THE MEDICINE OF LONE WOLF
The Lone Wolf had lost his “medicine,” and that was a most serious
disaster. To lose one’s “medicine” among the Indians is equivalent to
losing one’s money among the Whites, and means just as bad a mess in
one’s social and business affairs. One’s smell-feast friends of the day
before go by one with averted or unseeing eye, while everything and
everybody give evidence that one is beneath the notice of a
self-respecting world.
Thus it was with the Lone Wolf when now his “medicine” had left him.
Bear Shield, his chief, looked over him or through him without sign or
word that might be construed into an admission of his existence. Fellow
Cheyennes who had sat with him in the council or rode knee to knee with
him in the charge no longer knew him by mark of face or sound of name.
His squaws moped over the camp-fire with bowed heads; his pappooses
whimpered with the shame of what they felt but did not understand; his
dogs, cowed and dispirited, crept about with craven tails clewed close
between their legs; even his ponies made a disgraced band by themselves,
cropping dejected grass apart, as though unfit to mingle with the
reputable mustangs of mankind.
This situation was all the more a jolt to the sensibilities of the Lone
Wolf, since he had been a personage of eminence and place. His voice had
been high in tribal powwow, his strong hand resistless in war. He was
rich in robes and ponies, in pappooses and dogs and wives. The records
of the “medicine” lodge showed him entitled to sing of the conquest of
four scalps—one Pawnee, two Sioux, and one the former headwear of a
drunken teamster of Sun City—which four topknots were drying on his
tepee pole. By these one may know how to measure the heights from which
the melancholy Lone Wolf had been hurled.
The Lone Wolf had lost his “medicine” without fault, that is fault from
the standpoint of a paleface. He came down to the ford at the Beaver,
when storms to the west had rendered it boiling and bank full. By reason
of the boil and swirl, and the shifting quicksands under hoof, his pony
lost its foothold and went down. In the splash and water-scramble that
ensued, the Lone Wolf and his half-choked pony reached the shore; but
his “medicine,” torn from his neck in the struggle, was swept away.
There was no argument for a search. In the turbid toss of that ten-mile
current the “medicine” was as hopelessly lost as though it had exhaled.
And yet, while the Lone Wolf could relate this blameless story of his
vanished “medicine,” it availed him naught. There is no such word as
accident where one’s “medicine” is concerned. One’s separation from it,
no matter by what means brought about, is neither to be honourably
accounted for nor condoned. One has lost one’s “medicine”; and one is
thereby and therefore destroyed. It would be a stain, as even the
half-opened paleface eye may see, were it taken from one by the
conquering arm of a foe. It is as deep a stain to part with it, as the
Lone Wolf parted with his. Such manner of loss makes plain that, because
of crimes or cowardices unknown, the justice-loving ghosts have
interfered to strip a villain of this basic requisite of a warrior and
an honest man. Only in this way can the ghosts of good Cheyennes gone
before, having the honour of their tribe in dearest mind, furnish word
to their children of him in their midst, so flagrantly vile that a least
association with him provides disgrace, while bordering narrowly on
actual sin itself.
In a far day a leper cloaked his head and hung a tinkling bell at his
girdle, so that hale men might have warning of his evil case and hold
aloof. For kindred reasons the Lone Wolf, when now his “medicine” was
lost, killed his pony, broke his pipe-stem, and blackened his face. In
this sorrowful guise he went afoot the long journey to his home village
on the Cimarron, and all who met him by the way knew him at sight and
turned their backs upon him, for that thing below a caste, a man who has
lost his “medicine.”
The Lone Wolf’s “medicine” had been an exceeding strong “medicine,” and
this served to give his loss an emphasis. He had worn it through a dozen
battles, and it so cunningly protected him that, while others fell about
him knocked over like ninepins, nothing save and except one bullet from
a Gatling was able to leave its mark upon him. The Gatling had nicked
him; and the furrow it turned was visible on the cheek of Lone Wolf.
This untoward scratch was solvable only upon a theory that the
“medicine” of what paleface fired the shot must likewise have possessed
uncommon potentialities.
When boyhood ceased for the Lone Wolf and he trembled on the threshold
of existence as a full-blown buck, in deference to Cheyenne custom he
had wandered abroad and alone upon the blizzard-whipped plains, and
frozen and starved and prayed and mourned for seven nights and days. In
the end, cold and hunger and self-hypnotism did their work, and the Lone
Wolf began to see shapes and hear voices. These told him how to compound
his “medicine,” so that thereafter he should be wise as the owl in
peace, fierce as the eagle in strife.
The “medicine” bag was to be sewed from the skin of an otter, dressed
with claws and tail and head and teeth as though filled with grinning
life. Inside the otter-pelt “medicine” bag were to be hidden charmed
tobacco, slips of sacred cedar, a handful of periwinkle shells, as well
as twenty other occult odds and ends, the recondite whole, together with
the otter-skin pouch, to be and remain his “medicine” forevermore.
