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RED MEN AND WHITE
BY
OWEN WISTER
ILLUSTRATED
BY FREDERIC REMINGTON
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_Printed in the United States of America._
[Illustration: SPECIMEN JONES (Page 36)]
TO
S. B. W. AND O. J. W.
FROM THEIR SON
PREFACE
These eight stories are made from our Western Frontier as it was in a
past as near as yesterday and almost as by-gone as the Revolution; so
swiftly do we proceed. They belong to each other in a kinship of life
and manners, and a little through the nearer tie of having here and
there a character in common. Thus they resemble faintly the separate
parts of a whole, and gain, perhaps, something of the invaluable weight
of length; and they have been received by my closest friends with
suspicion.
Many sorts of Americans live in America; and the Atlantic American, it
is to be feared, often has a cautious and conventional imagination. In
his routine he has lived unaware of the violent and romantic era in
eruption upon his soil. Only the elk-hunter has at times returned with
tales at which the other Atlantic Americans have deported themselves
politely; and similarly, but for the assurances of Western readers, I
should have come to doubt the truth of my own impressions. All this is
most natural.
If you will look upon the term "United States" as describing what we
are, you must put upon it a strict and Federal construction. We
undoubtedly use the city of Washington for our general business office,
and in the event of a foreign enemy upon our coasts we should stand
bound together more stoutly than we have shown ourselves since 1776. But
as we are now, seldom has a great commonwealth been seen less united in
its stages of progress, more uneven in its degrees of enlightenment.
Never, indeed, it would seem, have such various centuries been jostled
together as they are to-day upon this continent, and within the
boundaries of our nation. We have taken the ages out of their
processional arrangement and set them marching disorderly abreast in our
wide territory, a harlequin platoon. We citizens of the United States
date our letters 18--, and speak of ourselves as living in the present
era; but the accuracy of that custom depends upon where we happen to be
writing. While portions of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are of
this nineteenth century, we have many ancient periods surviving among
us. What do you say, for example, to the Kentucky and Tennessee
mountaineers, with their vendettas of blood descending from father to
son? That was once the prevailing fashion of revenge. Yet even before
the day when Columbus sailed had certain communities matured beyond it.
This sprout of the Middle Ages flourishes fresh and green some five
hundred miles and five hundred years from New York. In the single State
of Texas you will find a contrast more violent still. There, not long
ago, an African was led upon a platform in a public place for people to
see, and tortured slowly to death with knives and fire. To witness this
scene young men and women came in crowds. It is said that the railroad
ran a special train for spectators from a distance. How might that
audience of Paris, Texas, appropriately date its letters? Not Anno
Domini, but many years B.C. The African deserves no pity. His hideous
crime was enough to drive a father to any madness, and too many such
monsters have by their acts made Texas justly desperate. But for
American citizens to crowd to the retribution, and look on as at a
holiday show, reveals the Inquisition, the Pagans, the Stone Age,
unreclaimed in our republic. On the other hand, the young men and women
who will watch side by side the burning of a negro shrink from using
such words as bull or stallion in polite society; many in Texas will
say, instead, _male cow_ and _caviard horse_ (a term spelled as they
pronounce it), and consider that delicacy is thus achieved. Yet in this
lump Texas holds leaven as sterling as in any State; but it has far to
spread.
It were easy to proceed from Maine to California instancing the remote
centuries that are daily colliding within our domain, but this is enough
to show how little we cohere in opinions. How many States and
Territories is it that we count united under our Stars and Stripes? I
know that there are some forty-five or more, and that though I belong
among the original thirteen, it has been my happiness to journey in all
the others, in most of them, indeed, many times, for the sake of making
my country's acquaintance. With no spread-eagle brag do I gather
conviction each year that we Americans, judged not hastily, are sound at
heart, kind, courageous, often of the truest delicacy, and always
ultimately of excellent good-sense. With such belief, or, rather,
knowledge, it is sorrowful to see our fatal complacence, our as yet
undisciplined folly, in sending to our State Legislatures and to that
general business office of ours at Washington a herd of mismanagers that
seems each year to grow more inefficient and contemptible, whether
branded Republican or Democrat. But I take heart, because often and
oftener I hear upon my journey the citizens high and low muttering,
"There's too much politics in this country"; and we shake hands.
But all this is growing too serious for a book of short stories.
They are about Indians and soldiers and events west of the Missouri.
They belong to the past thirty years of our development, but you will
find some of those ancient surviving centuries in them if you take
my view. In certain ones the incidents, and even some of the names,
are left unchanged from their original reality. The visit of
Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses to the Little Big Horn and the rise and
fall of the young Crow impostor, General Crook's surprise of E-egante,
and many other occurrences, noble and ignoble, are told as they were
told to me by those who saw them. When our national life, our own soil,
is so rich in adventures to record, what need is there for one to call
upon his invention save to draw, if he can, characters who shall fit
these strange and dramatic scenes? One cannot improve upon such
realities. If this fiction is at all faithful to the truth from which
it springs, let the thanks be given to the patience and boundless
hospitality of the Army friends and other friends across the Missouri
who have housed my body and instructed my mind. And if the stories
entertain the ignorant without grieving the judicious I am content.
