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Pehansan and Roka uttered warning shouts, and the youth, who in his enthusiasm had gone too near, made a convulsive leap to one side. Had he been on hard ground and in his moccasins he might easily have escaped that maddened rush, but the long and delicate snowshoes caught in a bush, and he fell at full length on his side. Then it was the very completeness of his fall that saved him.
With only a spear he fought and slew a monstrous grizzly bear that would have killed me the next instant. When we drove off the huge pack of giant mountain wolves his service was the greatest." "Even so, Xingudan. Those are brave deeds, but they cannot alter the command I brought from Heraka." "What was the command, Roka?"
"We have heard nothing of them for a week past," said Will. "The greater reason to expect them, because the word has been sent over a thousand miles of snow fields that we are here to be eaten. I know you are brave, watchful and quick, but take many arrows and see that Roka and Pehansan do the same." Will was gay and light of heart, but he obeyed the injunction of Inmutanka and filled the quiver.
Few as young as he is think as much as he does." "I don't grasp your meaning, Roka." "Perhaps it would be better to say that no one thinks of everything." "I'm still astray." "We'll call the people of the village to us." "If you had the voice of old Stentor himself, of whom you never heard, you couldn't reach the village, which you know is more than twenty miles away."
When Will departed for their lodge with Inmutanka, Xingudan said to Roka: "What think you now, Roka, of Waditaka, once Wayaka, a captive youth, but now Waditaka, the brave young Sioux warrior, the adopted son of Inmutanka, who is the greatest curer of sickness among us?"
A wolf stole in between the lodges, killed and carried off a little child. He was trailed by Will, Roka, now his fast friend, and a young warrior named Pehansan, the Crane, because of his extreme height and thinness. But Pehansan's figure, despite its slenderness, was so tough that he seemed able to endure anything, and on this expedition he was the leader.
"That I know not, Roka, but it will be many a day before he has a chance to return to them. The distance is great, as you know, and we concealed from him the way we came. The knowledge of the region in which this village stands is hidden from him." Will's idea, as he had promised, was developed the next day.
"I will go to the village and bring many people," said Pehansan. Again the wise Roka shook his head. "No," he said, "we three will stay by the bull. You are fast on your snowshoes, Pehansan, and you can shoot your arrows swift, hard and true, but you would never reach the village, which is many miles from here. The fierce wild animals would devour you.
The buffalo was Pteha, the bear was Warankxi, the badger, Roka; the deer, Tarinca; the wolf, Xunktokeca. One can get along with a surprisingly small vocabulary, and one also learns fast when he is surrounded by people who do not speak his own language. In six weeks Will had quite a smattering of the Sioux tongue.
Will and the Crane, otherwise Pehansan, formed a warm friendship, and he found a similar friend in Roka, the stalwart warrior who had come with the order for his death by torture. Soon after he received the gift of the great bow the three decided on a hunting expedition toward the upper end of the valley, all traveling on snowshoes. "Beware of the wild beasts, my son," said Inmutanka.
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