All this they would reveal to their tribal medicine men, who earned a living, supporting wives and families on the fees received in their practice. To such professionals, any magician who wrought cures for love was worse than amateurish. He was a menace. Not that the medicine man said anything outright, or exposed himself to a suspicion of jealousy by using such words as unprofessional, cheat, charlatan, black-leg, unorthodox. Only he would hint.
"String halt? Dear, dear! To get as lame as all that the horse must have been on high, rough, broken ground. Been in the mountains lately?"
"So you don't like the weather? Well, well, the Thunder Bird, and the Spirits of the Storm, and the Rain, have a deal to answer for."
"A war party ambushed? Tut, tut, very curious, very odd indeed. Now, if they'd mentioned their plans to a neutral, one who meets the enemy, and tells him about our raids, why, of course, of course! But no! That's quite out of the question. Quite. Odd, though, how many warriors we lose just after they've gone on pilgrimage."
Were the traders overcharging for their goods? "Why, what can you expect? We depart from the faith of our fathers to pick up every wind of heresy which blows about in the mountains, and yet you complain because your medicine goes bad!"
Were there scandals among the women. "Ah! How different in the days of our mothers, when there were no magicians calling up evil spirits!"
"It seems ungracious," said Rising Wolf in after years, recalling old events. "I don't want to set myself up as a critic of saints, for Rain and Storm were saints, and I'm no more than a sinner. Many a time when they would get a meal for the pilgrims, they went hungry themselves because there was nothing left to eat. They'd be up all night with people sick or in trouble. They never showed a sign of peevishness, or said an ill word of anybody. Both of them worked what one has to call miracles. They had far-reaching influence among the tribes, always used for the good of others. There was no trace of sham or trickery, but everything straightforward, unpretentious, real. Rain was really a very beautiful woman, and she would charm a bird off a tree. Storm was good-looking, too, in his way, a matter of coloring with his fierce blue eyes and that gorgeous mane of hair. Of course he had a slight truculence, a bit of defiance about him which choked one off until one knew him better. You know he began as a sailor before the mast, and his people, I take it, were in very humble life; but 'pon my soul he was a damned sight more like some duke. I never met one, but I mean what I think a duke ought to be like, with the grand air, the simple direct manners, the courtesies, the thoughtfulness for everybody which goes only with real thoroughbreds. The pilgrims just worshiped them—at the time; and yet when they went away, out of the glamour so to speak, they'd feel they'd been talked down to, their self-respect bruised, their plumes a little rumpled. There was the bend in the arrow.
"You mark my words. This human species runs in herds. If we forsake the herd life to run apart, we get out of focus like a burning-glass at the wrong distance, we see ourselves in the wrong proportion—not enough world, too much me. When the trouble came, the average human person helped by these big saints wanted to see them taken down a peg or two. Of course the tribes were shocked and all that, but human people rather enjoy a sensation. And if Rain and Storm were so mighty powerful, why didn't they help themselves? After all, it was their business to work wonders."
Rising Wolf paid four visits to the holy lodge, the first to expose fraud, the other times to seek advice in his own troubles. Of wider experience than any Indian, a deeper man than most and very shrewd, he had for thirty years kept almost the whole of the Blackfoot trade in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company; and thanks to him, this nation, for all its alleged ferocity, shed no white man's blood.
"They're gentlefolk," said he, "that's all. One only needs a little tact, and it would take a downright cad to quarrel with such fellows as Many Horses." Indian names wear out, and are discarded about as frequently as we change hats, but among the young bucks of that period were chiefs, now remembered by whites and Indians alike with kindly reverence as Crowfoot, Mad Wolf, and Brings-down-the-sun. In any land or age such men would have been distinguished as very perfect and most gentle knights, but there were hundreds of men worthy to ride with these.