CONTENTS
PAGE
LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE 3
SPECIMEN JONES 36
THE SERENADE AT SISKIYOU 64
THE GENERAL'S BLUFF 82
SALVATION GAP 115
THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE 131
LA TINAJA BONITA 159
A PILGRIM ON THE GILA 211
ILLUSTRATIONS
SPECIMEN JONES _Frontispiece_
"BOASTING IN INDIAN FASHION" _Facing page_ 6
"HIS HORSE DREW CLOSE, SHOVING THE HORSE
OF THE MEDICINE-MAN" " 14
"THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER" " 34
AN APACHE " 38
CUMNOR'S AWAKENING " 52
THE MEXICAN FREIGHT-WAGON " 58
"'AIN'T Y'U GOT SOMETHING TO SELL?'" " 90
THE CHARGE " 102
"HE HESITATED TO KILL THE WOMAN" " 112
THE SHOT-GUN MESSENGER " 122
"'I'D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER'" " 128
"HIS PLAN WAS TO WALK AND KEEP QUIET" " 148
"'DON'T NOBODY HURT ANYBODY,' SAID SPECIMEN
JONES" " 156
"'YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY.
YOU'RE ALONE'" " 204
"EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE" " 238
RED MEN AND WHITE
LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE
Something new was happening among the Crow Indians. A young pretender
had appeared in the tribe. What this might lead to was unknown alike to
white man and to red; but the old Crow chiefs discussed it in their
councils, and the soldiers at Fort Custer, and the civilians at the
agency twelve miles up the river, and all the white settlers in the
valley discussed it also. Lieutenants Stirling and Haines, of the First
Cavalry, were speculating upon it as they rode one afternoon.
"Can't tell about Indians," said Stirling. "But I think the Crows are
too reasonable to go on the war-path."
"Reasonable!" said Haines. He was young, and new to Indians.
"Just so. Until you come to his superstitions, the Indian can reason as
straight as you or I. He's perfectly logical."
"Logical!" echoed Haines again. He held the regulation Eastern view that
the Indian knows nothing but the three blind appetites.
"You'd know better," remarked Stirling, "if you'd been fighting 'em for
fifteen years. They're as shrewd as AEsop's fables."
Just then two Indians appeared round a bluff--one old and shabby, the
other young and very gaudy--riding side by side.
"That's Cheschapah," said Stirling. "That's the agitator in all his
feathers. His father, you see, dresses more conservatively."
The feathered dandy now did a singular thing. He galloped towards the
two officers almost as if to bear them down, and, steering much too
close, flashed by yelling, amid a clatter of gravel.
"Nice manners," commented Haines. "Seems to have a chip on his
shoulder."
But Stirling looked thoughtful. "Yes," he muttered, "he has a chip."
Meanwhile the shabby father was approaching. His face was mild and sad,
and he might be seventy. He made a gesture of greeting. "How!" he said,
pleasantly, and ambled on his way.
"Now there you have an object-lesson," said Stirling. "Old Pounded Meat
has no chip. The question is, are the fathers or the sons going to run
the Crow Nation?"
"Why did the young chap have a dog on his saddle?" inquired Haines.
"I didn't notice it. For his supper, probably--probably he's getting up
a dance. He is scheming to be a chief. Says he is a medicine-man, and
can make water boil without fire; but the big men of the tribe take no
stock in him--not yet. They've seen soda-water before. But I'm told this
water-boiling astonishes the young."
"You say the old chiefs take no stock in him _yet_?"
"Ah, that's the puzzle. I told you just now Indians could reason."
"And I was amused."
"Because you're an Eastern man. I tell you, Haines, if it wasn't my
business to shoot Indians I'd study them."
"You're a crank," said Haines.
But Stirling was not a crank. He knew that so far from being a mere
animal, the Indian is of a subtlety more ancient than the Sphinx. In his
primal brain--nearer nature than our own--the directness of a child
mingles with the profoundest cunning. He believes easily in powers of
light and darkness, yet is a sceptic all the while. Stirling knew this;
but he could not know just when, if ever, the young charlatan Cheschapah
would succeed in cheating the older chiefs; just when, if ever, he would
strike the chord of their superstition. Till then they would reason that
the white man was more comfortable as a friend than as a foe, that
rations and gifts of clothes and farming implements were better than
battles and prisons. Once their superstition was set alight, these three
thousand Crows might suddenly follow Cheschapah to burn and kill and
destroy.
"How does he manage his soda-water, do you suppose?" inquired Haines.
"That's mysterious. He has never been known to buy drugs, and he's
careful where he does his trick. He's still a little afraid of his
father. All Indians are. It's queer where he was going with that dog."
Hard galloping sounded behind them, and a courier from the Indian agency
overtook and passed them, hurrying to Fort Custer. The officers hurried
too, and, arriving, received news and orders. Forty Sioux were reported
up the river coming to visit the Crows. It was peaceable, but untimely.
The Sioux agent over at Pine Ridge had given these forty permission to
go, without first finding out if it would be convenient to the Crow
agent to have them come. It is a rule of the Indian Bureau that if one
tribe desire to visit another, the agents of both must consent. Now,
most of the Crows were farming and quiet, and it was not wise that a
visit from the Sioux and a season of feasting should tempt their hearts
and minds away from the tilling of the soil. The visitors must be taken
charge of and sent home.
