the village was stricken with a mysterious sickness. The fierce heat of
the time of the sunflowers blazed in its blood. Its eyes glowed with
the brightness of a burning thing. Its lips muttered strange words that
were not the words of men; and those who listened, trembled. And after
some time, the whole burning body of the child became one mass of sores.
It was then that Washkahee, the big medicine-man, came to the lodge of
the sick, sang his most potent songs and performed his most mysterious
rites. But one day the child leaped to its feet and stared at the
wall with eyes that were glazed with terror; then shrieked and fell
back limply into its blankets. And when the winter had crept into
its burning blood, they buried it upon a hill; and the wonder of the
village was great.
But the end was not yet. Another and another crept into his blankets,
stricken with the same sickness. Then another and another, until from
many lodges came the moans of the afflicted. Those who dwelt in the
lodges where the scourge entered, fled from their stricken kinsmen
as from the visible body of Death. They who could laugh back at the
challenge of the Sioux, quailed before the subtle creeping of this
invisible foe. They who were as yet untouched by the unseen Hand,
huddled terrified and speechless about their fires, in the light of
which they stared at each other and found each face ghastly, as though
it were the mirror of their dread.
In the stillness of their bated breaths they heard the lonesome
monotony of the winter wind and the swish of the drifting snow, through
the drone of which pierced like arrows of ice the occasional shrieks
of the deserted dying or those who battled with grotesque terrors in
the giddy whirl of feverish delirium.
With trembling fingers the women bound blankets closely across the
doors of the lodges, in the hope of barring out the black spirit
that wandered about the village. Vain hope! Through the walls of the
strongest lodge crept the subtle spirit.
One night the sound of a wild voice crying through the storm beat into
the lodges:
“Washkahee has cried to Wakunda [God] and lo! Washkahee has dreamed!
Only a tuft of hair from the head of the white bison can save us! So
spoke the dream to Washkahee; who will seek the white bison?”
It was as though the winter wind had found words! The people, huddled
about their fires, knew the voice to be that of the big medicine-man,
Washkahee, yet they did not move. The bravest had become weak as a
child at the back of a squaw.
That night Nu Zhinga, lying in the lodge of his mother, heard the cry
that came out of the storm; and when he slept he dreamed. He had walked
far across the white prairie and his legs were aching with toil and
his heart with despair. Then there broke upon his dream a mighty roar,
and lo! he saw, charging down upon him, the white bison, tossing the
crusted snow from its lowered horns.
“Tae Ska! Tae Ska!” (white bison) Nu Zhinga cried, and was awakened by
his own voice.
So in the early light of the morning, Nu Zhinga took down the bow and
arrows of his father, and wrapping himself in a buffalo robe, he strode
out into the prairie with his tame wolf trotting at his heels. To him
the dream was an omen. Might he not find the white bison, and thus
drive death from among his people?
As he walked, the dream that had ever crept like a slow music through
his blood, grew into the swaying fury of a battle-song. He timed his
brisk steps with a joyous chant that echoed up the frosty valleys.
He would find the white bison! Then his people would shout his name
without derision. Gunthai would be glad; Tabea would be glad. Tabea!
The word was music.
But meanwhile in the village thicker and thicker fell the invisible
arrows of the Terror; and in the lodges where they fell dwelt the cry
of agony and delirium and the muffled shriek of death. The old woman
Gunthai and the cripple Tabea were not spared. The old and the young,
the weak and the strong, the brave and the cowardly found no spell to
ward away the stroke of the hidden Hand.
At length the fear of the tribe grew into a frenzy. It needed but an
incident to lash it into madness.
One evening as the night crept westward across the hills, a brave
leaped upon a pony and yelling sent the frightened animal flying up
the valley. He was fleeing from the curse that hung over the village.
Then the fear became a madness. The people rushed from their lodges
and, fighting for the nearest pony, fled after the lone rider who had
disappeared into the night.
