by Max Brand
* * * * *
In the Sacred Valley, from day to day, Rusty Sabin went on with the building of his house, working constantly at the erection of the massive fireplace that was to crown his labor. He had better tools, now. Before the departure of Galway, he had helped himself to some of the trader’s possessions, particularly to a heavy axe, the back of whose head made an excellent hammer; he had also some rope, ammunition, a rifle, a revolver, a saddle. He had an adze for the shaping of planks, and, above all, he had a saw. The saw was the treasure beyond price.
But although he busied himself constantly, his days were not happy. It was in vain that the valley turned from brown to green. It was in vain that the great night owl, every evening or every morning, stooped from the lip of the cave and swept down to take from his hand the sacrifice of the rabbit. Even when he worked himself to a state of exhaustion, he could not sleep well at night.
There remained in his heart a sort of weary sorrow, an emptiness that he could not understand. He told himself that it was an uneasiness based on the manner in which he had allowed Galway to escape from the valley.
It was true that Galway had sworn never to return, but the oaths of the white men never weighed half so heavily in their minds as a single ounce of yellow gold. And Galway knew that the Sacred Valley possessed a soil rich with the metal. Could it be that he would stay away, or would he return with companions?
Sweet Medicine, of course, could protect his own. And yet when Sabin thought of the force of disciplined white fighting men, well-armed, trained, obedient to command, ready to fight to the death, he felt, with a shudder, that even the strength of a god would hardly be enough to defeat them. His own adopted people, the Cheyennes, were brave as brave. A single warrior chosen at random from among the red men would be almost certain to dispose with ease of a single white man. But with numbers came a mysterious change.
A score of Indians might be baffled by three resolute whites each guarding the back of the other, all patiently determined, fighting on calmly and intelligently even when no hope appeared.
The splendid rush and sweep of the Indian charge was turned back by the rock-like stubbornness of the whites; the keen edge was turned by the hard face of the stone. Ten white men, well in order, even nine novices with one experienced leader, might move guardedly across the plains and beat off a hundred selected braves. And therefore if Galway loosed against the Sacred Valley a wave of armed white men, it would need the strength of the god at its full to turn them back. He trusted the god, but feared the future.
In this odd unhappiness of Rusty, in this emptiness of spirit, there was another cause for grief. The memory of Blue Bird kept walking up and down the valley at his side. And most of all he remembered her as she had sat on the back of White Horse on that last morning, between smiling and sorrow.
Maisry Lester occupied his mind every day, also. But the recollection of her was a different matter. It was something more important, more beautiful, but almost as removed from actuality as are the ghosts of the dead.
His people had cast him out and he never could see her again. But with the Cheyennes it was different, and many a day, when he rode White Horse down the valley at high noon, he would hear the chant of a prayer come echoing up the hollows of the ravine.
They were not answered by the waterfall’s echoes alone, now. Sometimes he put his face close to the hollows of the rocky face of the cliff and called out words in a melancholy, straining voice, words that could be put together to make one of several meanings. It was not that he wanted to be mysterious, but, when he listened to the prayers, he usually felt some immediate emotion that, he felt, was communicated directly to him from the god.
So, when he heard a young lad crying out at the mouth of the ravine, he listened and made out, clearly, the words of the appeal.
“Sweet Medicine, shall I be strong for the torment of the initiation? Shall I be able to drag the big buffalo head tied to the flesh of my raw shoulders with the thongs? Shall I scream out like a woman or shall I be strong and silent like a man? Sweet Medicine, tell me if I shall be ashamed. Be merciful!”
And Red Hawk, remembering the shame of that initiation that he had not been able to face, answered: “The known face is not terrible. The day is a friend . . . the night is the terror. To the boy, manhood is a mystery. To the man, boyhood is sleep and happy dreams remembered. But to Sweet Medicine the young and the old are of one age. If you take the step into manhood, you take the step with pain. All the pain you have known will help you.”
And again on a day he heard a chanting of many men and then the hoarse, familiar voice of Running Elk, saying: “Sweet Medicine, you have sent water to us out of your own hand. You have given rain to make the world green once more. Now we are going to show that we are your children and love you. We are going to get scalps and sacrifice them to you. Not the scalps of the Sioux or the Pawnees. We are going to bring you better scalps. We are going to bring you the scalps of white men and long-haired scalps of white women and the soft hair of children. Give us a token.”
Then he answered: “The horses are weary. The warriors search the edge of the sky with searching eyes. The smoke of the white man rises. Happy is the brave who returns to the town of the Cheyennes. Happy is the warrior whose skin is not beaten by the rain until it rots like old grass.”
He was very troubled. It had seemed to him, as he spoke, that perhaps on this occasion he was speaking a little more for himself, a little less for Sweet Medicine, in trying to avoid the war between white men and Indians.
He remained in the Sacred Valley until sunset, every moment more and more disturbed. And at last he saddled White Horse and took rifle and revolver with him. He felt that he was being drawn forward by a force like that of a great wind, an irresistible impulse. And so he rode straight out of the valley, past the towering rock pillars of the gate.
