Chapter VIII: Rising Wolf

Southward, astride of the Rocky Mountains, ranged the Absarokas, the Sparrowhawks, who were known to the whites as the Crows. For a decade or so one, if not both, of the Absaroka tribes had been ruled by a mulatto adventurer Jim Beckwourth. Under his leadership the hunters were skilled in getting, the women industrious in dressing bison robes. In trade they abstained from liquor and bought guns and ammunition. They made themselves dreaded in war, stole plenty of ponies, danced for scalps beyond all numbering, and were very careful not to kill a white man. When at last Beckwourth abandoned his wives and tribe, departing for California, a rival but minor trader began to prosper among the Absaroka. He claimed to be an Absaroka, called himself the Crow, but, like Jim Beckwourth, was part negro. I think he was half negro and half Mexican. Beginning in a small way, he traded for bison robes with liquor only. As his business grew he got all the Absaroka robes, but in return the people had nothing but alcohol. So the two tribes, the richest in the west, were reduced to poverty, their pony herds became an easy prey, their warriors a mere supply of scalps for the Blackfoot raiders. The Crow brought the nation to ruin.

At this stage in the Crow's progress, the chief medicine man of the Absaroka nation came to the holy lodge and sought Rain's counsel. She advised him to get consent of his National Council, then have the Crow's wagon burned, and the man himself expelled with a price on his head lest he should venture back again. The medicine man departed, and No-man, traveling in his company, learned from him the whole advice which Rain had given in secret.

For some months No-man kept the secret, but in the ensuing winter he came into partnership with another trapper, and to him he told this story, together with many others, to illustrate the power and influence of his friends at the holy lodge.

Now does our story follow the other trapper. He was Hugh Monroe, the son of a Scots colonel and of a French-Canadian mother, born at Montreal in 1799. At the age of fourteen he joined the Blackfoot nation, and earned a title of honor--Rising Wolf.

Friends of mine who knew Rising Wolf in his age, spoke of him as not very much to look at, a little wizened old man deeply sunburned. In 1842, at the age of 43 and the height of his powers, one must think of him as the head of an Indian household, and as a leader of the glorious Blackfoot chivalry, unrivaled among horsemen, hunters, and warriors.

In August with the tribe on the march, Rising Wolf rode one day with Many Horses, Head Chief of the Blackfoot nation. To him he repeated No-man's tale concerning the downfall of the Absarokas, the Crow as organizing their destruction, their chief medicine man as pilgrim to the holy lodge and Rain's advice for the deliverance of the people. Many Horses was not pleased. The rescue of his foes the Absarokas was not his policy or that of the Blackfoot Council. Rain, a Blackfoot woman, had done a grievous injury to her tribe.

To Rising Wolf, Rain seemed of less importance, not to be taken quite so seriously. She and her husband Storm were doubtless rogues, but not likely to influence events or to become a factor in Indian politics.

"I don't know," said Many Horses. "The faith of the people makes this woman and her husband powerful. Get me proof that they are frauds, and I can put a stop to any further mischief."

"Shall I go and see for myself?" asked Rising Wolf.

"Yes. But do not let the people think that I am sending you, or have a hand in this. An embassy to the holy lodge would give it too much importance."

"Rain's brother, Heap-of-dogs, wants me to dine with him."

The big chief chuckled. "A young man," said he, "newly admitted to serve in the Camp Police. The impudence! Why, all the chiefs' wives, including mine, would take the warpath. If you refused their feasts and dined with this young upstart, they'd dance your scalp, my friend. Take him as guide to the holy lodge, but as you love me, do not dine with him."

"I only said I'd think it over," answered Rising Wolf. "Indeed, he bores me. Haven't you noticed, Many Horses, that a young man or a young woman who goes in for being excessively beautiful, as this young spark does, is always the very dullest company? It's the plain fellows like you and me who have to be attractive with humor, wit or skill, learning or valor."

"How you do paint yourself!" The great chief loved a chance of poking fun at his counselor. "Now, don't blush. Your gifts are most becoming."

"Let me off, or I'll turn flatterer and sicken you. This Heap-of-dogs, Rain's brother, is really beautiful."

"A fop, as you say--a fop."

Rain says that white people will not understand her brother's name--Heap-of-dogs--unless it is explained.