Those who were too weak or too unfortunate to gain the back of a
pony hung to the mane and were dragged in the snow until their grips
weakened, when they ran with frantic shrieks after their disappearing
tribesmen. The valley leading from the village became choked with the
fleeing people. Many of the stricken leaped from their blankets and
followed in the wild rout, until their knees weakened and their brains
swam, when they lay shrieking in the snow until death came.
From the deserted village the cries of the helpless followed the
unhearing refugees, who fled as the bison flee when the pitiless hunter
follows. Fainter and fainter grew the yelling until it was swallowed up
in the wind that lashed the spraying snow. When the morning looked into
the valley, it found no smoke arising from the silent lodges. Only the
dead were there; the dead and the winter.
On the evening of the second day after the flight of the tribe, a lone
form topped the hill above the village and looked down into the still
white valley, where lay the snow-choked lodges, quiet as a dream. The
form was short, and bent as with the toil and hunger of a long, hard
trail. At its heels a gaunt, grey wolf limped and whimpered with the
ache of emptiness and the frost.
The short, bent form stood still upon the summit and shading its eyes
with a hand that trembled, cast a long and searching gaze upon the
lodges of his people. No smoke, no voice, no roar of fires, scented
with the evening meal!
The form straightened itself and stood with head thrown back, making
a thin and pitiful figure against the cruel white glare of the icy
evening sky. It put a hand to its mouth, trumpet-wise, and raising the
other above its head, waved about a tuft of long, grey hair.
“Tae Ska! Tae Ska!”
The voice was scarcely raised above a faint, dry wheeze that sighed
dirge-like above the lifeless valley. The grey wolf with its four
trembling legs drawn together in the snow, raised its frost-whitened
muzzle to the fading sky and with a long, wild wail drowned the feebler
voice of its master.
With limping stride, grown short and uncertain as the first steps of a
papoose, the form went down the hillside and entered the village where
the Winter dwelt.
“Tae Ska! Tae Ska! I have found the white bison!”
The wheezing voice passed among the lodges like a mournful wind that
haunts the lonesome places of a bluff. Round and round the village went
the man and the wolf, crying into the silent lodges; and the man’s face
was wolflike with weariness and hunger; and the wolf’s eyes were grown
half human with the pinch of emptiness and frost.
“Why do you not come forth, for I have suffered and I have the tuft of
hair? No more shall the black spirits dwell among us! Come forth and
look upon the face of him whose heart was the heart of a squaw!”
The crisp snow whined beneath his step and the wolf whined beside him.
At last the form stopped before a lodge and with a trembling hand drew
away the covering at the entrance.
It was the lodge of Gunthai. Two forms lay within, huddled in their
blankets, and the snows had drifted about them. The man pulled the
blankets from their faces. One was Gunthai and the other Tabea. Each
was pinched with the pinch of death and winter, and the mystery of the
last long, lonesome trail was about them both.
With a moan the form tottered and fell upon its face in the snow. And
over all the valley there were but two sounds—the wail of the winter
wind and the howl of a lone wolf.
Days passed, and the people who had fled from home with the pitiless
scourge at their heels grew faint and weary with their wandering,
and at last the homeache drove them back upon their trail. Footsore,
famished, racked with the now dead terror, they toiled in silence
homeward, where they could die with the sound of their own fires in
their ears.
At last one morning a lone rider cautiously peered from under the
brow of the hill upon the village. Nothing moved below. He urged his
emaciated pony to the summit of the hill and stopping, gazed again,
shading his eyes with a hand grown weak and thin. There seemed nothing
in the valley to fear. Turning about upon his pony, he raised his arms
in the light of dawn and cried back into the valley beyond to the
waiting remnant of his people—a long, exultant cry, for he had looked
upon his home.
