"Of course," said Rain, approving heartily.
"He said the holy tipi is a place for prayer, but you have made it an All-Thieves-Society Lodge.
"Then a lot of blind and lame Indians came to the medicine lodge for help. So He mended them.
"But when the big chiefs and medicine men saw that——"
"I see," said Rain. "If He mended the poor people for nothing, they wouldn't have to pay all their ponies and robes to be cured by the medicine men. He was spoiling the medicine business. Of course they didn't understand that He was really Morning Star, the only Son of the Big Spirit. Nobody except Scarface could ever scout the way for the people over the terrible Wolf Trail. O Scarf ace, Star of the Daybreak, Christ our Chief, lead us through the darkness upon that Path of Stars."
On the other side of the hearth fire, No-man lay in torment, half mad with pain, disturbed all day and far into each night by the tireless labor and worship. After a couple of months his nerves were torn to rags. He became hysterical. One morning, while Rain was down at the bathing place, and Storm spelling out an epistle to the people of Salonica, the patient called a halt.
"Say," he drawled, "see here. Whar I was brung up, 'way East, my folks they got religion. They took it bad, at one of them camp meetings, whar more souls is made than saved. See?
"They was mean as snakes to start with, an' if they lost five cents they raised the death wail. But when they got Religion the way they'd slander the unconverted neighbors and whine about their own souls! I cleared. You couldn't see my tail for dust.
"I'm shorely disabled, and heap sick, but I'm what's left of a man, and you're a white-livered skunk with cold feet, which daresn't meet me, either with knives, guns, or teeth."
There was just enough truth in No-man's words to stab, to torture, sufficient injustice to enrage Storm almost to the point of murder. And he had fallen so far short of his own ideals. A fugitive from justice because he was afraid to face the gallows; an outcast of the master race contented in his shame to be a sham Indian among savages; a frontiersman, but so poor a specimen compared with this wounded trapper; a Christian yet angry, jealous, full of spiritual pride mixed up with devilish hatred. He doubted if he was really fit to live.