is pretty good for old men. I and the young chiefs will fight now and
kill our enemies."
"Cheschapah," said Pounded Meat, "if your medicine is good, it may be
the young chiefs will kill our enemies to-day. But there are other days
to come, and after them still others; there are many, many days. My son,
the years are a long road. The life of one man is not long, but enough
to learn this thing truly: the white man will always return. There was a
day on this river when the dead soldiers of Yellow Hair lay in hills,
and the squaws of the Sioux warriors climbed among them with their
knives. What do the Sioux warriors do now when they meet the white man
on this river? Their hearts are on the ground, and they go home like
children when the white man says, 'You shall not visit your friends.' My
son, I thought war was good once. I have kept you from the arrows of our
enemies on many trails when you were so little that my blankets were
enough for both. Your mother was not here any more, and the chiefs
laughed because I carried you. Oh, my son, I have seen the hearts of the
Sioux broken by the white man, and I do not think war is good."
"The talk of Pounded Meat is very good," said Pretty Eagle. "If
Cheschapah were wise like his father, this trouble would not have come
to the Crows. But we could not give the white chief so many of our
chiefs that he asked for to-day."
Cheschapah laughed. "Did he ask for so many? He wanted only Cheschapah,
who is not wise like Pounded Meat."
"You would have been given to him," said Pretty Eagle.
"Did Pretty Eagle tell the white chief that? Did he say he would give
Cheschapah? How would he give me? In one hand, or two? Or would the old
warrior take me to the white man's camp on the horse his young squaw
left?"
Pretty Eagle raised his rifle, and Pounded Meat, quick as a boy, seized
the barrel and pointed it up among the poles of the tepee, where the
quiet black fire smoke was oozing out into the air. "Have you lived so
long," said Pounded Meat to his ancient comrade, "and do this in the
council?" His wrinkled head and hands shook, the sudden strength left
him, and the rifle fell free.
"Let Pretty Eagle shoot," said Cheschapah, looking at the council. He
stood calm, and the seated chiefs turned their grim eyes upon him.
Certainty was in his face, and doubt in theirs. "Let him send his bullet
five times--ten times. Then I will go and let the white soldiers shoot
at me until they all lie dead."
"It is heavy for me," began Pounded Meat, "that my friend should be the
enemy of my son."
"Tell that lie no more," said Cheschapah. "You are not my father. I have
made the white man blind, and I have softened his heart with the rain. I
will call the rain to-day." He raised his red sword, and there was a
movement among the sitting figures. "The clouds will come from my
father's place, where I have talked with him as one chief to another. My
mother went into the mountains to gather berries. She was young, and the
thunder-maker saw her face. He brought the black clouds, so her feet
turned from home, and she walked where the river goes into the great
walls of the mountain, and that day she was stricken fruitful by the
lightning. You are not the father of Cheschapah." He dealt Pounded Meat
a blow, and the old man fell. But the council sat still until the sound
of Cheschapah's galloping horse died away. They were ready now to risk
everything. Their scepticism was conquered.
The medicine-man galloped to his camp of hostiles, and, seeing him, they
yelled and quickly finished plaiting their horses' tails. Cheschapah had
accomplished his wish; he had become the prophet of all the Crows, and
he led the armies of the faithful. Each man stripped his blanket off and
painted his body for the fight. The forms slipped in and out of the
brush, buckling their cartridge-belts, bringing their ponies, while many
families struck their tepees and moved up nearer the agency. The spare
horses were run across the river into the hills, and through the yelling
that shifted and swept like flames along the wind the hostiles made
ready and gathered, their crowds quivering with motion, and changing
place and shape as more mounted Indians appeared.
"Are the holes dug deep as I marked them on the earth?" said Cheschapah
to Two Whistles. "That is good. We shall soon have to go into them from
the great rain I will bring. Make these strong, to stay as we ride. They
are good medicine, and with them the white soldiers will not see you any
more than they saw me when I rode among them that day."
He had strips and capes of red flannel, and he and Two Whistles fastened
them to their painted bodies.
"You will let me go with you?" said Two Whistles.