Slowly the returning tribe, now dwindled to half its former numbers,
toiled up the hill. Only the strong were left, and now the strong were
weak. The straggling band of men, women and ponies reached the summit,
a pitiful, ragged multitude, and gazed for a moment into the valley.
Then a great shout arose above the silent spaces, scintillant under the
dawn, as the halting, famished band swooped down the hill to be again
at home.
Again the fires roared upward from the lodges, and the voices of a
happy people drove away the silence of the winter. There was no longer
any disease; the winter and the flight had purged the tribe.
Who had saved them from the black spirits? Could a tribe run faster
than the things which are not good?
The sun was at the centre of its short path when the answer to this
question of the tribe broke into the lodges where the people sat about
their steaming kettles. For it was then that one ran through the
village waving a tuft of long, grey hair and startling the ears of his
people with a shout:
“See! The tuft of hair from the head of the white bison! It has saved
us; for do you not remember the words of Washkahee?”
The people rushed from their lodges and thronged about the man who held
the tuft of hair.
“Who has found the white bison?” they cried.
And the answer of him who held the tuft of hair struck the people
silent with wonder:
“It was Nu Zhinga, the squaw-hearted; even he who could not dream a
dream!”
XI
THE REVOLT OF A SHEEP
“There is nothing more terrible than the revolt of a sheep,” said De
Marsay.—_Balzac._
“OH, shut up, Hank! Dang it! Hain’t you goin’ to let a feller sleep
none? How can I be strong enough to keep from snivellin’ in the
mornin’, if I don’t get my sleep?”
A small man with a thin, weak face, that might have suggested the
vacuous countenance of a sheep had it not been for an expression of
anguish and childish petulance, sat up among a bunch of furs in the
corner of the cabin. He supported himself tremblingly upon an arm and
stared with watery, haggard eyes upon Hank, who regarded him wistfully.
Hank was a big man and raw-boned. His big, quiet, hirsute face
contrasted strongly with the face of the other. About his waist hung
a belt containing a pair of six-shooters. Since the dark had fallen
he had been pacing nervously back and forth across the cabin floor,
his eyebrows knit, his face twitching, now and then offering a soft
word of comfort to the little man who lay among the furs in the corner
breathing fitfully.
“Cuss your hide, Hank! You know I hain’t slep’ none for a week, and
you go on a-trampin’ and a-gabbin’ till you got me all on needles! Why
can’t you leave me be? O damn it!”
The last words were more like a sob than a curse; and the white, thin
face and quivering lips seemed too impotent for the words. Hank stopped
pacing up and down, and with his fists resting upon his hips he stared
at the little man.
“Now, Sheep,” he drawled kindly, “you hain’t got no call to talk that
away. Hain’t I tryin’ to be your friend to the finish? I was just
thinkin’ to cheer you up so’s you’d make a respect’ble, manly hangin’.
I didn’t go to rile you.”
The little man thus addressed as “Sheep” drew himself up into a
shivering bunch among the furs and groaned. The big man shook his head
slowly and sat down, leaning against the wall of the cabin. “Pore
Sheep,” he muttered.
For an hour he sat with his chin in his hands, staring with pitying
eyes upon the huddled little man, who now and again shook with
shuddering sobs. The candle flame flickered dismally in the night wind
that came in through the chinks in the wall.
At length a series of stifled groans grew up among the furs,
accompanied by a spasmodic jerking of the limbs of the little man.
With a deep sigh he sat up. With an imbecile droop of the lower jaw,
and eyes that burned feverishly with utter horror, he stared at his
companion.
“O cuss you, Hank!” he broke out querulously, “why can’t you talk none?
You goin’ to let me keep a-slippin’ down, down, down right into hell
and never say a word to me? What you settin’ there like a bump on a log
for?”
“W’y, Sheep,” said the big man kindly; “thought you was tryin’ to
snooze.”