"Very awkward, though," said Stirling to Haines. He had been ordered to
take two troops and arrest the unoffending visitors on their way. "The
Sioux will be mad, and the Crows will be madder. What a bungle! and how
like the way we manage Indian affairs!" And so they started.
Thirty miles away, by a stream towards which Stirling with his command
was steadily marching through the night, the visitors were gathered.
There was a cook-fire and a pot, and a stewing dog leaped in the froth.
Old men in blankets and feathers sat near it, listening to young
Cheschapah's talk in the flighty lustre of the flames. An old squaw
acted as interpreter between Crow and Sioux. Round about, at a certain
distance, the figures of the crowd lounged at the edge of the darkness.
Two grizzled squaws stirred the pot, spreading a clawed fist to their
eyes against the red heat of the coals, while young Cheschapah harangued
the older chiefs.
[Illustration: "BOASTING IN INDIAN FASHION"]
"And more than that, I, Cheschapah, can do," said he, boasting in
Indian fashion. "I know how to make the white man's heart soft so
he cannot fight." He paused for effect, but his hearers seemed
uninterested. "You have come pretty far to see us," resumed the
orator, "and I, and my friend Two Whistles, and my father, Pounded
Meat, have come a day to meet you and bring you to our place. I have
brought you a fat dog. I say it is good the Crow and the Sioux shall
be friends. All the Crow chiefs are glad. Pretty Eagle is a big chief,
and he will tell you what I tell you. But I am bigger than Pretty
Eagle. I am a medicine-man."
He paused again; but the grim old chiefs were looking at the fire, and
not at him. He got a friendly glance from his henchman, Two Whistles,
but he heard his father give a grunt.
That enraged him. "I am a medicine-man," he repeated, defiantly. "I have
been in the big hole in the mountains where the river goes, and spoken
there with the old man who makes the thunder. I talked with him as one
chief to another. I am going to kill all the white men."
At this old Pounded Meat looked at his son angrily, but the son was not
afraid of his father just then. "I can make medicine to bring the rain,"
he continued. "I can make water boil when it is cold. With this I can
strike the white man blind when he is so far that his eyes do not show
his face."
He swept out from his blanket an old cavalry sabre painted scarlet.
Young Two Whistles made a movement of awe, but Pounded Meat said, "My
son's tongue has grown longer than his sword."
Laughter sounded among the old chiefs. Cheschapah turned his impudent
yet somewhat visionary face upon his father. "What do you know of
medicine?" said he. "Two sorts of Indians are among the Crows to-day,"
he continued to the chiefs. "One sort are the fathers, and the sons are
the other. The young warriors are not afraid of the white man. The old
plant corn with the squaws. Is this the way with the Sioux?"
"With the Sioux," remarked a grim visitor, "no one fears the white man.
But the young warriors do not talk much in council."
Pounded Meat put out his hand gently, as if in remonstrance. Other
people must not chide his son.
"You say you can make water boil with no fire?" pursued the Sioux, who
was named Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses, and had been young once.
Pounded Meat came between. "My son is a good man," said he. "These words
of his are not made in the heart, but are head words you need not count.
Cheschapah does not like peace. He has heard us sing our wars and the
enemies we have killed, and he remembers that he has no deeds, being
young. When he thinks of this sometimes he talks words without sense.
But my son is a good man."
The father again extended his hand, which trembled a little. The Sioux
had listened, looking at him with respect, and forgetful of Cheschapah,
who now stood before them with a cup of cold water.
"You shall see," he said, "who it is that talks words without sense."
Two Whistles and the young bucks crowded to watch, but the old men sat
where they were. As Cheschapah stood relishing his audience, Pounded
Meat stepped up suddenly and upset the cup. He went to the stream and
refilled it himself. "Now make it boil," said he.
Cheschapah smiled, and as he spread his hand quickly over the cup, the
water foamed up.
"Huh!" said Two Whistles, startled.
The medicine-man quickly seized his moment. "What does Pounded Meat
know of my medicine?" said he. "The dog is cooked. Let the dance begin."
The drums set up their dull, blunt beating, and the crowd of young and
less important bucks came from the outer circle nearer to the council.
Cheschapah set the pot in the midst of the flat camp, to be the centre
of the dance. None of the old chiefs said more to him, but sat apart
with the empty cup, having words among themselves. The flame reared high
into the dark, and showed the rock wall towering close, and at its feet
the light lay red on the streaming water. The young Sioux stripped naked
of their blankets, hanging them in a screen against the wind from the
jaws of the canon, with more constant shouts as the drumming beat
louder, and strokes of echo fell from the black cliffs. The figures
twinkled across each other in the glare, drifting and alert, till the
dog-dance shaped itself into twelve dancers with a united sway of body
and arms, one and another singing his song against the lifted sound of
the drums. The twelve sank crouching in simulated hunt for an enemy back
and forth over the same space, swinging together.
Presently they sprang with a shout upon their feet, for they had taken
the enemy. Cheschapah, leading the line closer to the central pot, began
a new figure, dancing the pursuit of the bear. This went faster; and
after the bear was taken, followed the elk-hunt, and a new sway and
crouch of the twelve gesturing bodies. The thudding drums were
ceaseless; and as the dance went always faster and always nearer the dog
pot, the steady blows of sound inflamed the dancers; their chests
heaved, and their arms and bodies swung alike as the excited crew filed
and circled closer to the pot, following Cheschapah, and shouting
uncontrollably. They came to firing pistols and slashing the air with
knives, when suddenly Cheschapah caught up a piece of steaming dog from
the pot, gave it to his best friend, and the dance was done. The
dripping figures sat quietly, shining and smooth with sweat, eating
their dog-flesh in the ardent light of the fire and the cool splendor of
the moon. By-and-by they lay in their blankets to sleep at ease.
