by Max Brand
“Why the devil should that be?” asked Galway,
“Because now she’s an honor and a glory to the tribe. You see? Every Cheyenne is a bigger and a better man because one of their people went through the Sacred Valley and lived to come among them again.”
Galway, narrowing his eyes, listened and nodded.
Then, out of the distance, an obscure roaring noise began, rolled toward them, grew greater, thundered in the very throat of the entrance ravine.
What Galway saw, first of all, was a cloudy white head of spray, like a mist driving on a storm wind. And afterward a tumultuous head of water sluiced out into the empty cañon, brimmed it with thunder, sent up waving flags of spray into the morning sunlight.
The Cheyennes fell flat on the ground in the face of the miracle; Galway himself felt his knees shaking. His heart was in his throat, choking him.
He knew the strange stories of the Indian superstitions and of mysterious rainmakers who had brought rain after long drought by incantations. But this was a miracle of another sort. This was a different matter, for by a veritable act of heaven a torrent had been made to spring out in the midst of a dry land.
He was baffled. His brain stubbornly refused to accept the facts that he had seen. He was a gloomy face and figure as he traveled back with the Cheyennes toward their camp.
The whole aspect of creation was changed for them now. Every pool and standing backwater of the ravine was filled with sweet, fresh water. There was ample to drink for their livestock for ten days to come. And since Sweet Medicine had sent them this quick sign of his favor, surely he would not fail to send them the rain, also. So they sang and laughed and shouted cheerfully to one another.
Hardly had they reached the Cheyenne encampment before other news came to them. The water-famished buffalo had found the smell of water on the wind and were beginning to troop in thousands to the drinking holes in the bed of the river. Already the hunters were out and bringing back skins and horse loads of the meat. It was like one of the great spring huntings, after a starving winter. The back of the famine was broken!
Very greatly the Cheyennes were honoring their god. What had the white men, what had the Pawnee wolves or the Sioux to show in comparison with Sweet Medicine? The encampment was filled with dancing and howling songs, and even the dogs grew excited and ran, yelping in noisy crowds.
Blue Bird, entering the village, was received as never a woman before had been welcomed. Two famous warriors, on foot, led her horse by the bridle. And the whole population of the tribe flocked around her with raised hands.
The warriors led her horse on slowly since they knew that the people would not be satisfied until every one of them had managed to touch the garments of this new prophetess. And she accepted this homage with a sad and resigned dignity rather than with a girlish joy.
Therefore even the women were not very jealous of her new honors. They muttered to one another: “It is plain that she has seen the god. I won’t need to see the owl feather in her hair. It’s enough to see her face. She will never be happy again, poor Blue Bird. She has seen too much of heaven ever to be contented with the earth again.”
She asked to be taken to the lodge of Standing Bull, and therefore that was her first stopping place.
The fever had left him for the moment; he lay with sunken eyes, a dreadful skeleton. His lips had shrunk against the teeth. He seemed an old man.
He said to Blue Bird: “They have told me. I know that a good woman can go farther toward the Sky People than the bravest man. But have you a message for me, Blue Bird?”
She sat down on her heels beside him and laid her hand on his forehead. “Do you feel something come over you from the touch of my hand?” she asked.
“A sort of coolness and a peace,” said Standing Bull.
“It is the blessing of Sweet Medicine,” said the girl.
“Ah hai! It is the word from the god?” breathed the war chief.
“You are to be cured.”
Standing Bull closed his eyes and groaned.
“But Sweet Medicine wishes that you should taste no food except what I prepare for you.”
“Willingly. But that is not possible. Running Elk gives me every day a new potion. I must take that or he will be angry.”
“Let me have the drink,” said the girl.
One of the squaws brought a bowl and gave it with a trembling hand to this visitor from the sky. Blue Bird tasted a foul and bitter mixture that made her head sing at once.
“Do you fear Running Elk more than you fear Sweet Medicine?” she asked.
