exultant beneath the staccato blows of the old men’s drumsticks.
Tum-um-um, tum-um-um! Now the women, dressed in their gayest garments
of dyed buckskin, radiant in beads, with the spirit of song upon their
painted faces, came forth in a long file from a lodge and approached
the centre of the open space about which were grouped the mud lodges of
the village.
There, in the centre, sat the old men. The drums were singing a
glad song, in sullen tones, in this hour of victory, for a runner,
breathless with his speed, had brought the good news when the sun was
halfway down the sky, and now the slowly setting sun was blazing on the
evening hills.
Soon the whole victorious band, fresh from their fight with the Sioux,
would come over the hills like an eager, dusty wind, clamorous with
glad tongues and thunderous with the driven hoofs of captured ponies.
So the drums sang and the women came forth and circled about them,
peering beneath hands raised browward, into the deepening shadows of
the valley down which the band would sweep.
They swelled the song of victory, the song of welcome to the victors,
and the look of welcome was already upon their faces as they searched
the deepening shadows.
There came a rumble over the hills as of a hidden storm in time of
drouth, thundering mockingly in the rainless air. The drummers lifted
their sticks with trembling hands and listened—with one accord they all
listened for the shouts and the hoof beats.
Now the faint treble of distant shouting pierced the growing rumble of
the thunder. It was the braves! They were returning with much glory and
many ponies. The drumsticks fell snarlingly upon the taut buckskin, but
the sound seemed only a whisper, for the entire village was shouting
with a tumult that made the grazing ponies snort upon the hillsides and
gallop away with ears pricked wonderingly.
“They come! They come!”
The villagers thronged upon that side of the village that looked toward
the hills from whence the thunder deepened. A dust cloud gathered
behind the hills. It grew until it caught the horizontal sunlight and
seemed a scintillating tower of victory. Suddenly the hill above the
valley was thronged with mounted braves, waving their weapons above
their heads and shouting, and a sunlit cloud of glory seemed about them.
The band swept down the hillside and down the valley, and the dust
cloud thickened under the impetuous hoofs that beat the parched and
yellow prairie. When they drew near the opening in the circle of
lodges, the foremost hurled his panting pony back upon its haunches and
the others reared and halted behind, champing at the restraining thongs.
“A-ho!” shouted the foremost, holding his weapons above his head. “We
come from the Sioux! We have many ponies and also scalp-locks! Sing!
For we have fought a good fight and we are not ashamed!”
A great shout went up from the village, and the drums snarled. Slowly,
majestically, the circle of women began moving about the drums, keeping
time to the rhythmic beats with a sideward shuffling of their feet in
the dust. In a monotonous minor key the singing of the women began—at
first like the crooning of an Indian mother to a restless child when
the camp fires burn blue, and all the braves are snoring in the dark.
Then it rose into the mournful wail of a wife looking upon a dead
face—a wordless, eloquent song. Then, with a burst, it rose into a
treble cry, and words became dimly recognisable amid the ecstasy.
“We come, we come, and we are not ashamed!” sang the women to the
snarling of the drums. “Let the fires roar and the bison meat be
cooked, for we have fought, and now we wish to eat!
“Let the women dance and sing that we may be glad after our fighting!
A-ho! A-ho! We travelled far—one sleep, two sleeps, three sleeps, but
we slumbered not! We came upon our enemies. They were hidden in the
grass like badgers. They were dressed in yellow grass that they might
hide. We saw them and we shouted with joy, for we were not afraid! The
enemy trembled like wolves who have come to the end of the ravine and
the hunters follow behind!”
As the women sang, shuffling about the circle, the braves rode in
single file into the enclosure of the village and formed a circle about
the dance.
“I saw a big man among my enemies,” sang the women, for so their
song ran. “He was strong as a bear and terrible as an elk. His head
was proud with eagle feathers, for many men had he killed. I did not
tremble when he rushed at me; I raised my club and struck him, and he
fell with his eagle feathers. He whimpered like an old woman when she
becomes a child again. He said, ‘I have many ponies for you, and my
children will cry if I do not go back. Spare me!’ But behold! I have
his scalp lock!”
“His scalp lock! His scalp lock!” shouted the braves, as the words of
the song were drowned again in the minor drone that followed the snarl
of the drums. And they waved scalp locks above their heads—the locks of
the fallen Sioux.