The elder chiefs had looked with distrust at Cheschapah as he led the
dance; now that the entertainment was over, they rose with gravity to go
to their beds.
"It is good for the Sioux and the Crows to be friends," said Pounded
Meat to Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses. "But we want no war with the
white man. It is a few young men who say that war is good now."
"We have not come for war," replied the Sioux. "We have come to eat much
meat together, and remember that day when war was good on the Little
Horn, and our warriors killed Yellow Hair and all his soldiers."
Pounded Meat came to where he and Cheschapah had their blankets.
"We shall have war," said the confident son to his father. "My medicine
is good."
"Peace is also pretty good," said Pounded Meat. "Get new thoughts. My
son, do you not care any more for my words?"
Cheschapah did not reply.
"I have lived a long while. Yet one man may be wrong. But all cannot be.
The other chiefs say what I say. The white men are too strong."
"They would not be too strong if the old men were not cowards."
"Have done," said the father, sternly. "If you are a medicine-man, do
not talk like a light fool."
The Indian has an "honor thy father" deep in his religion too, and
Cheschapah was silent. But after he was asleep, Pounded Meat lay
brooding. He felt himself dishonored, and his son to be an evil in the
tribe. With these sore notions keeping him awake, he saw the night wane
into gray, and then he heard the distant snort of a horse. He looked,
and started from his blankets, for the soldiers had come, and he ran to
wake the sleeping Indians. Frightened, and ignorant why they should be
surrounded, the Sioux leaped to their feet; and Stirling, from where he
sat on his horse, saw their rushing, frantic figures.
"Go quick, Kinney," he said to the interpreter, "and tell them it's
peace, or they'll be firing on us."
Kinney rode forward alone, with one hand raised; and seeing that sign,
they paused, and crept nearer, like crafty rabbits, while the sun rose
and turned the place pink. And then came the parley, and the long
explanation; and Stirling thanked his stars to see they were going to
allow themselves to be peaceably arrested. Bullets you get used to; but
after the firing's done, you must justify it to important personages who
live comfortably in Eastern towns and have never seen an Indian in their
lives, and are rancid with philanthropy and ignorance.
Stirling would sooner have faced Sioux than sentimentalists, and he was
fervently grateful to these savages for coming with him quietly without
obliging him to shoot them. Cheschapah was not behaving so amiably; and
recognizing him, Stirling understood about the dog. The medicine-man,
with his faithful Two Whistles, was endeavoring to excite the prisoners
as they were marched down the river to the Crow Agency.
Stirling sent for Kinney. "Send that rascal away," he said. "I'll not
have him bothering here."
The interpreter obeyed, but with a singular smile to himself. When he
had ordered Cheschapah away, he rode so as to overhear Stirling and
Haines talking. When they speculated about the soda-water, Kinney smiled
again. He was a quiet sort of man. The people in the valley admired his
business head. He supplied grain and steers to Fort Custer, and used to
say that business was always slow in time of peace.
By evening Stirling had brought his prisoners to the agency, and there
was the lieutenant of Indian police of the Sioux come over from Pine
Ridge to bring them home. There was restlessness in the air as night
fell round the prisoners and their guard. It was Cheschapah's hour, and
the young Crows listened while he declaimed against the white man for
thwarting their hospitality. The strong chain of sentinels was kept busy
preventing these hosts from breaking through to fraternize with their
guests. Cheschapah did not care that the old Crow chiefs would not
listen. When Pretty Eagle remarked laconically that peace was good, the
agitator laughed; he was gaining a faction, and the faction was feeling
its oats. Accordingly, next morning, though the prisoners were meek on
being started home by Stirling with twenty soldiers, and the majority of
the Crows were meek at seeing them thus started, this was not all.
Cheschapah, with a yelling swarm of his young friends, began to buzz
about the column as it marched up the river. All had rifles.
"It's an interesting state of affairs," said Stirling to Haines. "There
are at least fifty of these devils at our heels now, and more coming.
We've got twenty men. Haines, your Indian experiences may begin quite
early in your career."
"Yes, especially if our prisoners take to kicking."
"Well, to compensate for spoiling their dinner-party, the agent gave
them some rations and his parting blessing. It may suffice."
The line of march had been taken up by ten men in advance, followed in
the usual straggling fashion by the prisoners, and the rear-guard was
composed of the other ten soldiers under Stirling and Haines. With them
rode the chief of the Crow police and the lieutenant of the Sioux. This
little band was, of course, far separated from the advance-guard, and it
listened to the young Crow bucks yelling at its heels. They yelled in
English. Every Indian knows at least two English words; they are
pungent, and far from complimentary.
"It's got to stop here," said Stirling, as they came to a ford known as
Reno's Crossing. "They've got to be kept on this side."
"Can it be done without gunpowder?" Haines asked.