The Lone Wolf followed, religiously, the ghostly directions. He caught
and skinned and tanned and sewed his otter, and then invested the
precious bag with those chronicled weird fragments of matter. To these
latter, as all must admit, the lip of bat, and toe of toad, and eye of
newt—so valuable in witchcraft—or the negro necromancer’s dried snake’s
head, and left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit killed in the dark of the
moon, are as children’s toys; and so thought the Lone Wolf. When
complete, he hung his “medicine” about his neck, and felt himself a
proud, big warrior and a man. He had never been parted from it, were it
day or night, or war or peace. He had even worn it during his school
days at Carlisle, saving it from curious professors, who might have
decried it as some heathen fetish, by wearing it under his calico shirt.
Now it was gone, eaten up by the hungry Beaver, and the name of the Lone
Wolf had been dropped from all the aboriginal roll calls of good repute.
Not alone among the Cheyennes, but in the estimation of every Indian
that yelped between the Yellowstone and the Rio Grande, the unlucky Lone
Wolf, with a lost “medicine” bag to his discredit, was utterly abandoned
and undone.
And the worst feature of the case was that the Lone Wolf could not make
a new “medicine.” Since the Great Spirit invented the institution of
“medicine” and placed it upon earth, all men have known that one may
create his “medicine” but once. Any second attempt serves only to
introduce one to a covey of malevolent spirits, whose power will be
exercised to wet one’s bowstring, blunt one’s arrow, lame one’s pony,
and break one’s lance. No, the Lone Wolf could not make another
“medicine.”
Was there no hope for the Lone Wolf?
About an even century before the Lone Wolf slumped into that quicksand
crossing of the Beaver, and was robbed by the waters of his otter-skin
“medicine,” Mr. Goldsmith wrote a three act oratorio, called it “The
Captivity” and sold it to Dodsley for ten guineas. Among other tuneful
commodities in said oratorio contained, Mr. Goldsmith penned the
following:
The wretch condemned with life to part,
Still, still on hope relies;
And every pang that rends the heart
Bids expectation rise.
Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light,
Adorns and cheers our way;
And still as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.
Since he knew neither the one nor the other, it is fair to assume that
when Mr. Goldsmith wrote the above he was thinking as deeply on the Lone
Wolf as on you. Certainly the habit of hope therein set forth is as
prevalently sweeping among savages as among civilised folk. The Indian
does not hope for the same things, but to what extent and in what
direction his anticipations stray he hopes as industriously as ever
hoped any white man of you all. And so it was with the unhappy Lone
Wolf. In this, his darkest hour, there remained the glimmer of a hope.
When the Great Spirit fixed his commands against making a second
“medicine,” a fiat necessary lest a “medicine” easily replaced
degenerate to be a trivial gewgaw creature of small moment, he left
open, should one lose one’s “medicine,” a single gateway of relief. One
might conquer, in such pinch, an enemy, strip him of his personal
“medicine,” and thus redeem one’s self. The “medicine” of that dead foe
would take the place of the lost “medicine,” and by its virtues
rehabilitate the victor and restore him unto what tribal place was his
before his own original “medicine” had disappeared.
In this black hour of his fortunes, the Lone Wolf upheld his heart with
this. He might go north, and knock over some casual Pawnee or
inadvertent Sioux. Hundreds of these at this season would be met with
among the buffaloes. True, it would be a long, hard trail; but not so
long nor so hard as the life-trail of the Lone Wolf when now he was
without caste or tribal countenance.
Stripping himself of feathers and hawk-bells and bearclaw necklace and
every form of ornament, wrapped in his raggedest blanket, with a daub of
mud in his hair as one who mourns, without word or sign to any
concerning his purpose, the Lone Wolf turned his back on the Cimarron
and wended northward. His face paints were black, for his heart was sad.
The only matters about him that did not tell of woe and bankruptcy, and
warn one of an Indian without fortune or future, were his pony and his
arms. These showed of the best, and this weapon-care was not without a
reason. More than ever would the Lone Wolf require a pony tireless as
the storm and as swift, and lance and bow and knife without flaw or
fault; for now when he had lost his “medicine,” he was singularly
undefended and weak. No one knew better these latter helpless truths
than did the Lone Wolf. It was by no means sure that a child might not
overcome him—he who, but a fortnight before with his otter-skin
“medicine,” had been a thunderbolt of war. Wherefore, with his heart
little, his courage water, his bow an arc of weakness, his arrows no
better than windle-straws, and his lance as forceless as a cornstalk—for
losing one’s “medicine” means all these grievous conditions of undefence
and inability to smite—it behooved the Lone Wolf to provide as much as
he might, with prudence and farsighted care, in favour of a possible
success.
The Lone Wolf would have no help from the good ghosts, for these had
left him with the lost “medicine.” What ghosts might still be riding in
his disgraceful company, were bad ghosts. So far as they did anything
they would do harm, not good, and the best he might look for at their
hands was a sort of ghostly non-interference.