"You are my best friend," said Cheschapah, "and to-day I will take you.
You shall see my great medicine when I make the white man's eyes grow
sick."
The two rode forward, and one hundred and fifty followed them, bursting
from their tepees like an explosion, and rushing along quickly in
skirmish-line. Two Whistles rode beside his speeding prophet, and saw
the red sword waving near his face, and the sun in the great still sky,
and the swimming, fleeting earth. His superstition and the fierce ride
put him in a sort of trance.
"The medicine is beginning!" shouted Cheschapah; and at that Two
Whistles saw the day grow large with terrible shining, and heard his
own voice calling and could not stop it. They left the hundred and
fifty behind, he knew not where or when. He saw the line of troops
ahead change to separate waiting shapes of men, and their legs and
arms become plain; then all the guns took clear form in lines of
steady glitter. He seemed suddenly alone far ahead of the band, but
the voice of Cheschapah spoke close by his ear through the singing
wind, and he repeated each word without understanding; he was watching
the ground rush by, lest it might rise against his face, and all the
while he felt his horse's motion under him, smooth and perpetual.
Something weighed against his leg, and there was Cheschapah he had
forgotten, always there at his side, veering him around somewhere. But
there was no red sword waving. Then the white men must be blind
already, wherever they were, and Cheschapah, the only thing he could
see, sat leaning one hand on his horse's rump firing a pistol. The
ground came swimming towards his eyes always, smooth and wide like a
gray flood, but Two Whistles knew that Cheschapah would not let it
sweep him away. He saw a horse without a rider floated out of blue
smoke, and floated in again with a cracking noise; white soldiers
moved in a row across his eyes, very small and clear, and broke
into a blurred eddy of shapes which the flood swept away clean and
empty. Then a dead white man came by on the quick flood. Two Whistles
saw the yellow stripe on his sleeve; but he was gone, and there was
nothing but sky and blaze, with Cheschapah's head-dress in the middle.
The horse's even motion continued beneath him, when suddenly the
head-dress fell out of Two Whistles' sight, and the earth returned.
They were in brush, with his horse standing and breathing, and a dead
horse on the ground with Cheschapah, and smoke and moving people
everywhere outside. He saw Cheschapah run from the dead horse and jump
on a gray pony and go. Somehow he was on the ground too, looking at a
red sword lying beside his face. He stared at it a long while, then
took it in his hand, still staring; all at once he rose and broke it
savagely, and fell again. His faith was shivered to pieces like glass.
But he got on his horse, and the horse moved away. He was looking at
the blood running on his body. The horse moved always, and Two
Whistles followed with his eye a little deeper gush of blood along a
crease in his painted skin, noticed the flannel, and remembering the
lie of his prophet, instantly began tearing the red rags from his
body, and flinging them to the ground with cries of scorn. Presently
he heard some voices, and soon one voice much nearer, and saw he had
come to a new place, where there were white soldiers looking at him
quietly. One was riding up and telling him to give up his pistol. Two
Whistles got off and stood behind his horse, looking at the pistol.
The white soldier came quite near, and at his voice Two Whistles moved
slowly out from behind the horse, and listened to the cool words as
the soldier repeated his command. The Indian was pointing his pistol
uncertainly, and he looked at the soldier's coat and buttons, and the
straps on the shoulders, and the bright steel sabre, and the white
man's blue eyes; then Two Whistles looked at his own naked, clotted
body, and, turning the pistol against himself, fired it into his
breast.
[Illustration: THE CHARGE]
Far away up the river, on the right of the line, a lieutenant with two
men was wading across after some hostiles that had been skirmishing with
his troop. The hostiles had fallen back after some hot shooting, and had
dispersed among the brush and tepees on the farther shore, picking up
their dead, as Indians do. It was interesting work, this splashing
breast-high through a river into a concealed hornets'-nest, and the
lieutenant thought a little on his unfinished plans and duties in life;
he noted one dead Indian left on the shore, and went steadfastly in
among the half-seen tepees, rummaging and beating in the thick brush to
be sure no hornets remained. Finding them gone, and their dead spirited
away, he came back on the bank to the one dead Indian, who had a fine
head-dress, and was still ribanded with gay red streamers of flannel,
and was worth all the rest of the dead put together, and much more. The
head lay in the water, and one hand held the rope of the gray pony, who
stood quiet and uninterested over his fallen rider. They began carrying
the prize across to the other bank, where many had now collected, among
others Kinney and the lieutenant's captain, who subsequently said, "I
found the body of Cheschapah;" and, indeed, it was a very good thing to
be able to say.