So you must know that in Red Indian custom when a mother carries her new born baby into the sunshine, she looks about her, and the first thing she sees amusing or unusual suggests a name for her child.

Thus when Rain's mother, Thunder Feather, had been delivered of her firstborn child, her son, she went with him to the lodge door, and looked out at the sun-lit camp. And as it happened, the Stony Indians, come upon a visit, were pitching their tipis close by the tribal camp. But though the tribes were at peace, the dogs were at war, engaged in battle, all of a writhing heap.

So did Thunder Feather name her son Heap-of-dogs.

Rain's brother was strikingly handsome, a showy horseman, a dandy, a leader of fashion. Moreover, he shone with several different kinds of reflected glory, as son-in-law to a rich chief, as brother to the famous prophetess, and presently as guide to Rising Wolf. For this occasion he sported the top hat of a paleface chief, from which he had cut out the crown to use the thing as a sort of flowerpot from whence rose a bush of scalps. From his rump waved the tail of a horse. Large shaving glasses formed his necklace, which blazed in the sunshine, visible for miles to friends and enemies. As to the design of his face-paint, even Blackfoot society was surprised, ladies of our own tribes would have fainted with envy, and clocks would have stopped at the sight.

"Take off those mirrors," said Rising Wolf. "I don't want to be ambushed and scalped."

When this was done, they started, each with a wife to drive the baggage ponies and make camp, while the two men scouted ahead and killed meat for each day's provisions. They rode across the Rockies by way of Crow's Nest Pass, they forded the Upper Columbia below Lake Windermere, and they threaded the little trail up Toby Creek, this in the first week of a bright September. So, nearing the sources of Toby Creek in the heart of the Selkirk Range, they cantered through glades of bunch grass, by orchards of wild fruit and stately pine woods, with vistas now and then of glaciers at the head of the valley and snow-crowned walls against clear azure. The heights were bathed in a splendor of sunshine, but the vale in a mist of perfume where the organ of falling waters played for a choir of birds. The beauty of the place was overwhelming.

"You never told me," Rising Wolf complained, "that it would be like this."

"There are not words," answered Rain's brother, "or signs to tell with."

They passed through the herd, two hundred head of spotted and dappled ponies.

"We call Rain the Kutenai woman," said Heap-of-dogs, "because she likes the spotted ponies. How the herd grows!"

"Considering," answered Rising Wolf, "that every man in every tribe is a natural-born horse thief, have these ponies no fear of being run?"

"They know," said Rain's brother, "that they are the sacred herd. They expect us to get out of their way because they are important."

Now there opened out a glade commanding the head of the valley, and the eastward glaciers of the Apse. The westward glaciers were hidden by the altar hill on the right, a dark wall clothed with juniper and snow-crowned. At its base nestled the holy tipi and the guest lodge. As the custom was, the visitors dismounted, approaching the tents on foot. Both proved to be empty, but when a voice hailed them cheerily from overhead, they saw the priestess and her husband riding down the breakneck zigzag trail.

When Storm rode up and greeted him, Heap-of-dogs whispered behind his hand. "Brother Storm, there's going to be some fun."

"Rising Wolf," was Rain's greeting, "may the Sun bless you."

The white man saw in Rain's face the high cheekbones and pinched forehead of her people, free from face-paint though, aglow with health, and in a stern way almost beautiful. She moved with swift, savage grace, a creature of the wilds. Her smile was charming as she gave him welcome to her lodge, and asked Storm to make her brother comfortable. She lighted pipes for her white guest, Rising Wolf, and her brother Heap-of-dogs, and her husband Storm. Then she settled modestly in her place, on the woman's side of the hearth, confronting them.

"Certainly," the white man felt, "she has the manners of a lady, not of the conjurer, the professional charlatan."

According to Indian custom there was silence for a few minutes before they came to business. "You know my name, then?" said Rising Wolf.

Rain answered: "No-man, and my dear Storm, and Rising Wolf are the only Stonehearts in our country."

And the visitor had supposed he could pass for a Blackfoot! He had actually painted his face "for the mosquitos."

"It's much more comfortable," said Rain out loud, "in the fly season."

So she read his thoughts!

"Perhaps," he said with sharp suspicion, "you know what brings me?"