There was a least slant ray to encourage the latter hope. If the Lone
Wolf had the luck to cross up with a Pawnee or a Sioux as contemptible
as himself, the ghosts would not choose between them. In such miserable
coil of coyote-snap-coyote, the disgusted ghosts would stand afar off.
They would be content with the outcome, whatever it was, and refuse to
contaminate their vapourish hands by mixing in the business.
That was the one favouring chance that lay before the Lone Wolf. To have
full advantage of it, he wore his best weapons and rode his best war
pony. If he happened upon a Pawnee or Sioux, disreputable in the eyes of
gods and men, he might yet be saved from out those fires of disgrace
that were consuming him. He would kill that Pawnee or Sioux, and wash
himself free of stain with his victim’s “medicine.”
On the other and more likely hand—since good is more rife than evil—were
he to encounter an Indian, tribally eminent and high, one who stood well
with his people and of whose company therefore the most exactingly
exclusive ghost need not feel ashamed, the Lone Wolf knew the upcome.
His fate was written; he was no better than a dead Cheyenne. To these
poor conditions the Lone Wolf tacitly agreed. And wherefore no? What
death was not preferable to a life of endless ignominy—the life of one
who has lost his “medicine?” Such indeed were the thoughts to skulk in
the mind of the Lone Wolf like quails in corn, as he rode forward on his
quest.
The Lone Wolf could not expect to find that required Pawnee or needed
Sioux short of the Platte or perhaps the Yellowstone. He resolved to go
thither by way of Dodge. The Lone Wolf was not wanting in a kind of
sapiency. Now that his own weapons were undeniably weak—he could only
know how weak when he had tried them, and the news might come too
late—he decided to purchase a rifle of the palefaces. Such a weapon
would not have been sapped of its powers by any former possession of his
own, and he might possibly corral that “medicine” he sought before it
had been long enough in his hands to have degenerated. With this wisdom
in mind, the Lone Wolf drove before him two pack ponies, laden to the
ears of robes and furs. This sumpter stuff would buy that rifle, with
its accompanying belts and cartridges.
The Lone Wolf knew Mr. Masterson, and liked him. They had both fought at
the ’Dobe Walls and gained a deal of respect for one another. Also they
had met since at sundry agencies; and in good truth it was the Lone Wolf
who told Mr. Masterson how many of those charging savages went under in
that hot fortnight of fight.
“How many of you did we blink out?” asked Mr. Masterson, who had his
statistical side.
The Lone Wolf’s mathematics were wholly aboriginal, for all he had been
to Carlisle. He opened and closed his ten fingers eight times—eighty.
Then he held up one finger.
“Buffalo soldier,” said the Lone Wolf.
The one finger stood for that traitorous black bugler, who fought for
the side of the Indians and sounded rally and charge on his stolen
bugle, the property of the state. The Indians style such “buffalo
soldiers” because of their woolly heads like unto the curled frontlet of
a buffalo bull.
Having decided upon that rifle and its acquirement, the Lone Wolf would
go seeking his new “medicine” by way of Dodge. He would inquire out Mr.
Masterson and crave his aid in the rifle’s selection. This was highly
important. Some bad paleface might otherwise sell him a gun that was
bewitched. Mr. Masterson would protect him from that fearful risk. Mr.
Masterson was an honest man. No one could fight as Mr. Masterson had
fought, unless his heart were very pure and strong.
The only drawback to a visit to Dodge lurked in this that it would
compel the Lone Wolf to speak English. Surely, he had learned English at
Carlisle; but knowing, as know all Indians, that to speak the white
man’s language brings misfortune and sickness and death, he had had the
wit to discontinue the practice. Likewise and at the same time he laid
aside his paleface clothes as being extremely “bad medicine.” Of course,
there was also a commonsense side to the latter move, since anyone who
sticks to coat and trousers when, without shaking his position, he may
be freely comfortable in breech-clout and blanket, is an unimaginable
ass. Yes; in Dodge the Lone Wolf would be driven to speak English.
However, it would not last for long, and in the desolate pitch of his
fortune, what mattered it what he spoke? It would mean companionship,
and therefore a kind of comfort; for your Indian is as gregarious as a
prairie dog, and the Lone Wolf—who had not spoken to buck or squaw or
pappoose since he lost his “medicine”—was beginning to feel as solitary
and as lonesome as a good man in Chicago.
Six months before the Lone Wolf lost his “medicine” in the Beaver, there
had come to the Dodge Opera House that dramatic organization known as
the Red Stocking Blondes. The advent of this talented combination was
hailed with local delight, for it had ever been a favourite in Dodge.
The first violin of the Red Stocking Blondes, on this particular
occasion, was not the individual whom Mr. Wagner roped on a former
memorable evening. This first violin was thoroughly the artist. What he
couldn’t coax from a fiddle in the way of melody would have to be
developed by an Ole Bull.
