I
From beneath the skirt of the teepee a young prairie chicken
emerged--no ordinary prairie chicken, but an absurd thing dressed in
a little pair of trousers and a scrap of scarlet blanket. Hector
grinned. The chicken stood irresolute, looking wildly 'round for a
favourable avenue of escape. While it hesitated, two small brown
hands and arms appeared from under the teepee and frantically
searched the air. The chicken danced away. A dishevelled head next
wriggled its way into the open air, two bright black eyes flashed a
pitiful appeal to Hector, a soft voice cried:
"Oh, pony-soldier, please, pony-soldier--catch my prairie
chicken--catch my baby!"
Burly Corporal MacFarlane, Hector's companion in this stroll through
the Assiniboine encampment, smiled heavily but made no move. Hector
started off in pursuit.
The ground was rough, his boots and spurs were very heavy, the
agility of the baby was amazing and the crowded teepees were serious
obstacles. Hector dashed 'round and 'round, close behind. He
tripped, scraped his hands, stumbled up, heard MacFarlane's
encouraging "For'ard on!" made another desperate effort, crashed over
a box and emerged from the wreckage triumphant, the baby shrilling in
his arms.
"Got him, Mac!" he called. "Now, where's the owner of this
independent bird?"
He was at the teepee in a moment, but of the owner nothing could be
seen. Two years and more had taught him that most Indian women were
intensely shy with white men. He had learnt something of their
languages from Martin Brent--the knowledge was useful in his
work--and by this time could speak them fairly fluently. The little
squaw had been overcome by shyness but was not far away.
He summoned her in her own tongue:
"Here is your prairie chicken, O chieftain's daughter! Come and get
your prairie chicken!"
No answer came.
"O chieftain's daughter," he cooed seductively, "do not keep the poor
pony-soldier waiting. And your baby!"
The charm brought results in time. Two hands were thrust from the
door of the teepee, the fingers stretched to take the bird, but of
the lady herself nothing was visible.
Hector was disappointed.
"Why don't you come out?" he coaxed. "Surely you will thank the
pony-soldier--the poor pony-soldier who ran so far to bring your baby
back?"
She came.
Hector had leisure now to confirm first impressions. She was very
pretty, in her Indian way. Her gentle eyes, clear and limpid as a
fawn's, glanced shyly upward at his own. Her lips, on which the
smiles were trembling, were red petals from the prairie rose. The
two thick plaits in which her hair was braided were of that rich
blue-black which is the exclusive birthright of Indians and Latins.
She wore an elaborately beaded buckskin dress, which truly marked her
as the daughter of a chief. The rare beauty of her body, unspoilt by
heavy work, the looseness of her dress could not conceal. Hector
could not place her age, but she was delightfully young; and that was
good enough.
"Take it," he said gravely, handing her the bird.
Taking it, her small fingers mingling with his, she spoke at last, a
swift smile bringing light to her face, like a rainbow in sad skies.
"Thank you, pony-soldier, for catching my baby."
Serious, then, both were, till all at once the humour of the
situation struck her and her smile flashed back to break in little
rills of laughter. She laughed like a child, with her whole body.
Hector burst out laughing, too, his spirit echoing back her mood.
MacFarlane, behind, growled peevishly. A moment more and her shyness
was back again. Her pet on her breast, a final word of thanks on her
lips, she vanished, leaving Hector standing there.
"You laugh with my daughter, my son? That is good--for to laugh is
to be happy."
Hector turned, surprised.
Before him stood a chief--a minor chief, as chiefs went, but as fine
a figure as the plains could boast of, the very soul of
chieftainship. He was tall and spare, straight and majestic as a
pine, dressed in a barbaric splendor which became him to perfection.
But his greatness was written mainly in his face. The wisdom of a
hundred medicine men, made rich by long years of life, was in it,
with strength, true strength--which is utterly devoid of arrogance or
vanity--the calmness of a meditative mind, vast dignity and high
authority. And his long white hair and mighty war-bonnet framed it
all with glory.
"You laugh with her--is it not so?" he said.
"She has a cheerful heart," Hector answered, finding his voice.
"And you," the chief asserted, "you have one, too. But kind
also--few white men would run to catch the pet belonging to a little
squaw." He smiled. "You are interested in us? So you walk through
the camp to see us?"
"Yes," said Hector.
"That is good, for we are brothers, you and I, though I call you
'son.' You must come and see us when you will. We are--you know
it?--of the Assiniboines. My name is Sleeping Thunder, and my
daughter's name is Moon-on-the-Water. So you will find us."
Moon-on-the-Water! She was like her name.
"I will come and see you soon, Sleeping Thunder," replied Hector.
As they walked away, MacFarlane threw in a ponderous comment.
"Funny old man! Girl's pretty, though--for an In'jun. You made a
hit there, Hec'!"
