She obeyed, no longer bowed down, but facing the people bravely with eyes half closed and head thrown back. The sweat from his face dropped on her hair.
"Now preach!" The Crow was shouting at her. "Preach!" he repeated, slashing a mug of liquor into her face. "Preach——"
At Rain's feet her brother lay upon his face unconscious, and close beyond him a ring of men confronted her as they swirled slowly sideways round the cross in the first movement of the scalp dance, drunk all of them, and reeling. Behind them were women carrying buffalo robes which their men traded over the counter to the Crow's bartender, getting for each a pint, with a dram of rum. Most of these men were drunk, also the women, laughing, shouting, dancing, quarreling, or yelling insults or throwing stones at Storm. An immense crowd of people jostled and swayed, trying to enter the trade ground and buy liquor or to get a nearer view.
The trader had taunted Rain, calling her vile names, because she would not preach to amuse his customers. It was no time for preaching.
The sun had risen, and swung slowly upward into the southern sky, while still God showed no sign, wrought no vengeance, gave no deliverance. Only the Crow's god visibly triumphed, for the addition of rum to the trade liquor sent a man mad drunk for every pint, and the trader with all three of the bartenders could scarcely cope with the rush of business. Towards noon that saturnalia had every man in the tribe, nearly all the women, many of the children, raving mad.
The man on the cross confronted the sun, whose ever-increasing splendor of light and heat gave him the merciful delirium of pain, mounting towards its climax. And Rain, bound to the cross with wet rawhide, felt as the lashings dried shrinking, the slowly growing agony of swollen wrists and arms, without the man's triumphant faith, or any hope either from earth or heaven, for still there was no thunder of Rising Wolf's rescuing horsemen, still no portent, still no miracle to attest that God reigned, or would avenge.
Yet in the steady growth of her own pain the woman realized at last the valor of her man. In the stoic fortitude with which he faced the agonies of slow death, she found a healing pride which comforted her soul. While he set so great an example, she would be worthy of him, worthy to be his woman. More than that, she saw in his mysterious power proof absolute of something superhuman, something inspired, miraculous, divine.
They twain had been as one flesh, a lamp of the All-Father burning in the darkness of the earthly mists; but now, as the oil feeds the flame, her soul sustained his spirit; and that majestic light blazed visible to the Hells and to the Heavens. To light the way for the lost, to comfort the spirits in prison, to inspire those who climb the steeps of purgatory, even to fill the lower heavens with a new song of praise—that is the glory which is called Martyrdom.
The mists which veil the spirit-realms were thinned and rent asunder; the heavens, as we see them, were rolled together like a scroll. At last the priestess realized that she had not been in danger of outrage or pollution, but given the inestimable glory of the cross. She knew that her body was dying. She was beyond pain, giving her strength to Storm, whose body still endured in agony, unable to let him go.
At last, towards midday, No-man, who had been lying under the trader's wagon, awake some hours ago with a sick headache, crawled on his hands and knees into the open, got to his feet by the aid of one of the wheels, and stood there, clinging to the spokes. Still drunk, he staggered towards the bar in search of liquor to set him to rights. In a dim way he realized the pandemonium of raving savages as he shouldered his way among them. They greeted him, hilarious, eagerly pointing out the cross, and his friend, to whom he came bewildered, and stood in front of him swaying upon his feet, rubbing his eyes to clear them, trying in vain to realize. Then his brain cleared suddenly, and he stood sober, shouting until Storm heard him, saw him, spoke to him.