Once, Cimarron Bill, after listening to several of the first violin’s
most unstudied performances, had asked:
“Can you play the Bootiful Bloo Danyoob? I hears it ’leven years ago in
St. Looey, an’ have been honin’ for it ever since.”
The artist, thus appealed to, played that swelling piece of waltz music,
and when he finished, the emotional Cimarron, eyes a-swim with tears of
ecstasy, grasped his hand.
“Pard!” exclaimed the worthy Cimarron, in a gush of hyperbole, “you
could play a fiddle with your feet!” However, this is in advance of the
story.
The first violin of the Red Stocking Blondes was named Algernon Pepin,
albeit this may have been a _nom de theâtre_. Mr. Pepin was small, lean,
shy, silent, timid, with a long, sad, defeated face. His back was
humped, as were the backs of Aesop, Richard of Gloster, the poet Pope,
and many another gentleman of genius. He had rakehandle arms, and skinny
fingers like the claws of a great bird.
Of all who marched with the banners of the Red Stocking Blondes, Mr.
Pepin, when they came into Dodge, was the only one troubled of spirit.
The rest showed as gay as larks; for the troupe was on the road to
Broadway, and six weeks more would find its members in Rector’s,
Shanley’s, Brown’s and Lüchow’s, relating their adventures to guileless
ones who had never crossed the Hudson. It was that thought of Broadway
to pale the sallow, anxious cheek of Mr. Pepin. And the reason of the
terror which tugged at his soul was this:
Two years rearward Mr. Pepin, by several fortunate strokes and the aid
of a legacy, had made himself master of an opera company. It was one of
those terrible opera companies that sing Wagner and are both fashionable
and awful to hear.
The contralto of the opera company was a large, powerful woman whose
name ended in “ski.” Her upper lip was distinctly mustached, and her
voice sounded like a man in a cistern. There are, in divers parts of
Europe, just such beings as this contralto who, yoked with cattle,
assist in agriculture by pulling plows. This happy condition, however,
is confined to Europe; here they sing in Wagner.
Any lady of the theaters will tell you there is advantage in being the
wife of the owner of the show. It means spotlights, music, three-sheets,
puffs; in short the center of the stage. The contralto in question was
wholly aware of these advantages. Acting on that knowledge, this
formidable woman arose one New York morning, conveyed Mr. Pepin to the
Little Church Around the Corner, almost with force and arms, and married
him to her for better or for worse. It turned out to be the latter
alternative in the dismal case of Mr. Pepin.
There came a time when the opera company fell upon poor days. Then the
days went from poor to bad and bad to worse. Lastly, came the crash. At
the close of a losing week the treasurer fled with the receipts, and a
host of creditors, the sheriff at their hungry head, tore Mr. Pepin into
insolvent bits. When the dust of that last fierce struggle had subsided,
Mr. Pepin crawled from the wreck with two fiddles and the necessity of
beginning life anew.
Mr. Pepin, at that time, would have said that he had nothing further to
fear from fate. Ill-fortune, he would have argued, had shot its bolt and
done its worst. Most folk, after an unbiased review, would have
coincided with Mr. Pepin. Also, most folk, like Mr. Pepin, would be
wrong, since they would have overlooked that fell contralto.
When the opera company went to grief, and with it her position, the
contralto scrupled not to revile Mr. Pepin. She even taunted him with
his misshapen back. Then she beat him. When he ran from her and
concealed himself, she charged him with abandonment and cruelty, and the
police dragged Mr. Pepin from his place of hiding.
One day by some masterly sleight, Mr. Pepin escaped, and went fiddling
forth into the land. He was not after position; salary was no object;
the one purpose of Mr. Pepin was to keep out of New York and thereby out
of the clutches of his contralto, for whom—since she never left that
metropolis—New York had become the dread synonym. You who read may now
consider how far Mr. Pepin was justified of his shudders at the mention
of Broadway.
Two days prior to the coming of those Red Stocking Blondes, Mr.
Peacock’s Dance Hall had suffered an orchestral setback. In the midst of
the evening’s gayety five couples presented themselves in the formation
of one quadrille—a manifest solecism!
Mr. Peacock, alive to the dangerous impropriety described, warned the
musicians, by a repressive gesture of his hand, not to strike up. Had
Mr. Peacock’s signals been heeded there would have been no trouble in
the Dance Hall, for the gentlemen concerned would have either adjusted
their differences by tossing a copper or gone outside to shoot.
But the signals of Mr. Peacock were not obeyed. The violinist of the
Dance Hall was one of your ill-conditioned natures that dislike a quiet
life. Observing those five couple where only four should be, and
careless of the pantomime of Mr. Peacock, with a brief exultant remark
to the pianist that he thought he saw in the snarl the rudiments of
trouble, the violinist went ranting off into the “Arkansas Traveler” and
dragged the pianist along.