II
Sleeping Thunder's camp was only one of many gathered together that
day in the Fort Macleod country, where the Indians were to meet the
Queen's officials to make a treaty. Hector's division was there on
escort duty.
The years had brought swift and sweeping changes. To-day Hector was
a senior sergeant, though still in the early twenties, knowing his
work inside out, intimate with the red men, an expert catcher of
criminals and particularly of whiskey-traders, his special game.
Honest, hard, dangerous work had put the triple chevrons on his arm.
And drawing nearer every day, though still a dreary distance off, the
first faint flashes of the higher light he sought were slowly opening
before his eyes.
The Police had wrought great things in the few years behind them.
The whiskey traffic had been much reduced and the old system of
trading posts was gone, entirely and forever. The effect had been to
convert the Indian to ways of peace. This in turn had brought the
settler in who, up till now, had barely dared to show a timid nose in
the country south of the Red Deer. Already the plains were dotted
with homesteads, and cattle roamed along the grass lands soon to
become tenanted by the immense herds of prosperous ranches. More
settlers and more settlers were pouring out from the East. Before
they could be accommodated, some title to the lands they wanted must
be given them. The red men claimed the whole of the Northwest
Territories. They were willing to relinquish them in return for
certain privileges. So treaties were made with the great tribes in
turn. And now the tribes of the Macleod district had come together
to make their treaty too.
III
"You have a love for our ways and an interest in our customs?" asked
Sleeping Thunder. "You admired our warriors?"
"Yes," Hector answered.
They were standing with Moon outside the chief's teepee on the last
day of the treaty celebrations.
"Would you like to see more of them? You have not really seen us
until you have seen the Sun Dance, which we hold each year in the
summer."
"I want to see much more," said Hector. The romance of the things he
had recently witnessed had fascinated him. "I would like to see the
Sun Dance."
"Then hear me. If you do not mind camping with Indians, come to us
next year and I will show you. I will teach you all our practices,
our stories and legends and more of our language. It is too late
this year, but next year--. I will send a messenger to tell you
where to come and when. I would like you to come--and so would Moon."
"_You_ would like me to come?" Hector asked, smiling at Moon.
She flashed a demure answer with her eyes.
An attractive little thing, this Indian girl!
"Then I will come," said Hector, seizing the opportunity.
With that promise they parted.
IV
In June of the following year, Hector, in frontier outfit; his
uniform laid aside, rode out to meet Sleeping Thunder and to see the
Sun Dance.
MacFarlane saw him off at the stables.
"Who is she, Hec'?" he asked, raising his bushy brows and smiling
meaningly. "That pretty little squaw, isn't it?"
Hector, whacking the pack-pony into motion and touching up his horse,
looked down and smiled in return.
"You will have your little joke, won't you, Mac?" he said. "The
girl's got nothing to do with it."
"Hasn't she?" MacFarlane mocked. "Oh, no--not at all!"
On the trail Hector headed southward, thinking of many things.
His interview with Sub-Inspector Lescheneaux, a wizened, bird-like
French-Canadian commanding Hector's troop, when asking for leave, had
been a droll but pleasing affair, ending very flatteringly.
"No leave ov h'absence since we first cam' out 'ere," the worthy
little man had ruminated; "one ov bes' N.C.O.s in dis de-vision,
_oui_; 'as don' more to stamp out d'illicit wheesk-ey traffic den any
oder sergeant I know; desires leave ov h'absence for one for'd'night;
_vraiment_, 'e deserve it, too. Eef Inspect-eur Denton 'as no
_ob_jection, Sergeant, you go by all means. I t'ink, Sergeant-Major
Whee-taker, we say dis request granted, eh? Good luck,
Sergeant--_bon voyage_. _Tiens!_"
The Sergeant-Major, too, had made Hector happy.
"He's right--right, by God, he is! Since that day at 'Red-hot'
Dan's, Adair, yes, and before that, I marked you for a winner.
You've certainly earned your little rest--damn my buttons, yes!"
This was true, all of it. Hector had worked hard. He had acquired a
reputation in the Force as one of the smartest hunters of
whiskey-runners it possessed.
But there were flies in the ointment and snakes in the grass. He had
not yet been able, for all his hard work, to put down the traffic in
the district allotted to him. Most of the traders and runners had
long since fallen into his hands. Yet there was still a great deal
of trading the source of which he could not trace. Some underground
current was pouring through the district carrying liquor to the
Indians. During the past few months he had made a particularly stern
effort to dam the flood. Success would temporarily reward him.
Then, suddenly, without warning, the stream would bubble out in some
new spot--in twenty spots at once. The mystery troubled him. The
hold it had secured on him made itself obvious in the fact that,
though he had fixedly resolved to forget it for a fortnight, it had
him now.
But the glorious appeal of the morning soon drove it from his mind.
