Peyton

by Max Brand

  To Torridon this story seemed at once amusing, pathetic, and worthy of inspiring fear. He could understand, after he had heard it, that attitude of the Cheyenne toward him, as though he were a personal possession of Standing Bull, and all that he had with him a part of the property of the brave. Heaven had brought him to Standing Bull. Therefore, being from heaven, he must be treated with respect, consideration, gentleness, but at the same time he belonged to Standing Bull. He had been given to Standing Bull in a dream straight from heaven, a dream so powerful that it had not faded as other visions are apt to fade, but had materialized into flesh and blood and iron.

  It was easy, too, to understand why Standing Bull had disliked the thought that Torridon wanted to go to Fort Kendry. Furthermore, it was not really right that a man from heaven should want to go to any place other than the abode of the brave to whom he had been sent as a material dream.

  It made a situation so ludicrous that Torridon could have burst into laughter. It made a situation so grave that he was ready to quake with fear. He had serious thoughts of making an attack upon his companion, and then riding off to take his chance on the prairie, but the prairie to him was as unknown as the uncharted sea, and, besides, to attack the warrior would have been no less difficult than to attack a wolf. He slept with one eye open; he was ever on the alert, and Torridon began to submit to his fate with a growing apprehension of what it might lead him to.

  So they voyaged across the plains. The weather was clear. Sometimes little clouds of purest crystal white, filled with brilliance, blew rapidly across the sky; otherwise it was washed clear. And all day the heat was blinding and burning in its intensity, and the face of the plains quivered with the heat waves that danced endlessly upward. Often from the burning of the sun against his shoulders, Torridon groaned, and then his big companion would look sharply at him.

  “Speak louder, louder, brother,” he would say. “When the spirits wish to use your tongue, speak with a loud voice, so that I may hear.”

  Torridon would shake his head and declare that it was only the heat of the sun, but, when he said this, Standing Bull merely smiled a little, secret smile, as though he knew a great deal, and would not press the subject with too many questions. He was willing to be patient with his strange captive.

  In the heart of Torridon there was that mingled fear and curious expectancy that filled the old explorers, sailing for the first time through unknown seas, and he turned pale when, on a day, Standing Bull raised his arm and pointed into the eye of the sun. Beneath the sun, like a thickening of the horizon mist, thin clouds were rising—smoke!

  “It is there,” said Standing Bull. “Presently we shall see our people.”

  The confusion in the Cheyenne’s mind was revealed by that speech. In part he looked on Torridon simply as a white man. In part, the white man was a messenger from heaven, a bringer of luck and medicine to him. And, in part, Torridon was actually a Cheyenne himself, because he had been sent down by the Great Spirit to that tribe.

  To a logical and educated mind the three points of view would have been impossible, of course. But Standing Bull could separate the three thoughts. He used them one by one and looked upon his companion in the fashion that was most convenient at the moment.

  Presently Standing Bull checked the gray mare. He gestured before him where arose a few swellings of the ground. “Shall I cross the hills and ride in to the village?” he asked.

  “You know what is best to do,” said Torridon.

  The warrior exclaimed impatiently: “Why do you keep back your knowledge, White Thunder? Do you wish to do me harm? Or do you think that Standing Bull is a fool? No, no! I am not a fool. I know that you have understanding of everything. Otherwise, why did Heammawihio send you to me? Now, be kind to me and tell me what I should do?”

  Torridon half closed his eyes. But he saw that it was useless to argue and protest. To Standing Bull he was a miraculous creature. He consulted, therefore, his own disinclination to go into the Cheyenne village.

  “We should wait here,” he said at last.

  The brave smiled with satisfaction. “They will come out to find me, will they not?” he said. “They will come out and escort me into the city? They will give me honor, White Thunder?”

  “They will.” Torridon sighed.

  Standing Bull in a vast excitement dismounted, took out his paints, and straightway began to blacken his face. Next he brushed out the mane and the tail of the gray mare. He rubbed away the dust that covered the bead and quillwork on his moccasins and leggings. He combed out his long hair over his shoulders, and he began to put added touches of improvement, such as streaks of paint on his brawny arms. In a few moments he was a brilliant and terrible form, and Torridon looked upon him with awe.

  “My heart is filled with impatience, White Thunder!” exclaimed the brave. “Send them out to me soon!”

  He hardly had spoken when a boy riding without a saddle galloped a horse over the verge of the hill, swept toward them, and then with a sudden shout wheeled his horse and rushed away. Standing Bull could not speak. He was throttled by emotion and literally bared his teeth like a wolf as he waited.

  He was on his horse again, wrapped in his buffalo robe, magnificent and grim, when a cavalcade of half a dozen warriors came over the hill and galloped toward them. The Cheyennes spread out suddenly in a fan, and with a war yell they charged. Torridon glanced at his companion, but he saw a faint smile on the lips of Standing Bull—a smile which that hero was struggling to suppress.

  A rush of horsemen, a sweeping cloud of dust, and then they wheeled and came up. Keen glances they flung at Torridon; he felt his scalp prickling on his head.