"If a shot is fired now, my friend, it's war, and a court of inquiry in
Washington for you and me, if we're not buried here. Sergeant, you will
take five men and see the column is kept moving. The rest remain with
me. The prisoners must be got across and away from their friends."
The fording began, and the two officers went over to the east bank to
see that the instructions were carried out.
"See that?" observed Stirling. As the last of the rear-guard stepped
into the stream, the shore they were leaving filled instantly with the
Crows. "Every man jack of them is armed. And here's an interesting
development," he continued.
It was Cheschapah riding out into the water, and with him Two Whistles.
The rear guard passed up the trail, and the little knot of men with the
officers stood halted on the bank. There were nine--the two Indian
police, the two lieutenants, and five long muscular boys of K troop of
the First Cavalry. They remained on the bank, looking at the thick
painted swarm that yelled across the ford.
"Bet you there's a hundred," remarked Haines.
"You forget I never gamble," murmured Stirling. Two of the five long
boys overheard this, and grinned at each other, which Stirling noted;
and he loved them. It was curious to mark the two shores: the feathered
multitude and its yells and its fifty yards of rifles that fronted a
small spot of white men sitting easily in the saddle, and the clear,
pleasant water speeding between. Cheschapah and Two Whistles came
tauntingly towards this spot, and the mass of Crows on the other side
drew forward a little.
"You tell them," said Stirling to the chief of the Crow police, "that
they must go back."
Cheschapah came nearer, by way of obedience.
"Take them over, then," the officer ordered.
[Illustration: "HIS HORSE DREW CLOSE, SHOVING THE HORSE OF THE
MEDICINE-MAN"]
The chief of Crow police rode to Cheschapah, speaking and pointing.
His horse drew close, shoving the horse of the medicine-man, who now
launched an insult that with Indians calls for blood. He struck the
man's horse with his whip, and at that a volume of yells chorussed
from the other bank.
"Looks like the court of inquiry," remarked Stirling. "Don't shoot,
boys," he commanded aloud.
The amazed Sioux policeman gasped. "You not shoot?" he said. "But he hit
that man's horse--all the same hit your horse, all the same hit you."
"Right. Quite right," growled Stirling. "All the same hit Uncle Sam. But
we soldier devils have orders to temporize." His eye rested hard and
serious on the party in the water as he went on speaking with jocular
unconcern. "Tem-po-rize, Johnny," said he. "You savvy temporize?"
"Ump! Me no savvy."
"Bully for you, Johnny. Too many syllables. Well, now! he's hit that
horse again. One more for the court of inquiry. Steady, men! There's Two
Whistles switching now. They ought to call that lad Young Dog Tray. And
there's a chap in paint fooling with his gun. If any more do that--it's
very catching--Yes, we're going to have a circus. Attention! Now what's
that, do you suppose?"
An apparition, an old chief, came suddenly on the other bank, pushing
through the crowd, grizzled and little and lean, among the smooth,
full-limbed young blood. They turned and saw him, and slunk from the
tones of his voice and the light in his ancient eye. They swerved and
melted among the cottonwoods, so that the ford's edge grew bare of
dusky bodies and looked sandy and green again. Cheschapah saw the
wrinkled figure coming, and his face sank tame. He stood uncertain in
the stream, seeing his banded companions gone and the few white soldiers
firm on the bank. The old chief rode to him through the water, his face
brightened with a last flare of command.
"Make your medicine!" he said. "Why are the white men not blind? Is the
medicine bad to-day?" And he whipped his son's horse to the right, and
to the left he slashed the horse of Two Whistles, and, whirling the
leather quirt, drove them cowed before him and out of the stream, with
never a look or word to the white men. He crossed the sandy margin, and
as a man drives steers to the corral, striking spurs to his horse and
following the frightened animals close when they would twist aside, so
did old Pounded Meat herd his son down the valley.
"Useful old man," remarked Stirling; "and brings up his children
carefully. Let's get these prisoners along."
"How rural the river looks now!" Haines said, as they left the deserted
bank.
So the Sioux went home in peace, the lieutenants, with their command of
twenty, returned to the post, and all white people felt much obliged to
Pounded Meat for his act of timely parental discipline--all except one
white person.
Sol Kinney sauntered into the agency store one evening. "I want ten
pounds of sugar," said he, "and navy plug as usual. And say, I'll take
another bottle of the Seltzer fizz salts. Since I quit whiskey," he
explained, "my liver's poorly."
He returned with his purchase to his cabin, and set a lamp in the
window. Presently the door opened noiselessly, and Cheschapah came in.
"Maybe you got that now?" he said, in English.
The interpreter fumbled among bottles of liniment and vaseline, and from
among these household remedies brought the blue one he had just bought.
Cheschapah watched him like a child, following his steps round the
cabin. Kinney tore a half-page from an old Sunday _World_, and poured a
little heap of salts into it. The Indian touched the heap timidly with
his finger. "Maybe no good," he suggested.
"Heap good!" said the interpreter, throwing a pinch into a glass. When
Cheschapah saw the water effervesce, he folded his newspaper with the
salt into a tight lump, stuck the talisman into his clothes, and
departed, leaving Mr. Kinney well content. He was doing his best to
nourish the sinews of war, for business in the country was
discouragingly slack.
