Peyton

by Max Brand

  “Do you know what it is now?” asked Standing Bull.

  “I know,” said Rising Hawk, and said no more, as though he intended to keep his information secret until the end of the tale, thereby being prepared to check its correctness. This made all heads turn for an instant toward Rising Hawk. Excitement apparently was rising fast. This story would be corroborated or completely disproved by an adequate witness.

  “Good,” said Standing Bull. “I do not say the thing that is not true. Therefore I am glad that Rising Hawk has seen the place. But when I came to it the spirit that conducted me told me to stay there and lie down. I lay down on my right side, with my head to the east and with my face to the north. I lay on my right side for a long time, waiting for something to happen.

  “After a while I began to grow hungry, but more than the hunger was the thirst, and that thirst was like a fire in me, and all the while I could hear the running of the water among the stones in the bed of the river. Sometimes I fell asleep and dreamed that I was the bed of the river and that the cool water was running through my mouth. But I always waked up and found that I still lay on the hard ground. And my bones began to press through my flesh. My muscles asked me to turn, only a little bit, because they were dying. Still I would not turn. I did not want to get up and go away. I did not care to live if I had no soul. All at once, in the middle of a sleep, a voice said to me . . . ‘Stand up and follow me.’

  “I knew that it was a spirit. I tried to get up, but I was too weak to move. Then the spirit said . . . ‘Your body cannot get up, so leave it behind you.’ Then I tried to throw out my thought after the spirit, and all at once I felt as though my body were falling down through thin air. The next moment I was standing on my feet. I looked down, and in the starlight I saw that I was still lying on the ground. Then I knew that my soul had come away from my body. I heard the spirit call again. I walked. And at one step I crossed to the farther bank of the river. I could see the spirit now. It was an old man with feathers in his hair. He had the ghost of a war bow and stone-pointed arrows in his hand, and the ghost of a painted robe was flying over his shoulders in the wind. He smiled and reached out his hand. ‘Come with me,’ he said. He began to walk up through the air. I followed him, and it was as easy to walk up through the air as it was to walk along the ground. Every step we took was longer than the width of this camp.

  “After a while we came to the tops of some mountains and we sat down to rest. We could see all the rivers spread out at our feet. Only, to the north and east, there was a shadow on the earth. I said to my guide . . . ‘What is that?’ ‘It is the land of the Dakotas,’ he answered me. Then we stood up and walked through the air again, always going higher, until we reached the clouds. Our bodies were so light that it was rather hard work to walk through them. It was like going in mud. At last we came to the top of the clouds and I saw the sky country filled with Sky People.”

  He paused again and looked down with a frown. There was a most breathless silence while the others attended this strange narration. Torridon looked to the chief, expecting that his superior intelligence and experience would at once penetrate the deceit, but, instead, the nostrils of the old man were quivering and his hollow chest heaved with a passionate joy and belief.

  “When I try to remember what was up there,” said Standing Bull with a sort of baffled dignity, “my mind walks through darkness. However, I met many good Indians up there. I remember I heard a sound like ten thousand warriors all shouting for battle. I asked what it was and they told me that it was the sound of the wind whistling through the robe of Heammawihio as he strides across the sky country. I remember, too, that I stood before a man as tall as a mountain. He looked like a mountain when it turns blue in the evening. I kneeled before him and begged him to give me another soul. He said that he would. His voice was like the sound of a great river after the spring floods have begun. He offered me a soul in the palm of his hand, but I said . . . ‘If I go back and say that is my new soul, my people will not believe me. Give me a soul that they can see.’

  “After a while he said . . . ‘You ask for a great deal, but I want to please you. You have fought bravely. I have watched you in the field and I never saw you turn away from an equal enemy. Now I am going to make a soul for you.’ He took up what looked like white clay and began to work it with his fingers, like an old woman molding a pot. After a while he leaned and breathed on it, and there was a sound like a nation singing. After that the lump of clay stood up, breathed, spoke, and was a man.”

  The narrator turned to Torridon. “It was this man,” he said.

  There was a stir, an intake of breath like a groan. Torridon saw beads of moisture standing on the forehead of Rising Hawk. Not a shadow of disbelief appeared on any face. These people, more simple than children, did not have to be told that it was a fairy tale they were hearing. They were willing to believe with a wonderful faith.

  “‘This is your soul!’ said Heammawihio to me. ‘You had better go down to the earth at once. You had better hurry. The Underwater People are very angry because I am helping you. They want to have you and now they are sending down water devils who will destroy your body. If your body is destroyed, of course this new soul will be no good to you.’ Then he showed me where a white-headed flood was racing down the river toward the island where my body lay.

  “I said . . . ‘Alas, we never can get to the body in time.’

  “‘That is true,’ said the voice. ‘Then you must have horses to ride.’

  “I saw his hand reach away like the shadow of a cloud that reaches across a valley in a moment. The shadow came back and put two horses beside us. One horse was like silver. One was as black as night.

  “‘Which horse will you take?’ asked the voice.

  “I looked at the white mare. She was like silver. I said that I would take her.

