"It's worth a hundred ponies to you."
"Huh! I can steal your ponies any day. And besides, what do you do when you break my heart with the killing of my poor brother, Storm?"
"See here, young fellow. You keep sober, and I'll see your braves get none. And you obey my orders until, say, sundown to-morrow. When I've finished with Storm, you get his beautiful yellow scalp you talked about so much. You get me for your brother. Do you see what that means? First, I give you, my brother, a keg for you and your braves to dance the scalp with. You shall be so drunk to-morrow night that you'll fall up off the ground. You shall be dead drunk every night for one moon, and after that I'll teach my brother the way I pray to my god all the time just a little. Why, it's ten years since I've been properly sober, and all the time my god makes me richer and richer with wagons, horses, scarlet cloth, axes, beautiful guns. My god shall make my brother as rich as that! And you'll never be sober again. Think of it!"
The trader sighed. "If it were only true!" he thought. "It gives one quite a glow. The Devil, if there is any such person, must enjoy a bit of philanthropy. It makes one feel so good."
The Indian felt the blood race in his arteries, the whirling joy. Clearer vision, a new worldly wisdom, made him see the folly of Rain's mission to the tribes. "She doesn't know what's good for her," he thought. "She needs me to handle her affairs, and make her the Big Chief's wife. Then she can run him, as he runs the Nations." Then came insurgent memories of Rain's camp, and the meager supper, of Storm hewing notches in the two logs, so that they would fit, one athwart the other, to make a cross. "Like the logs notched at the corners of a cabin." Storm dreaded the preaching. "I'd much rather," he had confessed, "trust all to the mysterious power of the cross, which burns away all evils, triumphs over enemies, conquers Death himself. Death is not."
"That must be nonsense, but still——"
The young chief was riding his horse in circles through the dusk, teaching a new dance movement of exceeding grace. The Crow thought he had never in all his life seen anything quite so beautiful.
"I want," said Heap-of-dogs, "another prayer to clear my head."
"When it's earned," answered the trader.
"Suppose I fetch Storm's hair, will you give me a drink?"