Somewhere it has been put forth—and the assertion has had solemn
acceptance to this day—that the man was a public benefactor who made two
blades of grass grow where but one had grown before. However much this
may be of value as a statement concerning grass, it fails when one
attempts its application to quadrilles. Instead of benefiting the
public, he who sought to make two couples dance where but one had danced
before, would simply be laying the foundations of civil war. And this in
particular were the scene of his operations Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall in
the hour borne in mind.
And so the sequel showed. That malignant violinist, when he plowed off
into the “Arkansas Traveler”—to which music, be it known, more men have
perished than to the “British Grenadier”—he gave the fatal call:
“First four forward and back!”
The “First Four” on this overloaded occasion, carrying as it did that
extra couple and being not four but six, fell at once into a general
knot. Upon the knot growing worse instead of better, those therein
involved attempted to untie it with their guns.
It was over in a moment, with a gratifying count of one killed and none
wounded. The word “gratifying” is used, because the one killed was that
troublemongering violinist who, with his “Arkansas Traveler,” had shoved
the row from shore. Justice is blind, and now and then an accident may
be counted upon to do an equity.
While every right-thinking soul in Dodge felt glad that the malignant
violinist was killed, his blotting out none the less became a common
injury. There was no one to put in his place; which, it may be said in
passing, furnished the precise reason why he had not been shot before.
Now a violinist was a highly important personage in Dodge. Your cowboy,
after the sixth drink, is a being of mood and romance—a dreamy
sentimentalist! He requires the violin, as the Jewish king required the
harp, and nothing else will soothe him. Wherefore, while Mr. Peacock’s
pianist—he had lived through that overstocked quadrille untouched—might
hammer out a dance tune, the atmosphere was sorely lacking in those
calmative elements which only a violin could give. It offered a state of
affairs especially hectic and explosive, one which the cooler spirits
must watch in order to preserve a peace.
The dead violinist was buried on the day when the Red Stocking Blondes
came to town, and it is safe to assume that those funeral doings taught
Mr. Pepin, by the gossip they provoked, of the refuge for himself and
fortunes which those obsequies inferred. Whether that be so or no, at
the end of the week when the Red Stocking Blondes closed their brilliant
engagement and on the breath of Dodge’s plaudits were wafted to the next
stand, Mr. Pepin remained behind. He lapsed into that bullet-constructed
vacancy in Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall, while his light companions of the
theater set their faces eastward, singing:
“The sun is always shining on Broadway.”
One can imagine a war that would have obliterated, but not one that
would have conquered Dodge. Mere force could never have brought it to
its knees; and yet within a week it had unconditionally surrendered to
the melodious genius of Mr. Pepin. He enraptured Dodge. It took him to
its heart; it would have defended him to the latest gasp. Mr. Pepin
repayed this local worship. Never had he drawn sweeter strains from his
instrument; for never, of late at least, had his heart been more
protected and at perfect ease.
Also, the musical taste of Dodge was elevated by Mr. Pepin. In this
taste improvement, Mr. Pepin showed himself equipped of tact, and a wary
wit. He played selections from “Trovatore” and “Martha,” and rendered
Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song,” and “Old Madrid.” But he renamed them—in
favour of local colour, probably—“Midnight Along the Arkansas,” “Two
Black Bears,” “The Fieste at Santa Fé,” and “Daybreak On the Plains.”
This was a sagacious nomenclature; it plowed ’round suspicion, and
avoided prejudices that otherwise might have been invoked.
When the Red Stocking Blondes departed for the East, Mr. Pepin severally
swore every member of that organisation to say nothing of his
whereabouts to the contralto, and it is creditable to the dramatic
profession that every member kept the oath. Mr. Pepin, released from
bondage and doubly safe with distance and an address that was now
suppressed, might have scraped an unscared fiddle to the ending of his
days, had it not been for his own loquacity—a loquacity that was brought
about in this wise.
Mr. Pepin had dwelt in Dodge, and been the soul of those revels that
found nightly place in Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall, for divers months, when
the town dedicated its first church. The event was epoch-making, and
Dodge, impressed as to what onward and upward strides were suggested of
that day, gave way to vast rejoicing. A deal of Old Jordan was
destroyed, and Mr. Pepin, contrary to a usual habit, was among those
overcome. Most of Mr. Pepin’s liquor was consumed in the Alhambra; for
he and Mr. Kelly—who owned a musical ear—had become as brothers.
There is a proverb which says _In vino veritas_, and talks of truth in
wine. This is manifest mistake. Intoxication is the very seed of
mendacity, and a drunken man is always and everywhere a liar. After the
tenth drink, Mr. Pepin and Mr. Kelly communed together affectionately,
and Mr. Pepin told Mr. Kelly of the contralto. He spoke of the domestic
affections; said it was the one sorrow of his life that the contralto
wasn’t with him in Dodge, and bewept a poverty which separated them. He
explained that if Mr. Kelly could but see his heart he might then gain
some glimmer of the grief that fed upon it. Mr. Pepin cried profoundly,
and Mr. Kelly, who loved him, united his sobs to Mr. Pepin’s.
