Storm made the pony grunt as he set his knee to the pack, and hauled sharp home. Then he crossed the lines.
"If Rain knew the meaning of fear," he said, "I'd keep my mouth shut." He made his basket line, and Rising Wolf, with a foot on the end of the pack, took in all that. He also made his basket line, completing the diamond hitch. He made all fast.
"Rain and I," Storm smiled as he patted the pony on the neck, "are making the big trail, the long trail, the Wolf Trail, climbing the Milky Way, the great white Road of Stars. You"—he looked Rising Wolf in the eyes—"will live to see the plains covered with the white man's buffalo, the free water fenced, the free men like dogs begging for their rations, the women selling themselves to the Stonehearts because their children are hungry. I see vulgar white people tear down the burial scaffolds to rob the bodies of our Indian chiefs. I see them peeping in at the window of your cabin to see the squaw man at dinner, and say 'Now, ain't that jest too quaint!' My friend, you will live until your grandsons ride to the iron road, to see the train, and sell war bonnets whose every feather records a deed of war. Wouldn't you rather ride the Wolf Trail with Rain and Storm?
"The dead, the comforted, are sorry for the mourners who cry in the night outside the desolate lodges."
"Come," said Rain, "you who are speaking in the owl talk, and keep the ponies waiting with their groans all ready for the lash rope."
Rising Wolf's woman laughed heartily as she folded the lodge skin. "Thus," she said, "days fly when Stonehearts talk."
The guest lodge was left standing to shelter travelers; the poles of the holy lodge to grow into a little grove of trees; and Rain laid the ashes from her hearth at the foot of the cross. Her man led her away.
Rising Wolf and his woman had spare ponies for them to ride, driving the small remuda down through the valley. The falling waters called to them through the berry groves, but they dared not look back to where the desolate cross, gray in the dawn light, stood out against the junipers, where the winding trail went up the altar hill, and far above that, the mighty spires of icy rock full in the rose flush of the sunrise pointed to the skies.
"The valley seems full of shadows," said Rising Wolf's woman fearfully. "I'm so frightened."
"It is the valley of the shadow," answered Storm.