"Oh, of course." Rain counted on her fingers. "Seven suns ago, you rode with the big chief Many Horses, and you told him that my man and I are frauds."

"Rain counts coup!" cried her brother Heap-of-dogs, exultant. "Didn't I warn you?"

"So," Rising Wolf probed shrewdly, "Many Horses has sent a rider ahead to prepare you for this visit."

"Hyai yo! You think the head chief too good a sportsman!"

"I did," the white man retorted; "you read my mind."

"That is true, Rising Wolf," answered the priestess, amused by his chagrin. "You rode leading your painted war horse, who tried to plead, poor thing, that the trotting was bad for his wound."

"What do you mean?"

"That your war horse has an arrow point behind his off shoulder blade, but you mistake the lameness for cracked heel."

"The head chief said it was cracked heel, but, by Jove, you may be right! How on earth----"

"Not on earth," answered the priestess gently, "for you didn't see me riding your led horse, you didn't hear him pleading to me in his pain, you didn't remember the red stone arrow points when the Snake braves attacked you down at the Pisk'un. You will not believe until the red arrowhead works out to the skin, at Leaf Fall."

"So I'm put off," said Rising Wolf sarcastically, "until Leaf Fall for your proof!"

"My dear guest," Rain laughed at his ill-humor, "did I ask you to come? Did I seek your opinion? Will you judge me as you judged your horse?"

Rising Wolf thought deeply, and his was a quick intellect. If the Chief Many Horses had sent a messenger, the priestess might know that his charger was a piebald, lame in the off fore, but not of a red stone arrowhead behind the shoulderblade. Had the Snake warriors, who raided his camp beside the old buffalo trap, been here and told the story? Of course this must be some sort of cheap conjuring. Was Heap-of-dogs guiding Rain his sister in the sign talk, or how was the trick worked?

"Even cheap conjuring," Rain answered his unspoken thoughts once more, "is puzzling until one knows the trick."

Gentle her smile, and womanly her conduct, yet without the least offense she made him catch his breath, amazed, startled, almost frightened. Under the straight, strong brows her eyes were shadowed, but the glance was penetrating, looking right through him. By her smile she seemed to be sorry for him. And she was beautiful, pure, austere, making his lurking suspicion feel caddish.

"Many Horses is not pleased," she said, "that his enemies the Absaroka are being rescued, that the Crow is to be driven from their camps, that the fire water shall not destroy them any more. Are the Blackfeet afraid lest their enemies be fit for war? Is Many Horses frightened? Are you turned coward?"

Then Rising Wolf knew that Many Horses had sent no messenger. This witch had powers beyond all things possible.

"Poor Doggie!" she whispered. His father had called him that far back in childhood, a nickname forgotten these forty years.

"Your father," said Rain, "sends you that token."

Nobody in the West knew who his father was, but in quaint, broken English, unable to pronounce the letters l and r, "Co'on'ee Mon'oe," she said.

"Colonel Monroe," said Rising Wolf. "Where is he?"

"At the small Stoneheart town under the hill by the river where foam of the long falls rides on the salty water."

"Name the town."

"Names do not make thoughts easily," said Rain.

"What is my father's message?"

"In three suns, his spirit will pass over the Wolf Trail."

Rising Wolf jumped to his feet. "I must go quick," he cried.

"Sit down ... think. How far can you ride your animal in three suns?"

That was true.

"You would like to be with your father this evening?"

"Impossible!"

"Poor Stoneheart!" said Rain pitifully. "You refuse to see, you refuse to hear, you refuse to know. You make yourself just like a stone which cannot see, or hear, or feel, or know anything at all. So if I took you to Mont-re-al--I read the word in your mind--you would come back from the dream saying it was a dream, not real. The woman is a fraud and plays tricks. You only want to prove that you are right--and show me up. Your heart is bad to my man and to me. You fool my brother to bring you here, and think that is so clever. I am sorry for you, my poor little enemy!"

"You don't mince your words."

"I am frank to your face as you were behind my back when you told Many Horses that my man and I do our conjuring for the presents we get, the ponies."

"I saw a couple of hundred."

"We have three hundred. Take them, all of them. Four ponies will break back here when my love calls them. They are mine. The rest you shall take to the head chief as a gift to the poor of your village."

"Why didn't you do this before?"