Controlling his grief, Mr. Pepin averred that he lived only for a day
when, having accumulated what treasure was necessary for the enterprise,
he could bring his contralto to Dodge, and show that aggregation of
bumpkins what a real lady was like. Then Mr. Pepin went to sleep with
his head on a poker table, and forgot every word he had spoken to Mr.
Kelly.
Mr. Kelly had a better memory; he was capable of more liquor than was
Mr. Pepin. And he was Mr. Pepin’s friend. Mr. Kelly resolved upon a
sentimental surprise. He would restore that contralto to the arms and
heart of Mr. Pepin. The latter should not wait upon the painful, slow
achievement of what funds were called for. Mr. Kelly had money; and to
what better purpose, pray, can one’s money be put than a promotion of
the happiness of a friend? Mr. Kelly had jotted down the lady’s
address—being that of a dramatic agency—as furnished drunkenly by Mr.
Pepin, and he now wired her to come at once. Mr. Kelly benevolently
closed his message with:
“If you’re broke, draw on me for five hundred.”
Having accomplished so much, Mr. Kelly as a reward of merit bestowed
upon himself a huge drink. Then he gave himself up to those feelings of
self-approval that come blandly to souls engaged upon virtuous works.
The day next but one after sending his message, Mr. Kelly received the
following from the contralto:
“Have drawn for five hundred. Will start for Dodge in a week.”
In the beginning, Mr. Kelly had planned to keep the joy in store for Mr.
Pepin a secret from that virtuoso. Mr. Pepin was to know nothing of the
bliss that was being arranged for him. His earliest information should
come when Mr. Kelly led him to the Wright House, where his contralto was
awaiting him with parted lips and outstretched, loving hands.
“Which I’ll nacherally bring down heaven on him like a pan of milk from
a top shelf!” quoth the excellent Mr. Kelly.
As stated, this was the plan; but after receiving the contralto’s
message, Mr. Kelly decided upon amendments. It would be safer, when all
was said, to let Mr. Pepin hear of the contralto and her coming. Mr.
Pepin was a frail man; a sudden joy might strike him dead. Mr. Kelly had
heard of such cases. Not to invite any similar catastrophe in the
fragile instance of Mr. Pepin, Mr. Kelly took him aside and told him of
the happiness ahead. He was ten minutes in the telling, rolling the
blessed secret beneath his tongue, until the last possible moment, like
a sweet morsel.
Mr. Pepin, rendered mute by his peril, said never a word. He read the
contralto’s message and then fell into a chair—glazed of eye and pale of
cheek. Mr. Kelly poured whiskey down Mr. Pepin, laying his faintness to
bliss. Mr. Pepin was at last so far recovered that he could walk. But
his eyes roved wildly, like the eyes of a trapped animal, and how he
fiddled through the night he never knew.
Nature preserves herself by equilibriums. He who will stop and think
must see that this is so. Wherever there is danger there is defence, a
poison means an antidote and the distillery and the rattlesnake go hand
in hand. The day of Mr. Kelly’s headlong breaking into the domestic
affairs of Mr. Pepin, was the day upon which the Lone Wolf came into
Dodge. The Lone Wolf lost no time, but sought out Mr. Masterson. His
ragged blanket and blackened face must be explained, and the Lone Wolf
told Mr. Masterson of his lost “medicine.” Moreover, he set forth his
design of presently potting that Pawnee or Sioux, and sequestering, _de
bene esse_, the dead person’s “medicine.”
Mr. Masterson spoke against this latter scheme; to carry it out would
betray the Lone Wolf into all sorts and fashions of trouble. The Lone
Wolf’s Great Father in Washington objected to these unauthorized
homicides, and would send the walkaheaps or the pony-soldiers from the
Fort upon the trail of the Lone Wolf.
As against this, the Lone Wolf showed that he was even then in all sorts
and fashions of trouble by reason of his lost “medicine,” and nothing
the Great Father did could add to it. What was he, the Lone Wolf, to do?
He must have a “medicine.” He could not make a new one, for the Great
Spirit had passed commands against it. He could not buy one, for every
Indian urgently needed his “medicine” in his own affairs, and when he
died it must be buried with him since he would then need it more than
ever. There was no other solution. He must knock out the brains of that
Pawnee or Sioux of whom he was in pursuit. There would then be an extra
“medicine” on earth, and he might claim it.
Mr. Masterson owned a fertile intelligence; a bright thought came to
him. He told the Lone Wolf that he knew one who was the chief of all
medicine men, and master of the mightiest “medicines.” This personage,
by a most marvellous chance, had an extra “medicine.” Mr. Masterson was
sure that if the need were properly presented, his friend the Lone Wolf
could buy this “medicine.” The Lone Wolf would then, in that matter of a
“medicine,” to quote from Mr. Masterson, “have every other Cheyenne too
dead to skin.”