“No, no, no,” muttered Standing Bull.
Blue Bird flung the contents of the bowl into the fire. The squaws cried out with shrill voices. One of them ran in wild haste out of the lodge. Standing Bull himself gathered his strength to lift himself on one elbow and watch the cloud of steam and smoke and dust of ashes that fountained up into the air as high as the vent hole of the lodge. Then he let himself fall back with a deep sigh.
“What have you done, Blue Bird?” he demanded. “Running Elk put a great medicine into that bowl of drink. He fasted for three days, and the Underground People told him what to put in it. They told him in a dream.”
“I was not told in a dream,” said Blue Bird. “Look, Standing Bull. Here is the sign of the god on my head.”
She touched the owl feather, and the chief fell silent, staring with wide eyes. The squaw who had not left the teepee, crouching in a corner, held a child gathered close to her inside the grasp of each arm; she seemed to be seeing a terrible ghost instead of the pretty face of Blue Bird.
And here came a small tumult, and then Running Elk strode into the lodge with armed men behind him. He was in a frightful rage. His skinny arm shook as he pointed to the girl.
“Is it true?” he shouted. “Have you spilled out the medicine that I made?”
“Look,” whispered the squaw, still crouched in her corner. “The fire is out. She has put out the fire with the evil of the thing she did.”
The wood in the fire trench was in fact all black; only a single small head of steam and smoke arose from it.
“The fire is sacred,” cried Running Elk, “and you have put it out! The spirits who told me how to make that medicine have stifled the fire with their hands. Those same hands will some night reach for your throat while you sleep and stifle you, also. It will be well for the Cheyennes when that happens.”
“Running Elk,” said Blue Bird, “you have kept Standing Bull very sick for a very long time. While he lies here, you are the head of the tribe. You don’t want him to be well. And that is the word of the god to me.”
Running Elk screamed with rage. “You say the thing that is not so!” he cried. “Sweet Medicine would not show his whole face to a woman.”
A little murmur of assent came from the braves who had followed the medicine man into the lodge of the chief.
Running Elk went on: “If your act was right and good in the eyes of Sweet Medicine, he would have made the drink you threw away give the fire more brightness. He would have made it a sign. Instead, he caused it to drown out the fire.” He turned to the men behind him. “Lay your hands on her and drag her away,” he commanded. “We shall have a council to learn how she should be punished. . . . The Underground People are very angry. I can hear their voices inside my ears. . . . They are angry at Blue Bird. . . . They are plucking at my body with their fingernails. . . . Catch hold of her quickly.”
Two or three of the warriors stepped forward, but the girl faced them quietly and made no effort to escape.
It was Standing Bull who spoke from his bed in a weary voice: “No matter if she has done wrong. Even if the Underground People put their hands over my mouth and choke me today, she is safe in my lodge.”
“Standing Bull is sick. His brain has turned into the brain of a child. Will you take her in your hands?”
One of the braves answered: “She has come from the Sacred Valley. How can we touch her unless she p
ermits us to?”
Blue Bird, looking into the face of the medicine man, shuddered. The constant smile of malice and relaxed old age had turned now into a ghastly rage that worked his features as though with the grasp of a deadly agony.
And then she heard behind her a small cracking or breaking noise. Instantly the squaw of Standing Bull cried out: “A sign! A sign! Look!”
When Blue Bird turned, she saw the thin column of steam and smoke that rose from the embers of the fire had increased to a thickening white arm and from the wood beneath the smoke came the slight noise of the crackling of fire as it grows hotter and eats into the heart of the fuel.
A groan of surprise came from the throats of the warriors.
Standing Bull said: “Now we shall see if my brain is that of a child. Now we shall see if the god uses the hands of Blue Bird to do very wise things. . . . Flame, lift your head if Blue Bird comes from Sweet Medicine. Let us see only one red eye of fire, and it will be enough.”