"Why should we? Nobody before has doubted us. As you told my brother here, all other men except yourself are horse thieves. Any Indian, as he told you, caught with the sacred herd, would be burned by my people. But, as you are not a horse thief, you are safe. What! surely you are not frightened? You? who are so brave!"

"Because I'm your enemy," said Rising Wolf, "you've set a trap to get me burned!"

"My brother Heap-of-dogs shall ride ahead with my message for the Chief Many Horses. The head chief himself shall send herders to help you. Then you will be praised for the gift you bring to the poor. And you like praise."

"Damned clever," said Rising Wolf, "perfectly convincing, and devilish subtle. And why do you want to win me over?"

"Is this the moment for telling?" asked Rain. "Should we not win you first?"

"A common woman," the man was thinking, "would have bargained with her horses. She is at least a lady. And she claims that father is dying. Suppose it were true! After all, I don't think she means any harm, or that I'm frightened."

"Please," he said, "will you take me to my father?"

"Not while your heart is bad."

"Why not?"

"Because your coming would spoil your father's peace while he is dying. So I will take you in your dream to see other people until your heart is good. Who would you like to see?"

"Adventurers, fellows like me. I understand them best."

The French-Canadian mother side of Rising Wolf was very superstitious, had to be bitted severely, and reined hard lest it run away with the pawky Monroe strain in his character. Now, both his womanly intuition and his Scots intellect were leagued together against the noble pig-headed tenacity of his Indian training.

"I won't be fooled," he said all through that afternoon, while he held himself proudly aloof from Rain and haunted Storm like a peevish ghost to show his independence. Storm would tell him nothing, but went fishing with Rain's brother Heap-of-dogs. Like all good Blackfeet, Heap-of-dogs despised fish as unclean, but being a sportsman found that rainbow trouts were rather good fun. Neither Heap-of-dogs nor Storm took heed of Rising Wolf and his worries; indeed the Indian's mind was set upon his fond ambition to get Storm's golden scalp as a trophy of war. But Rain objected.

At sundown, fagged in mind and body, Rising Wolf lay down in the guest lodge bidding the squaws keep quiet while he had a nap. Afterwards he swore that he went down to the bathing pool, where Rain came behind him, placing her forefinger just between his eyes, and bidding him look at the light on the still water. "We never moved an inch." So he told the woman. "And all the time I could hear the roar of the falls. Only the sound through the pines was more like the sough of wind. It was lifting the snow as it drove across the rocks, a sort of whirling blizzard, so it was only between the gusts that I saw the old fellow up on top of the crag. The young chap was close by, small, frail, with the fringes of his buckskin shirt snapping like whip crackers. He was blown off his feet once or twice, but he scrambled up at last with a little bundle which he reached out to the man on top. It blew out on the wind, a flag, the Yankee flag, and the man waved it, shouting. Both of 'em were cheering like mad."

"Who are they?" asked Rising Wolf.

"The boy," said Rain, "is called Kit, Kit Carson, I think. The man's name is Fremont. They're sent by the Big Father to find a trail to the Oregon; but they've climbed up a peak of the World Spine to plant--they call it Old Glory! Say a prayer with me, Rising Wolf, for these men and for their flag."

"Why should I?"

"It helps them."

"To steal Oregon, eh? I'll see 'em damned first."

"Oregon," said Rain, "is here."

The snow had vanished, and they looked down at the Columbia, all flame red, snaking through lava fields. Up beyond the broken brown hills loomed blue forest, and high above that was a volcano blazing, whose immense eruption filled the sky with light, as of a burning world.

"Storm likes that," said the priestess. "So I thought it might please you. He calls the mountain Saint Helens. I don't like it at all. I think it's dreadful. The tribes on the coast are packing up smoked salmon, for a move to the next world, poor things. My man says that even the Stonehearts at Fort Vancouver are getting frightened. They call it 'Day-of-judgment.'"

"Ah! That's it," the white man was thinking; "she's got a professional manner, just like a medicine man or a war chief teaching. I wonder if the angels have a professional manner."

"If you only saw one!" said Rain's mind. "The dogs and the ponies can see. Why is this poor thing blinded by his conceit!"

"Humph!" said Rising Wolf. "Am I so bad as all that?"

"Your spirit-power," Rain answered, "is like a spent torch, which flickers, then smokes and then flares, nearly dead. Sun Spirit, help him!"

