Page:Harris Dickson--The black wolf's breed.djvu/260

234 of the tempest, the lightning's flash, the thunder's rumbling roar.

His arms raised to heaven like some gaunt priest of butchery, he invoked the mighty Manitou of his tribe, then dropping prone upon the ground he crawled, a sinuous serpent, among the trees.

For awhile his listeners wandered away upon their chieftain's words to the waiting ones at home, to hunting grounds of peace and plenty; melodious as a maiden's sigh that song breathed of love and lover's hopes, it wailed for departed friends, extolled their virtues, and called down heaven's curses upon the coward of to-morrow's fight. Then the fierce gleam of shining steel, one wild war-whoop and all again was still. His words faded away in the echoless night till a holy hush brooded o'er beach and forest.

Then the solitary dancer wound about the ring as the crouching panther steals upon her prey, while peal after peal came the frightful cries of barbaric conflict, the shrieks of the wounded—a wild, victorious shout blended with a hopeless dying scream.

With a master's touch he played upon their vibrant feelings; not a key of human emotion he left unsounded—fame, pride, hate, love and death—his song expressed them all.

Thoroughly frenzied, warrior after warrior now began to join him in the ring; voice after voice caught up the dread refrain which terrorized the trained soldiery of Europe and filled their imaginations with the nameless horrors of unrelenting war.