Now the Crows were a tribe that had never warred with us, but only with
other tribes; they had been valiant enough to steal our cattle, but
sufficiently discreet to stop there; and Kinney realized that he had
uphill work before him. His dearest hopes hung upon Cheschapah, in whom
he thought he saw a development. From being a mere humbug, the young
Indian seemed to be getting a belief in himself as something genuinely
out of the common. His success in creating a party had greatly increased
his conceit, and he walked with a strut, and his face was more unsettled
and visionary than ever. One clear sign of his mental change was that he
no longer respected his father at all, though the lonely old man looked
at him often with what in one of our race would have been tenderness.
Cheschapah had been secretly maturing a plot ever since his humiliation
at the crossing, and now he was ready. With his lump of newspaper
carefully treasured, he came to Two Whistles.
"Now we go," he said. "We shall fight with the Piegans. I will make big
medicine, so that we shall get many of their horses and women. Then
Pretty Eagle will be afraid to go against me in the council. Pounded
Meat whipped my horse. Pounded Meat can cut his hay without Cheschapah,
since he is so strong."
But little Two Whistles wavered. "I will stay here," he ventured to say
to the prophet.
"Does Two Whistles think I cannot do what I say?"
"I think you make good medicine."
"You are afraid of the Piegans."
"No, I am not afraid. I have hay the white man will pay me for. If I go,
he will not pay me. If I had a father, I would not leave him." He spoke
pleadingly, and his prophet bore him down by ridicule. Two Whistles
believed, but he did not want to lose the money the agent was to pay for
his hay. And so, not so much because he believed as because he was
afraid, he resigned his personal desires.
The next morning the whole band had disappeared with Cheschapah. The
agent was taken aback at this marked challenge to his authority--of
course they had gone without permission--and even the old Crow chiefs
held a council.
Pretty Eagle resorted to sarcasm. "He has taken his friends to the old
man who makes the thunder," he said. But others did not feel sarcastic,
and one observed, "Cheschapah knows more than we know."
"Let him make rain, then," said Pretty Eagle. "Let him make the white
man's heart soft."
The situation was assisted by a step of the careful Kinney. He took a
private journey to Junction City, through which place he expected
Cheschapah to return, and there he made arrangements to have as much
whiskey furnished to the Indian and his friends as they should ask for.
It was certainly a good stroke of business. The victorious raiders did
return that way, and Junction City was most hospitable to their thirst.
The valley of the Big Horn was resonant with their homeward yells. They
swept up the river, and the agent heard them coming, and he locked his
door immediately. He listened to their descent upon his fold, and he
peeped out and saw them ride round the tightly shut buildings in their
war-paint and the pride of utter success. They had taken booty from the
Piegans, and now, knocking at the store, they demanded ammunition,
proclaiming at the same time in English that Cheschapah was a big man,
and knew a "big heap medicine." The agent told them from inside that
they could not have any ammunition. He also informed them that he knew
who they were, and that they were under arrest. This touched their
primitive sense of the incongruous. On the buoyancy of the whiskey they
rode round and round the store containing the agent, and then rushed
away, firing shots at the buildings and shots in the air, and so
gloriously home among their tribe, while the agent sent a courier
packing to Fort Custer.
The young bucks who had not gone on the raid to the Piegans thronged to
hear the story, and the warriors told it here and there, walking in
their feathers among a knot of friends, who listened with gay
exclamations of pleasure and envy. Great was Cheschapah, who had done
all this! And one and another told exactly and at length how he had seen
the cold water rise into foam beneath the medicine-man's hand; it could
not be told too often; not every companion of Cheschapah's had been
accorded the privilege of witnessing this miracle, and each narrator in
his circle became a wonder himself to the bold boyish faces that
surrounded him. And after the miracle he told how the Piegans had been
like a flock of birds before the medicine-man. Cheschapah himself passed
among the groups, alone and aloof; he spoke to none, and he looked at
none, and he noted how their voices fell to whispers as he passed; his
ear caught the magic words of praise and awe; he felt the gaze of
admiration follow him away, and a mist rose like incense in his brain.
He wandered among the scattered tepees, and, turning, came along the
same paths again, that he might once more overhear his worshippers.
Great was Cheschapah! His heart beat, a throb of power passed through
his body, and "Great is Cheschapah!" said he, aloud; for the fumes of
hallucination wherewith he had drugged others had begun to make him
drunk also. He sought a tepee where the wife of another chief was alone,
and at his light call she stood at the entrance and heard him longer
than she had ever listened to him before. But she withstood the
temptation that was strong in the young chief's looks and words. She did
not speak much, but laughed unsteadily, and, shaking her head with
averted eyes, left him, and went where several women were together, and
sat among them.
Cheschapah told his victory to the council, with many sentences about
himself, and how his medicine had fended all hurt from the Crows. The
elder chiefs sat cold.
"Ump!" said one, at the close of the oration, and "Heh!" remarked
another. The sounds were of assent without surprise.
"It is good," said Pretty Eagle. His voice seemed to enrage Cheschapah.
"Heh! it is always pretty good!" remarked Spotted Horse.
"I have done this too," said Pounded Meat to his son, simply. "Once,
twice, three times. The Crows have always been better warriors than the
Piegans."
"Have you made water boil like me?" Cheschapah said.
"I am not a medicine-man," replied his father. "But I have taken horses
and squaws from the Piegans. You make good medicine, maybe; but a cup of
water will not kill many white men. Can you make the river boil? Let
Cheschapah make bigger medicine, so the white man shall fear him as well
as the Piegans, whose hearts are well known to us."
