"I tell you that fellow is an Indian! You can't fool me! Look at the way
he walks! He doesn't _step_; he _pads_ like a panther!"
Billy ceased speaking, but still pointed an excited forefinger along the
half-obliterated buffalo trail that swung up the prairie, out of the
southern horizon. The two boys craned their necks, watching the coming
figure, that advanced at a half-trot, half-stride. Billy was right. The
man seemed to be moving on cushioned feet. Nothing could give that slow,
springing swing except a moccasin.
"Any man is welcome," almost groaned little Jerry, "but, oh, how much
more welcome an Indian man, eh, Billy?"
"You bet!" said Billy. "He'll show us a way out of this. Yes, he's
Indian. I can see his long hair now. Look! I can see the fringe up the
sleeves of his shirt; it is buckskin!"
"Do you think he sees us?" questioned Jerry.
Billy laughed contemptuously. "Sees us! Why, he saw us long before we
saw him, you can bet on that!"
Then Billy raised his arm, and whirled about his head the big bandanna
handkerchief which he had snatched from his neck. The man responded to
the signal by lifting aloft for a single instant his open palm with
fingers outstretched.
"Yes, he's Indian! A white man would have wiggled his wrist at us!"
sighed Jerry contentedly. "He'll help us out, Billy. There's nothing he
won't know how to do!" And the little boy's eyes grew moist with the
relief of knowing help was at last at hand.
Ten minutes more and the man slowed up beside them. He was a tall,
splendidly made Cree, with eyes like jewels and hands as slender and
small as a woman's.
"You savvy English?" asked Billy.
"Little," answered the Indian, never looking at Billy, but keeping his
wonderful eyes on the outstretched figure, the pallid face, of young
Jerry, whose forehead was wrinkled with evident pain.
"We have met with an accident," explained Billy. "My little brother's
horse loped into a badger hole and broke its leg. I had to shoot it."
Here Billy's voice choked, and his fingers touched the big revolver at
his belt. "My brother was thrown. He landed badly; something's wrong
with his ankle, his leg; he can't walk; can't go on, even on my horse.
It happened over there, about two miles." Here Billy pointed across the
prairie to where a slight hump showed where the dead horse lay. "I got
him over here," he continued, looking about at the scrub poplar and
cottonwood trees, "where there was shelter and slough water, but he
can't go on. Our father is Mr. MacIntyre, the Hudson's Bay Factor at
Fort o' Farewell."
As Billy ceased speaking the Indian kneeled beside Jerry, feeling with
tender fingers his hurts. As the dark hand touched his ankle, the boy
screamed and cried out, "Oh, don't! Oh, don't!" The Indian arose,
shaking his head solemnly, then said softly, "Hudson's Bay boys, eh?
Good boys! You good boy to bring him here to trees. We make camp! Your
brother's ankle is broken."
"But we must get him home," urged Billy. "We ought to have a doctor.
He'll be lame all his life if we don't!" And poor big Billy's voice
shook.
"No. No lame. I doctor him," said the Indian. "I good doctor. My name
Five Feathers--me."
"Five Feathers!" exclaimed Billy. "Oh, I've often heard father speak of
you. Father loves you. He says you are the best Indian in the whole
Hudson's Bay country."
Five Feathers smiled. "Your father and me good friends," he said simply.
Then added, "How you come here?"
"Why, you see," said Billy, "we were returning from school at Winnipeg;
it's holiday now, you know. Father sent the two ponies to 'the front'
for us to ride home. Some Indians brought them over for us. It's a
hundred and sixty miles. We started yesterday morning, and slept last
night at Black Jack Pete's place. We must be a full hundred miles from
home now." Billy stopped speaking. His voice simply _would_ not go on.
"More miles than hundred," said the Indian. "You got something eat?"
Billy went over to where his horse was staked to a cottonwood, hauled
off his saddlebags, and, returning, emptied them on the brown grass.
They made a good showing. Six boxes of matches, a half side of bacon,
two pounds of hardtack, a package of tea, four tins of sardines, a big
roll of cooked smoked antelope, sugar, three loaves of bread, one can of
tongue, one of salmon, a small tin teapot, two tin cups, one big knife,
and one tin pie plate, to be used in lieu of a frying-pan. "I wish we
had more," said the boy, surveying the outfit ruefully.