Blue Bird herself, facing the fireplace, dropped on her knees and lifted her hands in prayer, silently.
But Running Elk shouted: “There is nothing of the god in this! Sweet Medicine will not let the fire burn. He speaks in my breast. He commands me to stamp out the heat of the wood. . . .” He strode to the embers, as he spoke, and stamped heavily on them with his moccasined foot.
Two or three of the warriors groaned in fear of this almost sacrilegious act. But the wood, which had been broken down and brought into closer contact by the stamp of the foot, now threw up a much greater cloud of smoke, and in the white mist a golden flickering of fire was seen. It flashed like a signaling hand, far away. It put up an arm of red that was withdrawn again, and now with a cheerful crackling the whole of the embers broke into a strong and steady flame that scattered the smoke above it.
Running Elk drew away with halting, backward dragging steps.
The warriors said in soft voices, one after another: “We have not put out our hands and touched you. We have not harmed you, Blue Bird.”
She said nothing. She was continuing her silent prayer.
Chapter Fifteen
Charlie Galway waited three days in the camp. He waited the first day in the hope that he would be able to see something of Blue Bird. But he discovered that the girl had withdrawn from the society of men and women. She went about the lodge of her father in a faintly smiling silence, cooking and cleaning as she always had done. But even Lazy Wolf could not induce her to talk, beyond the speaking of a few words.
It seemed to Galway that either her brain had weakened or she was in the grip of a lasting hysteria. In either case, she was not for him.
Then, on the second and the third day, when he was ready to leave the Cheyenne camp, he was kept there by a continual deluge. The wind shifted into the southwest. All of one night the clouds gathered in increasing piles on the horizon, and the next morning they rolled across the heavens, spilling sheets and torrents of water as they came. There was the smell of the dry earth drinking. The camp turned into a sea of mud. For two whole days and nights, without cessation, the rain fell, and during all that time he had to listen to the chants of the Cheyennes in praise of Sweet Medicine, who first had answered their prayers by filling the ravine with waters from his Sacred Valley, magic water, and now he had swept up the heaped rain clouds and was giving the water of an entire season in a single downpouring.
But on the third morning the sky cleared. The sun shone. The children ran out to play and their feet made sticky, plopping noises in the mud; the squaws began to take out damp garments and string them up where the sun could dry them. The sides of the lodges were furled up; the entrances were opened; the purifying sun was allowed to strike through everywhere.
On that morning, big Charlie Galway saddled his horses and prepared the packs of the robes and other goods he had obtained from the Indians by trade. Lazy Wolf came to smoke a pipe and watch the work progressing.
He said: “This is a good time for you to be stirring, Charlie. The fact is that the Cheyennes are getting a little restless. Sweet Medicine has been doing so much for them that the warriors want to do something in return.”
“Such as lifting the hair of some white men?” asked Galway sharply, turning his head over his shoulder.
“Maybe,” said Lazy Wolf. “There’s a lot of excitement. Running Elk is in a stew because Blue Bird has taken away some of his trade. She won’t try to do a miracle every day, like the re-lighting of the fire in the lodge of Standing Bull, but she’s performing a pretty thoroughgoing miracle on Standing Bull himself. He’s beginning to eat three times a day and the flesh is coming back on his body as fast as the grass comes in the first warm spring days. His squaws go around laughing with joy like drunken women.”
“Do you think that Running Elk was poisoning Standing Bull?” demanded Galway.
“I don’t think so. I know so. Just enough poison to keep him from getting better. Not enough to kill him. Because, the moment he died, another war chief would be chosen, and Running Elk wouldn’t be the single head of the tribe.”
“If you knew that, why didn’t you tell some of the lesser chiefs?”
“Because there’s no use trying to talk down a medicine man. If I accused him, he’d do a devil dance and find out that I was a bad influence in the tribe, and they’d probably skin me alive. But Standing Bull is getting back his strength, and Running Elk is having chills and fevers at the thought of what will happen when the war chief is back on his feet. By this time, Standing Bull knows why he was sick such a long time. And he’s saying nothing, but waiting for a chance to get even. That’s why we’ll all be on the warpath before long.”