“Snooze! How can I snooze with a million little devils runnin’ up and
down my backbone and adancin’ all over my head? You knowed I couldn’t
sleep! You knowed I hain’t slep’ for a week! Snooze! O damn it! Hain’t
I goin’ to get plenty of snoozin’ when they drag the cart out from ’n
under me in the mornin’?”
Sheep’s voice broke; the fire went out of his eyes; his teeth chattered
as though a sudden gust of winter had struck him.
“Now, Sheep,” said Hank, “don’t be so riled up like. I know it’s hard
to go out that away; but it won’t last long, and it can’t hurt much
after the first jerk. I reckon it don’t matter much how a feller goes
out after he’s gone.”
“Oh, shut that up!”
The little man leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. After a
considerable silence the big man produced a flask of liquor and spoke
soothingly.
“Want a drink, Sheepy, old man?”
The little man leaped up with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“‘Course I do! What made you keep a-hidin’ it when you knowed all
along that’s what I been wantin’?”
He grasped the flask and drank with great eager gulps until it was
empty. Then he sat down against the cabin wall, staring fixedly at
the candle flame. The empty, sheepish, cowardly face began to gain
expression as the liquor mounted to his head. A light of fearlessness
began to grow in his eyes. Lines appeared and deepened in his thin
face, suggesting at once a certain degree of mastery and infinite
malevolence. The wolf that lurks somewhere in the fastness of every
man’s soul had come forth and routed the sheep.
“What in thunder you doin’ with all that heavy artillery hangin’
to you, Hank? Take ’em off! I don’t need no guards. Who said I was
thinkin’ of breakin’ camp? I hain’t tryin’ to run, am I? Damn me,
I’m glad I done it and I’m a-goin’ to walk right straight into hell
a-grinnin’! Sheep, am I?”
The little man laughed a strange laugh that had the snarl of a mad wolf
in it; a moment since he had been bleating like a scared lamb.
“You set there and listen. Sheep, sheep, sheep! That’s what they all
been a-callin’ me, but when I get done tellin’ you about it, I guess
you won’t call me no sheep. Hain’t a danged one of you big fellers as
would ’ve done it up better ’n me!
“You’ve knowed me quite a spell, Hank; and you never knowed no bad of
me till now, did you? And I hain’t had any easy trail most of the time
neither. When I was jest a little feller goin’ to country school back
East, the other fellers always picked onto me ’cause I was so easy to
pick onto. Never had a fight in my life. Always scared to death of
fightin’; sucked it in with my mother’s milk, I guess. Used to get off
alone and bawl ’cause I couldn’t make myself fight.
“Never was a real boy; always a kind of a stray sheep, bleatin’ around
in lonesome places. Guess I must look like a sheep; anyway the boys
called me that; and it stuck. Pretty hard bein’ a sheep amongst wolves,
Hank!
“I was always shy and easy scared, Hank. I never owned it to a livin’
man before; but a man is like to say things just before he goes out for
good that he wouldn’t say before.
“You knowed ol’ man Leclerc, didn’t you? _Her_ dad, you know. Used to
live down-river half a day’s hard walkin’. I reckon that ol’ man was
about the best friend I ever had, ’ceptin’ you, Hank. Kind of seemed to
understand me like. Wonder if he’s hearin’ me now! Don’t give a damn if
he is! He knowed it wasn’t in me to be bad, and he knows I done right.
I tell you, Hank, I ain’t scared, nor ’shamed nor nothin’. Damn me, I
can see Donahan a-dyin’ yet, and it does me good, Hank! Does me good!”
The little man’s eyes blazed, and his face seemed to take fire from
them. But the light died as quickly as it was kindled, like a fire
in too little fuel whipped by a wind too strong. A soft light of
reminiscence lingered where the fiercer glow had died.
“Used to go down there pretty often when I could; part to see the ol’
man, and most to see his girl. Nice little thing, Hank; awful nice
little thing! Don’t you think so? Good as an angel, too, but weak like
a woman can be. I hain’t nothin’ again’ her, Hank—so help me God, I
hain’t! I wasn’t the man for her. She’d ought to ’ve had a big, strong,
quiet feller what wasn’t afraid of the devil. Some feller like you,
Hank—or Donahan.