Cheschapah scowled. "Pounded Meat shall have this," said he. "I will
make medicine to-morrow, old fool!"
"Drive him from the council!" said Pretty Eagle.
"Let him stay," said Pounded Meat. "His bad talk was not to the council,
but to me, and I do not count it."
But the medicine-man left the presence of the chiefs, and came to the
cabin of Kinney.
"Hello!" said the white man. "Sit down."
"You got that?" said the Indian, standing.
"More water medicine? I guess so. Take a seat."
"No, not boil any more. You got that other?"
"That other, eh? Well, now, you're not going to blind them yet? What's
your hurry?"
"Yes. Make blind to-morrow. Me great chief!"
A slight uneasiness passed across the bantering face of Kinney. His
Seltzer salts performed what he promised, but he had mentioned another
miracle, and he did not want his dupe to find him out until a war was
thoroughly set agoing. He looked at the young Indian, noticing his eyes.
"What's the matter with you, anyway, Cheschapah?"
"Me great chief!" The raised voice trembled with unearthly conviction.
"Well, I guess you are. I guess you've got pretty far along," said the
frontier cynic. He tilted his chair back and smiled at the child whose
primitive brain he had tampered with so easily. The child stood looking
at him with intent black eyes. "Better wait, Cheschapah. Come again.
Medicine heap better after a while."
The Indian's quick ear caught the insincerity without understanding it.
"You give me that quick!" he said, suddenly terrible.
"Oh, all right, Cheschapah. You know more medicine than me."
"Yes, I know more."
The white man brought a pot of scarlet paint, and the Indian's staring
eyes contracted. Kinney took the battered cavalry sabre in his hand, and
set its point in the earth floor of the cabin. "Stand back," he said, in
mysterious tones, and Cheschapah shrank from the impending sorcery. Now
Kinney had been to school once, in his Eastern childhood, and there had
committed to memory portions of Shakespeare, Mrs. Hemans, and other
poets out of a Reader. He had never forgotten a single word of any of
them, and it now occurred to him that for the purposes of an incantation
it would be both entertaining for himself and impressive to Cheschapah
if he should recite "The Battle of Hohenlinden." He was drawing squares
and circles with the point of the sabre.
"No," he said to himself, "that piece won't do. He knows too much
English. Some of them words might strike him as bein' too usual, and
he'd start to kill me, and spoil the whole thing. 'Munich' and
'chivalry' are snortin', but 'sun was low' ain't worth a damn. I
guess--"
He stopped guessing, for the noon recess at school came in his mind,
like a picture, and with it certain old-time preliminaries to the game
of tag.
"'Eeny, meeny, money, my,'"
said Kinney, tapping himself, the sabre, the paint-pot, and Cheschapah
in turn, one for each word. The incantation was begun. He held the sabre
solemnly upright, while Cheschapah tried to control his excited
breathing where he stood flattened against the wall.
"'Butter, leather, boney, stry;
Hare-bit, frost-neck,
Harrico, barrico, whee, why, whoa, whack!'
"You're it, Cheschapah." After that the weapon was given its fresh coat
of paint, and Cheschapah went away with his new miracle in the dark.
"He is it," mused Kinney, grave, but inwardly lively. He was one of
those sincere artists who need no popular commendation. "And whoever he
does catch, it won't be me," he concluded. He felt pretty sure there
would be war now.
Dawn showed the summoned troops near the agency at the corral, standing
to horse. Cheschapah gathered his hostiles along the brow of the ridge
in the rear of the agency buildings, and the two forces watched each
other across the intervening four hundred yards.
"There they are," said the agent, jumping about. "Shoot them, colonel;
shoot them!"
"You can't do that, you know," said the officer, "without an order from
the President, or an overt act from the Indians."
So nothing happened, and Cheschapah told his friends the white men were
already afraid of him. He saw more troops arrive, water their horses in
the river, form line outside the corral, and dismount. He made ready at
this movement, and all Indian on-lookers scattered from the expected
fight. Yet the white man stayed quiet. It was issue day, but no families
remained after drawing their rations. They had had no dance the night
before, as was usual, and they did not linger a moment now, but came and
departed with their beef and flour at once.
"I have done all this," said Cheschapah to Two Whistles.
"Cheschapah is a great man," assented the friend and follower. He had
gone at once to his hay-field on his return from the Piegans, but some
one had broken the little Indian's fence, and cattle were wandering in
what remained of his crop.
"Our nation knows I will make a war, and therefore they do not stay
here," said the medicine-man, caring nothing what Two Whistles might
have suffered. "And now they will see that the white soldiers dare not
fight with Cheschapah. The sun is high now, but they have not moved
because I have stopped them. Do you not see it is my medicine?"
"We see it." It was the voice of the people.
But a chief spoke. "Maybe they wait for us to come."
Cheschapah answered. "Their eyes shall be made sick. I will ride among
them, but they will not know it." He galloped away alone, and lifted his
red sword as he sped along the ridge of the hills, showing against the
sky. Below at the corral the white soldiers waited ready, and heard him
chanting his war song through the silence of the day. He turned in a
long curve, and came in near the watching troops and through the agency,
and then, made bolder by their motionless figures and guns held idle, he
turned again and flew, singing, along close to the line, so they saw his
eyes; and a few that had been talking low as they stood side by side
fell silent at the spectacle. They could not shoot until some Indian
should shoot. They watched him and the gray pony pass and return to the
hostiles on the hill. Then they saw the hostiles melt away like magic.