Chapter Eighteen
In the camp of the Cheyennes, there remained a reaction after the departure of the war party like the bubbling, swirling wake that passed over water behind a speeding boat. So in the village of the Cheyennes the enthusiasm of the people did not subside at once but, instead, expended itself in various small ways.
At night, the young men with musical instruments that made howling noises went to serenade their ladies. The dogs poured back and forth through the camp chasing imaginary wolves with a terrible clamor from dark to dawn. The old men sat down cross-legged to tell stories of the prowess of their youth, and the young men were overcome by the war spirit and yearning because they had been left behind so that at any moment of the day or the night they were impelled to leap up with a war cry and do a war dance in which with a war club or an axe they brained airy enemies by the score and took hundreds of invisible scalps.
That evening, half a dozen of the braves were seized by enthusiasm at the same moment and began to yelp and whoop with such energy that the dogs of the Cheyennes caught the enthusiasm of the idea and started to chase the imaginary wolves and fight over the imaginary bones again.
Standing Bull heaved himself up on his elbows and remained in this posture, half risen from his willow bed. Now that he made the effort it was possible to see how nearly he had recovered from his illness. The big shoulder muscles were filling out. Across his breast the traces of strength were reappearing. His skinny shanks were swelling day by day with the commencement of the huge power of his ordinary health.
Blue Bird said: “He is only halfway back to earth from the Happy Hunting Ground, but already he wants to be taking scalps and counting the coup.”
The two squaws of the brave smiled and nodded. They would not have dared to make such a remark about their famous husband, but they were brave enough to agree with that newly privileged person in the camp, one who herself had passed through an unearthly adventure.
Standing Bull looked up to the girl with a smile and watched the owl feather that trembled continually in her hair.
“What is happening now, Blue Bird?” he asked.
“Have they sighted an enemy? Are they surrounding him?”
“They have come to the end of the day,” said the girl, still smiling. “They are tired. Their horses are white with dried sweat. Their stomachs are empty. There is only a little stale water left in the water bags. They sit about and chew some parched corn. They look about them toward the ends of the earth. The world is a big place and honor is hard to find in it. Clouds are in the sky. It will rain on them before the morning.”
“No,” said Standing Bull. “They are pressing on through the hills. They see before them the town of the white men. They creep forward. As the night begins, they rush suddenly forward. The white men sit inside their wooden lodges and eat, and blind themselves with the light of their lamps. The Indians rush like a storm on them. The white men run out with guns. They are shot down, the tomahawk is in their brains, their red scalps are torn from their heads!
“Ah, my people! You forget what Red Hawk so often told you . . . that Witherell is not the chief city of the whites, that they are more numberless than the buffalo in the prairies. For this first blow you strike, you will be smitten a hundred times. All the Cheyennes will feel the strength of the white warriors. They will come by thousands, and every man will carry a rifle that shoots straight. My tribe will be lost.”
“Will they go so far?” asked the girl, staring. “Will they go even to the town of Witherell, Standing Bull?”
“They will go wherever the evil brain of Running Elk can lead them,” said the war chief. “He knows that before long I shall be able to ride a horse, and, when that happens, he will be no longer the head chief of the Cheyennes unless he does some great thing. That is the reason he takes three hundred warriors, well-armed, and rides away. He dreams of a great battle. The heart of the bad man never is small.”
“The wooden lodges of the white men are very strong,” said the girl. “Sometimes they are made of heavy walls, and there are loopholes through which the guns can be fired. Every house is like a fort.”
“Suppose that the grass is lighted, and the flames sweep down over the town? The white men run out like frightened rabbits. The Cheyennes are before them in the streets, killing them by scores. But for every white man who dies, ten Indians shall be shot down later on. That is the word of Red Hawk. Ah hai, Blue Bird. If he were alive . . . as he is dead . . . he would be able to stop the madness of my people. No other man could do it.”
An immensity of sorrow, a sense of doom covered the mind of the girl. All that she had seen inside the Sacred Valley must remain nameless. She could not even say to Standing Bull that his friend was not dead, but living. Or was it life indeed that Red Hawk had inside the Sacred Valley? If he were brought into the light and the air of common places, might he not be utterly dead and a ghost?
She began to tremble. She began to taste again the life in the Sacred Valley.
Afterward, she made medicine.
She did it very simply, as one who could be sure that the Sky People would hear her voice and give her wisdom. In her father’s lodge, she picked up a handful of dust and blew on it.
He sneezed and looked up from the book that he was reading by the light of a lantern with glass sides—a miracle to the Cheyennes.
“What’s the matter, Blue Bird?” he asked her.
She raised her free hand to let him see that she was conversing with the gods. Then, with lowered eyes, she counted the small pebbles that remained in her palm, some of them almost too small to glisten.
The number was odd. It meant that the gods wanted her to complete a task. What could the task be? Why, the very one that Standing Bull had named to her.
Her father was saying: “You and I are going on a journey, Blue Bird. You’re getting a little out of hand, what with all this medicine making, and dust blowing, and stewing of herbs. There’s always a bad smell in the lodge, and, besides, I’m disturbed by all the women who come with their sick children to you and ask you for cures. Do you think that the Sky People really are telling you how to help the sick?”