It was full June, the sky was a light blue dome, golden at bottom,
where the sun blazed, and flecked elsewhere with baby clouds drifting
before the lazy wind. The long grass, clean, shining, went rippling
to the edges of eternity. The larks piped in the hollows and the
little gophers sat up to watch him as he passed. Hector was young,
the day was young, and troubles fly light as thistledown over the
heads of Youth when the time of the year is June.
In a minute or two he was singing a jibing song beloved by the Force,
that band of happy warriors who would not take things seriously:
_So pass the tea and let us drink
To the guardians of the land.
You bet your life it's not our fault
If whiskey's contraband!_
When he sighted Welland's place, where he planned to spend the night,
his roving fancy clicked sharply back to roost and turned to Welland.
The friendship between them, though it had prospered in the years now
gone, had never reached real intimacy. But Welland's fortunes had
been amazingly strengthened during recent times. Prosperity seemed
to come to him unsought There was something almost strange in it.
Probably he had money invested elsewhere. As men count wealth in
other places, he was not yet a Crœsus, of course, but a great
improvement was palpably evident. Several new sheds and stables;
acres of cultivated ground; cattle and horses; two wagons in the
yard; the shack extended and freshly painted--these were obvious
additions to the real and personal property owned by Welland when the
Police first came to the country. Had he fallen heir to Aladdin's
lamp? How, otherwise, had he acquired all this so easily?
As Hector rode slowly down upon the homestead through the velvet
dusk, a strange thing happened. From the house he heard an awesome,
chilling sound--dull, measured, heavy,--like blows on raw beef. And
this sound was punctuated by several low screams, each whimpering,
one by one, into a moan. Completely baffled, he dismounted near the
stables, raised the 'long yell' that common courtesy demanded, and
waited.
Welland came out, peering through the gloom.
"It's me, Joe," Hector called. "Adair!"
"Oh, that you, Hec'?" Welland responded with genuine pleasure. "Good
boy! What brings you here this time o' night?"
Hector told him, still wondering----
"Leave, eh? Going down to Milk River, eh? Fine! Fine! Of course
you'll spend the night here, and feed, too. Come on! I'll take your
horses."
When they entered the house, Lizzie was there, smiling cheerily
enough on Hector, whom she knew well by this time--Lizzie, in a new
striped skirt, sharing her man's prosperity.
"It couldn't be," Hector decided. Thereupon he placed what he had
heard aside, in one of those innumerable pigeonholes of memory, where
facts and incidents are unconsciously stowed away till wanted.
In the morning Welland gave him surprise No. 2.
"Hec', you're interested in the suppression of the liquor traffic,"
he asserted. "I don't know if you've come across this arrangement,
though. It's one of the neatest things devised yet."
He handed him that common relic of the prairie, a buffalo skull.
"The horns, as you know, are hollow. The tips have been cleverly cut
off and made into caps, to act as corks. You pour in the whiskey and
put the caps on. Perfectly tight--perfectly safe! Load a cart up
with buffalo skulls, same as all the Indians are doing now, mix a few
of these among 'em and you can get your stuff into any reserve in the
country without being caught. Who'd suspect a wagonload of buffalo
skulls?"
Hector examined it, brain busy.
"Where did you get it?"
"One of those In'juns you arrested about two weeks ago gave it to me.
I did him a good turn once. Want it?"
"I might get it when I come back. Here's how!"
"All right. Good hunting!"
Trouble brooded on Hector's face as he turned his horses out into the
morning.
He was miles on his way before the holiday spirit came back to him
and the buffalo skull went bang into its pigeon-hole.
Milk River, now! And Moon! And Sleeping Thunder!
V
The nights between the days which witnessed the Sun Dance Hector
thought wonderful, for it was then that Sleeping Thunder opened his
heart. Each night they sat beside the crimson fire, before the
teepee, under a splendid canopy of purple strewn with stars. The
silence of the plains, with only the howl of a lonely wolf by way of
contrast, was about them as they sat, their voices took on mystic
qualities unknown to them by day, the air was tense with hidden
forces. Nothing stirred and there was nothing to divert them but the
flitting form of Moon, attending the fire.
Hector spoke of one thing which dominated his mind, puzzling him.
"At this meeting, Sleeping Thunder, I have seen two ceremonies: one
the making of a brave, the other the renewal of the vows of wives and
maidens. To me these are as far apart as sun and earth. The first,
to me--and I speak for all white men--is barbarous and cruel. But
the second is very beautiful. Why do we find these things in the
same race and practised by one people?"
Sleeping Thunder, answering him, revealed the entire sum and
substance of his Indian philosophy:
"Because you find a thing you think terrible standing side by side
with something that is beautiful, you are puzzled. But there is
nothing strange in this. It is true to Nature. In one man, to say
nothing of peoples, you will find great evils dwelling with much that
is good. In the white race, as in the Indian, practices that are
beautiful and practices that are ugly walk hand in hand. The white
man's law, shielding the weak from the strong, is beautiful. The
white man's gambling dens and saloons are not. The Indians, my son,
are not the only people possessed at once by good and evil!"
