The two talked later on about the matter and Roka fully agreed with Xingudan that the command of Heraka should be disregarded. Red Cloud, the great Mahpeyalute, would support them in it and, in any event, it was quite sure that the village itself would not allow it.
Will did not awake until the afternoon, and then he yawned and stretched himself a minute or two between the warm covers before he opened his eyes. He saw a low fire of big coals burning in the centre of the lodge, neutralizing the intensely cold air that came in where the door of the lodge was left open for a foot or more.
He surmised from the angle of the sun's rays that the day was far advanced. Pemmican, strips of venison and some corn cakes lay by the edge of the fire and he knew that good old Inmutanka had left them there for him. He began to feel hungry. He would rise in a few minutes and warm the bread and meat by the fire, but he first listened to a chant that came from the outside, low at first, though swelling gradually. His attention was specially attracted, because he caught the sound of his own name in a recurring note. At length he made out the song, something like this:
Lo, in the night the great bears came
Our horses they would crush and devour.
Mighty were they in their size and strength
And hunger fierce and terrible drove them on.
Bullets we had none, only the edge of steel and bone,
But the fires of Waditaka filled their souls with fear,
Waditaka, the wise, the brave son of Inmutanka,
Without him our herd would have been lost, and we, too.
Waditaka, the valiant and wise, showed us the way.
Young, but his arrow sings true, his lance strikes deep,
Waditaka, the thoughtful, the bold, the son of Inmutanka,
Proud we are that he belongs to us and fights for us.
Young Clarke lay back between the buffalo covers. The song, crude though it was, and without rhyme or metre in the Indian fashion, gave him a strange and deep thrill. It was in just such manner that the Greeks chanted the praises of some hero who had saved them from great disaster, or who had done a mighty deed against dragons. From his early reading came visions of Hercules and Theseus, of Perseus and Bellerophon. But he did not put himself with such champions. He was merely serving a primitive little village, carried by its primitive state farther back than that world in which the more or less legendary Greek heroes lived.
But it was pleasant, wonderfully pleasant, to hear the chant. This was his world and to know, for a time at least, that he was first among the people, was very grateful to young ears. Listening a while he rose, dressed, warmed his food, and ate it with the appetite of a young lion.