She looked down again at the pebbles in her hand, and then closed the fingers over the little stones.
She knew, now, what course she would have to take.
She got up suddenly, and left the lodge with bowed head. As she stood under the stars again, it was revealed to her what she must do.
From among the horses tethered near the teepee, she took the big colt with one blue and one black eye, the fiercest, the strongest, the wildest of the horses belonging to rich Lazy Wolf. When she returned inside the lodge, she took her saddle from the post from which it hung.
“Where are you away now, Blue Bird?” asked Lazy Wolf.
Instead of answering, she picked up a small leather bag filled with parched corn, and a light rifle that her father had bought especially for her. When she reached the entrance to the teepee, Lazy Wolf called after her: “Confound it, Blue Bird, tell me what’s up now! I’m getting a little tired of all this conversation with Sky People. Try talking for a while with your father and you may find one or two good ideas tucked away inside his old brain.”
Her heart was pinched. She wanted to answer. It was her sacred duty as a daughter to answer the questions of her father, but a vow that held her was more binding still—she must not utter a syllable until she stood again at the awful entrance to the Sacred Valley.
She heard him muttering as she saddled the young stallion.
Her heart went out to him, but the vow laid a cold finger on her lips and kept her silent.
Now the horse was equipped. She mounted and rode slowly through the village. As she came out from among the teepees, from all the night noises of the town, she saw hanging in the east the thin, curved knife of the new moon.
She went on. The glimmering lights of the village grew pale behind her. And then a sudden rush of hoof beats came roaring toward her and the shouting voices of young men of the night guard who rode around and around the town. Not another woman among the Cheyennes would have abided that charge.
Only Blue Bird rode straight on at the usual dog-trot of an Indian pony.
They swept away. The dust from the hoofs of their horses stung her nostrils. Then she was alone in the night.
Chapter Nineteen
At the gates of the Sacred Valley, for a long hour Blue Bird cried to the god, and the only answer she heard was the whisper of the water running down the bed of the ravine, and the far-off chanting of the waterfall at the other end of the valley.
Wiser people than she, perhaps, could have construed that echo into words with a meaning, but Blue Bird merely withdrew to one side and lay face down on the ground, pressing the palms of her hands against it, praying to the Underground People. And as she lay there, the dawn began, slowly, a light streaming gradually up around the edges of the great bowl of the sky.
She heard, at last, a light footfall on the rocks and, turning her head, was aware of a great elk, a king of his kind, standing at the entrance of the Sacred Valley. His head was lifted so that the great tree of horns sloped well back over his body. In spite of size and sleek weight, he had the look of a creature with winged heels.
The girl sat up, trembling with awe. This was the manner in which the souls of the dead heroes approached the Sacred Valley. Here was some famous warrior, clad in a new form, standing on the verge of paradise. The elk turned his head, saw her, and bounded straightforward through the gates of the valley.
Blue Bird arose, her eyes shining.
In some far place on the prairies a whole tribe, perhaps, was lamenting for the death of a war chief; the voices of the women were screeching to the sky, their faces were marred by their own nails, their hair was cut short and clotted with dust as they howled. How could they know that in a form so new and splendid the brave man’s soul was entering the earthly heaven of the Sacred Valley?
She went again to the mouth of the valley and called out her prayer, and again there was no answer.
Always her prayer was the same: to send Red Hawk out fro
m the Sacred Valley so that the war between the whites and the Cheyennes might be averted. The empty silence of the ravine at last weighed down her mind. She turned away full of uncertainty.
Red Hawk seemed to her half man and half god, who had passed through death into a higher life though he still moved and breathed upon the earth. He it was who should, as Standing Bull declared, hold back the Indians and perhaps check the white men.
How could he be drawn forth from the Sacred Valley on that errand of peace?
Then, suddenly, bitterly, she remembered the white girl, the blue eyes, the beauty, the smiling. Even the very presence of the god hardly could withhold Red Hawk, if he heard the voice of Maisry Lester calling.
Well, she was no longer Blue Bird, a mere name, a girl of no importance whatever; she was now a famous medicine woman, and for the welfare of her people she must give up her last hope of gaining that happiness of which most women can be sure. She felt such pain that she put both hands over her heart for a moment and closed her eyes. Then she laid her course straight across the plains toward the distant town of Witherell.
It was the twilight of a day when she came to the edge of the hills and looked down into the shallow, dimly lighted bowl of the town. The English that her father had taught her was not very good, not very extensive, but it was enough to enable her to ask her way to the house of Maisry Lester. She remembered that other time and that other town that she had visited in order to see the white girl. She remembered sadly, and shook her head. Then she rode her tired horse down the slope.
She had been remembering all through her journey the details of wisdom that the Cheyennes had taught her about the whites. These were some of the items.
First, the God of the white man lives too high in the sky to be of any use. He is worshipped by clasping the hands together and rolling up the eyes. He never receives sacrifices that are worth anything, but he is pleased by the moan and howl of a pumping organ. Big wooden teepees are built in his honor, each teepee crowned with a long wooden finger that points toward the sky.