"Plenty," said the Indian; "we get prairie chicken and rabbit plenty."
But his keen eyes scarcely glanced at the food. He was busy slitting one
of the sleeves from his buckskin shirt, cutting it into bandages. His
knife was already shaping splints from the scrub poplar. Little Jerry,
his eyes full of pain, watched him, knowing of the agony to come,
when even those gentle Indian fingers could not save his poor ankle
from torture while they set the broken bone. Suddenly the misery of
anticipation was arrested by a great and glad cry from the Indian, who
had discovered and pounced upon a small scarlet blossom that was growing
down near the slough. He caught up the flower, root and all, carrying
it triumphantly to where the injured boy lay. Within ten minutes he had
made a little fire, placed the scarlet flower, stem and root, in the
teapot, half filled it up with water, and set it boiling. Then he turned
to Billy.
"Sleeping medicine," he said, pointing to the teapot. "He not have pain.
You stay until he awake, then you ride on to Fort o' Farewell. You take
some food. You leave some for us. You send wagon, take him home. I stay
with him. Maybe four, five days before you get there and send wagon
back. You trust me? I give him sleeping medicine. I watch him. You trust
me--Five Feathers?"
But Jerry's hand was already clasping the Indian's, and Billy was
interrupting.
"Trust you? Trust Five Feathers, the best Indian in the Hudson's Bay
country? I should think I will trust you!"
The Indian nodded quietly; and, taking the teapot from the fire, poured
the liquid into one of the cups, cooling it by dripping from one cup to
the other over and over again. Presently it began to thicken, almost
like a jelly, and turned a dull red color, then brighter, clearer,
redder. Suddenly the Indian snatched up the prostrate boy to a sitting
posture. One hand was around the boy's shoulder, the other held the tin
cup, brimming with reddening, glue-like stuff.
"Quick!" he said, looking at Billy. "You trust me?"
"Yes," said the boy, very quietly. "Give it to him."
"Yes," said Jerry; "give it to me."
The Indian held the cup to the little chap's lips. One, two, three
minutes passed. The boy had swallowed every drop. Then the Indian laid
him flat on the grass. For a moment his suffering eyes looked into those
of his brother, then he glanced at the sky, the trees, the far horizon,
the half-obliterated buffalo trail. Then his lids drooped, his hands
twitched, he lay utterly unconscious.
With a rapidity hardly believable in an Indian, Five Feathers skinned
off the boy's sock, ran his lithe fingers about the ankle, clicked the
bone into place, splinted and bandaged it like an expert surgeon; but,
with all his haste, it was completed none too soon. Jerry's eyes slowly
opened, to see Billy smiling down at him, and Five Feathers standing
calmly by his side.
"Bully, Jerry! Your ankle is all set and bandaged. How do you feel?"
asked his brother, a little shakily.
"Just tired," said the boy. "Tired, but no pain. Oh, I wish I could have
stayed!"
"Stayed where?" demanded Billy.
"With the scarlet flowers!" whispered Jerry. "I've been dreaming, I
think," he continued. "I thought I was walking among fields and fields
of scarlet flowers. They were so pretty."
Five Feathers sprang to his feet. "Good! Good!" he exclaimed. "I scared
he would not see them. If he see red flowers, he all right. Sometimes,
when they don't see it, they not get well soon." Then, under his breath,
"The Scarlet Eye!"
"I saw them all right!" almost laughed the boy. "Miles of them. I could
see and smell them. They smelled like smoke--like prairie fires."
"Get well right away!" chuckled the Indian. "_Very_ good to smell them."
Then to Billy: "You eat. You get ready. You ride now to Fort o'
Farewell."
So they built up the dying fire, made tea, cooked a little bacon, and
all three ate heartily.
"I'll leave you the teapot, of course," said Billy, taking a dozen
hardtack and one tin of sardines. "Slough water's good enough for me."