They were flashing southward, the sunset glow abreast upon their right, where violet cumuli, like mountain ranges, broke to reveal cirrii of molten ruby against clear orange sky. As they came down into the lower earth mist, that radiance glowed warmly upon the face of an adobe wall upon their left, with prickly pear bush on the parapet dark green against the upward sweep of the advancing night.

"We are in Mexico," said Rain.

In front of this wall facing the afterglow stood a long line of men on parade, at open intervals three feet apart. Ragged, unshaven, famished, they were gay with a forced cheerfulness, passing jokes one to another in derision of a group of officers, Mexicans.

"That general," said Rain, "is the wicked President Santa Ana. Years ago, in a dream like this, Storm saw him at the siege of Alamo, when Bowie, Travis, and so many heroes fell, and dear Davy Crockett."

The Mexican General Staff was attended by a squad of half-clad soldiers, who shuffled their dusty sandals, halting to order in front of each in turn of the American prisoners. To each of these captured filibusters, when his turn came, there was tendered a sack from which he was required to take one bean, and hold it up for inspection. If it proved to be a white bean, he lived. If it was a black bean, the firing party, moving in drill time, got ready, presented, loaded, fired, then left the quivering body in its blood, to shoulder arms, and march one full pace right in readiness for the next murder. The Americans were jeering at their uncouth movements.

"My man is here," said Rain. "Of course, they cannot see him. Look."

Amid the disheveled company Storm stood out clean. His golden mane and tawny dress looked crisp, fresh, strangely luminous, his face, from which the beard hairs had been plucked in the Indian manner, was that of a mighty chief, commanding, sternly beautiful as he stood wrapped in prayer. In his arms he held the prisoner next for death, supporting him. The fusillade rang out, and as the smoke cleared Rising Wolf saw the crumpled body sag down with that queer empty look he had noticed so often in men newly dead.

But the prisoner released, the man, the spirit himself, stood as before, supported in Storm's arms, rather bewildered than hurt. "It wasn't so very bad?" Storm whispered to him.

"Why," answered the American, "you don't say I'm dead?"

"There is no death," said Storm, "except for your poor body. Come away; here is your mother waiting to take you home."

Rain pointed out the prisoner next for trial, young Crittenden. "He isn't old enough to go on the war trail," she said. "A boy, and such a dear lad! O Rising Wolf, this will awaken your soul--or your soul is dead. My man and I pray for him. Oh, can't you say one little prayer?"

Crittenden drew a white bean, so Rain's prayer was answered.

"I am glad of that," said Rising Wolf. "He seems a decent lad."

Crittenden gave his white bean to the middle-aged man who stood next upon his left. "You have a wife and children," he was saying, his tongue so dried by fear that he could scarcely speak. "I haven't. I can afford to risk another chance."

"O Mighty Power," Rain cried, "O Morning Star, Son of the All-Father, help him! Help him!"

Storm came behind Crittenden, trying to guide his hand. "Rain," he shouted, "help me to guide his hand! Quick!"

Crittenden put his hand into the bag.

"Help him!" cried Rising Wolf. "Oh, I do wish I could help!"

"Your first prayer, answered!" said Rain, as Crittenden held up a white bean.

For some time after that Rising Wolf joined his wishes to the prayers of Rain and Storm for those who were murdered or for those who lived. Then Storm was left to the duty, while the priestess led the white adventurer upon another quest.

"How do you find your way?" asked Rising Wolf, as they went southward into deepening twilight, guided now for vast distances by the heights upon their left, of the white Andes.

"My secret helper," answered the priestess, "tells me the names and the places. Then I just wish, and I am there. Pray now for those in peril." The southern ocean lay beneath, lashed by an icy hurricane. Through the gray dusk loomed icebergs spectral and enormous above the black white-capped ranges of seas mountainous. There, like poor ghosts half seen amid the level driving snow, two ice-clad ships fled under bare poles eastward.

"What ships?" asked Rising Wolf.

"The _Erebus_ and the _Terror_," answered Rain, "and they are so frightened!"

The ships passed into the night, and Rain's prayer went with them.

"I always help them a little at evening prayer," she said.

But Rising Wolf was troubled. "You do a hard day's work; then travel ten thousand miles to pray for people in danger, and that when you're dead tired."

