BRAVE ELK stripped away powder-horn and pouch and beaded belt and weapons, left the jutting arrow as his sign, and darted back to retrieve the fusil. He cast a look at the horse, which had come to a halt in the draw below, and spoke.
“Now I am a man again. I will go to Sights the Enemy with what I have taken, and ask him for Singing Bird.” Carson started.
“Singing Bird! Then she is back home again?”
“I do not know,” said Brave Elk. “I did not go into Plenty Eagle’s village when I watched for Sun Buffalo. The hearts of the Arapahoe are bad toward the Blackfeet, The Arapahoe will not talk with him until he returns Singing Bird. They will listen only to the great medicine, the sign from the Great Spirit. Why did you ask me to look under the shirt of this dead dog?”
“Because we have the great medicine; I trapped it myself,” Carson said. “I thought Shunan had stolen it and was running to the Blackfeet.”
Brave Elk regarded him frowningly, curiously, and shook his head.
“No; what you have is not the medicine, Little Chief. The medicine is not in this country. The White Beaver Medicine Crosses the mountains from the sunrise side, when the grass is green.”
“Why do you say that, Brave Elk?”
“It is what the Flatheads say, what the Nez Perces say. They look for the White Beaver to come through the mountains by that pass you call South Pass. It is the true strong medicine for the side that keeps it. That is the sign. The medicine you have is false.”
Carson mounted. Brave Elk bestrode Shunan’s horse, with all his plunder, and paused for one last word.
“When Singing Bird sees the red scalp, she will be glad. I promised it to her. You talked big but you have done nothing. If the Blackfeet take that skin you claim to have, and it makes them strong, then the Arapahoe will not wait for the other White Beaver medicine that crosses the mountains. They will make war at once.”
Away went Brave Elk.
Carson turned homeward, and rode at his best pace toward the camp across the Yellowstone. He was thoughtful, perplexed.
What had Shunan been trying to say, when that arrow stilled him? Perhaps he had known the Blackfeet were on the move. But what had made him pull out in such a tearing hurry?
Silence descended with the night. The wearied camp slept. Carson was brought from sleep by an alarm. A shout, another. He sprang up; the lodge was emptying in a flurry of robes as men grabbed their arms and bolted. He followed at Laforay’s heels, to stand in sheer amazement.
The sky above was murky, but the night was drenched with a ruddy glow from the north, mounting and flaming across the heavens.
The northern lights flamed higher in a weaving shuttle of crimson.
Laforay cried: “Red sky, bare ground—it is the sign! Now they come!”
“Look!” went up a shout. “Laforay’s right!”
The plain across the river was bathed in reflected crimson. From the northwest quarter, a black torrent moved down, spreading into the plain. Black feet—a host!
Two men were on guard along the rear of the camp, a needless precaution, here was all the menace out here in front.
The dawn began to lighten Carson, standing by himself and watching, swung around as Bridger stalked up to him.
“What d'ye make of it, Kit?”
“Looks queer,” said Carson.
“Ain't in nature. Injun nature, for them to front us in a scrap,” growled Bridger. “No circling around. Ain’t reasonable.”
“Who’s watching the river?” Carson asked suddenly.
“Smith and Herndon. Let’s take a prowl.”