  “Brother!” cried a magnificent youth who seemed the leader of the six riders. “You come with your face blackened. Have you taken a scalp with no harm to yourself? And have you brought this prisoner back with you?”

  “Rising Hawk,” said the other, “I have been on such a trail as no Cheyenne ever walked or rode before. But this is not the time to speak of it. There is medicine to be made before another word can pass my lips.”

  VII

  There was a murmur of eager contentment among the others. They seemed to accept the fact that this was a mystery about to be carried into their encampment. Four remained as a sort of guard of honor; two raced their horses off over the hill, and by the time that Torridon with the others had climbed to the crest, there was a stream of rapid riders swinging out toward him.

  He saw a village of lofty teepees that flashed clean as metal against the sun, and between them and the village was a river, fallen very low. The flats on either side of the stream were covered with corn, but so dust-sprinkled that it was hardly visible to the eye at the first glance. Only by the margin of the stream was it a strong green, as though there it had been irrigated.

  Out from the big circle of the village riders were breaking—men, women, boys, little girls. Each horse, as it struck the shallow stream, sent a white dash of spray flying high, and then the rider lurched on up the nearer bank.

  Torridon felt that the end of the world was flying upon him. The riders came in a vast tide of noise, with arms brandished. Guns exploded. Wild whoops cut at his ears. And around him poured the tribe.

  A huge warrior, naked to the waist, drove straight at him with axe lifted, the sun flashing on it. That flash glanced in the very eyes of Torridon. But the blow was not driven home. The brave went on by with a war yell that stunned the brain of Torridon, and in place of the axe wielder, a spearsman was galloping, bent low over the mane of his horse, and with his lance point leveled at the breast of the white man. This time, surely, the steel would slide home through his breast. No, at the last instant the point was raised, glanced over his shoulder, and another terrible cry dinned in his ears. A procession of terrible forms rushed against him and went by, leaving him untouched. Then a naked boy was dancing beside him, threatening him with a knife whose blade was at least a foot long, and sharpened to an airy edge.
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br />   Torridon felt that devils had flooded the world. He would have shrunk from this terrible peril, but his nerves were as numb as though paralyzed.

  He heard the exultant voice of Standing Bull beside him: “My brother is fearless. He who has ridden down from the sky on the white thunder, what would make him tremble on the earth?”

  He could not answer this friendly and proud remark. If he opened his lips, he felt that a scream would come from them.

  The riders had formed in a vast, irregularly eddying circle. Dust clouds boiled up. Through the dust he saw the frantic shapes gleaming, men like polished forms of bronze, terrible in action.

  And slowly they moved on—they were the focus and the center of the storm. They crossed the creek. They entered the village. They were pushing through solid masses of horses, men, dogs that writhed away before them and closed again behind. The heat became intense. Dust choked Torridon. A knife thrust between the ribs would have been a happy ending to this prologue of terror and burning sun and confusion.

  A woman screamed above the din. She was a young squaw, holding an infant boy high above her head, a naked little statue of red-gold in the flash of the sun. Standing Bull did not so much as turn his head, and yet Torridon knew, by instinct, that they had passed one of the wives of the brave.

  Before them the crowd began to split; there were warriors working with a sort of organization to push the rest to either side, and so a way was opened to the front of the biggest teepee that Torridon yet had seen. It was painted yellow below, and black above, spotted with little yellow crosses, and on either side of the doorway buffalo bulls were painted with a good deal of skill, and above the doorway a green crescent moon.

  In front of the lodge stood a very old man. The arm with which he held his buffalo robe about him was withered like the arm of a mummy. The flesh was gone from his face, but, instead of making him look wrinkled and old, the skin was stretched a little, like parchment. It gave him rather the look of a starved boy than of an old man, and the eyes were bright and bold as the eyes of a child.

  Standing Bull dismounted before this ancient, greeting him with the greatest respect. Torridon himself was motioned from his horse and dismounted. His knees sagged under him. A breath would have staggered him, so completely was he unnerved. He felt reasonably sure of death. He would almost have welcomed such an ending, but it was the means that he had in his mind like a nightmare. He had heard the great Roger Lincoln tell of Indian tortures, of splinters thrust under the nails of the victim, and then lighted, of the tearing and shaving away of flesh, of slow roasting over fires.

  Those were the images that drifted rapidly between the eyes of Torridon and the strange forms around him. He hardly knew how he was brought into the teepee. But there he found himself seated, with Standing Bull beside him. The old chief, called High Wolf, who seemed to be the head of the tribe, sat facing the doorway. Presently others entered. Finally ten men had come in, each carefully passing behind the backs of the others, avoiding moving before anyone, until they came to a place where they could sit. They were like ten senators at council. Torridon did not need to be told that the ten chief men of the tribe had gathered here for deliberation of some sort. The youngest among them were Standing Bull and that graceful brave, Rising Hawk, who first had come out to meet them.

  Outside, the noise was dying down, but when the lodge flap was dropped, the dust clouds were still rising. It was hot in the lodge, although the lower edges had been furled to admit the passage of a draft. It was hot because of the intense sun beating down from above, and because, also, of the fire that burned in a heart-shaped excavation in the center of the lodge with a steaming kettle on it.