"Dead tired? Oh dear, no. Are you?"

"Well, fact is, I'm not."

"How you get things mixed up! Of course our animals are tired, which we washed, fed, watered, rode to a finish, then washed, fed, and watered all over again before we put them to rest. But we left our animals asleep. We are not the horses, but the riders, the mounted Spirits of the Heavens. We are free, we use the free will which white men talk so much about, and know so little."

"Free will? What do you mean?"

"I'm free, dear man. I will to be in a country called Tahiti, at the hut of the Queen Pomare. Look!"

The dusk was taking form within a large grass hut, where there seemed to be many persons, women, asleep on the floor. The sudden flinging open of a door filled the place with the hot splendor of a tropic day. Outside, the cocoa palms were streaming in the breeze above the coral reefs and the leaping diamond-glittering surf.

A man stood in the doorway, seen darkly against the blaze, his white uniform heavily laced, braided and hung with cords of gold across the shoulders. His gestures and his speech were French and full of studied deliberate insult, addressed to a woman who sat up on the mats, while she suckled a new-born baby at her breast. She was lithe, tawny, fierce, tigerishly regal, and in a royal rage as she stood up to confront this bully.

"Admiral," she answered him, holding out her baby that he might see, "this is the prince you have robbed of his kingdom, this is my son, the king who shall avenge me against your people. Now"--with a sweeping gesture of her arm, Pomare pointed away through the door to the sun and the leap of the crested seas--"get out!" she hissed, "or I'll have you thrown to the sharks. They love a cur. I don't."

"Poor thing!" Rain muttered. "So she has lost her kingdom after all, to the cruel Stonehearts. What do you think of that man who could bully a woman in labor?"

From Tahiti westward Rain showed her pupil the wide immensity of the Coral Sea which, like the sky at night, glitters with far-flung constellations, though these are of ring-shaped palm groves and white beach, set in a riot of surf. Beyond that gleamed the Indies; and, crossing a forest continent, they came to a bay in Sarawak where a white schooner yacht rolled in the anchorage. The white man was puzzled by Rain's Blackfoot accent, which gave a funny twist to "Rajah Brooke."

"He is the new king of all this land," said Rain. "He is ever so busy shooting robbers, saving English sailors who are war slaves of the chiefs, opening old mines of stuff called diamonds and gold, which is not to eat, or to wear, or to keep the tipi warm."

Under the poop awnings Brooke of Sarawak sat at a table writing.

"He makes the power-message every day for his old mother. Peep over his shoulder and tell me. No? Of course--you say you are a chief. But what is the use of being a chief, a gent-le-man, when nobody can see you. Oh, do look!"

Gentleman though he was, being greatly tempted, Rising Wolf took one step, and read the words to Rain. "'I breathe peace,' he writes, 'and comfort to all who obey; and wrath and fury to the evil-doer.'"

"His medicine," said Rain, "is very strong this day; but sometimes my man or I must nurse him through the fever. Now he thinks about his friend whose name is so hard to say--Captainharry Keppel. We will go, see."

In Malacca Strait they found Harry Keppel's ship, H.M.S. _Dido_, having a fight with a number of pirate junks, one being afire and sinking. "I like fights best," said Rain, "don't you?"

"But I thought you set up as a holy woman!"

"That's to help my man, and other people, but I'm really and truly bad most of the time. Storm likes you, for instance, but I've always thought you hateful."

"We never met until yesterday!"

Rain chuckled. "Why, we've looked after you for years. My Secret Helper told me I must train myself by praying for some one I hated, so I took you. Then of course I had to help that other Stoneheart, No-man, who is poison. I loathe you both--like fruits and vegetables."

They had crossed a broad haze of the midday heat, but now above the mist descried a broken sea of mountains, a storm of rock, which was called Afghanistan. Far to the left, fain in the distance rose a rock platform, old Herat. Beyond lay Persia whose king, the Shah-in-Shah, had lately laid siege with seventy thousand men, to the rock fortress. "The Afghans there," said Rain, "were yelping coyotes until the young spy came. He made them mountain lions."

"Who is the young spy?"