Out of the droning the song of the women grew again. It became more
ecstatic, running the gamut of human passion—from the shrill shriek of
defiance to the mournful wail for those who had fallen in the battle.
And then the shuffling stopped; the song died away into a drone and
ceased, like the song of a locust at the end of a sultry evening. The
drums snarled no more, a great silence fell, the sun had sunk beneath
the hills.
Then, in the silence and the shadows of the evening, one came forth
from among the circle of braves, and, with a slow, majestic bending of
the knees, danced in a circle about the women and the drums, that began
again as an accompaniment to the song that he would sing.
Round and round the circle he danced, improvising a song to the rhythm
of the drums, in which he sang his prowess, and the whole village
shouted when he reached the end of his song, for he told of a good
fight and a strong arm, and he had been great in battle.
Then, amid the shouting, another came forth to dance and sing, for he
too had done great things. It was White Cloud, and he was great among
his people. Round and round the circle he danced to the tune of the
drums, dodging imaginary arrows, leaping upon imaginary foes, striking
huge blows at the heads of warriors hidden in the shadow.
“See!” he shouted in his song, and his voice was loud and masterful,
for a murmur of praise had passed among the people. “See! White Cloud
brings the scalp lock of a chief. He took it alone with his strong
hand. The scalp lock of a big Sioux chief! Who has done a greater deed
than White Cloud? Then let the old men place the eagle feather in his
hair that he may be known among his people.”
Once again the dancing stopped and the drums ceased their droning.
White Cloud approached the old men, who slowly placed the eagle feather
in his hair.
But one among the assembled braves did not give his voice to the shout
that ensued.
His gaze narrowed with hatred as he looked upon White Cloud, and his
body trembled as a strong tree that stands alone in the path of a
tempest.
Then as White Cloud strode proudly to the inner rim of the circle of
braves, with the tall eagle feather in his hair, another came forth
bearing with him his bow and his arrows. It was he who had found no
voice in which to celebrate White Cloud’s valour.
He was tall and sinewy, and he had the clear-cut, cruel face of a hawk,
now dark with a darkness deeper than the shadow of the evening. It was
Little Weasel.
Erect, quivering like a strong bow in the clutch of a mighty warrior,
he walked into the open space, and the drums once more began their
wailing. But Little Weasel raised one trembling hand and commanded
silence.
“Fathers,” he said, and his voice was low, vibrant with the growl of a
wounded beast in it, “Little Weasel needs no drums to help him fill the
stillness.”
The people bent forward, hushed, because there was something deeper
than shadow in the face of Little Weasel as he turned his hawk’s gaze
upon the bowed head of White Cloud.
“Little Weasel has words to utter, but they are not song words nor
dance words. Let the women and cowards sing and dance!”
Still the head of White Cloud was bowed, and Little Weasel laughed a
strange laugh.
“Who took the scalplock of the big Sioux chief?” shouted Little Weasel.
“I, Little Weasel, took it! One sleep, two sleeps, I kept it close
beside me; for I am a young man and I wanted to hear the shouts of my
people. But in the third sleep a great heaviness came upon me, and when
I awoke my Sioux scalp lock had been stolen from me. Now I know the
badger who crept upon me in my heaviness and stole my honour from me.
Look! You have placed the eagle feather in his hair!”
In the hush that filled that shadowed place naught but the heavy
breathing of the people was heard. Little Weasel fitted a feathered
arrow to his bow.
“See!” he cried. “I do not cry about my stolen feather. I give another!”
The bow-thong twanged, the arrow sang, and lodged deep in White Cloud’s
breast.
“Let White Cloud wear that feather in his breast so that the black
spirits will know him! For look! Already he is among them!”
White Cloud had fallen upon his face. Little Weasel dropped his bow
upon the ground, and, raising his hands above his head, he shouted into
the stillness: “Fathers, I have given feather for feather!”
Then a great cry broke from the assembled braves and the women
shrieked. But Little Weasel shouldered his way through the throng and
went to his lodge, laughing bitterly.
That evening the fires of the feast did not roar upward into the night.
There was no song; there was no babble of glad voices; there was no
bubbling of kettle nor scent of meat.
For a member of the tribe had been murdered by a tribesman, and the
murderer, according to an ancient custom, would be driven forth that
night from the circle of the lodges into the prairie. And the people
sat speechless at the dark doors of their lodges awaiting the signal.
