A STRONG TEMPTATION.
As Jack and Hugh walked away from the crowd, Hugh leading the horse, he
talked with Jack about all the mysterious performances of the Medicine
Lodge, and said how sorry he felt that they had been away when the
ceremonies began.
"It's a great religious performance with these people," he said; "kind
o' like Christmas, when everybody gives presents and everybody prays,
and then the Medicine Lodge women pray for everybody in the camp and for
the welfare of the whole tribe. It's a mighty solemn time, I tell you."
They had nearly reached the lodge when Hugh handed the horse's rope to
Jack and told him to tie the animal near it.
"I want to stop to speak to Double Runner," he said, and he turned and
entered one of the lodges.
Jack went on to John Monroe's and tied the horse to a pin, and then went
on beyond, within the circle of the lodges, looking at the paintings on
the different ones, and at the bundles tied to tripods that stood behind
each. He wondered what the different paintings meant, and thought he
would sometime get Hugh, or maybe Joe, to walk around the camp with him
and see if they could explain them. As he was thinking about this, he
suddenly heard quickly running footsteps behind him, and turned to see
Joe rushing towards him as fast as he could; his hair flying in the
wind, and his white teeth disclosed by a broad grin. His arms were
stretched forward as if he were about to seize Jack. Jack sprang to one
side, but Joe turned quickly and caught him around the body, trying to
swing him off his feet, but Jack had the under-hold and resisted, and
for a moment or two they wrestled there in silence. Then Joe laughed and
said, "Can't I throw you?" and gave him a swift twist to the left, but
Jack responded only by bending Joe's back toward him as strongly as he
could. For a moment the back was stiff, and then, little by little it
began to yield, but before this had gone far Joe made a mighty effort,
and twisted himself free from the encircling arms, and started off
running as hard as he could go. Jack pursued and for some minutes they
raced around in and out among the lodges until at last, Joe finding
himself before John Monroe's, threw himself on the ground, laughing
merrily.
"Ha! my brave one," he said; "you are strong and run fast. I thought I
should throw you at once, but I could not." Jack sat down beside him and
for some moments nothing was heard except their quick breathing.
"Well," said Joe, "I think you must feel proud of what has happened this
day. It was a great thing to be able to stand out in front of all the
people and count a coup. I was proud myself to see this thing happen to
my friend."
"Well," said Jack, "I was so surprised that I did not think anything
about it, and I didn't know what Hugh was going to do when he dragged me
out into the open space. I guess the idea must have come to him all of a
sudden; anyhow, he never said a word to me about it, but just got up and
took a hold of me, pulled me out, and the first thing I knew he was
talking. Then I didn't know what he was talking about, but it made me
ashamed to be standing with everybody looking at me."
"Well," said Joe. "It's a big thing. It's the biggest thing ever
happened to anybody near your age since I have been in the camp. I tell
you, if such a thing had happened to me, I wouldn't speak to anybody for
a week, I think, I would feel so big.
"And then your having a horse given to you, that made it all the better.
He is a nice horse, too, a good riding horse, maybe a buffalo horse."
"Yes," said Jack, "it's a pretty good looking horse. I am going to ask
John Monroe about him when I see him."
"Why do you call him John Monroe?" said Joe; "that's his white man's
name; but we here all call him Pis'kun; that means buffalo corral."
"Oh, yes," said Jack; "I have heard Hugh tell about how they used to
drive the buffalo over the cliff into the pen. I don't suppose they do
that any more, do they?"
"No," said Joe, "there's plenty of men in the camp that's helped to do
that, but since they got so many guns and such good horses they don't do
it no more. Some day likely the camp will stop near one of the old
places where they used to jump the buffalo, and then we can go there
and see the piles of stones on the prairie, where the buffalo used to
run. And down under the jumping off place you can see yet lots of bones
and old horns."
"I'd like to see one of those places," said Jack; "maybe you could dig
round in the dirt and find some of the old tools that the Indians used
to use."
"Sure," said Joe. "Often they dig up the old stone arrows, and sometimes
other tools of stone and bone there, that were left by the old-time
people."
"Gracious," said Jack, "I'd like to get some of those things to take
back with me when I go home."
"When are you going?" said Joe.
"I don't know," said Jack; "not for a good while yet; not until the
autumn comes."