Eldred Pottinger was his name, but in Rain's telling the words were not much like that. While Pottinger was busy saving Herat from the Persians, a British field force had conquered Afghanistan. But there arose an Afghan chief named Akbar, who brought about a revolt against the British. It burst like a volcano, and the British leaders lost their heads. Their army was caught in the Khyber, and only one man escaped, a Doctor Brydon. Rain had held him steady on his dying horse until he crossed the Indian boundary to Fort Jellalabad. She told the story next of General Sale, and his young warriors cut off in Afghanistan, corralled by Akbar's army. During three whole moons under fire they built the walls of their stronghold; then on the ninetieth day an earthquake knocked their fortress flat, and left them at Akbar's mercy. "That," said Rain, "is when I learned what prayers can do. Oh, if you had seen the chief Havelock with his young men charge, stampeding Akbar's tribes--like dust before a cyclone!

"See, Stoneheart, yonder, far in the north, is Kohistan. There was the young spy with his regiment of the Ghoorka tribe, fighting his way southward. He was wounded and nearly dead. He had five warriors left when he came to the gates of Cabul."

"Five men!"

"Then," answered Rain, "but now! See, all along this roadside, the regiments of his Afghan army camped, asleep through the heat of the day, until his trumpets call at sundown. See here, outside this little wayside fort, are forty great chiefs and medicine men of his Council.

"Where is the young spy?"

"That shabby Afghan sitting half asleep in the shadow of the gate."

"You say he raised and leads an army?"

"Yes, these Afghan tribesmen think that he is a sort of god. He leads them against Akbar, their own king."

"This is a man indeed!"

Rain showed him the courtyard of the fort, full of poor ragged women and children, Lady Sale, the British General's wife, Lady McNaughten, the wives of many soldiers. The women of the fallen government and the dead army were all rescued, they and their children, by the spy who sat asleep there in the gateway.

"Listen!" said Rain, as they stood on the wall of the fort. Somewhere, far away in the heat haze, there was a tiny broken thread of music. First one and then another, the women and the children stirred in their sleep, awakened in sudden terror, then sat up, wondering, to listen, straining to catch the distant sound again, for an old, old Scottish melody rang softly in the cañons, "Oh, but ye've been lang a-comin'!"

Now they were all afoot, swarming across the courtyard to the gate. Lady McNaughten, rousing the spy, cried, "Major Pottinger, don't you hear? Oh, can't you hear? A band is playing somewhere!"

Pottinger rose to his feet, swaying with weariness as he stared down the pass, intent to catch the sound; and then he also heard.

"Oh, but ye've been lang a-comin'!"

Pottinger called his General Staff about him, giving brisk orders. His bugler was sounding the "Alert," then the "Assembly," and trumpet after trumpet took the echo far off into the haze.

Then the head of the British relief column came swinging round a shoulder of the cliffs, and Lady Sale ran, shouting, to join her husband.

Rain cried a little, then brushed her eyes with her sleeve. "Finished," she said. "I have worked for our dear spy three snows now, and he needs no more help." She turned upon her pupil.

"And you?" Rising Wolf felt as though Rain's eyes were burning him. "Your soul," she said, "has come alive so quickly."

They were crossing the evening westward into the night and Rain drove her lesson home to the white man's heart:

"Faith in all that is good is the soul's life, like sunshine to a plant, but doubt is the bleak wind which stops its growth, denial the frost which nips and withers it."

"I believe in you."

"The messenger is bad," she answered, "but the message is true, and He who sends it expects you to obey. Now, if I take you to your father, what sort of comfort do you bring to his bedside? Ah, you still dread death!"

"I do."

"A sore thing, parting with one's horse, eh?"

"It is all that."

"--with the animal one has ridden so hard, and loved so dearly."

"Aye, Rain. You love a horse as much as I do."

"Did it break your heart to leave your tired animal there in the guest lodge when you came with me?"

"You mean my body? No."

"See. There below us is the Atlantic, lit by the moonrise."

"So it is. Then we've been nearly round the earth. What an immense adventure!"

"And yet you grudge your father this adventure?"

"Oh, but he's dying."

"Dying into a bigger adventure than ours, in bigger and more splendid worlds. Do you grudge him that? Shame on you!"

He saw America lift above the sky line, and presently the Gulf of St. Lawrence narrowed to the river. There was the citadel of Quebec, yonder his native Montreal, the familiar maple trees, the garden, the old house with its green shutters, the open windows. "See," said Rain, "I leave you now. My dear man, Storm, is waiting, to take you to your father."