After a long and wordless waiting in the dark, the people saw the
door-flap of the big council lodge swing open, and they held their
breaths, for the time of the casting forth had come.
Through the hush of the starlit night came Little Weasel, pacing slowly
about the circle of the village, and the fathers of the council, slow
with age, followed behind.
Three times the outcast made the rounds, and when he began the fourth
and last circle (for four is a medicine number), the old men who
followed raised their faces to the starlit sky and breathed these words
into the quiet:
“Let the people look upon Little Weasel, our brother, for he has killed
a brother and must suffer. Four times shall the bears bring forth their
cubs; four times shall the lone goose fly; four times shall the frogs
sing in the valleys; four times shall the sunflowers grow; and he must
wander, wander. Then shall Little Weasel return and his deed shall be
forgotten. _Wah-hoo-ha-a-a-a!_”
Then when Little Weasel came the fourth time to the opening in the
circle of lodges, looking toward the place of sunrise, he saw one
standing in the dark who held a pony by a thong. And Little Weasel
leaped upon the pony, laughed a loud, unpleasant laugh, and urged it
southward into the night.
Throughout the night the people in the village heard strange sounds.
For at times somewhere in the darkness of the hills, something laughed
a loud, unmirthful laugh.
“Do you hear it?” the people whispered. “It is a wolf. For sometimes in
the lonesome nights they laugh so.” But the people muffled their ears
in their blankets, for it is not good to hear a wolf laugh almost like
a man.
All night long Little Weasel wandered upon the hills, holding his
grazing pony and looking down upon the starlit village of his people.
He laughed loudly at times, for he was not one of those who sadden
with trouble.
“How can I get revenge upon my people?” he asked himself. And as yet he
could not answer.
The pale dawn found him sitting upon the hills. Then he arose and
mounted his pony and the three went southward—the pony, the man, and
the question.
A light wind blew upon his back.
“How can I get revenge upon my people?” he sang aloud in endless
variation until his question wove itself into a song—a battle song, for
Little Weasel had not eaten, and hunger feeds anger. But the light wind
sighing at his back made no answer.
“I will go to the country of the Pawnees and make them angry with my
people,” he said to himself, and this seemed the answer to his question
until the sun had reached its highest in the sky and the wind had
fallen and the yellow prairie had become parched and bare.
In the afternoon he stopped in the glare of the sun and held one wet
finger above his head that he might learn the source of the wind.
There was a faint breath from the south. As he stood it increased,
coming in little puffs, hot and fitful and dry. Suddenly it came with a
great puff and boomed in the arid gulches.
Little Weasel shouted with joy.
He had heard his answer in the booming of the sudden wind. He
dismounted, and, with a flint and some dry grass, lit a little fire.
The great wind fed it and it grew. Then Little Weasel collected a bunch
of grass, lit it and rapidly set fire to the dry prairie.
Long, yellow flames leaped up from the sun-cured buffalo-grass, howled
in the wind that grew stronger and stronger, and raced northward toward
the valley where the circled lodges of the Omahas lay.
“Now I will go back,” said Little Weasel, “and the fire shall go with
me.” He kicked his pony in the ribs and pointed its head northward.
The wave of flame preceded him, skimming the surface of the grass with
great leaps, gaining strength and fleetness as the dry wind lashed it
from behind.
“_Aha-ha-he-ha-ha-ha-ha!_” sang Little Weasel, and the pony, straining
its wiry limbs to keep pace with the yellow giant that ran before,
wheezed and coughed an accompaniment to the song, for the ashes were in
his nostrils.
Over hills, through valleys, across gulches the pony ran, with the wall
of flame ever a strong man’s bow-shot ahead of him.
Now the Omahas, who had been deprived of their feast of victory the
evening before, had made the feast fires roar upward throughout the
village that day and much meat had been eaten.
Weary with much dancing and singing and heavy with meat, the evening
twilight found them sleeping heavily. And the night deepened and still
they slept.
But there was one upon whom the feast had laid but a light hand, and
who awoke suddenly in the night with a smell in his nostrils, a
roaring in his ears, and a great light in his eyes. He marvelled, for
the feast fires were dead in their ashes.
He arose, and when he reached the door of his lodge he gave a cry that
woke the sleeping village and brought the people clamouring into the
open air.
