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Updated: June 11, 2025
Beyond the stretch of forest is a Sioux village, and there you will stay until your fate befalls you." "I imagine, Heraka, that you did not come here merely to escort me. So great a chief would not take so long a ride for one so insignificant as I am. You must have had another motive." "Though Wayaka is a youth he is also keen.
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?"
When he saw them better, then he would know whether his friends were really dead, because if they were their packs and the animals would be there, too. But the chief, Heraka, broke in upon the thought he seemed able to read Will's mind. "This is but part of the force that besieged you," he said. "There were three bands joined.
Once more he looked Heraka straight in the eye, but the gaze of the chief did not waver. "I have hope, though but a little hope," he said, "that it pleases the chief to test me. He would see whether I can bear such news." "If the belief helps you then Heraka will not try again to make you see the truth. What is your name?" "Clarke, William Clarke." "Why have you come to the land of the Dakotas?"
"I see that I'm at least alive," said Will with a faint touch of humor, "though I can scarcely describe my condition as cheerful. Who are you?" "I am Heraka, a Sioux chief. Heraka in your language means the Elk, and I am proud of the name." Will looked again at him, and much more closely now, because, despite his condition, he was impressed by the manner and appearance.
Upon the vast western plateau the nights were nearly always cold, whatever the day may have been. Yet they went on another hour, and then he heard the voice of Heraka, raised in a tone of command, followed by a halt. An Indian unbound his feet and said something to him in Sioux, which he did not understand, but he knew what the action signified, and he swung off the pony.
Will was disappointed, but he recalled that after the threat of Heraka he should not expect to get off with such an easy task as the continual herding of ponies. Scraping hides would be terribly wearying and it would be a humiliation to put him with the old squaws. Nevertheless his heart was light. The fate of the white captive too often was speedy and horrible torture and death.
The direction at first was toward the north, as Will well knew, but the band presently made many curves and changes of course, and, as Heraka had truly said, he ceased to have any idea of the course they were taking. He saw nothing, but he heard all around him the footfalls of the ponies, and, now and then, the word of one warrior to another.
Yet, despite all his brave bearing, his heart was faint within him. Heraka did not speak to him again, and by the same sort of mental telepathy he felt, after a while, that the chief had dropped away from his side, and had been replaced by the original warrior. Although eyes were denied to him, for the present, all his other faculties became heightened as a consequence, and he began to use them.
Heraka's look followed his and in the light of the fire the smile of the chief was so malicious that the great pulse in Will's throat beat hard with anger. "They were yours once," said Heraka, "the great rifle that fires many times without reloading, the cartridges to fit, and the strong glasses that bring the far near. Now they are mine." "They are yours for the present.
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