The Quest of the Four Part 13

Many of those in the crowd shared in the fierce paroxysm of the hour, and pressed forward upon the ropes, as if to join the dancers, but the armed guard thrust them back. The dancers, their eyes fixed on the joss, continued, apparently intending to go around the circle forever.

The air in the lodge, heavy with dust and the odors of oil and paint and human beings, would have been intolerable to one just coming from the outside, but it only excited those within all the more.

Phil's muscles stiffened as he lay on the bough, but his position against one of the wooden scantlings that held the buffalo skins in place was easy, and he did not stir. His eyes were always at the slit and he became oppressed with a strange curiosity. How long could the men maintain the dancing and singing? He was conscious that quite a long time had pa.s.sed, three or four hours, but there was yet no faltering. Nor did the chant of the crowd cease. Their song, as Phil learned later, ran something like this:

"The Comanche goes forth to war, His arrow and bow he takes, The shaman's blessing is on his head.

His eye is keen and his arm is strong; He rides the plain like the wind; His spirit is hot as the touch of fire.

The foeman fights but his strength fails; His scalp hangs at the Comanche's belt."

There were four or five verses of this, but as soon as they were all sung, the singers went back to the beginning and sang them again and again in endless repet.i.tion, while the twelve little whistles shrilled out their piercing accompaniment. The wind began to blow outside, but Phil did not feel it. Heavy clouds and vapors were drifting past, but he did not notice them, either. Would this incantation, for now it was nothing else, go on forever? Certainly the shaman, naked and hideously painted, presided with undiminished zest at this dance of the imps. He moved now and then about the circle of dancers, noting them sharply, his eye ready for any sign of wavering, whether of the spirit or the body.

Phil observed presently some s.h.i.+fting in the crowd of spectators, and then a new face appeared in the copper-colored ma.s.s. It was the face of a white man, and with a little start the boy recognized it as that of Bill Breakstone. It may seem singular, but he felt a certain joy at seeing him there. He had felt sure all the while that Breakstone was a prisoner, and now he had found him. Certainly he was in the midst of enemies. Nevertheless, the boy had gone a step forward in his search.

Breakstone was not bound--there was no need of it, a single white man in such a crowd--and Phil thought he could see pallor showing through his tan, but the captive bore himself bravely. Evidently he was brought forward as a trophy, as the chant was broken for a moment or two, and a great shout went up when he approached, except from the dancers, who circled on and on, blowing their whistles, without ceasing. Okapa walked over to Breakstone and brandished a tomahawk before his face, making the sharp blade whistle in front of his nose and then beside either cheek. Phil held his breath, but Bill Breakstone folded his arms and stood immovable, looking the ferocious shaman squarely in the face.

It was at once the best thing and the hardest thing to do, never to flinch while a razor edge of steel flashed so close to one's face that it felt cold as it pa.s.sed.

Two or three minutes of such amus.e.m.e.nt satisfied the shaman, and, going back inside the ropes, he turned his attention again to the dancers. It was now much past midnight, and the slenderest and youngest of the warriors was beginning to show some signs of weakness. The shaman watched him keenly. He would last a long time yet, and if he gave up it would not occur until he fell unconscious. Then he would be dragged out, water would be thrown over him, and, when he recovered, he would be compelled to resume dancing if the shaman ordered it. Sometimes the dancers died of exhaustion. It was well to be in the good graces of the shaman.

But Phil was now watching Bill Breakstone, who was pressing back in the crowd, getting as far as possible from the ropes that enclosed the dancers. Once or twice he saw Breakstone's face, and it seemed to him that he read there an intention, a summoning of his faculties and resolution for some great attempt. The mind of a man at such a time could hold only one purpose, and that would be the desire to escape.

Yet he could not escape single-handed, despite the absorption of the Comanches in the medicine dance. There was only one door to the great lodge, and it was guarded. But Phil was there. He felt that the hand of Providence itself had sent him at this critical moment, and that Bill Breakstone, with his help, might escape.

He watched for a long time. It must have been three or four o'clock in the morning. The whistling, shrill, penetrating, now and then getting horribly upon his nerves, still went on. The wavering warrior seemed to have got his second wind, and around and around the warriors went, their eyes fixed steadily upon the hideous wooden face of the joss. Phil believed that it must be alive to them now. It was alive to him even with its ghastly cheek of black and its ghastly cheek of white, and its thick, red lips, grinning down at the fearful strain that was put upon men for its sake.