Mr. Masterson conveyed the Lone Wolf to Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall, and
called his attention to Mr. Pepin, who, made desperate by the peep into
a contralto-filled future which the kindness of Mr. Kelly had afforded
him, was fiddling as he n’er fiddled before. The Lone Wolf gazed
planet-smitten. Even without the spotless word of Mr. Masterson, he
would have known by the hump on his shoulders—that especial mark of the
Great Spirit’s favour!—how Mr. Pepin was a most tremendous medicine man.
Neither was it needed that Mr. Masterson instruct him as to the
prodigious qualities of the resounding “medicine” which Mr. Pepin
fondled. The Lone Wolf could hear the wailing and sobbing and singing of
the scores of ghosts—as many as four screaming at once!—that dwelt
therein, and whose sensibilities Mr. Pepin worked upon with the wand in
his right hand.
Between dances, that gentleman being at leisure, Mr. Masterson made Mr.
Pepin acquainted with the Lone Wolf, and set forth—winking instructively
the while—the sore dilemma of his Cheyenne friend. Mr. Masterson
explained that he had told the Lone Wolf about an extra “medicine”
whereof he, Mr. Pepin, was endowed. Would Mr. Pepin, from his charity
and goodness, sell this priceless “medicine” to the Lone Wolf, and lift
him out of that abyss into which he had fallen?
Mr. Pepin owned an extra violin, that was not a good violin and
therefore out of commission. It abode in a black, oblong box, like a
little coffin. Being the kindest of souls, he declined the thought of
sale, and said that he would give it to Mr. Masterson’s friend, the Lone
Wolf. He took it from its case, which on being opened displayed an
advantageous lining of red. The Lone Wolf received it reverently,
smelled to it, peered through the slashes in its bosom, placed it to his
ear, and then with a kind of awe turned to Mr. Pepin. Was this
“medicine” also full of ghosts? Mr. Pepin took it and bowfully showed
him that it was a very hive of ghosts.
The Lone Wolf declared that he would receive this inestimable “medicine”
from Mr. Pepin. To simply handle it had given him a good heart. Its mere
touch, to say nothing of the voices of those ghosts imprisoned in its
cherry coloured belly, cheered him and thrilled him as had no other
“medicine.” He would return to his people, and scowl in every man’s
face. His squaws should again hold up their heads, his pappooses cease
their crying. His dogs’ tails should proudly curl aloft, and his ponies
snort contempt for the broncos of feebler folk. Altogether the Lone Wolf
pictured for himself a balmy future. In conclusion, the grateful Lone
Wolf set forth that, while he was proud to take this wondrous “medicine”
as a gift, he must still bestow those pack ponies, with their cargoes of
robes and furs, upon Mr. Pepin, who was his heart’s brother.
The Lone Wolf told Mr. Masterson that he would put in the balance of the
evening in Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall. He desired to sit by the side of
his heart’s brother and listen to the talk of his “medicine.” Mr. Pepin
instructed the Lone Wolf how he might bind that precious fiddle-case to
his shoulders with straps, and wear it like a knapsack. The Lone Wolf,
being thus adorned, gave himself a new title. He was no more the Lone
Wolf; he had lost that name in the Beaver with his old “medicine.” He
had become “The-Man-who-packs-his-medicine-on-his-back.”
After the Dance Hall revels were done, being alone together, the Lone
Wolf and Mr. Pepin fell into closer talk. Two days later, no one could
have found Mr. Pepin with a search warrant. The Lone Wolf, too, had
disappeared.
When Dodge realised the spiriting away of Mr. Pepin, a howl, not to say
a hue and cry, went up. In the woeful midst of the excitement, Mr. Kelly
informed the world of his negotiations with the contralto. This news
created the utmost consternation.
“It was that which run him out o’ camp,” said Cimarron Bill, referring
to the departed Mr. Pepin. “You’ve stampeded him by sendin’ for his
wife.”
Dodge could not but look coldly upon Mr. Kelly for his foolish header
into the household affairs of Mr. Pepin. And there was a serious side:
the contralto had said she would start for Dodge in a week. When she
arrived, and Mr. Kelly could not produce Mr. Pepin, what would be her
course? Dodge could not guess; it could only shudder. In her resentment
the contralto might marry Mr. Kelly. Cimarron Bill expressed a hope that
she would. He said that such an upcome would punish Mr. Kelly as well as
offer safety to Dodge.
“For that lady’s disapp’intment,” said Cimarron Bill, “is goin’ to be
frightful; an’ if ever she turns loose once, thar’ll be nothin’ for
Dodge to do but adjourn _sine die_.”
Mr. Kelly had lived long on the border and was a resourceful man. He saw
the dangers that surrounded him, and appreciated, as he phrased it, that
he “was out on a limb.” He must act without delay, or there was no
measuring the calamities that might overtake him. Thank heaven! the
contralto would not start for three full days. There was still time, if
Mr. Kelly moved rapidly. Mr. Kelly wired the contralto:
“Your husband dropped dead with joy on hearing you were coming.
You may keep the money.”