Half the earth and half the sky were aflame. The stars had fled before
the great burning. Booming in the strong wind, a wave of flame was
coming over the hills and reaching long, spiteful arms toward the
village in the valley.
Spellbound, the people gazed. Then of a sudden a cry ran among them,
for they had seen, through a momentary rift in the flame and smoke,
high upon the eminence of a peaked, fire-blackened hill, a man
standing upon a pony’s back, with his arms above his head. He looked
prodigiously big and seemed to ride upon a flood of fire.
Then the flames closed in, the smoke hid the peaked hill, and
frantically the people fled from their village to a nearby creek, where
they huddled in the stream, and where the loud flame passed over them,
booming on into the north.
When the gray of morning fell upon the blackened prairie, the people
returned to their village. But at the opening in the circle of lodges
stood a mounted man. Both he and his pony were blackened as with fire.
It was Little Weasel.
As his people drew near he raised a wheezing voice and said: “Behold
Little Weasel, whom the fire-spirits love! All day I rode across the
hills, thinking of my people’s unkindness. In the evening a great fire
grew up about me. It was not a common fire; it was a medicine fire. It
grew up about me and my pony, and lifted us like the waters of a flood.
And I was frightened till I heard a voice that thundered, and it said:
‘Little Weasel has been punished by a foolish people. The spirits of
fire will take him back and his people will take him in again.’ And lo!
here I am, Little Weasel. I want my eagle feather.”
And the people, believing many strange things, took him in with a great
feasting.
And from that day they called him by another name—Paeda-Nu, the
Fire-Man.
And he was great among his people.
IV
THE SCARS
MY friend, the old frontiersman, poked an extra supply of cobs into the
stove, meditatively watched the sudden flame lick about the husks, then
began this monologue after his usual manner:
* * * * *
Yes, I’ve got a nice place here—nice ranch. Didn’t work for it
either—lied for it!
Now, I’m not given much to that sort of thing, as you will grant; but
when I see a place where a good manly twisting of the truth can sweeten
matters up a bit, I’m not so scrupulous.
Back in the late fifties I was living in St. Louis, pretty nigh broke,
for all I’d lived a hard, industrious life up and down the river. One
day I got a note bearing the postmark of some California mining town,
and it informed me that I had a considerable credit with a certain St.
Louis bank. I never heard directly where the money came from, but I
thought I knew. I bought this place with some of that money, you see.
And there’s a little story attached to this.
For a number of years I was employed by the American Fur Company as
expressman. Every winter I made the trip from St. Louis to Fort
Pierre, a distance of about a thousand miles. Carried messages from
headquarters to the posts and from the posts back to headquarters. From
St. Louis to Pierre the trip was made on horseback, and from there up,
other expressmen carried the mail on dog sleds.
Great days, those! Sometimes when I get to thinking over old times, I
wonder if the railroads haven’t taken some of the iron out of the blood
of men.
In the winter of ’50—that was the year the gold fever was raging, you
know—I got to Pierre about the middle of February. When I had delivered
the mail and was making ready to start south again with the returns,
old Choteau, the factor of the post, called me into the hut he called
his office, and made an unusual request of me. “We’ve got a half-breed
here,” said he, “who’s got to be elevated. Understand? Killed a man
in the most atrocious manner. He’s due at a necktie party down at St.
Louis about next spring, and I’d rather not keep him at the post; can
you take him down?”
I was somewhat younger in those days, and ready for most anything
new. Also, I had found the trail a little lonesome at times. Riding a
preoccupied broncho through hundreds of miles of white silence, hearing
the coyotes yelp, dodging Indians, and bucking blizzards weren’t ever
calculated to be social functions, you know. So I was glad to have
company on the trail, even if it had to be the company of a criminal.
Anyway, I had been so taught in the great rough school of primitive
men, that I had not that loathing for a killer of his kind that is felt
by this generation.
“Certainly,” said I to the factor. “Put him on a mule, and I’ll see him
into the government corral at St. Louis.” So it was arranged that I
should take the man to the authorities.
I did not hear his name spoken and I didn’t take the trouble to ask.
It seemed to me that a man who was being shipped out with a tag on him
reading “Nowhere,” had little use for a name. No one was apt to dispute
his identity.
