by Max Brand
Had he done wrong, therefore? Had he failed to please Sweet Medicine by his labors in the damming of the creek?
Anxiously he waited until the chill of the evening wind began to strike through him, and then, suddenly, the great winged shape was in the air.
It circled softly above him. He saw the talons, clearly, under the deeply feathered belly of the bird. He saw the cruel hook of the beak and the great, ominous, moon-like eyes. And he held up the poor rabbit by all four legs.
Down dropped the owl. The talons struck—marvelously missing the human fingers that held up this religious offering—and the rabbit screeched once like a child in agony. Afterward, it hung limply from the powerful claws and Sweet Medicine, in his guise as a bird, slid away over the treetops of the lower valley and was seen no more. From that moment, Rusty knew that all was well.
Chapter Nine
Charlie Galway succeeded in having Rusty driven out of the town, never to return unless to have his neck stretched by a hangman’s rope, and it naturally occurred to Charlie that he was the heir, by right, to the entire life of Rusty. He himself, he said, would now become a trader and deal with the Indians.
His purpose was clear. Trading with the Indians would be the shield under which he would attempt to follow the back trail of Rusty, the back trail as far as the moment when Rusty Sabin had discovered the gold mine. It could not be that the gold that was found so readily, in such quantity, had been exhausted. Somewhere the mine must exist, and incredible wealth would go to the man who opened it again. The whole life of Charlie Galway might be devoted to this large purpose.
He felt that his way was open. It led back through the Cheyennes, of course, since it was while he was with the Indians that young Sabin had found the gold. Perhaps the Cheyennes would look upon Galway as an enemy? No, on the whole he was certain that he had appeared, on the night of the attempted lynching, rather as a friend than as an enemy. At least, that would be the interpretation Standing Bull was apt to put upon him.
But Rusty Sabin himself was dead. That report had come in across the plains with certainty.
It had been brought by a party of Pawnees who rejoiced with firewater and a great deal of noise over the death of the great scourge of their nation. The Cheyennes themselves, it was said, had penned Rusty up in the Valley of Death.
As for Standing Bull, he was a wreck, a mere gaunt skeleton who failed to return to vigorous manhood even though his wound had been healed. And the entire handling of that section of the tribe was left to the medicine man, Running Elk, who avoided war and showed himself a shrewd trader in the time of peace.
But there was a drought over the plains. The Indians were scattering far off toward the mountains in their effort to get plenty of water for their livestock. Even the inexhaustible water that flowed from the Sacred Valley of the Cheyennes, it was said, had been reduced to a mere dribble and threatened to fail altogether. It was under these circumstances, when a food shortage also was threatening, that Charlie Galway decided to undertake an excursion that should prove profitable in a small way and that should bring him, in some degree, close to the back trail of Rusty Sabin. In short, he would equip a small number of horses and mules with packs of food—corn and dried meat—add a certain amount of guns, powder and lead, and above all a good bit of whiskey. These goods he would exchange only for enough robes to pay the expenses of his journey. Then, to sweeten his reputation throughout the tribe, he would give away the rest of his merchandise, especially including the whiskey. He foresaw that he would become a most popular man with the Cheyennes, and certainly he would be in a position to ask all the questions he pleased about Rusty Sabin’s past movements. And it would be a sad chance if he were not able to get swiftly and easily back onto the trail of the gold.
Since he had made himself the heir of Rusty’s life, he did not see why he should not become the heir to Rusty’s other and greatest possession—the love of young Maisry Lester.
Maisry, since the death of her father, had lived in an eager expectation of the return of Rusty, and, when the news came that Rusty was surely dead, a very odd transformation had occurred in her. The town of Witherell, which expected to see her pine away for a time at least, was amazed to see in her a sudden transformation.
She spent two days prostrated in grief, and on the third day she was seen at the market with a pale, calm, almost smiling face.
And this quiet calm of hers persisted.
If people spoke to her about Rusty, she looked either at the ground or at the far horizon and would not speak.
Some said that her poor brain was slightly addled by grief, but Charlie Galway was one who did not believe in a grief that extended over more than a few weeks, at the most. So he chose his time, and, when his merchandise was ready for the trip into the prairies, he went to see Maisry.
He found her in the cool of the back porch at a spinning wheel, singing a Cheyenne song.
She looked up without a start toward Charlie Galway and smiled a little as she bade him good day. He knew that he made a splendid figure. He had combed his long blond hair back across his shoulders; his broad hat had a great, crimson feather stuck into one side of it. His shirt and leggings were the purest, softest white of doeskin, worked as only Indian skill and patience could work it. The fringes were brightly beaded; the moccasins were delicately worked with beads, also. The rifle he leaned on gave a significance to his appearance, a purpose to his manhood.
“I didn’t know that you were such a good hand with the Cheyenne language,” he said.
“Rusty taught me,” said the girl.
“Wasn’t English good enough for him?” asked Galway.
“Why, you see he’d lived so long among the Cheyennes that English was only a thing to use when he asked for bread and butter, so to speak. He did his thinking in Cheyenne. He used to sing this song for me.”
