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Updated: June 19, 2025
Shortly after they passed the summit of the ridge which formed the boundary between the desert and the fertile country, Ska, the vulture, winging his way at a high altitude toward his aerie, caught sight of a strange new bird of gigantic proportions encroaching upon the preserves of his aerial domain.
But Devers couldn't see it in that light. He was bringing up the rear of his own regiment. Indeed, not until the fatal day of their débouchement from the Bad Lands and sighting the broad valley of the Ska had Devers's men felt the sting of Indian lead, and then he was not with them.
He reestablished the Polish language in the schools and churches of Posen, that is of Prussian-Poland, nominated a Polish ecclesiastic to the archbishopric of that province, and conferred so many court dignities, government offices, and decorations upon the compatriots of the fair Jenny, as to give rise to the remark that the best road to imperial preferment at Berlin was to add the Polish and feminine termination of "ska" to one's name.
The bird that would have devoured him, and the providential rain, had saved him at the very moment that death seemed inevitable. Again partaking of a few mouthfuls of the unsavory flesh of Ska, the vulture, the ape-man arose with something of his old force and set out with steady gait toward the hills of promise rising alluringly ahead.
Then it would be a stern chase into the heart of the hills, and there, reinforced by renegades from all sides, they might be able to turn upon and overwhelm their pursuers. There was only one likely way of striking them where they were, and that was by making wide circuit to the north, fording the Ska far behind their camp, and then, turning up-stream, attack them from the north or northeast.
Without being trammelled by precise orders, the general tenor of his instructions was to march on down the Ska, and strike and punish any Indian war-parties he could find, and clear the valley as soon as possible.
After a brisk gallop of three or four miles up the valley of the Ska, the troopers of the th had permitted the stampeded ponies to take things more leisurely, and so it resulted that by six o'clock many of their number were stopping occasionally to nibble at the grass which grew here luxuriantly, but there was, all the same, a steady, persistent movement of the living mass, an enforced migration at the rate of at least three miles an hour.
Circling far to the west and south, riding like the wind when once well out of sight of watching foes, the Ogallallas had swung around between the Ska and Winthrop's distant column, threaded ravines and depressions well known to them from boyish days, and finally creeping behind the curtaining bluffs into full view of the great herd drowsily nibbling in the broad, sunny valley, had burst with maddening yell and waving blankets and banging rifles, with sudden fury from their covert, tearing by the weary pickets, stampeding their horses, and so had gone thundering down upon the startled herd and, skilfully encircling it from the south, reckless of rallying cry and rapid shot from Canker's men, had sent the whole pack, with many a cavalry charger too, whirling before them in wild triumph down the echoing valley, back to the waiting village whence they came.
Through his brain ran a persistent and doleful chant to which he involuntarily set two words, repeated over and over again in horrible monotony: "Ska knows! Ska knows!" until, shaking himself in anger, he picked up a rock and hurled it at the grim scavenger. Lowering himself over the precipitous side of the gorge Tarzan half clambered and half slid to the sandy floor beneath.
Occasionally he stopped and called aloud, listening for some response but only silence rewarded him-a sinister silence that his cries only accentuated. Late in the evening of the second day he came to the well-remembered gorge in which lay the clean-picked bones of the ancient adventurer, and here, for the first time, Ska, the vulture, picked up his trail.
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