The old man smiled, his bright eyes fixed on Hector.
"But is it evil----" he resumed, "this ceremony of making warriors?
What, after all, do we most admire in a man? White men and red
alike, we especially admire strength, courage and fortitude. You are
content to await the great test of action to prove that your comrades
possess these qualities. Till then you credit them with all the
strength, courage and fortitude they should rightly have. But we
Indians, we are not so easily satisfied. We demand that a young man
prove himself before the hour of action. When danger rises in your
very path and Death awaits you with his arrow on the string, that is
no time, we say, to test a man for the first time. Your safety,
perhaps your life, depends, in that moment, on the courage, strength
and fortitude of those about you. Then surely you should see that
those about you are brave and strong and hardy before entrusting
either life or safety to their keeping? That is wisdom, my son, that
is right. The boy must show that he is fit to go before we take him
with us. Therefore, we try him in the Sun Dance. If he
succeeds--then, we need have no further doubts. If he fails--the
lives of men are saved and no needless risks are encountered by the
remainder of the tribe. The test is severe? Yes; because,
otherwise, it would be worthless. But no lasting injury results.
What, then, are a few drops of blood, a little agony?
"My son, the Indian does not shun, he embraces the opportunity of
that ceremony. Does it not show that he has courage, strength and
fortitude, which crown a man with glory as his antlers crown the
caribou?
"Now in a woman--what do we admire?" The chief's voice grew tender.
"Is it gentleness, is it obedience? These things we honour, yes.
But greater than these, and higher than them all, is Purity! White
men and red alike, that is the thing we would have especially in
woman. We are ourselves weak and corrupt. We feel in our hearts the
need of something to help us to be better. So we ask that help from
these, our women. We make of Purity a torch of light and put that
torch in the hands of those we love, to guide us through the storm.
We would have our women--" here he swept a hand towards the
skies--"as high above us, as white and clear as yonder stars, to show
the way, as they do. We would have them like the peaks of the
World's Backbone, which you call the Rocky Mountains, looking always,
like them, upon our deeds, landmarks, like them, to guide us by day,
as the stars guide us by night, crowned with that virtue, Purity, as
the peaks are crowned with spotless snow and, like those peaks, so
glorious, so unchanging, so near the Great Spirit--nearer, far, than
we!--that only to look on them fills our hearts with awe and wonder.
So we would have our women.
"But here again the white and red man part. Your women shrink from a
public declaration such as ours endure. Unlike you, we do more than
teach our women purity. We ask them to dedicate themselves to purity
before the eyes of all. We hold that virtue up before them as a
thing to be prized. Then is the shame which follows any falling from
the heights made trebly terrible. So do our women learn that it is
for them to be true to the laws of the Great Spirit and leave
love-making to the male--as with birds, animals, fishes, so must it
be with men and women."
Moon, in the shadows, stirred restlessly.
"Both these ceremonies, my son, are beautiful, for they glorify
strength, courage and fortitude in men, purity in women. Then there
is nothing strange in the observance of these ceremonies by one and
the same people. I wonder--do you understand now?"
"I think--I think I see," said Hector.
He looked for Moon; but she had disappeared.
VI
When the great meeting was over, Hector said goodbye to Sleeping
Thunder.
"You go from us, my son," the old man exclaimed, extending his hand,
"knowing far more of my people than when you came. The Indian's ways
and the white man's ways are not the same and it is not good that one
should take to himself the habits of the other. The Great Spirit
made us different and so we should remain. For one, vast cities,
such as you have pictured to me--buildings of stone--sheltered lives;
for the other, open plains--teepees--and roving lives that are wild
and free. But it is good that we should know one another, since,
though you are white and we are red, we are not less brothers. For
this, at least, you will not regret your visit, O my son, and I will
always hold you as a friend--in time of need, especially, a friend.
And now you ride back to your people and no-one knows when we will
meet again. But we shall meet again, be sure of that!"
Hector smiled.
"I hope so, Sleeping Thunder," he said; then added regretfully, "Tell
Moon I am troubled that she was not here to say goodbye. Tell her I
do not understand."
Pain momentarily darkened the chief's face. Then he also smiled.
"Who shall read the mind of a woman?" he questioned. "Go your way.
I will tell her."
Again they shook hands. Hector wheeled his horses and rode away.
An Indian watched his going from a clump of bushes on the outskirts
of the camp, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes.
From the shadows, night after night, he had sullenly watched the
stranger talking with the chief outside the teepee, watched him
sitting with the father of Moon.
Loud Gun was glad to see the last of the white man.