the grass. And the two men, withdrawing to a little knoll from which they could sweep the plain to a distance, admired the stallion.
“Look at him,” said Roger Lincoln. “You can’t see more than the shadow of his ribs. The work that would have killed two ordinary horses was simply a good little work-out for him. There never will be another like him, Torridon. Never in this world.”
Torridon agreed.