[Illustration: "THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER"]
"This busts the war," said Kinney to the captain, as the body was
being lifted over the Little Horn. "They know he's killed, and they've
all quit. I was up by the tepees near the agency just now, and I
could see the hostiles jamming back home for dear life. They was
chucking their rifles to the squaws, and jumping in the river--ha!
ha!--to wash off their war-paint, and each ---- ---- would crawl out
and sit innercint in the family blanket his squaw had ready. If you
was to go there now, cap'n, you'd find just a lot of harmless Injuns
eatin' supper like all the year round. Let me help you, boys, with
that carcass."
Kinney gave a hand to the lieutenant and men of G troop, First United
States Cavalry, and they lifted Cheschapah up the bank. In the tilted
position of the body the cartridge-belt slid a little, and a lump of
newspaper fell into the stream. Kinney watched it open and float away
with a momentary effervescence. The dead medicine-man was laid between
the white and red camps, that all might see he could be killed like
other people; and this wholesome discovery brought the Crows to terms at
once. Pretty Eagle had displayed a flag of truce, and now he surrendered
the guilty chiefs whose hearts had been bad. Every one came where the
dead prophet lay to get a look at him. For a space of hours Pretty Eagle
and the many other Crows he had deceived rode by in single file,
striking him with their whips; after them came a young squaw, and she
also lashed the upturned face.
This night was untroubled at the agency, and both camps and the valley
lay quiet in the peaceful dark. Only Pounded Meat, alone on the top of a
hill, mourned for his son; and his wailing voice sounded through the
silence until the new day came. Then the general had him stopped and
brought in, for it might be that the old man's noise would unsettle the
Crows again.
SPECIMEN JONES
Ephraim, the proprietor of Twenty Mile, had wasted his day in burying a
man. He did not know the man. He had found him, or what the Apaches had
left of him, sprawled among some charred sticks just outside the Canon
del Oro. It was a useful discovery in its way, for otherwise Ephraim
might have gone on hunting his strayed horses near the canon, and ended
among charred sticks himself. Very likely the Indians were far away by
this time, but he returned to Twenty Mile with the man tied to his
saddle, and his pony nervously snorting. And now the day was done, and
the man lay in the earth, and they had even built a fence round him; for
the hole was pretty shallow, and coyotes have a way of smelling this
sort of thing a long way off when they are hungry, and the man was not
in a coffin. They were always short of coffins in Arizona.
Day was done at Twenty Mile, and the customary activity prevailed inside
that flat-roofed cube of mud. Sounds of singing, shooting, dancing, and
Mexican tunes on the concertina came out of the windows hand in hand, to
widen and die among the hills. A limber, pretty boy, who might be
nineteen, was dancing energetically, while a grave old gentleman, with
tobacco running down his beard, pointed a pistol at the boy's heels,
and shot a hole in the earth now and then to show that the weapon was
really loaded. Everybody was quite used to all of this--excepting the
boy. He was an Eastern new-comer, passing his first evening at a place
of entertainment.
Night in and night out every guest at Twenty Mile was either happy and
full of whiskey, or else his friends were making arrangements for his
funeral. There was water at Twenty Mile--the only water for twoscore of
miles. Consequently it was an important station on the road between the
southern country and Old Camp Grant, and the new mines north of the
Mescal Range. The stunt, liquor-perfumed adobe cabin lay on the gray
floor of the desert like an isolated slab of chocolate. A corral, two
desolate stable-sheds, and the slowly turning windmill were all else.
Here Ephraim and one or two helpers abode, armed against Indians, and
selling whiskey. Variety in their vocation of drinking and killing was
brought them by the travellers. These passed and passed through the
glaring vacant months--some days only one ragged fortune-hunter, riding
a pony; again by twos and threes, with high-loaded burros; and sometimes
they came in companies, walking beside their clanking freight-wagons.