Phil's eyes again sought Breakstone. The captive had now pushed himself back against the buffalo skin wall and stood there, as if he had reached the end of his effort. He, too, was now watching the dancers. Phil noted his position, with his shoulder against one of the wooden pieces that supported the buffalo hide, and the lad now saw the way. Courage, resolution, and endurance had brought him to the second step on the stairway of success.

Phil sat on the bough and stretched his limbs again and again to bring back the circulation. Then he became conscious of something that he had not noticed before in his absorption. It was raining lightly. Drops fell from the boughs and leaves, but his rifle, sheltered against his coat, was dry, and the rain might serve the useful purpose of hiding the traces of footsteps from trailers so skilled as the Comanches.

He dropped to the ground and moved softly by the side of the lodge, which was circular in shape, until he came to the point at which he believed Bill Breakstone rested. There was the wooden scantling, and, unless he had made a great mistake, the shoulder of the captive was pressed against the buffalo hide on the left of it. He deliberated a moment or two, but he knew that he must take a risk, a big risk. No success was possible without it, and he drew forth his hunting-knife.

Phil was proud of this hunting-knife. It was long, and large of blade, and keen of edge. He carried it in a leather scabbard, and he had used it but little. He put the sharp point against the buffalo hide at a place about the height of a man, and next to the scantling on the left.

Then he pressed upon the blade, and endeavored to cut through the skin.

It was no easy task. Buffalo hide is heavy and tough, but he gradually made a small slit, without noise, and then, resting his hand and arm, looked through it.

Phil saw little definite, only a confused ma.s.s of heads and bodies, the light of torches gleaming beyond them, and close by, almost against his eyes, a thatch of hair. That hair was brown and curling slightly, such hair as never grew on the head of an Indian. It could clothe the head of Bill Breakstone and none other. Phil's heart throbbed once more.

Courage and decision had won again. He put his mouth to the slit and whispered softly:

"Bill! Bill! Don't move! It is I, Phil Bedford!"

The thatch of brown hair, curling slightly at the ends, turned gently, and back came the whisper, so soft that it could not have been heard more than a foot away:

"Phil, good old Phil! You've come for me! I might have known it!"

"Are they still looking at the dance?"

"Yes, they can't keep their eyes off it."

"Then now is your only chance. You must get out of this medicine lodge, and I will help you. I'm going to cut through the buffalo hide low down, then you must stoop and push your way out at the slash, when they're not looking."

"All right," said Bill Breakstone, and Phil detected the thrill of joy in his tone. Phil stooped and bearing hard upon the knife, cut a slash through the hide from the height of his waist to the ground.

"Now, Bill," he whispered, "when you think the time has come, press through."

"All right," again came the answer with that leaping tone in it.

Phil put the knife back in its scabbard, and, pressing closely against the hide beside the slash, waited. Bill did not come. A minute, another, and a third pa.s.sed. He heard the monotonous whistling, the steady chant, and the ceaseless beat of the dancer's feet, but Breakstone made no sound. Once more he pressed his lips to the slit, and said in the softest of tones:

"Are you coming, Bill?"

No answer, and again he waited interminable minutes. Then the lips of the buffalo skin parted, and a shoulder appeared at the opening. It was thrust farther, and a head and face, the head and face of Bill Breakstone, followed. Then he slipped entirely out, and the tough buffalo hide closed up behind him. Phil seized his hand, and the two palms closed in a strong grasp.

"I had to wait until n.o.body was looking my way," whispered Breakstone, "and then it was necessary to make it a kind of sleight-of-hand performance. I slipped through so quick that any one looking could only see the place where I had been."

Then he added in tones of irrepressible admiration:

"It was well done, it was n.o.bly done, it was grandly done, Sir Philip of the Night and the Knife."

"Hark to that!" said Phil, "they miss you already!"

A shout, sharp, shrill, wholly different from all the other sounds, came from within the great medicine lodge. It was the signal of alarm. It was not repeated, and the whistling and wailing went on, but Phil and Breakstone knew that warriors would be out in an instant, seeking the lost captive.

"We must run for it," whispered Breakstone, as they stood among the trees.

"It's too late," said Phil. Warriors with torches had already appeared at either end of the grove, but the light did not yet reach where the two stood in the thick darkness, with the gentle rain sifting through the leaves upon them. Phil saw no chance to escape, because the light of the torches reached into the river bed, and then, like lightning, the idea came to him.

"Look over your head, Bill," he said. "You stand under an Indian platform for the dead, and I under another! Jump up on yours and lie down between the mummies, and I'll do the same here. Take this pistol for the last crisis, if it should come!"