“Oh, let the hottest fires in hell eat Donahan!”
The little man shook with a passion that seemed grotesque, because it
was too big for him.
“And I kep’ goin’ down there, and goin’ down there, till I begun to
be happy, Hank. Begun to thinkin’ part of this world was made for me.
Begun to thinkin’ about havin’ a woman and babies; and somehow I got to
feelin’ bigger and stronger, and not sneakin’ any more.
“‘Peared like the girl liked me. Never had nothin’ to do with no woman
’cept my mother, you know. Oh, Hank, why can’t a feller be a man when
he wants to so bad? I dunno. I tried.
“Well, one time I went down there and ol’ man Leclerc was pretty sick.
Said he was a-goin’ to die sure thing. Wheezin’ already and pickin’
at the blankets. Calls me up to him, and after he got done tellin’ me
what he was goin’ to do d’rectly, he says: ‘Sheep, my boy, I’ve brought
her up as near like a French lady as I knowed how. She hain’t able to
hustle for herself, and—well, ain’t she a pretty girl? Why the devil
don’t you ask me for her?’
“And I asked, and the ol’ man said ‘yes,’ and that was his last word,
’cept ‘God be with both of you.’ Took all his breath to say that,
seemed like.
“And so I saw the ol’ man under ground and come up here with the girl.
Got the missionary, Father Donahan, to do the tyin’. (Oh, damn him!)
And then I begun to be happy. Seemed like God heard the ol’ man for a
spell, tho’ his voice was weak when he said it. Now I guess mebbe he
didn’t hear. Does he always hear, Hank?”
“Dunno,” muttered the big man, who sat with his face in his hands;
“seems like He ain’t out here ’t all, sometimes.”
“Oh, shut up, will you?” peevishly snapped the little man. “Le’ me
talk! _You_ got plenty of time for talkin’! Le’ _me_ talk, will you?”
The big man sighed, and the other continued rapidly in a sort of a
dazed sing-song voice with little inflection in it, like a man in a
trance.
“Big change come over me then; better man all ’round. Factor saw it and
sent me on some long trips; seemed to trust me more’n before. But I
always done the longest trips in the shortest poss’ble time. Doted on
that girl wife, and I guess I was about the happiest feller that ever
cussed a pack mule. Used to like to set around the cabin when I could
and watch her skip about the place makin’ things comfort’ble like a
woman can when she’s a mind.
“And by and by I was happier’n ever. That was when the little boy come.
Cute little feller, that boy was. Don’t you mind? Had blue eyes, and
that tickled me half to death, ’cause black eyes is the rule in my
fambly and hers, and it seemed like God was tryin’ to be kind to me.
“When Father Donahan christened the young’n, I drawed his attention to
them blue eyes and Donahan (no, I ain’t goin’ to call him Father no
more, ’cause if he was a priest, he was a priest of the devil!) What
was I sayin’?”
At the sound of Donahan’s name upon his own lips, the little man’s face
writhed into malevolent contortions.
“What was I sayin’?” he repeated dazedly.
“Blue eyes,” suggested Hank.
“Quit breakin’ in onto me that away!” snapped the little man peevishly.
“And when I showed him the blue eyes, Donahan grinned and said, ‘Yes,
God had been very kind.’ And it did look like it, didn’t it?
“Donahan named the boy; asked me if I’d let him. Called him James for a
front name and Donahan for a middle one. Well, things went along smooth
until one day the little feller died. Made me feel pretty bad—like to
tore my heart out. But Donahan he come and cried too, and that helped.
Always helps to have somebody feel bad with you; don’t you think so?