  “‘You are wrong,’ said Heammawihio, ‘because the black stallion is much better than she. But they are both medicine horses. However, you chose the silver mare, and therefore you must keep her and always let your soul ride on the black stallion. Now you must go, and you had better hurry. When you come safely back to the Cheyennes tell them that they are my people. The air that I breathe is sweet with the smoke that they blow up to me.’

  “When he had said this, my soul and I got on the horses. They were only the ghosts of horses. We jumped them off the edge of a cloud and they went down like birds. But when I looked before me, I could see a great distance away, because the sun was shining now. I saw the island. I saw my body lying on it, and I saw the flood coming down faster than we could go. I said to my soul . . . ‘What shall we do?’ He said to me . . . ‘Call to the white thunder.’ Then I called, and a terrible noise took hold of us, and white thunder wrapped us around, and suddenly we were standing on the island. I looked about me and found my body, and I got into it.

  “When I opened my eyes, the flood was almost on the island. I looked around me. To the eyes of my spirit, the two horses and the new soul had been as real as this knife.” He snatched a long weapon from his belt and buried it in the earth with a powerful gesture. Then he went on: “But when I looked at them with the dim eyes of a man, they were no more solid than the shapes of mist that come out of the ground on a moonlight evening. But every moment they got thicker and more real. I sang a song to them and told them to hurry and help me, because I was too weak to move. All at once they turned into two real horses and a real man. He caught me up. Then the flood struck the island. It tore away almost all of it. It tore away the ground that I had been lying on. It made a noise like thunder, and I could hear the underwater devils groaning and shouting with anger because they could not have my body.

  “Then White Thunder, which is the name of this man that the Great Spirit sent down with me, took me away and took care of me while I lay very sick, with all my blood turned into fire. After that, when he had made me strong again with his magic and his strong medicine, we rode back to my people.” He paused again, sat up
to his stiffest, fullest height, and looked across at Rising Hawk.

  “Friend,” he said, “this is a meeting of the great men of the Cheyennes. Everyone should hear only the truth. If you have seen the island, speak and let them know if I have said the thing that is not.”

  Torridon waited, breathless.

  Rising Hawk swallowed and then struck the arch of his chest until it resounded like a drum. “I have seen that island within seven suns,” he declared. “It was half as big as this village. There were many trees on it. But when I looked at it again, I saw that it was torn to pieces. All that was left of it was one tree standing, and even the roots of that one tree were washed bare on the north side. So I give my witness that we have heard the truth from our brother.”

  IX

  After the conclusion of this short speech from Rising Hawk everyone seemed to take it for granted that no further proof was needed. Rising Hawk had seen that the island at the fork of the river actually had been almost destroyed. That was enough, apparently, to verify all of the odd tale that Standing Bull had told.

  He, like a hero overcome by the mere thought of what he had been through, allowed himself to sink against the backrest and fall into a profound contemplation, but the others chattered like birds. Torridon, who had in mind ten thousand tales of their taciturnity, was amazed to see them talking all at once, like enthusiastic women.

  They never for an instant cast a doubt on the story of their companion, but they declared that undoubtedly he had brought a great blessing upon the entire Cheyenne people, because he had carried down from heaven an actual spirit. Upon Torridon they turned their eyes with the frankest curiosity. If he was something more than man, he was also something less than man, apparently, for they remarked frankly and openly on the slenderness of his hands and the lack of weight in his shoulders, and the delicacy of his features, which proved, they said, that he was not really a white man like those other bronzed ruffians who rode across the plains to traffic or fight with the red man.

  What divine properties, then, would they expect him to have? Certainly they had seen that he ate food, cast a shadow, possessed a voice.

  But they were all like Standing Bull. They never put facts against facts. They believed what they wanted to believe, and the story of Standing Bull was too good to be thrown away. It was such an exploit as gave distinction to an entire tribe. As for the hero, Torridon puzzled over him a great deal. At last he came to the conclusion that in the first place Standing Bull had made up the story out of ecstasy and a good bit of invention mixed together, but, after telling the tale a few times, it had become letter perfect—and convinced himself.

  He had plenty of occasions to tell the story. For the first ten days after the return of Standing Bull there was an endless succession of feasts. Some old man would go through the camp, chanting the names of the guests who were invited to a certain teepee to feast. The feasts were all very much like that which High Wolf had given. There was no change in the food offered, there was a great deal of smoke raised after the eating ended, and then always Standing Bull was called on for his narration.

  Each time he talked a little longer. He discovered new details that were worthy of development. For instance, when he declared that his spirit had issued from his body, he said that he had looked at his lifeless self with a great deal of interest. He had leaned and fingered the back of his skull. He had admired the breadth of his shoulders and the strength of his neck, and he had looked for a while at his face, for this was the only time he could see himself except by the treacherous help of standing water or a mirror. For the first time he knew himself.

  There was a great deal more of this same sort of thing added by Standing Bull, but his auditors never were tired of listening. They were not all new faces at each feast. Indeed, some of the same men attended a dozen times and always listened with the same earnest, amazed attention. Rising Hawk grew so familiar with the story that he knew when the high points were coming, and he used to rise on his knees, and even whoop with delight when he heard the never-familiar marvels of the story.