  “Everything is here,” said High Wolf. “You may eat.”

  Standing Bull raised his hand, big as a shield, heavy as metal. “First we must be purified,” he said. “Everyone here must be purified. There is a great medicine in this lodge, High Wolf.”

  The old man glanced at Standing Bull. The turning of his eyes was like the stirring of two red lights, but Torridon guessed shrewdly that it was pleasure that moved the great chief.

  He himself then took wisps of sweet grass, ignited them, and, waving the smoke to the earth, to the sky, to the four corners of the heavens, he muttered a chant so rapidly that Torridon could not understand the words. Then he carried the smoke to all the guests. They washed their hands in it. This, apparently, was a degree of purification.

  Still the ceremonies were not ended. Five small pieces of meat were taken from the pot, and one placed in the palm of High Wolf’s hand, and the other four at the four points of the compass. Then, inverting his hand upon the palm of his left, he allowed the meat to remain there and offered it to the four directions.

  The eating began after that. Torridon found a large portion of unsalted buffalo flesh before him. He ate it greedily. He hoped that food would give him sufficient strength to put an end to the faint tremor that was running steadily through his body.

  It did not take long to consume the food. After that the pipe was produced by High Wolf. He filled it with a preparation of tobacco and dried leaves of the sumac, flavored with buffalo grease. After that he blew smoke to the earth, to the heavens, and to the four points of the compass, murmuring a phrase with each puff. Then he passed it to his left. So it went to the door, but apparently it could not cross the doorway, and was passed rapidly back from man to man so that it could begin again on the farther side.

  This smoking was done with absorption, without speech, and each man held the pipe in a way that differed slightly from that of others.

  At last it was empty.

  High Wolf turned to Standing Bull. “Brother,” he said, “Heammawihio is a stern master, but he always is just. We were all sorry when you lost your medicine bag. We wondered what you had done that was wrong. Now we hope that it was taken away from you only in order to inspire you to do some great thing. I think you are about to tell what the great thing may be. We are all ready to hear. We all are your friends. To me you are as a child. Therefore, open your heart and we will receive all your words.”

  After this courteous invitation all eyes turned upon Standing Bull, and Torridon saw that the braves were in an actual fever of excitement.

  That huge warrior, however, remained silent for some time, staring at the ground, and then raised his head on its bull neck and glared up through the smoke hole toward the sun-whitened sky above them. Then he picked from the floor of the teepee just before him a small handful of little pebbles and grains of sand. This he spread smoothly on the flat of his palm, and then puffed it away. There remained two little glittering pebbles, and these he carefully put away in his pouch.

  It seemed to Torridon that this was the maddest sort of nonsense, but all the other braves watched it with the most absorbed attention and respect.

  “Now,” said Standing Bull, “I have asked the spirits of the air and the under the earth spirits to listen to me. If I say anything that is not true, may they strike me with as many knives as there are grains of dust in that which I have just blown off my hand. If I say the thing that is not true, may they strike me with as many arrows as there were grains of dust, also.”

  He paused and looked about him from face to face, and every one of those dignified warriors inclined his head a little as though acknowledging the tremendous force of this oath.

  “For the thing I am about to tell,” said Standing Bull, “is hard to understand. I am going to tell you how I sent my soul up to the Sky People, and how my soul came back again with this man and the two horses and all that was with them besides.”

  VIII

  Up to this point Torridon had remained more interested in the possibilities of his future fate than in the talk around him, but at this prodigious lie he could not help glancing down sharply to the ground, prepared to hear the outburst of laughter that would greet the statement of Standing Bull. But there was not a sound.

  And when he glanced up again he saw that there was
not the slightest indication of mirth in any face. With eyes overbright, the warriors listened, hanging on the words that were next to be spoken. Standing Bull was in no hurry. As one prepared to allow his audience to grow expectant because he had plenty with which to satisfy that expectation, Standing Bull was again looking down to the ground. Or perhaps it might be said that his attitude was that of a man rapt in thought, forgetting those around him while he called up again a vision from the past.

  At length he slowly lifted his hand, palm up, and extended his long, powerful arm toward the heavens. Then he said: “When I last saw you, my friends, I was less than a man. My soul was in the hands of the Dakotas. Or else it was rotting on the desert in the rains and drying to dust in the suns. I went out to find another soul.

  “I had lain down and asked for a dream and the dream only told me to go out from among my people and follow an invisible guide. I saw no guide, but still I was led for a great distance. I was not told to take a horse, and therefore I left a horse behind me. I did not say farewell to my children or to my wives. I let everything stay behind. Nothing matters to a man so much as his soul.” Here he paused. He lowered the arm that had been raised as though invoking divine witness to the truth of his words. He went on, after a moment: “I was led through many days of marching. But though I had little food, I was not hungry and I was not tired. I was supported by the thing that led me. At last I came to the place where the great river comes to a fork, and above the fork it has two arms. One arm goes north and the other arm goes west. Where they meet, there is an island.” He paused and looked about him for confirmation.

  Rising Hawk said gravely: “I myself have seen that island in the last seven days.”