The night was hot and the windows thrown wide open, the moonlight falling through the maples cast the shadows of their delicately pointed leaves, like dark stars, on the floor and on the white bed where old Monroe lay dying.

"'For this my son,'" he said in his dream, "was dead, and is alive again, was lost, and is found. It's been such a long time, Doggie. I'm frightened, too, although you needn't tell my brother officers."

"What is it makes you frightened, sir?" asked Rising Wolf.

"To lie in the earth while the worms crawl and bite me. I can't say I like the idea, Doggie. And when they've finished, I won't be exactly nice for the Last Parade."

"I've a friend outside, sir, waiting, sort of angel, knows all about it. Will you see him?"

"Three days, Doggie, since I shaved my chin, or brushed my whiskers. I've had men flogged for less, much less."

"Draw the sheet up to your mouth, sir. There, you look fine. Storm!"

Storm knelt beside him.

"Oh, it's you!" said the old man. "But, Doggie, this is the fellow I sent to fetch you. He doesn't know a platoon from a quarter guard."

"I don't," said Storm cheerily, "but I use worm for bait."

"Hoo! What a despicable way of fishing."

"No flies," the Colonel's son explained.

"If a worm wanted," said Storm, "to eat me, and if he was old Boneyparte himself, he'd need to run like a jack rabbit, or fly like a bird before he got a bite."

The colonel nodded.

"I'm not frightened of worms, and you're no more scared of 'em than you was of Boney. They're welcome to my animal body, after I've finished with it."

"Finished with it?"

"Well, there's a natural body, and there's a spiritual body, isn't there?"

"That's quoting Authority. That's as good as Queen's Regulations."

"Better," said Storm. "Won't be monkeyed with by the War Office. I've heard soldiers growsing before now."

"Bravo! Excellent!"

"Well, the worms get the natural body, and the angels get the spiritual body."

"We shall rise in our bodies at the Last Day. That's Authority too."

"Yes, if it says 'in our animal bodies.' I've seen some I'd hate to repair if I was the carpenter."

The colonel chuckled. "Well," he said, "there's sense in that. Go on."

"Soldiers tell me," said Storm, "that each regiment has a battalion at home feeding one oversea."

"With drafts, yes."

"Yours, Colonel, if I've got it correct, sent out a lot of drafts, one time and another."

"That's true."

"Drafts from Torres Vedras, Fuentes d'Onoro, Talavera, Toulouse, Quatre Bras, Waterloo----"

"Hold on. We lost men, a lot of men in those engagements, but----"

"Drafts," said Storm. "I've met the Other Battalion, and they say they'll be jolly glad to welcome good old--well, they called you 'Old Cat's Whiskers.'"

"They did, eh? Beastly cheek!"

"They say you'll have seniority, whatever that means."

"It means taking command, I say, young Angel, or whatever you call yourself--are they on active service?"

"Yes."

"Who's the enemy?"

"Devils."

"Is it like that, Angel?" answered the colonel, radiant. "Doggie," he turned to his son, "seem's you've found a new master. Follow him, my son, when I am gone."

"I will," said Rising Wolf.

For hours he kept vigil at his father's bedside, each in his dream comforted by the other's presence, although the old man did not speak again.

Hugh Monroe thought of this night's great journey round the planet, made at a speed he reckoned of about four thousand miles an hour, by sheer will power of the woman he had slandered. He had dared to call Rain a charlatan!

He who called himself adventurer had met Kit Carson, Fremont, and Crittenden, Brooke the King of Sarawak, Harry Keppel, and greatest of them all young Eldred Pottinger the spy. Their very names were new to him. "And what am I?" he moaned, "compared with the least of these!"

His world had seemed enormous, limitless, his influence powerful, yet his own father had told him, Rising Wolf, white leader of the Blackfeet, to be Storm's dog!

Then Rising Wolf awakened from his dream, to find himself in the guest lodge, and through the open doorway saw the rose flush of the sunrise lighting the pinnacles of the Apse of Ice. Rain sat beside him, her hand upon his forehead. "Remember!" she was whispering--"remember!"

"He called me Doggie," answered Rising Wolf. "Storm's dog. I shall remember. While I live, I shall remember."