  As for Torridon, the Indians treated him with a certain respect and contempt commingled. He was regarded as a part of Standing Bull, and was significant simply because he was a gift from Heammawihio. He was a sort of fleshy shadow, in other words.

  He was glad enough to be thus lightly regarded by these savage warriors. They were such men as he never had looked upon. There was hardly a warrior under six feet in height, and they were built like Romans, for war and effort. He saw no others quite up to the Herculean standard of Standing Bull, who was like his namesake in massive weight and power, but every man in the tribe was a powerful athlete who lived for one purpose—war. Torridon was glad to slip about among them, almost unnoticed.

  Standing Bull treated him very well and made him at home in his teepee. It was a good big lodge, as befitted a man who had two wives and three children. There was a middle-aged squaw who had given her master two daughters; she was a sour-faced creature, but a strong and incessant worker. Her companion, the favored wife of Standing Bull, was called Owl Woman, although Torridon never learned why she should have been given the ugly title. She was the young and handsome mother who Torridon had seen lifting her baby son above her head so that the child might behold the return of his father. Ill-matched as the two wives seemed to be, they got on perfectly; there was never a voice raised in the teepee except when one of the children squawked. Torridon himself was equipped with a bed, a backrest, a post on which he could hang clothes and weapons.

  He felt that Standing Bull might have gone on forever attending feasts and talking about his heavenly exploits, but now a cloud was hanging over this section of the great Cheyennes. Two days after the arrival of Torridon, the river that flowed past the encampment ceased running and thereafter no water was to be had except in standing pools, which shrank rapidly under the strength of the summer sun. There were plenty of other places to which they could remove to find water, but that would mean the definite abandonment of the corn crop that had been planted here. Already that corn had suffered from drought. The dusty look that Torridon had noticed had been a true sign of coming death, and, if the drought persisted, there might be cruel want in every lodge in the tribe during the winter to come.

  In the meantime the medicine lodge was noisy every day with the incantations of the medicine men, making rain. But though they fasted, strained, and sweated copiously, still not a single black cloud would blow up over the horizon.

  Something more than a drought was worrying Torridon. From the first he was allowed to walk about the village as he pleased, but when he asked to be allowed to mount the black stallion, Ashur, he was informed that the horse was very sick and could not be used. This, when with his own eyes he could see the big fellow galloping in the distance, the manifest king of the entire herd belonging to the tribe. When he asked for the gray mare, he was given the same response, although she led home the horse herd at night by a dozen lengths when they were raced in from the pasture grounds, Ashur, like a dutiful lord of his kind, ranging in the rear and hurrying on the laggards while the Indian boys yelled like demons.

  He was to be forbidden the use of a horse, then. More than this, wherever he went, he could not make a step without close attendance. Two or three young braves were sure to spy him, and they loitered along in the vicinity, as though their own will conducted them. But after this had happened during several days, he began to understand that the Cheyennes were determined that this gift from Heammawihio should not escape from them if vigilance could prevent it.

  To be sure his captivity was not heavy, but his heart was off yonder across the sunburned fields, hurrying toward Nancy Brett and Fort Kendry. He was held here, and who could tell when the kindness of his captors might be exchanged for quite another attitude?

  Nervously he waited, and as the drought increased, the village grew more dusty, the faces of the Indians more solemn and sullen, just so much did the face of Nancy Brett grow c
learer and dearer to him, and every day he sat with her as they had done once before, at the edge of the river where the crimson and golden forest rolled all its colors into the standing water.

  On a day when he was walking past the edge of the village, with two or three braves loitering in his rear, he saw a youth of thirteen or fourteen dragging something on the ground by means of two long leather thongs over his shoulders, but, when he came closer, he saw that the thongs issued out of the shoulders. They actually were fastened to the flesh, and from either shoulder a stream of blood ran slowly down, blackening quickly with dust. Held by the rawhide thongs, a buffalo head was dragged behind the boy, who never ceased walking, although sometimes the fatigue or the misery of his constant pain made him stagger for a step or two.

  “Why are you letting that boy torture himself to death?” asked Torridon of one of the braves.

  “Do you think that he wants to remain a boy forever?” answered the brave curtly. “Is he to be a woman forever in the tribe? No, but a strong warrior who will go on the warpath and take scalps.”

  “Can he take no scalps unless he does this?”

  “If he is not braver than pain, if he is not patient and strong so that he can smile at trouble, who would want to ask him to go on the warpath?”

  That answer had to content Torridon, although he had an almost irresistible impulse to cut those thongs and set the lad free. But who can free a man from self-inflicted torture?

  He had hardly turned his back on that pitiful sight when he saw Standing Bull riding toward him, accompanied by no less a person than the great old chief, High Wolf. They came straight to him and High Wolf gave him a solemn greeting.

  “Oh, my friend,” said High Wolf, “you have been among us many days. You have heard the medicine men working to bring the rain and they raise only a dry dust. You see the corn dying by the river, and the river itself is dead. How long will it be, White Thunder, before you take pity on us and bring us the rain?”