He thrust his pistol into his companion's hand, seized a bough, and drew himself up. Bill Breakstone was quick of comprehension, and in an instant he did likewise. Two bodies tightly wrapped in deerskin were about three feet apart, and Phil, not without a shudder, lay down between them. Bill Breakstone on his platform did the same. They were completely hidden, but the soft rain seeped through the trees and fell upon their faces. Phil stretched his rifle by his side and scarcely breathed.

The medicine dance continued unbroken inside. Okapa, greatest shaman of the Comanches, still stood in the ring watching the circling twelve.

The symbols and hieroglyphics painted on his naked body gleamed ruddily in the light of the torches, but the war chief, Black Panther, and the other great war chief, Santana, had gone forth with many good warriors.

The single cry had warned them. Sharp eyes had quickly detected the slit in the wall of buffalo skin, and even the littlest Indian boy knew that this was the door by which the captive had pa.s.sed. He knew, too, that he must have had a confederate who had helped from the outside, but the warriors were sure that they could yet retake the captive and his friend also.

Black Panther, Santana, and a dozen warriors, some carrying torches, rushed into the grove. They ran by the side of the medicine lodge until they came to the slit. There they stopped and examined it, pulling it open widely. They noticed the powerful slash of the knife that had cut through the tough buffalo hide four feet to the ground. Then they knelt down and examined the ground for traces of footsteps. But the rain, the beneficent, intervening rain, had done its work. It had pushed down the gra.s.s with gentle insistence and flooded the ground until nothing was left from which the keenest Comanche could derive a clue. They ran about like dogs in the brake, seeking the scent, but they found nothing.

Warriors from the river had reported, also, that they saw n.o.body.

It was marvelous, incomprehensible, this sudden vanis.h.i.+ng of the captive and his friend, and the two chiefs were troubled. They glanced up at the dark platforms of the dead and s.h.i.+vered a little. Perhaps the spirits of those who had pa.s.sed were not favorable to them. It was well that Okapa made medicine within to avert disaster from the tribe. But Black Panther and Santana were brave men, else they would not have been great chiefs, and they still searched in this grove, which was more or less sacred, examining behind every tree, prowling among the bushes, and searching the gra.s.s again and again for footsteps.

Phil lay flat upon his back, and those moments were as vivid in his memory years afterward as if they were pa.s.sing again. Either elbow almost touched the shrouded form of some warrior who had lived intensely in his time. They did not inspire any terror in him now. His enemies alive, they had become, through no will of their own, his protectors dead. He did not dare even to turn on his side for fear of making a noise that might be heard by the keen watchers below. He merely looked up at the heavens, which were somber, full of drifting clouds, and without stars or moon. The rain was gradually soaking through his clothing, and now and then drops struck him in the eyes, but he did not notice them.

He heard the Comanches walking about beneath him, and the guttural notes of their words that he did not understand, but he knew that neither he nor Bill Breakstone could expect much mercy if they were found. After one escape they would be lucky if they met quick death and not torture at the hands of the Comanches. He saw now and then the reflection of the torch-lights high up on the walls of the medicine lodge, but generally he saw only the clouds and vapors above him.

Despite the voices and footsteps, Phil felt that they would not be seen.

No one would ever think of looking in such places for him and Breakstone. But the wait was terribly long, and the suspense was an acute physical strain. He felt his breath growing shorter, and the strength seemed to depart from his arms and legs. He was glad that he was lying down, as it would have been hard to stand upon one's feet and wait, helpless and in silence, while one's fate was being decided.

There was even a fear lest his breathing should turn to a gasp, and be heard by those ruthless searchers, the Comanches. Then he fell to calculating how long it would be until dawn. The night could not last more than two or three hours longer, and if they were compelled to remain there until day, the chance of being seen by the Comanches would become tenfold greater.

He longed, also, to see or hear his comrade who lay not ten feet away, but he dared not try the lowest of whispers. If he turned a little on his side to see, the mummy of some famous Comanche would shut out the view; so he remained perfectly still, which was the wisest thing to do, and waited through interminable time. The rain still dripped through the foliage, and by and by the wind rose, the rain increasing with it.

The wet leaves matted together, but above wind and rain came the sound from the medicine lodge, that ceaseless whistling and beating of the dancers' feet. He wondered when it would stop. He did not know that Comanche warriors had been known to go around and around in their dance three days and three nights, without stopping for a moment, and without food or water.

After a long silence without, he heard the Comanches moving again through the grove, and the reflection from the flare of a torch struck high on the wall of the medicine lodge. They had come back for a second search! He felt for a few moments a great apprehension lest they invade the platforms themselves, but this thought was quickly succeeded by confidence in the invisibility of Breakstone and himself, and the superst.i.tion of the Indians.