"That's good," said Joe, "we will have plenty of fun first then."
"Oh, yes," said Jack, "I guess so. I expect we will be here a couple of
months yet. I haven't spoken to Hugh yet about it."
There was a moment's pause, and presently Joe burst out, and said:
"Say, don't you want to go off on the warpath with some young men?
There's a war party going to start out pretty soon, and the young men
have asked me to go along, and the leader said he'd like to have you go
too. He didn't say that until after you had counted your coup."
"Jerusalem," said Jack, "I'd like that. That would be fun," and he
looked at Joe with his face beaming with excitement. Suddenly, his look
changed, and he said:
"But no, I could not go anyhow. Hugh would never be willing for me to
go on a trip like that, and I wouldn't sneak off without speaking to him
about it.
"You see, Joe," he went on, "when I came up here, I promised my uncle
that I would listen to Hugh about everything, and would take his advice
always. It wouldn't be square either to Hugh or to my uncle if I didn't
do as I promised I would. Besides that Hugh has been mighty good to me.
He has helped me a whole lot and pretty much everything I wanted to do
he's said I could. Look at his going off with us the other day when we
went to hunt antelope. I don't expect that there was much fun for him in
that. I think he went because he thought I wanted to go and wanted to
give me pleasure. It wouldn't be the square thing for me to go back on
Hugh that way.
"He'd be mighty uneasy all the time I'd be gone. Likely he'd be hunting
for me, and what would be lots of fun for me would be giving him a
mighty bad time. Besides, suppose anything should happen to me, and I
should get hurt or killed, he'd feel mighty mean going back to my uncle
and telling him what had happened."
"Well," said Joe, "I guess what you say is right. It would be mean to
make White Bull feel that way. I'd like to have you come. We could go
and get a lot of horses and come back and people would say we had done
well. I wish you could go, but you have got to do what you think is
good."
Jack felt badly. He could think of nothing that would be so much fun as
to go off with these young men and make a long journey, and take some
horses from the enemy's camp and then return and be praised by all the
people, but he knew as well as he knew anything that Hugh would never
consent to his going, and he felt that it was impossible to break faith,
even for so great a pleasure. He remembered all that Hugh had done for
him, and especially how he saved his life at the Musselshell River, and
he knew well that the more he thought about it the more firm would be
his resolve not to give Hugh this great anxiety.
They talked about it a little longer and at last Joe got up to go and
Jack went into the lodge. There he found John Monroe's woman cooking
supper, and spoke to her, thanking her for the gift of the horse made to
him that afternoon.
"Why," she said, "I was proud that anybody living in my lodge should
have done so brave a thing as you did. Many years ago the Assiniboines
killed my brother. Since then my heart is always glad when I hear of one
of their people being killed."
Jack sat down on his bed and gave himself up to gloomy reflections. What
a wonderful time he could have if he were to go off with this war party;
how much he could learn of the ways of the Indians in their fighting;
what adventures he might perhaps have, and what strange stories he could
tell to the people at home when he returned to New York. But there
seemed no way in which he could decently go. He determined, at all
events, he would speak to Hugh about it, and see what he said.
He had not long to wait, for presently, the curtain of the door was
thrown aside and Hugh entered. When he had seated himself and had filled
his pipe, and lighted it by a coal from the fire, Jack said:
"Hugh, I have got something to say to you, something that's troubling me
and that I think I ought to tell you. Joe came to me this afternoon, and
told me that a war party of young men is going to start out, and they'd
like to have me go with them. At first I jumped at the invitation, but
then when I thought about it, I felt 'most sure that you would not be
willing for me to go, and I told Joe so. Of course, I'd love to go more
than anything, but I suppose there's no use thinking about it."
For a moment or two, Hugh said nothing, and then he turned and looked at
Jack.
"Well, son, suppose your uncle was here, do you think he'd be willing to
have you go?"
"No," said Jack, "I don't believe he would."
"Well," said Hugh, "suppose your father and mother were here, what do
you think they'd say about it?"
"Well," said Jack, "I suppose you know as well as I do."
"Yes," said Hugh, "I expect I do, and if you and I both know what your
uncle and your father and mother would say about it, we both know what I
will say about it."
"Yes," said Jack with a sigh, "I suppose so."
