The Indian boys were plunging into the river when Erskine appeared at
the opening of the old chief's tent next morning, and when they came out
icicles were clinging to their hair. He had forgotten the custom and he
shrugged his shoulders at his mother's inquiring look. But the next
morning when Crooked Lightning's son Black Wolf passed him with a
taunting smile he changed his mind.
"Wait!" he said. He turned, stripped quickly to a breech-clout, pointed
to 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 the
water like the arrow that he was. At the beech he whipped about to meet
the angry face of his competitor ten yards behind. Half-way back he was
more than twenty yards ahead when he heard a strangled cry. Perhaps it
was a ruse to cover the humiliation of defeat, but when he saw bucks
rushing for the river-bank he knew that the icy water had brought a
cramp to Black Wolf, so he turned, caught the lad by his topknot, towed
him shoreward, dropped him contemptuously, and stalked back to his tent.
The girl Early Morn stood smiling at her lodge and her eyes followed his
white 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 and
dressed, and to the astonishment of the tribe emerged from his tent and
walked firmly about the village until he found Crooked Lightning.
"You would have Black Wolf chief," he said. "Very well. We shall see who
can show the better right--your son or White Arrow"--a challenge that sent
Crooked Lightning to brood awhile in his tent, and then secretly to
consult 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 Spirit
had made revelations to him alone. What manner of man was he, questioned
the boy--did he have ponies and pelts and jerked meat?
"He is poor," said the chief. "He has only a wife and children and the
tribe feeds him."
White Arrow himself grunted--it was the first sign of his old life
stirring 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 game
and 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 game
away."
"Crooked Lightning has found much favor with him, and in turn with the
others, so that I have not thought it wise to tell Crooked Lightning
that he must go. He has stirred up the young men against me--and against
you. They were waiting for me to die." The boy looked thoughtful and the
chief waited. He had not reached the aim of his speech and there was no
need 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 whole
village knew what was in the wind. Should it be a horse-race first?
Crooked Lightning looked at the boy's thoroughbred and shook his
head--Indian ponies would as well try to outrun an arrow, a bullet, a
hurricane.
A foot-race? The old chief smiled when Crooked Lightning shook his head
again--no brave in the tribe even could match the speed that gave the lad
his name. The bow and arrow, the rifle, the tomahawk? Perhaps the
pole-dance of the Sioux? The last suggestion seemed to make Crooked
Lightning angry, for a rumor was that Crooked Lightning was a renegade
Sioux and had been shamed from the tribe because of his evasion of that
same pole-dance. Old Kahtoo had humor as well as sarcasm. Tomahawks and
bows 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 itself
deeper into the tree, and his arrows flashed faster and were harder to
pull out. He had the power but not the practice, and Black Wolf won with
great 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 his
bow 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 for
to-day."
The first snow fell that night, and at dawn the two lads started
out--each with a bow and a dozen arrows. Erskine's woodcraft had not
suffered and the night's story of the wilderness was as plain to his
keen eyes as a printed page. Nothing escaped them, no matter how minute
the signs. Across the patch where corn had been planted, field-mice had
left tracks like stitched seams. Crows had been after crawfish along the
edge of the stream and a mink after minnows. A muskrat had crossed the
swamp beyond. In the woods, wind-blown leaves had dotted and dashed the
snow like a stenographer's notebook. Here a squirrel had leaped along,
his tail showing occasionally in the snow, and there was the
four-pointed, triangle-track of a cottontail. The wide-spreading toes of
a coon had made this tracery; moles had made these snowy ridges over
their galleries, and this long line of stitched tracks was the trail of
the fearless skunk which came to a sudden end in fur, feathers, and
bones where the great horned owl had swooped down on him, the only
creature that seems not to mind his smell. Here was the print of a
pheasant's wing, and buds and bits of twigs on the snow were the
scattered remnants of his breakfast. Here was the spring hole that never
freezes--the drinking-cup for the little folks of the woods. Here a hawk
had been after a rabbit, and the lengthening distance between his
triangles showed how he had speeded up in flight. He had scudded under
thick 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, or
buffalo.
And then an hour later he heard a snort from a thick copse and the crash
of an unseen body in flight through the brush, and he loped after its
tracks.
Black Wolf came in at sunset with a bear cub which he had found feeding
apart from its mother. He was triumphant, and Crooked Lightning was
scornful when White Arrow appeared empty-handed. His left wrist was
bruised 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 a
whoop 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. He
horned me," and went into his tent.
The bruised wrist and wounded forearm made no matter, for the rifle was
the 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 he
noted now that the Indian girl was always an intent observer of each
contest, and that she always went swiftly back to her tent to tell his
deeds to the white woman within.
There was a feast and a dance that night, and Kahtoo could have gone to
his fathers and left the lad, young as he was, as chief, but not yet was
he ready, and Crooked Lightning, too, bided his time.