But Five Feathers gripped him by the arm--an iron grip--not at all with
the gentle fingers that had so recently dressed the other boy's wounded
ankle. "You not go that way!" he glared, his fine eyes dark and
scowling. "Yes, we keep teapot, but you take bread, and antelope, and
more fat fish," pointing to the sardines. "Fat fish very good for long
ride. You take, or I not let you go!"
There was such a strange severity in his dark face that Billy did not
argue the matter, but quietly obeyed, taking one loaf of bread, half
the antelope, and three tins of the "fat fish."
"Plenty prairie chicken here," explained the Indian. "I make good soup
for Little Brave."
"What a nice name to call me, Five Feathers!" smiled Jerry.
"Yes, you Little Brave," replied the Indian. "Little boy, but very big
brave."
At the last moment Jerry and his brother clasped hands. "I hate to leave
you, old man," said Billy, a little unsteadily.
"Why, I'm not afraid," answered the boy. "You and father and I all know
that I am with the best Indian in the Hudson's Bay country--we _do_ know
it, don't we, Billy?"
"I'll stake my life on that," replied Billy, swinging into his saddle.
"Remember, Jerry, it's only a hundred miles. I'll be there in two days,
and the wagon will be here in another two."
"Yes, I'll remember," replied the sick boy.
Then Billy struck rather abruptly up the half-obliterated buffalo trail.
Several times he turned in his saddle, looking back and waving his
bandanna, and each time the Indian stood erect and lifted his open palm.
The receding horse and rider grew smaller, less, fainter, then they
blurred into the horizon. The sick boy closed his eyes, that ached from
watching the fading figure. He was utterly alone, with leagues of
untracked prairie about him, alone with Five Feathers, a strange Indian,
who sat silently nearby.
When Jerry awoke, the sun was almost setting, and Five Feathers was
in precisely the same place and in precisely the same attitude. Once,
in his dreams, wherein he still wandered through fields of scarlet
flowers, he watched a bud unfolding. It opened with a sound like a
revolver shot, or was it really a revolver? The boy turned over on his
side, for a savory odor greeted his nostrils, and he looked wonderingly
around. Five Feathers had evidently not been sitting there throughout
that long June afternoon, for, within an arm's length was the jolliest
little tepee made of many branches of poplar and cottonwood, sides and
roof all one thick mass of green leaves and branches woven together like
basketwork, a bed of short, dry prairie grass, fragrant and brown, his
own saddlebags and single blanket for pillow and mattress. And on the
fire the teapot, steaming with that delicious savory odor.
"What is it?" asked the boy, indicating the cooking.
"Prairie chicken," smiled the Indian. "I shoot while you sleep."
So _that_ was the bursting of the scarlet bud!
"Very good chicken," continued the Indian. "Very fat--good for eat, good
soup, both."
So they made their supper off the tender stew, and soaked some hardtack
in the soup. It seemed to Jerry a royal meal, and he made up his mind
that, when he arrived home, he would get his mother to stew a prairie
hen in the teapot some day; it tasted so much better than anything he
had ever eaten before.
The sun had set, and the long, long twilight of the north was gathering.
Five Feathers built up the fire, for the prairie night brings a chill,
even in June.
"Did you see them again, the red flowers, while you slept?" he asked the
boy.
"Yes; fields of them," replied Jerry. Then added, "Why?"
"It is good," said the Indian. "Very good. You will now have what we
call 'The Scarlet Eye.'"
"What's that?" asked Jerry, half frightened.
"It's very good. You will yourself be a great medicine man--what you
white men call 'doctor.' You like to be that?"
"I never thought of studying medicine until to-day," said the boy,
excitedly; "but, just as Billy rode away, something seemed to grip me.
I made up my mind then and there to be a doctor."
"That is because you have seen 'The Scarlet Eye,'" said the Indian,
quietly.
"Tell me of it, will you, Five Feathers?" asked the boy, gently.
"Yes, but first I lift you on to bed." And, gathering Jerry in his
strong, lean arms, he laid him on the grass couch in the green tepee,
looked at his foot, loosened all his clothing, spread the one blanket
over him, stirred up the fire, and, sitting at the tepee door, began
the story.