Well, they put him on a mule, handcuffed, with a chain to his ankles
passed around the belly of the mule. He was, of course, unarmed, and
I drove him on ahead of me to break trail. He was a powerfully built
fellow, neither tall nor short, and close-knit. He had a face that was
not so bad, showing the French and Indian strains in him plainly. When
we had been riding along silently for several hours, I called to him to
stop and rode up beside him.
I looked into his eyes, and that look satisfied me that I was safe in
doing what I had thought of. His eyes were large and black and quiet.
“I am going to take the cussed irons off your legs and arms,” I said;
“you can’t keep warm this way.” He watched me taking them off and said
nothing. I threw the irons away. “Go on,” I said. And he went, giving
me a look that thanked me more than words could have done.
He had the eyes of a brave man. I was never much afraid of a brave man;
it’s the cowards you have to watch, you know.
All day we rode, saying nothing. In the evening we made a shelter with
our blankets in the bend of a creek where the plum bushes were thick.
The man was a good hand at the business, and seemed anxious to please
me.
We cooked and ate supper, then rolled up in our blankets. I put my two
six-shooters under my head for fear that I might have somehow misread
the man’s eyes.
When I awoke in the morning, he had breakfast cooked and the nags
saddled. When we were eating I said: “Why didn’t you take my horse and
run away? I could never have caught you with the mule.”
He searched me for a moment with his eyes.
“Because I’m not a coward,” he said.
And all day we rode again in silence, until, toward evening, he set up
a wild sort of a song—a _chanson_ of his fathers, I suppose—in a voice
that was strong but sweet.
“You sing!” said I.
Breaking off his song and turning about on his mule, he said quietly,
as though he were discussing the best way to make biscuits when you
haven’t any soda: “Did you ever see a dead liar?”
“Perhaps,” said I; “but none in particular.”
“And that is why you never sing.”
That was the last word that day. Up to this time the weather had been
rather too warm for winter—an ominous sort of a warm, you know. A mist
hung over the country, drifting with a light wind from the southeast.
During the night the wind whipped into the northwest, and in the
morning we had a genuine frank old blizzard howling around us; one of
those fierce old boys that nobody cares to face. We had camped in a
wooded nook on the south side of the river bluffs and were pretty well
protected, so I decided to lay up there until things brightened up a
bit.
The man, for I had not yet learned his name, which was not necessary,
as the mail I carried attended to that, volunteered to gather wood; and
so I lay in the tent near the fire that roared in front, smoking my
pipe and swapping cusses with myself on account of the delay.
After a while the man came in with a big arm load of wood, whistling
merrily. “Well, you beat ’em all,” I said. “I say a man who can whistle
like that on his last trip is a game one. What’s your name and who are
you? Here, want to smoke?”
I gave him my pipe. He took it and blew rings meditatively for a while.
“Well,” said he, “the name doesn’t matter much, and I’m the fellow
who’s elected to be elevated!”
We both laughed strangely, and I began to open my stock of yarns,
truthful and otherwise, to relieve the tedium of the day. I had told a
number of stories when the man seemed to brighten up all at once. His
eyes became on a sudden unusually brilliant.
“I know a story that’s a fact,” said he. “It’s about a friend of
mine—one of the best friends I ever had, I reckon. At least he never
went back on me. Shall I tell it?”
“Go ahead,” said I.
And this is the story he told me:
“My friend’s name is Narcisse. I knew him when he was just a little
shaver. I knew his mother and his father. In fact I was, at one time,
just like one of the family.
“Narcisse was a wild sort of a boy always, though I do think his heart
was in the right place, as they say. Never betrayed a friend, never
stole, and never knuckled to an enemy. But he was a wild boy and
didn’t stay at home much after he was in his first ’teens. Knocked
about the world considerable, Narcisse did, and wound up out here in
this God-forsaken end of creation. Worked on a cordelle gang, handled
mackinaws, hammered pack mules, fought Indians, starved and feasted,
froze and toasted, like all the others who come out here. Entered the
fur trade as _engagé_ of the Company, and was sent to a post up river.
“Now if there was a weak spot in Narcisse, it was his leaning toward
womenfolks. None of your fooling, though! Narcisse loved just like he’d
fight—pretty serious, you know. When he said a thing, Narcisse he
meant that; and when he wanted to do something real bad, he did that—O,
spite of hell he did that! You know the breed? Well, that was Narcisse.