One instant, surely, he saw the sacred bird, there against the flaming sky—the great round head, the glint of the beak, the cruel talons tucked up in the soft down of the body feathers, with a red-stained something clutched in one talon. The next moment the thing was gone.
What is seen by the eye, the next instant will be felt by the flesh. Sweet Medicine had appeared, and now the stroke would fall. Red Hawk, very sick and small of heart, waited. He searched the sky against which the owl had showed, but the bird did not again appear. He searched the upper face of the cliff, and there, not far from the verge of the cataract, he saw the mouth of a small cave. Fear made him dizzy when he looked on it, for he understood instantly what it must be. It was at that very place that Sweet Medicine had opened the heart of the mountain, and within that cave he had confronted the magicians and taken from them the holy arrows of the Cheyennes. Therefore he, Red Hawk, must mount to that perilous place.
This was the way death would come to him; this was the terrible agony of mind that he must endure before the final stroke. He must climb, with laboring feet, between earth and heaven, until at last he entered the black mouth of the cave. Then death—in the form of a monstrous owl, perhaps—would leap upon him and tear out his life with beak and talons.
He turned, and saw that White Horse was shrinking back from him. For the first time since the stallion had come to his hand, it moved away from its master. Then, in a sudden panic, White Horse had fled away, sweeping along faster and faster.
Red Hawk looked after the fugitive with a melancholy eye. Even all the speed of that swiftest of horses would be of no avail, now that the wrath of Sweet Medicine hung overhead. In a moment the blow might fall—or would it be delayed?
Yes, White Horse had disappeared beyond a grove of trees so lofty that they must have buried their roots in a thousand generations of men. White Horse was gone. He would perish as a sacrifice unseen by his master, and for that Red Hawk was glad.
He began to climb. The way up the rock was not very hard. Sometimes, as he followed the windings of the easiest route, it seemed to him that his feet were falling on the time-obscured traces of steps that had been cut into the stone ages ago. But this, he felt, must be an illusion.
The mist from the waterfall drenched a portion of the way, but his feet did not slip. Now that he was approaching the last moment of his life, they bore him steadfastly and strongly onward.
At last, from a giddy height, he looked down and back. The whole valley lay spread before him. The trees were not so high as the walls of the ravine. No, they were much shorter, in fact. And the river was not so huge as it had seemed. It ran now with a face of golden light, and in another stride the bright sun would rise upon the day, and to some men would bring happiness.
He turned and faced the cave. The lower lip of that rocky mouth protruded to take him in. He stood on the narrow ledge for an instant, fighting the terror that made his knees weaken. In fact, the orifice of the cave was high enough to permit him to enter erect, without so much as brushing the tips of the feathers in his hair. He told himself that he must stride into the presence of Sweet Medicine like a man glad of his fate. So, with an upward head, with a slow and dragging step, he forced himself into the teeth of darkness.
Only for a stride or two did the outer daylight follow him, then all was swimming blackness. He could not tell whether he had taken three steps or thirty when he heard a rustling, as of feathers. A sound of many whispers rushed toward him. Eyes of burning gold shone at him, sped through his very brain, and he fell forward with a great cry.
Afterward, he thought a hand of ice was on his forehead. He wakened to find that it was the cold of the rock. As he had lain before the house of Wind Walker, so he lay now, cold and shuddering. But death for the second time had refused to destroy him with its hand. This day it had not so much as broken his skin. Fumbling to his feet, his hand touched a wooden stick, which he picked up as he rose. And now, turning, he saw the dull gleam of daylight to lead him from the gloom.
When he came to the lip of the cave, he was still too dizzy to stand upright, fearlessly. But sitting on his heels, he remembered what the truth must be. Between two things Sweet Medicine must make his choice: either to take at once the wretched life of his believer, or else give to that man happiness. But was there any happiness? Was there happiness anywhere?
Aye, it was there at Red Hawk’s feet, in the green of the valley and in the sun-bright running of the river. The light that poured on the flat-topped mountains beyond the valley was happiness, too. And happiness was in the trumpet-tongued voice that now rang from the floor of the ravine, where the stallion ran back and forth, already darkened by a sweat of anxious fear, and neighing above the uproar of the waterfall.
Happiness? The surety of it streamed through Red Hawk’s soul like the brilliance of the day. If for him happiness meant the white girl in the far-off village, Sweet Medicine would give her to him. If she were bound to marry another man—well, death is a solvent that burns away all bonds at a touch.
He began to laugh with such exaltation that he flourished his arms above his head. It was a gesture that made him consider for the first time the stick that was grasped in his hand. It was half an arrow, with the head still adhering to the broken stick.
The breath went out of Red Hawk as though he had been plunged into cold water. Only by degrees his eyes, dim with staring, made out the features of the time-rotted wood, and the flint point.
Certainty came flooding over the staggered brain of Red Hawk, and he took the precious thing in both hands. He cherished it against the warmth of his breast. For what could it be but one of those sacred arrows that long ago the magicians of the mountains had given to Sweet Medicine?
Happiness? The sky was cloven before him. Let the most hard-minded among the Cheyennes dare to doubt that he had walked into the presence of the god, when he returned, carrying in his hand this proof.
He was hungry, suddenly, for the smoke that might be breathed forth in ceremonial praise of Sweet Medicine.
The sun, lifting over the shoulder of the rock, fell on him with a warmth that went all through him, as though his body were glass.
He stood up. The steep face of the rock seemed to him of no more danger than if he had worn wings at his shoulders to keep him from a fall. Laughing, he went down the slippery descent, leaped over the rill of water that ran across the foot of it. Loss of wind choked him, but he could not stop laughing.
He would not ride, at once. Riding would carry him too quickly out of the Sacred Valley, which was now his valley, for was he not free of it? He began to see small things that had not entered into the deep and single trench of his first impression.
Into every corner of the valley he wandered, and found everywhere that same enchanting combination of great trees and open meadows. One who cared to dwell here would never need to ask a thing from the hand of the outer world. In the brush he saw numbers of mountain grouse. A moment later, he discovered a herd of splendid elk. Black-tailed deer were grazing in another ravine.
He told himself that this was the place where he would pitch his lodge or build his house, on the side of the lake overlooking the big sweep of the outer valley.
A little creek above the lake was a bright and singing beauty that could not go straight for a moment, but danced from side to side in the brilliance of the sun. It seemed to him that the very pebbles of the creek shone with a light of their own—a rich and metallic yellow. He leaned and scooped up a handful of the little stones and of the bright sand. He was amazed to find that it weighted his hand far more than ever rocks could do.
White Horse came and nibbled curiously at him, then tossed his head and turned away in disdain. But Red Hawk began suddenly to shout, for he knew that he held in his hands the god of the white men—gold!