“It’s a kind of a funny thing, ain’t it?” said Galway. “I mean, for a man to be praying for sweet speech and light touching hands and soft falling feet.”
“I suppose it is odd for a man to sing that song,” said the girl. She looked away thoughtfully. “He wasn’t like others.”
“You’re getting easier about him, ain’t you?” said Charlie Galway. “What I heard was you wouldn’t talk about him at all.”
“I feel like talking about him today,” said the girl.
“Why?” asked Galway.
“Well, I saw Colonel Miner ride by on his big gray horse. And it made me think about White Horse.”
“White Horse sure has four legs under him,” said Charlie. “But you know what I was thinking?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl.
“You can’t go on grieving about Rusty all the days of your life, you know.”
“I’m not grieving such a great deal,” she said.
“No, I reckon everybody lets go, after a while, and gets nacheral again. What I mean is, you and me might be pretty friendly, Maisry.”
“Of course we might,” she answered.
“Yeah?” said Charlie. He came closer and leaned against a pillar of the porch. He said: “You see how I’m fixed up. I been doing pretty good in trading. Things are sort of coming my way. I’m going to be rich, one of these days. I’m going to be mighty rich.” He gripped one hand into a fist and his eyes brightened.
“I think you are,” she said, watching him. “I hope you are, too.” She spun the wheel.
He reached out and stopped it. It made a soft hissing sound against the palm of his strong hand.
“You and me,” he said, “why shouldn’t we get married and team it together, Maisry?”
“Married?” she echoed. “Oh, no. I thought you were talking about friendship.”
“I was. That’s the best way to marry. You gotta marry sometime, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“I mean, you gotta have children, and all that.”
She bent her head and looked down at her own breathing. “I
couldn’t have children unless Rusty were their father,” she said.
“You couldn’t? Why couldn’t you?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t marry, unless it’s Rusty.”
“You talk like you were a saint,” said Charlie Galway.
“No, I’m not a saint,” she replied. “Far from it.”
“You’re sure a funny one, though,” said Charlie without scorn or anger. “You kind of beat me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You got a kind of a blue nice kind of an eye,” said Galway.
She looked straight at him so that he could study the blue of that eye as deliberately as he pleased.
“You know, Charlie,” she said, “you ought not to fall in love with me. I don’t think you will. But I’m simply warning you.”
“You know something?” he answered, leaning well forward and staring. “I think I’m in love with you already.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I never saw a knife or a rifle or a horse that I wanted as much as I want you, right now. That’s love, ain’t it?”
She shook her head.
“Go on and tell me, then,” persisted Galway.
“When you love, you don’t want to own a thing . . . you just want to join it.”
“Come away from that. You can’t tell me that,” said Galway. “Why would a man love a woman if he didn’t own her? Why would a woman love her children if she didn’t own them?”
She considered this mystery for a time, and then shook her head again. “I can’t put it into words,” she said.
“Didn’t Rusty act like he owned you?” asked Galway.
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “I don’t know how he acted. But not as though he owned me.”
“Why, he would’ve made a squaw out of you!” cried Galway.
“I wish he had,” said the girl. “But instead, he wanted to make a white man of himself, for my sake. And that was why he found the gold and brought it. And the gold has been the end of everything, and the death . . . the death . . .”
“Steady,” said Galway.
“I’m sorry,” murmured Maisry.
“Gee,” said Galway, “but you are a most lovely-looking girl.”
Chapter Ten
Charlie Galway started the next day for the distant Cheyennes. He chucked the thought of Maisry Lester over his shoulder as soon as he was outside the circle of the Witherell Hills. A long, hoarse hoot from the whistle of the river steamer was the last sound from civilization, and then he was out in the long, brown grass of the prairie. It was pale, sunburned, dry. It hurt the eyes with the strong reflection of the sun. It made the skin of his eyelids burn. A thin dust kept rising to his nostrils and made him cough a good deal the first day. Afterward, he settled to the work. He brought on his ten animals carefully. The second day, he missed one water hole, found a second crusted with cracking mud, and only by chance came on a bit of muddy water in the bottom of a draw. That water was what brought him through to the Cheyenne camp.
He was stopped when he was hardly in eyeshot of the white lodges and brought under guard into the village by a cluster of half a dozen young warriors. On the way, he talked with them, exercising his newly acquired Cheyenne, and they chattered back freely enough when they learned that he was a trader. For their food supply, they said, was running short in the village, and for a week not a drop of water had run past the mouth of the Sacred Valley, or at most small driblets that soon evaporated from the dry rocks of the gorge.
Disaster seemed to face the Cheyennes of this tribe. For that reason, all the more, the heart of Charlie Galway was light as he rode into the camp.
