He removed the latter’s weapons—rifle, revolver, knife—and keeping a sharp look-out against any further aggression, regained his horse. In mounting, he trod on something which crackled crisply. It was a dried and shrivelled knee-boot, from which the leg-bone still protruded. And his attention being once more attracted to these ghastly relics, it almost seemed to him that the two heads had changed their position, and were glaring at him with hideous and menacing scowl. The ravens, from a neighbouring tree, renewed their lugubrious croak, as if resentful at being so long kept away from their repulsive feast. Overhead, the sky grew blacker and blacker, and the snowflakes whirled round the horseman as he emerged from the gloom of that grisly brake.
“There’s more carrion for you, you black devils,” he muttered, apostrophising the ravens. “Heavens! What had I to do with the brute’s unwashen ‘pardners’? If I’m to be held answerable for the scalp of every idiot who goes to sleep with both eyes shut, I’ve got my work cut out for me. Ha, ha! The red brother comes in mighty convenient sometimes.”
Thus musing, he had gained the crossing of a mountain torrent, at the entrance to a long, narrow cañon, whose sheer, overhanging walls were gloomy and forbidding, even by the light of day. Dismounting, he took out the scalp, and wrapping it round a stone, hurled it away into a deep, swirling pool, whose centre was free from ice. The dead man’s weapons followed suit.
“There! Pity to throw away good serviceable arms, but—‘Self-preservation, etc.’ I only treated the dog as he would have treated me, but I don’t want to establish a vendetta among his desperado mates with myself for its object. A lot the scoundrels care about such a plea as self-defence. No. Let them credit the reds with the job.”
The rising gale shrieked wildly overhead, but within the black walls of the cañon the wayfarer was entirely protected from its force. The snowflakes, large and fleecy, now fell thickly about him. And now there was exultation in place of the former anxiety in his glance as ever and anon he studied the dark and overcast sky.
“Better and better. Nothing like snow for covering up a trail, and by the time it’s open again there’ll be not much left of yon carrion. Up, Satanta! We’ll soon be home now.”
The black steed arched his splendid neck responsive to his master’s voice. And his said master, muffling himself closer in his buffalo robe, settled himself down in his saddle with every confidence in the ability of one or other, or both of them, to keep the right trail, even through the pitchy blackness which was now descending upon them. The driving snow, the shrieking of the gale, the howling of wolves in the dark forest, the grisly sight left behind, the stain of blood, were nothing to him who rode there—on—on through the night.