Much as the Bat yearned to steep his hands in the gore of Papin, yet the exigencies of the girl’s escape made it impossible now, as he feared pursuit. On the mountain-ridge they stopped, watching for the pursuing party from the Fort, but the Cheyennes swarmed around and evidently Papin was perturbed.
So they watched and talked, and fondled each other, the fierce Cheyenne boy and Minataree girl—for she proved to be of that tribe—and they were married by the ancient rites of the ceremony of the Fastest Horse.
Shortly the tribe moved away to its wintering-grounds, the young couple following after. The Bat lacked the inclination to stop long enough to murder Papin; he deferred that to the gray future, when the “Mid-day Sun” did not warm him so.
As they entered the lodges, they were greeted with answering yells, and the sickening gossip of his misadventure at Laramie was forgotten when they saw his willing captive. The fierce old women swarmed around, yelling at Seet-se-be-a in no complimentary way, but the fury of possible mothers-in-law stopped without the sweep of the Bat’s elk-horn pony whip.
Before many days there was a new tepee among the “Red Lodges,” and every morning Seet-se-be-a set a lance and shield up beside the door, so that people should know by the devices that the Bat lived there.
V. “The Kites and the Crows”
The Bat had passed the boy stage. He was a Chis-chis-chash warrior now, of agile body and eager mind. No man’s medicine looked more sharply after his physical form and shadow-self than did the Bat’s; no young man was quicker in the surround; no war-pony could scrabble to the lariat ahead of his in the races. He had borne more bravely in the sun-dance than all others, and those who had done the ceremony of “smoking his shield” had heard the thick bull’s-hide promise that no arrow or bullet should ever reach the Bat. He lost the contents of his lodge at the game of the plum-stones—all the robes that Seet-se-be-a had fleshed and softened, but more often his squaw had to bring a pack-pony down to the gamble and pile it high with his winnings. He was much looked up to in the warrior class of the Red Lodges, which contained the tried-out braves of the Cheyenne tribe; moreover old men—wise ones—men who stood for all there was in the Chis-chis-chash, talked to him occasionally out of their pipes, throwing measuring glances from under lowering brows in his direction to feel if he had the secret Power of the Eyes.