He was taken straight to the lodge of Standing Bull who, as the head chief, received all newcomers. And on a supple willow bed padded with buffalo robes, the sides of the lodge furled up to admit a free current of air, Charlie Galway saw a grim caricature of the copper giant who he had last looked at in Witherell,
The bones of Standing Bull were hardly covered by the dry, hard muscles. His ribs lifted out like gigantic fingers with every breath he drew. A pulse beat in the sunken hollow of his throat, but it throbbed with a feeble wavering. On the naked side of Standing Bull appeared, in dull purple, the round spot where the rifle bullet had driven into his body. That bullet had come from the gun of Galway, and Galway knew it, but there was no fear that the chief might recognize him and accuse him, even if he could have known what trigger finger had launched the bullet. For the starved face of Standing Bull turned continually to this side and to that, and his purple-gray lips were parted by mutterings that made only fragments of sense.
The eyes were worst—the shadow of them, and the red stain visible beneath the lids.
The man was dying, certainly, but slowly, and again the heart of Charlie Galway was lightened.
He went to the lodge of the medicine man next. In the teepee of Standing Bull he left merely a package of beads at which the sad-eyed squaws would hardly look. But at the home of Running Elk all was different.
An air of good cheer pervaded the teepee in spite of the unfortunate circumstances of the entire tribe. The squaws had a breezy air of conversation, and Running Elk himself deliberately admired with eye and hand the long strip of colored calico print that was unrolled. It was long enough to pass clear around the lodge, and it was a full yard in width. Running Elk crowed like a happy child when he saw the gaudy beauty of the pattern.
And in person he went out to supervise the trading. The goods were unpacked from the backs of the horses. Here again the guns and ammunition, the beads and the knives and hatchets were not considered very gravely, but the Indians brought out eagerly their best buffalo robes to trade for the corn and the dried beef.
There was still food in the village, but the supply of it was dwindling rapidly. For the lack of water, unless a rain fell soon or the supply from the Sacred Valley mysteriously was increased, they soon would have to begin to kill off their horses—and a tribe of Indians dismounted was like a tribe of wolves without legs to run on.
Before the loads of five horses had been disposed of, the trader had made twice the cost of the expedition. So he stood up and made a speech to this effect—that he was in his heart a brother to the Cheyennes, that he always had yearned to come among them and see some of their wisdom and hear some of their lore, and, therefore, he would not sell any more of his possessions to them. He would distribute freely. He would give to the lodges where only squaws lived, widows who were helpless in the tribe.
It was a rather moving speech, and, since it was followed straightway by the distribution of what was left of the goods, the words of Charlie Galway were looked on as the sheerest of truth. Afterward, a bearded white man dressed in all respects like one of the Cheyennes, put on a pair of spectacles and peered with earnestness into the face of the other.
“Come to my lodge and tell me what’s in your mind, stranger,” said the white Indian.
“What’s your name, partner?” asked Galway.
“They call me Lazy Wolf. Will that suit you?”
“Anything you say,” answered Galway, laughing, and went willingly with the trader.
As they passed on, Galway heard a chanting of women’s voices, muffled by distance, and asked about it.
The trader answered: “That’s a mean business. You take the Cheyennes most of the time and in most ways, and you’ll find them a pretty upstanding people. But now and then the devil comes out of them . . . I mean, the devil of old customs. Those women yapping over there are getting ready to make a sacrifice of a living girl.”
“Hold on,” said Galway. “Living?”
“That’s what I mean. They’ve got the habit of thinking that in a big pinch there’s nothing so good as the sacrifice of a living person.”
They entered the lodge of Lazy Wolf. It was larger than the other teepees, and instead of the white hides of buffalo cows, it was a double shell of the best canvas, the insulating air space between the two shells acting
to shut out winter cold and summer heat. Even in the middle of this hot day the interior was only mildly warm.
As they sat down in the lodge, it seemed to Galway that he never before had seen furnishings so commodious in a tent. Besides the willow beds, there were backrests, and light, folding chairs; there was a rack for fishing tackle, another for rifles and revolvers, and over the fireplace leaned a little traveling crane on which several pots of varying sizes could be hung.
“When an Indian sees this outfit, doesn’t your scalp fit a bit loose on your head?” asked Galway, staring enviously at the layout.
“I never know what I’ll find in the lodge,” said Lazy Wolf, grinning and stroking his short beard. “Whenever Blue Bird . . . that’s my daughter . . . thinks that one of the braves or one of the squaws needs something, she gives it away if she can find it in my lodge.”
“Gives it away?” echoed Galway, staring.
“That’s the Indian in her,” said Lazy Wolf.
“If she was a daughter of mine, I’d find a way of changing her habits,” declared Galway with a stern conviction.
“Maybe you would,” answered the trader. “But these are bad days for her. When an Indian is sad, she always starts giving things away. Love is a devilish thing, Galway.”
“Oh . . . love, eh?” said Galway with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Never bothered you much?” asked Lazy Wolf.
“Not a lot,” said Galway.
“It may hit you later on,” said Lazy Wolf. “The Cheyenne girl I married died when Blue Bird was born. I’ve tried to go back and live among my own people . . . but I miss something when I’m away. Love is a queer thing, Galway, but you’re too young to know about it, perhaps.”
“Aye, maybe,” said Galway. “Won’t the chief she’s in love with have anything to do with her?”
“It’s a dead man,” said Lazy Wolf. “It’s Red Hawk that I’m talking about.”
“Ah, you mean Rusty Sabin?”