“I still don’t follow it. Civil war, you mean?”
“There’s never civil war among the Cheyennes. But Running Elk is sure to try to build up his reputation again, and that means the warpath. He’ll get an inspiration, one of these days, and take all the best of the young braves away on a war expedition against the Pawnees, or even against the whites, I suppose. In war days the Indians are a pretty tricky lot. It’s better for you to get away and keep away.”
“I’m doing that,” agreed Galway. “But tell me, man, what makes you stay on here, now that your daughter has gone a little out of her head?”
“She hasn’t gone out of her head,” said the trader. “She simply feels that she’s got something up her sleeve. Like a woman who knows that she’s going to have a baby, or something like that. Something that men don’t know anything about.”
* * * * *
Charlie Galway told himself that he would head straight back for the town of Witherell with the news that the Cheyennes were about to be up and stirring before long. But he could not help changing the course of his journey until he was close to the entrance of the Sacred Valley. And there he halted, to brood over a number of strange events.
There was some means of communication between the Valley of Death and the Sacred Valley, of course. For he had seen Blue Bird led into the first valley, and later on she had walked calmly out of the second. A god, she said, had carried her from one place to the other. Some agency, but not a god.
As for what actually had happened, no court in the land would believe a word of her testimony; it was a very dizzy business about being carried up to heaven, and all that sort of thing. But, in the end, how had she managed to get from one rockbound valley into the next?
Other things had happened. Very strange things. The business of the owl feather, of course, was the purest nonsense. But why had the girl come walking out of the Sacred Valley in that strange trance that still persisted? What had induced her to defy the strength of the great medicine man?
But first, and above all, if Rusty Sabin had mined gold somewhere in this country—if the source of the gold was unknown—if he had been the only man to enter the valley and come out again alive . . .
Charlie Galway turned with his pack horses right into the ravine that entered the Sacred Valley. He rode last, to drive the
horses before him. He carried a pair of loaded revolvers in the saddle holsters, had a rifle balanced in his hands, and his nerves were filled by apprehension to an incredible tensity and accuracy.
So he came with his outfit into sight of the Sacred Valley, and his breath stopped. It had been newly washed by the rain. The big trees rolled like bright clouds above the deep pastures. The river ran with a small song down the center of the valley, and now from the farther end of the valley he could see the white face of the waterfall whose mysterious murmurings and chantings, heard at the mouth of the Sacred Valley, were construed into words and answers by the Cheyennes, when they came to consult the oracle.
The eye of the trader grew brighter and brighter. This naturally fenced and reserved valley was the sort of a place in which he could settle for the rest of his days. It was the sort of a place in which he would settle. When he took a wife, he would come here.
As for the Cheyennes—well, the matter would have to be settled with them, but sooner or later, at any rate, a war was sure to come that would sweep the red men farther back on the prairies.
And then he came to a little rabbit run in the grass and in the middle of the small trail was set a trap. Startled, big Charlie Galway jerked up his head and stared around him.
Was there a god in the Sacred Valley? Well, no god had made that trap but a mere man. He got down and examined the thing. It was well enough done, but he himself could have made a better contraption, he felt. A very average sort of a man had made that trap, in fact. And Charlie Galway was not average. He stretched his arms a little to reassure himself with the sense of the muscles that robed his shoulders with power. Here he was, armed to the teeth, to set himself against a man or men who made silly little rabbit traps instead of shooting such game as they required.
A scattering rush of little hoofs—and a herd of antelope broke out of covert and flashed across the meadows of brown, sun-cured grasses. They did not run far. As he lifted his rifle to shoot, he was checked by the multiplicity of the targets. For they stopped only a short distance away and turned toward him, every one of them!