Some were young, and some were old, and all drank whiskey, and wore
knives and guns to keep each other civil. Most of them were bound for
the mines, and some of them sometimes returned. No man trusted the next
man, and their names, when they had any, would be O'Rafferty, Angus,
Schwartzmeyer, Jose Maria, and Smith. All stopped for one night; some
longer, remaining drunk and profitable to Ephraim; now and then one
stayed permanently, and had a fence built round him. Whoever came, and
whatever befell them, Twenty Mile was chronically hilarious after
sundown--a dot of riot in the dumb Arizona night.
On this particular evening they had a tenderfoot. The boy, being new in
Arizona, still trusted his neighbor. Such people turned up occasionally.
This one had paid for everybody's drink several times, because he felt
friendly, and never noticed that nobody ever paid for his. They had
played cards with him, stolen his spurs, and now they were making him
dance. It was an ancient pastime; yet two or three were glad to stand
round and watch it, because it was some time since they had been to the
opera. Now the tenderfoot had misunderstood these friends at the
beginning, supposing himself to be among good fellows, and they
therefore naturally set him down as a fool. But even while dancing you
may learn much, and suddenly. The boy, besides being limber, had good
tough black hair, and it was not in fear, but with a cold blue eye, that
he looked at the old gentleman. The trouble had been that his own
revolver had somehow hitched, so he could not pull it from the holster
at the necessary moment.
"Tried to draw on me, did yer?" said the old gentleman. "Step higher!
Step, now, or I'll crack open yer kneepans, ye robin's egg."
"Thinks he's having a bad time," remarked Ephraim. "Wonder how he'd like
to have been that man the Injuns had sport with?"
"Weren't his ear funny?" said one who had helped bury the man.
"Ear?" said Ephraim. "You boys ought to been along when I found him,
and seen the way they'd fixed up his mouth." Ephraim explained the
details simply, and the listeners shivered. But Ephraim was a
humorist. "Wonder how it feels," he continued, "to have--"
[Illustration: AN APACHE]
Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few
hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest
with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By
no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so
often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and
over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company,
singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that entertained him
in the least. He had seen everything quite often.
"Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf," remarked the old gentleman to
the tenderfoot. "High-yer!" And he placidly fired a fourth shot that
scraped the boy's boot at the ankle and threw earth over the clock, so
that you could not tell the minute from the hour hand.
"'Drink to me only with thine eyes,'" sang Specimen Jones, softly. They
did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These lyrics were all, or
nearly all, that he retained of the days when he was twenty, although he
was but twenty-six now.
The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played "Matamoras,"
Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and
the concertina stopped with a quack.
"Quit it!" said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the two with his
weapon. "I don't want any greasers scrapping round here to-night. We've
just got cleaned up."
It had been cards, but the Mexicans made peace, to the regret of
Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a crisis, and now
for the first time he noticed the boy.
"Blamed if he ain't neat," he said. But interest faded from his eye, and
he turned again to the wall. "'Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein,'" he
melodiously observed. His repertory was wide and refined. When he sang
he was always grammatical.
"Ye kin stop, kid," said the old gentleman, not unkindly, and he shoved
his pistol into his belt.
The boy ceased. He had been thinking matters over. Being lithe and
strong, he was not tired nor much out of breath, but he was trembling
with the plan and the prospect he had laid out for himself. "Set 'em
up," he said to Ephraim. "Set 'em up again all round."
His voice caused Specimen Jones to turn and look once more, while the
old gentleman, still benevolent, said, "Yer langwidge means pleasanter
than it sounds, kid." He glanced at the boy's holster, and knew he need
not keep a very sharp watch as to that. Its owner had bungled over it
once already. All the old gentleman did was to place himself next the
boy on the off side from the holster; any move the tenderfoot's hand
might make for it would be green and unskilful, and easily anticipated.