"You see, son," said the old man, "a good many people would have thought
it was a mighty big risk for a boy of your age to go travelling across
the country the way we done, to an Indian camp to stop here for two or
three months. Of course, there's danger in it; but then there's danger
everywhere, and if people have good sense, and keep their wits about
them, there ain't no more danger travelling on the prairie, than there
is travelling on a railroad train, or going about back in the states.
Anyway that's how I look at it, but as I have often told you before, I
don't want you to go hunting for danger. I want you to keep as far from
it as you can. Now, I told your uncle when he let us come off up here,
that I would take as good care of you as I knew how. I have done it and
I am going to keep on doing it. You might go off on a war party and
never have any trouble at all, and then again you might get killed. I
don't want to see you get any nearer to danger than you have to, and I
wouldn't let you go to war if I could help it. Now, there's one more
thing. I understand just as well as if you'd told me how much you want
to go with this party, and what fun you think you'd sure have. 'Course,
you could have slipped away out of the camp without saying anything to
me, and as likely as not I never would have seen you until you got back
again, and of course, while you were gone I should have felt mighty bad,
not knowing but what you might get killed. Your speaking to me this way
just makes me think more than ever what I have always thought since I
first got to know you; that you are square; that when you say you will
do a thing you will do it. Now, it ain't every boy of your years that
would have had the pluck to say no when a chance of this kind came to
him, just because he knew that to say yes, would make a friend feel bad.
I understand pretty well how you felt about it and just what has been
going on in your mind, and I won't never forget it. It makes us closer
friends than we have ever been yet;" and reaching out his hand, he
grasped Jack's in a firm, close grip, that brought the tears to the
boy's eyes.
"Never you mind, son," Hugh went on, "we'll have plenty of good times
yet while we are in this camp, and we'll keep our words to the people
down south and back east that we made promises to. We may have trouble
of one sort or another, but we won't give anybody a chance to call us
liars."
That night after supper as they were sitting around the fire, Hugh and
John Monroe talking, and Jack listening, partly to what they said, and
partly to the distant sounds of the camp--the singing, the drumming, the
hum of conversation, the laughter and the galloping hoofs--he noticed
that some of the singing sounded constantly more distinct, and presently
it was directly in front of the lodge. Here two or three songs were
sung, and Hugh taking a piece of tobacco from his pocket handed it to
the woman who passed it out through the door of the lodge. A moment
later Joe's smiling countenance appeared in the doorway, and he said to
Jack:
"Come on out, and go round the camp with us."
"Go on," said Hugh to Jack. "They're a lot of young men going round
singing in front of the different lodges; maybe it's your war party
getting ready to start out."
Jack seized his hat and dived through the doorway, and when he was
outside and his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness he saw that a
group of eight young men stood before the lodge. Joe took him by the arm
and said to him:
"We're going round singing in front of the lodges, and sometimes they
give us presents. These are the men that are going off to war. You know
Bull Calf, and likely before you leave the camp you will know all the
rest of them."
In a moment or two, the little group started on, and after passing
several of the lodges, stopped before one, where they sang two or three
songs. These were plaintive and melancholy to Jack's ear, and yet full
of spirit. Of course, he did not know the airs and could not sing, but
he listened. He looked about over his strange surroundings and half
wondered whether it could be possible that he were standing here with
these Indian boys under the brilliant moon and in this circle of white
lodges. The music as it was sung thrilled and moved him strangely and it
seemed to him as if it must all be a dream.
A little bundle was passed out from this lodge door, and they set out
again. Jack whispered to Joe, as they walked along:
"How strange these songs are."
"Yes," said Joe, "they ain't much like white men's songs. These that
they are singing now are all camp songs, but there are lots of other
kinds. Some of them for war and some of them for dancing, or songs that
young fellows sing when they are courting their girls, or songs that
they sing when they are praying; lots of different kinds."
"Well," said Jack, "I'd love to know some of them so that I could sing
them when I went back East."
For a long time the young men wandered about through the camp, but at
last stopped not far from John Monroe's lodge. There they separated and
went to their several homes. Joe walked back with Jack and said good
night to him in front of the lodge. When Jack entered he found Hugh and
John Monroe still talking. Soon after, they all went to bed and the fire
died down.