They stepped forward and seized Sid. In a very few minutes he found himself seated, firmly bound to the very post from which he had freed Hano but recently. The food Nahla had brought for Hano was fed him; then the door was shut and he was left in the darkness of the lodge.
Sid reflected over it all as he sat, awaiting the long vigil until morning. Escape was impossible. Not only was he bound cunningly to the post so that any movement of even his hands was impossible, but two Apache guards squatted near him, silent as specters but watching him fixedly.
“Go forth—if you can!” had been Honanta’s last words. In them Sid found his sole hope. Honanta was still his friend, but the logic of the situation had been too strong even for him. But Honanta was more than his friend. It was true, then, that Colonel Colvin was that white officer! Honanta had said so at last. Through his father he owed a debt that to an Indian is never paid. Honanta, too, was torn between two duties—that to his tribe and that to Sid as the Colonel’s son. In the subtle workings of the Indian mind there would surely be a loophole for him, somewhere, by Honanta, Sid felt. It was for him to find and utilize that loophole of escape. It would be something that would clear Honanta’s conscience as regards his tribe, yet fulfill his obligation to him as the son of the man who had saved his life.
What it would be, Sid could not imagine. He decided to keep his eyes open to-morrow, alert to seize the opportunity whatever it should be. Then, with the ability of youth to sleep anywhere and in any impossible posture, his head fell forward on his chest and he was soon oblivious of his and any one else’s troubles.
Next morning as he was led from the lodge, a notable change in the village greeted him. A high Sun Dance pole had been erected during the night, with a cross bar secured near its top. From the bar dangled two effigies; the figure of a man and of a mountain sheep. Sid recognized the symbol of it. The figure represented Honanta, dead but for the intervention of the Great Mystery in the person of that white officer who had spared his mother. The mountain sheep represented man’s physical life, his principal means of sustenance, the gift of Mother Earth, replacing the buffalo of plains ceremonies.
After a time Honanta appeared, nude save for his moccasins and breech clout; his hair was disheveled, his body daubed with clay. He dragged after him the skull of a mountain sheep, symbolizing the grave from which he had escaped by divine intervention. As the eastern sun flamed over the wall of Red Mesa, an old priest cut and scarified Honanta’s chest, signifying the natural accompaniments of a physical death.
The rest of the tribe now formed in a line under the east wall and faced him. Sid himself was placed opposite Honanta, standing alone. He felt awed at the part he was taking—for he obviously represented the instrument through which the Great Mystery had shown His favor.
Looking with fixed eyes on the sun, Honanta began the Sun Dance, dragging the skull after him and blowing from time to time on a sacred whistle which he kept pointed at the sun as it rose toward the zenith.
Sid watched him, fascinated. He was seeing the original Sun Dance, the Indian symbol of death and resurrection, as it was before later changes degraded it into a meaningless exhibition of endurance under torture—about on the level with our own bull-ring and prize-fight arena. How long the dance would keep up depended solely upon Honanta’s physical endurance. He was not much over forty years of age, so he would be yet in his prime, and his fervor would lead him to dance before the Great Mystery until his sinews could work no longer.
Sid’s prayers went out to aid him. He liked to see a man give his best! This humbling of the body was nothing repulsive, when one thought of the exalted mood of that soul, engaged in an act of Indian worship so far above our own milder and, let us say, more self-indulgent and vanity-ridden forms of ritual.