The company lined up along the bar, and the bottle slid from glass to
glass. The boy and his tormentor stood together in the middle of the
line, and the tormentor, always with half a thought for the holster,
handled his drink on the wet counter, waiting till all should be filled
and ready to swallow simultaneously, as befits good manners.
"Well, my regards," he said, seeing the boy raise his glass; and as the
old gentleman's arm lifted in unison, exposing his waist, the boy
reached down a lightning hand, caught the old gentleman's own pistol,
and jammed it in his face.
"Now you'll dance," said he.
"Whoop!" exclaimed Specimen Jones, delighted. "_Blamed_ if he ain't
neat!" And Jones's handsome face lighted keenly.
"Hold on!" the boy sang out, for the amazed old gentleman was
mechanically drinking his whiskey out of sheer fright. The rest had
forgotten their drinks. "Not one swallow," the boy continued. "No,
you'll not put it down either. You'll keep hold of it, and you'll dance
all round this place. Around and around. And don't you spill any. And
I'll be thinking what you'll do after that."
Specimen Jones eyed the boy with growing esteem. "Why, he ain't bigger
than a pint of cider," said he.
"Prance away!" commanded the tenderfoot, and fired a shot between the
old gentleman's not widely straddled legs.
"You hev the floor, Mr. Adams," Jones observed, respectfully, at the old
gentleman's agile leap. "I'll let no man here interrupt you." So the
capering began, and the company stood back to make room. "I've saw juicy
things in this Territory," continued Specimen Jones, aloud, to himself,
"but this combination fills my bill."
He shook his head sagely, following the black-haired boy with his eye.
That youth was steering Mr. Adams round the room with the pistol, proud
as a ring-master. Yet not altogether. He was only nineteen, and though
his heart beat stoutly, it was beating alone in a strange country. He
had come straight to this from hunting squirrels along the Susquehanna,
with his mother keeping supper warm for him in the stone farm-house
among the trees. He had read books in which hardy heroes saw life, and
always triumphed with precision on the last page, but he remembered no
receipt for this particular situation. Being good game American blood,
he did not think now about the Susquehanna, but he did long with all his
might to know what he ought to do next to prove himself a man. His
buoyant rage, being glutted with the old gentleman's fervent skipping,
had cooled, and a stress of reaction was falling hard on his brave young
nerves. He imagined everybody against him. He had no notion that there
was another American wanderer there, whose reserved and whimsical nature
he had touched to the heart.
The fickle audience was with him, of course, for the moment, since he
was upper dog and it was a good show; but one in that room was
distinctly against him. The old gentleman was dancing with an ugly eye;
he had glanced down to see just where his knife hung at his side, and he
had made some calculations. He had fired four shots; the boy had fired
one. "Four and one hez always made five," the old gentleman told himself
with much secret pleasure, and pretended that he was going to stop his
double-shuffle. It was an excellent trap, and the boy fell straight into
it. He squandered his last precious bullet on the spittoon near which
Mr. Adams happened to be at the moment, and the next moment Mr. Adams
had him by the throat. They swayed and gulped for breath, rutting the
earth with sharp heels; they rolled to the floor and floundered with
legs tight tangled, the boy blindly striking at Mr. Adams with the
pistol-butt, and the audience drawing closer to lose nothing, when the
bright knife flashed suddenly. It poised, and flew across the room,
harmless, for a foot had driven into Mr. Adams's arm, and he felt a
cold ring grooving his temple. It was the smooth, chilly muzzle of
Specimen Jones's six-shooter.
"That's enough," said Jones. "More than enough."
Mr. Adams, being mature in judgment, rose instantly, like a good old
sheep, and put his knife back obedient to orders. But in the brain of
the over-strained, bewildered boy universal destruction was whirling.
With a face stricken lean with ferocity, he staggered to his feet,
plucking at his obstinate holster, and glaring for a foe. His eye fell
first on his deliverer, leaning easily against the bar watching him,
while the more and more curious audience scattered, and held themselves
ready to murder the boy if he should point his pistol their way. He was
dragging at it clumsily, and at last it came. Specimen Jones sprang like
a cat, and held the barrel vertical and gripped the boy's wrist.
"Go easy, son," said he. "I know how you're feelin'."