When Red Hawk rode the stallion up the ravine toward the Sacred Valley, it seemed to him that the walls of the gorge were ten times as deep as when he had come here with his foster father. He told himself that it was not death itself that he feared; what he dreaded was the moment when destruction approached, for there is agony of mind greater than any of the body. His thoughts were those of delirium.
He had expected that it would be full daylight when he reached the mouth of the valley, but in this calculation he had overlooked the speed of White Horse, which rapidly unrolled the remembered silhouettes of the hills and brought him in the first of the dawn to the entrance of the valley.
He had made up his mind before. Perhaps it was more fitting that he should walk meekly, with bowed head, through the enormous gate, but, since destruction was so near at hand, he had determined to ride in to meet it on the back of White Horse.
Mounted, therefore, he made a short prayer holding out his hands: “Sweet Medicine, since you made the feathered wing of an owl speak to me in your name, I have been your man. But I am tired of traveling in sorrow, and so I have come back to look into your face. I am going to ride into your own valley. If I have done wrong, you will kill me quickly, but, if you have pity on me, then you will let me go back to the world, and you will show me happiness among men.”
When he had finished, he took the robe from around his shoulders, folded it, and laid it across the loins of the stallion, so that on his own bare breast Sweet Medicine might see the painted symbol of the owl. After that, Red Hawk rode straight forward to meet his destiny.
He was glad that there was a morning mist in the air, for its obscure rollings would hide whatever death ran upon him until just before its hand was at his throat. He threw open his arms and put back his head to receive the fatal stroke, as White Horse carried him straight into the valley.
It seemed that something like a shadow crossed his mind. But now he saw before him only the green billowing of trees on either side of the water that shunted down the slant, held quiet by its speed and the smoothness of its bed. It was a forest that thronged all the throat of the valley, so that in a moment he was passing through a second night, dim and gray. The branches were polished with wet and blackness. They interlaced their fingers to continue overhead a billowing gloom, except where he found a monstrous trunk fallen, making a gap in the solid canopy.
Little saplings had taken root in the ground that the giant had broken in its fall. It was as though Sweet Medicine had little care for even his finest trees, but allowed the storms to enter the sacred precincts and strike down the mightiest in his forest.
The silence of the flowing river, which made only hushed sounds, was proof that Sweet Medicine wished the magic voice of his distant waterfall to be heard from afar. That noise was a chanting and a shouting and a trampling, still far away when Red Hawk left the trees and came suddenly out into such a prospect as he had never seen before.
The morning had increased from gray to rose, burning higher and higher behind the black shoulders of the mountains, and the mist had almost dispersed. Only walking wraiths moved from hillock to hillock, and flowings of translucent silver poured over the low places. The wet grass took the rosy sheen of the dawn like a dim lake, and here and there, and again in the distance, rose open groves of enormous trees that seemed to be standing in water. It appeared to Red Hawk that their lofty heads mounted as high as the great walls of the valley.
Something moved out of the mist that still clung about the trunks of a grove of trees. Then one after another he saw buffalo stepping behind a lordly bull. By twenties and twenties they moved. They drew near; they paused, and all at once turned their shaggy eyes to behold him, without fear.
At that, Red Hawk’s strength slid like water out of his heart, and he dropped from White Horse to the ground. In the wet grass he lay face down and groaned with terror. Why should the buffalo fear him, when they were accustomed to the comings and goings of Sweet Medicine? He had entered a world of magic. The very taste of the air was different, and even the grass was not cold, but wet and warm against his flesh.
When he ventured to lift his head again, he saw that the monsters had vanished. White Horse stood close by with lifted head, listening, listening.
He stood up, and the stallion crowded close to him. He made himself bold, and plucked up a handful of grass and offered it to the lips of White Horse. But the stallion shook his head in a human gesture of refusal, and there was wonder in his eyes. At least, the wounding of the turf brought no instant punishment on Red Hawk’s impious head and hand.
He walked on, the stallion ever pressing close behind him. They passed over a small rise, and, in the hollow beyond, a whole herd of antelope stood frozen in attention. He waited for them to scatter before him like leaves on a wind of fear, but with bewildered eyes he saw them begin to graze again.
He walked straight down among them. None of them seemed to avoid him, though in their grazing they happened, as it were, to drift away from the line that he followed, so that a clear path was left before him. To right and left, he could have touched them. He saw their little black hoofs shining in the wet of the grass. A buck showed the sharp tips of his horns, and stamped with threatening anger. A fawn stretched out its head toward his hand, and then shrank back from the great step of the stallion.
“Why should they be afraid?” said Red Hawk to his soul. “Arrows and bullets would turn aside from them. Sweet Medicine has breathed upon them, and steel edges cannot slay them.”
He was walking through wildflowers. Wherever his eyes fell, beauty looked back at him, for this was the abode of a god, and where the feet of a god have rested—where even his eye has fallen—there is, of course, an enduring loveliness.
Only in one direction he dared not look, and that was toward the sound of the waterfall that called from the head of the valley. That was the visible semblance of the god, the eternal voice of Sweet Medicine. Strange to say, the realization of that fact was not overwhelming, now. He drew nearer, moved by the side of the running water, letting it lead him toward its source. Sometimes his image wavered for an instant in a stillness of the shoal water at the side of the river, but usually there was nothing save froth and whirling. Or else broken runways, where the surface was streaked and wind-blown. Staring at the bright pebbles of the bottom, he could see the gleaming forms of fish that wavered and were gone and appeared again.
Then a cool showering of spray wafted toward him. He looked up. Far above, the stream leaped out from the brow of the rock, pouring in the center like shuddering blue glass that whitened at the edges, more and more, until the stream became a downpour of snowy spray. Some of that smoke was always blowing to the side. The morning color bloomed in it now.
Regathering, the water went swirling and twisting, clinging close to the rock all the way to the bottom of the cliff. Far above where the voice of the waterfall sang, there was comparative silence. Once more a miracle of Sweet Medicine. For here was his living presence—his voice.
Something sliding in the air above him made Red Hawk turn his head and then fall on his knees, staring helplessly. For there was the great night owl, sliding overhead on easy wings.