“After that things dragged on like they have a way of doin’. I kep’
on tryin’ to be like a man. But the girl, she seemed to be takin’ it
pretty hard. Got stranger and stranger toward me, like as if she didn’t
care for me no more. Donahan used to come in often and console her, and
she seemed to brighten up at them times—’cause she was always strong on
the religion business. That’s what made her so good, I guess.
“But by and by there was goin’ to be another youngster, and I kind of
got into the way of whistlin’ again somehow. Got to thinkin’ how it’d
be a boy with blue eyes like the one that died. About that time the
Factor sent me off on a long trip. Hated to go, but it couldn’t be
helped. You’d ought to seen me travel, Hank! Wantin’ to get back, you
know; ’feared all the time mebbe she was sick and a-wantin’ me. Made a
quick trip—quicker’n most big men could, Hank. And when I come in sight
of home, I was that glad that I couldn’t feel my feet and legs achin’.
“It was night when I got back, and I thought I’d just take a peep in at
the winder before I went in; light was shinin’ out so home-like. You
know how a boy looks a long time at a big, red apple before he eats it;
gettin’ his eyes full of it before he fills his belly? That was like me.
“I crep’ up and looked in; winder was raised a little. I could see
Donahan inside and he was talkin’ soft and low.
“‘Hope it’ll have blue eyes,’ he was sayin’; ‘blue eyes like mine.’ And
that made me love Donahan more, ’cause it was just what I was a-wishin’
myself. Talked along quite a spell, and me watchin’ outside, all the
time pityin’ Donahan ’cause he couldn’t never have no little woman like
that and a youngster with blue eyes.
“And the talkin’ growed into a mumble and hum like as if I was
a-dreamin’ it all in a happy dream; until all to oncet some of the
words leaped out of the hum, and stood out clear like so many candle
flames a-burnin’ into my head, and a-scorchin’ my backbone, and
a-settin’ the whole world afire with bloody light.
“I held onto the winder sill to keep from fallin’ down, and this is
what I heard: ‘Sometimes I feel sorry for the pore sheep; and I’ve
spent many nights prayin’ to God about it and askin’ him to forgive me.
Then when I see you again, it all comes back and the prayers are no
more than so many curses. What’d you ever marry that sheep for? Curse
the day that I was made a priest!’
“And then the words seemed to get muffled, only now and then I could
hear some of ’em plain, and every one of ’em was like a big man’s fist
drivin’ into my face and a-beatin’ my eyes full of blood.”
The little man covered his face with his hands and sobbed.
“O, I ain’t a-blamin’ her, Hank,” he blubbered. “Never was a better
woman. I ain’t blamin’ her.”
He rocked himself back and forth for some time. His sobbing ceased.
Suddenly he raised his face and the flames of hell glittered in his
tear-washed eyes.
“I’m a white-livered coward, so I didn’t go in and kill him. He was
a big man, and I ain’t no fighter. I run; don’t know why. Didn’t
feel sore nor achy in my legs no more. I run and run and run till my
breath give out, then I fell down and the stars swum ’round and went
out. Then after awhile I was up and walkin’, and nothin’ would stand
still. Things danced round and round me and the air was full of little
spiteful, spittin’ lights and sounds like devils a-laughin’. And by
and by I come to ol’ man Leclerc’s place. Don’t know why I went there.
Nothin’ there but the _place_.
“I went in and laid down on the floor all broke up. And when I went to
sleep, I dreamed of killin’ Donahan. I woke up and it was mornin’.
“First thing I heard was the rattle of some Red River carts goin’
north. I guess it was the devil that whispered somethin’ in my ear
then. I run out and told a big lie to the bull-whackers. ‘Man a-dyin’
in here! Go as fast as you can to the next post and tell Father Donahan
to come down to see the pore devil through with it!’
“Guess I looked like I’d been settin’ up for a week, so the
bull-whackers believed it and went on north a-whackin’ their bulls into
a swingin’ trot.
“Well, Donahan come all right.”