“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.