Their prophet had told them to go to their tepees and wait for the great
rain he would now bring. It was noon, and the sky utterly blue over the
bright valley. The sun rode a space nearer the west, and the thick black
clouds assembled in the mountains and descended; their shadow flooded
the valley with a lake of slatish blue, and presently the sudden
torrents sluiced down with flashes and the ample thunder of Montana.
Thus not alone the law against our soldiers firing the first shot in an
Indian excitement, but now also the elements coincided to help the
medicine-man's destiny.
Cheschapah sat in a tepee with his father, and as the rain splashed
heavily on the earth the old man gazed at the young one.
"Why do you tremble, my son? You have made the white soldier's heart
soft," said Pounded Meat. "You are indeed a great man, my son."
Cheschapah rose. "Do not call me your son," said he. "That is a lie."
He went out into the fury of the rain, lifting his face against the
drops, and exultingly calling out at each glare of the lightning. He
went to Pretty Eagle's young squaw, who held off from him no longer, but
got on a horse, and the two rode into the mountains. Before the sun had
set, the sky was again utterly blue, and a cool scent rose everywhere in
the shining valley.
The Crows came out of their tepees, and there were the white soldiers
obeying orders and going away. They watched the column slowly move
across the flat land below the bluffs, where the road led down the river
twelve miles to the post.
"They are afraid," said new converts. "Cheschapah's rain has made their
hearts soft."
"They have not all gone," said Pretty Eagle. "Maybe he did not make
enough rain." But even Pretty Eagle began to be shaken, and he heard
several of his brother chiefs during the next few days openly declare
for the medicine-man. Cheschapah with his woman came from the mountains,
and Pretty Eagle did not dare to harm him. Then another coincidence
followed that was certainly most reassuring to the war party. Some of
them had no meat, and told Cheschapah they were hungry. With consummate
audacity he informed them he would give them plenty at once. On the same
day another timely electric storm occurred up the river, and six steers
were struck by lightning.
When the officers at Fort Custer heard of this they became serious.
"If this was not the nineteenth century," said Haines, "I should begin
to think the elements were deliberately against us."
"It's very careless of the weather," said Stirling. "Very inconsiderate,
at such a juncture."
Yet nothing more dangerous than red-tape happened for a while. There was
an expensive quantity of investigation from Washington, and this gave
the hostiles time to increase both in faith and numbers.
Among the excited Crows only a few wise old men held out. As for
Cheschapah himself, ambition and success had brought him to the weird
enthusiasm of a fanatic. He was still a charlatan, but a charlatan who
believed utterly in his star. He moved among his people with growing
mystery, and his hapless adjutant, Two Whistles, rode with him, slaved
for him, abandoned the plans he had for making himself a farm, and,
desiring peace in his heart, weakly cast his lot with war. Then one day
there came an order from the agent to all the Indians: they were to come
in by a certain fixed day. The department commander had assembled six
hundred troops at the post, and these moved up the river and went into
camp. The usually empty ridges, and the bottom where the road ran,
filled with white and red men. Half a mile to the north of the
buildings, on the first rise from the river, lay the cavalry, and some
infantry above them with a howitzer, while across the level, three
hundred yards opposite, along the river-bank, was the main Indian camp.
Even the hostiles had obeyed the agent's order, and came in close to the
troops, totally unlike hostiles in general; for Cheschapah had told them
he would protect them with his medicine, and they shouted and sang all
through this last night. The women joined with harsh cries and
shriekings, and a scalp-dance went on, besides lesser commotions and
gatherings, with the throbbing of drums everywhere. Through the
sleepless din ran the barking of a hundred dogs, that herded and hurried
in crowds of twenty at a time, meeting, crossing from fire to fire among
the tepees. Their yelps rose to the high bench of land, summoning a
horde of coyotes. These cringing nomads gathered from the desert in a
tramp army, and, skulking down the bluffs, sat in their outer darkness
and ceaselessly howled their long, shrill greeting to the dogs that sat
in the circle of light. The general sent scouts to find the nature of
the dance and hubbub, and these brought word it was peaceful; and in the
morning another scout summoned the elder chiefs to a talk with the
friend who had come from the Great Father at Washington to see them and
find if their hearts were good.
"Our hearts are good," said Pretty Eagle. "We do not want war. If you
want Cheschapah, we will drive him out from the Crows to you."
"There are other young chiefs with bad hearts," said the commissioner,
naming the ringleaders that were known. He made a speech, but Pretty
Eagle grew sullen. "It is well," said the commissioner; "you will not
help me to make things smooth, and now I step aside and the war chief
will talk."
"If you want any other chiefs," said Pretty Eagle, "come and take them."
"Pretty Eagle shall have an hour and a half to think on my words," said
the general. "I have plenty of men behind me to make my words good. You
must send me all those Indians who fired at the agency."
The Crow chiefs returned to the council, which was apart from the war
party's camp; and Cheschapah walked in among them, and after him,
slowly, old Pounded Meat, to learn how the conference had gone.