Mr. Masterson, to whom he read this message, approved it, and said that
it did Mr. Kelly credit. At Mr. Masterson’s suggestion, Mr. Kelly added
the inquiry,
“Shall I ship body to New York?”
as calculated to allay doubts.
Both Mr. Kelly and Dodge breathed more freely when the contralto
replied, expressed her tearful thanks, and said that, as to shipment
suggested, Mr. Kelly needn’t mind.
“An’ you can gamble, Bat,” observed Mr. Kelly, solemnly, “it’s the last
time I’ll open a correspondence, that a-way, with another gent’s wife.”
It was during the frosts of a next autumn that Mr. Masterson, in his
official character, was over on the Cimarron looking for stolen horses.
He decided upon a visit to Bear Shield’s band, since stolen horses among
the Cheyennes were not without a precedent.
In the earlier hours of an evening full of moonlight and natural peace,
Mr. Masterson came into Bear Shield’s village through a yelping skirmish
line of dogs. As he rode leisurely forward, he could hear above the
howling of the dogs the “Tunk, tunk!” of a native drum, which is not a
drum but a tomtom. As he drew slowly nearer, the “Hy yah! hy yah! hy!”
of savage singing taught an experienced intelligence that the Cheyennes
were holding a dance. This was not surprising; the Cheyennes, when not
hunting nor robbing nor scalping, are generally holding a dance.
And yet the situation was not lacking in elements of amazement. The
“Tunk! tunk!” and the “Hy yah! hy yah! hy!” Mr. Masterson could explain,
for he had heard them many times. But over and under and through them
all ran a thin, wailing note which would have been understandable in a
hurdy-gurdy, but fell strangely not to say fantastically upon the ear
when heard in an Indian village among the cottonwoods, with the
whispering soft rush of the Cimarron to bear it company.
Full of curiosity, and yet with a half guess, Mr. Masterson threw
himself from the saddle and made his way through the circle of
spectators that were as a frame for the dance. There, in good sooth! sat
Mr. Pepin, flourishing a tuneful bow. He was giving them the “Gypsy
Chorus,” while an Indian drummer beat out the time on his tomtom. Back
of Mr. Pepin were squatted a half dozen young squaws, who furnished the
“Hy yah! hy!” It cannot be said that these fair vocalists closely
followed the score as written by Mr. Balfe; but they struck all about
him, and since time was perfect the dancers skated and crouched and
towered and leaped and crept thereunto with the utmost éclat.
Mr. Masterson moved into a position where he might have the moonlight
full upon Mr. Pepin. That lost genius was indeed a splendid spectacle!
His hair exhibited a plumy bristle of feathers, while the paints on his
face offered a colour scheme by the dazzling side of which the most
brilliant among the Cheyennes dwindled into dreary failure.
After the dance, Mr. Masterson talked with Mr. Pepin. It was as Mr.
Masterson had surmised; in his despair at the threatened coming of the
contralto, and having advantage of the Lone Wolf’s new friendship, Mr.
Pepin had thrown himself upon the Cheyennes. They received him most
decorously, for the Lone Wolf made a speech that opened their eyes. The
Lone Wolf had exhibited his new “medicine,” and requested Mr. Pepin to
make the ghosts talk, which he did. The hunch on Mr. Pepin’s back was
also a mighty endorsement. It was as the signature of the Great Spirit,
and bespoke for him an instant Cheyenne vogue. Bear Shield became his
friend; the Lone Wolf continued to be his heart’s brother. He was given
a lodge. Then Bear Shield bestowed upon him his daughter Red Bud to be
his wife.
Mr. Pepin confessed that he might have hesitated at this final honour,
but the thoroughgoing Bear Shield accompanied the gift of the blooming
Red Bud with a fine elm club. The two went ever together, Bear Shield
said, and explained the marital possibilities of the elm club. Mr. Pepin
had always heard how there was a per cent. of good among every sort and
sept of men. He could now bear witness that the Cheyennes nourished
views concerning matrimony, and the rights of husband and wife, for
which much might be said.
Mr. Pepin did not wish to return to the whites; the Indians were devoid
of contraltos. The Lone Wolf filled his lodge with buffalo beef and
robes. By way of receiving return, he came once a week, and asked his
heart’s brother to make the ghosts in his “medicine” tell him their
impressions. Under Mr. Pepin’s spell the ghosts were sure to talk
hopefully and with courageous optimism. Their usual discourse took the
form of “Johnny Comes Marching Home,” or “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”
These never failed to make the Lone Wolf’s heart both bold and good.
Mr. Masterson presently met the Lone Wolf. That warrior was wearing his
fiddle-case “medicine” on his back, after the manner of a squaw carrying
her pappoose. The Lone Wolf had a prideful look which he held was one of
the beneficent effects of his “medicine.” He confided to Mr. Masterson
that Mr. Pepin’s Cheyenne name was a rumbling procession of gutturals
that, translated, meant “The-toad-that-sings-like-a-thrush.”