“That’s Cheschapah,” said Stirling. “That’s the agitator in all his feathers. His father, you see, dresses more conservatively.”
The feathered dandy now did a singular thing. He galloped towards the two officers almost as if to bear them down, and, steering much too close, flashed by yelling, amid a clatter of gravel.
“Nice manners,” commented Haines. “Seems to have a chip on his shoulder.”
But Stirling looked thoughtful. “Yes,” he muttered, “he has a chip.”
Meanwhile the shabby father was approaching. His face was mild and sad, and he might be seventy. He made a gesture of greeting. “How!” he said, pleasantly, and ambled on his way.
“Now there you have an object-lesson,” said Stirling. “Old Pounded Meat has no chip. The question is, are the fathers or the sons going to run the Crow Nation?”
“Why did the young chap have a dog on his saddle?” inquired Haines.
“I didn’t notice it. For his supper, probably—probably he’s getting up a dance. He is scheming to be a chief. Says he is a medicine-man, and can make water boil without fire; but the big men of the tribe take no stock in him—not yet. They’ve seen soda-water before. But I’m told this water-boiling astonishes the young.”
“You say the old chiefs take no stock in him yet?”
“Ah, that’s the puzzle. I told you just now Indians could reason.”
“And I was amused.”
“Because you’re an Eastern man. I tell you, Haines, if it wasn’t my business to shoot Indians I’d study them.”
“You’re a crank,” said Haines.
But Stirling was not a crank. He knew that so far from being a mere animal, the Indian is of a subtlety more ancient than the Sphinx. In his primal brain—nearer nature than our own—the directness of a child mingles with the profoundest cunning. He believes easily in powers of light and darkness, yet is a sceptic all the while. Stirling knew this; but he could not know just when, if ever, the young charlatan Cheschapah would succeed in cheating the older chiefs; just when, if ever, he would strike the chord of their superstition. Till then they would reason that the white man was more comfortable as a friend than as a foe, that rations and gifts of clothes and farming implements were better than battles and prisons. Once their superstition was set alight, these three thousand Crows might suddenly follow Cheschapah to burn and kill and destroy.
“How does he manage his soda-water, do you suppose?” inquired Haines.
“That’s mysterious. He has never been known to buy drugs, and he’s careful where he does his trick. He’s still a little afraid of his father. All Indians are. It’s queer where he was going with that dog.”
Hard galloping sounded behind them, and a courier from the Indian agency overtook and passed them, hurrying to Fort Custer. The officers hurried too, and, arriving, received news and orders. Forty Sioux were reported up the river coming to visit the Crows. It was peaceable, but untimely. The Sioux agent over at Pine Ridge had given these forty permission to go, without first finding out if it would be convenient to the Crow agent to have them come. It is a rule of the Indian Bureau that if one tribe desire to visit another, the agents of both must consent. Now, most of the Crows were farming and quiet, and it was not wise that a visit from the Sioux and a season of feasting should tempt their hearts and minds away from the tilling of the soil. The visitors must be taken charge of and sent home.
“Very awkward, though,” said Stirling to Haines. He had been ordered to take two troops and arrest the unoffending visitors on their way. “The Sioux will be mad, and the Crows will be madder. What a bungle! and how like the way we manage Indian affairs!” And so they started.
Thirty miles away, by a stream towards which Stirling with his command was steadily marching through the night, the visitors were gathered. There was a cook-fire and a pot, and a stewing dog leaped in the froth. Old men in blankets and feathers sat near it, listening to young Cheschapah’s talk in the flighty lustre of the flames. An old squaw acted as interpreter between Crow and Sioux. Round about, at a certain distance, the figures of the crowd lounged at the edge of the darkness. Two grizzled squaws stirred the pot, spreading a clawed fist to their eyes against the red heat of the coals, while young Cheschapah harangued the older chiefs.
“And more than that, I, Cheschapah, can do,” said he, boasting in Indian fashion. “I know how to make the white man’s heart soft so he cannot fight.” He paused for effect, but his hearers seemed uninterested. “You have come pretty far to see us,” resumed the orator, “and I, and my friend Two Whistles, and my father, Pounded Meat, have come a day to meet you and bring you to our place. I have brought you a fat dog. I say it is good the Crow and the Sioux shall be friends. All the Crow chiefs are glad. Pretty Eagle is a big chief, and he will tell you what I tell you. But I am bigger than Pretty Eagle. I am a medicine-man.”
He paused again; but the grim old chiefs were looking at the fire, and not at him. He got a friendly glance from his henchman, Two Whistles, but he heard his father give a grunt.
That enraged him. “I am a medicine-man,” he repeated, defiantly. “I have been in the big hole in the mountains where the river goes, and spoken there with the old man who makes the thunder. I talked with him as one chief to another. I am going to kill all the white men.”
At this old Pounded Meat looked at his son angrily, but the son was not afraid of his father just then. “I can make medicine to bring the rain,”he continued. “I can make water boil when it is cold. With this I can strike the white man blind when he is so far that his eyes do not show his face.”
He swept out from his blanket an old cavalry sabre painted scarlet. Young Two Whistles made a movement of awe, but Pounded Meat said, “My son’s tongue has grown longer than his sword.”
Laughter sounded among the old chiefs. Cheschapah turned his impudent yet somewhat visionary face upon his father. “What do you know of medicine?” said he. “Two sorts of Indians are among the Crows to-day,”he continued to the chiefs. “One sort are the fathers, and the sons are the other. The young warriors are not afraid of the white man. The old plant corn with the squaws. Is this the way with the Sioux?”
“With the Sioux,” remarked a grim visitor, “no one fears the white man. But the young warriors do not talk much in council.”
Pounded Meat put out his hand gently, as if in remonstrance. Other people must not chide his son.
“You say you can make water boil with no fire?” pursued the Sioux, who was named Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses, and had been young once.
Pounded Meat came between. “My son is a good man,” said he. “These words of his are not made in the heart, but are head words you need not count. Cheschapah does not like peace. He has heard us sing our wars and the enemies we have killed, and he remembers that he has no deeds, being young. When he thinks of this sometimes he talks words without sense. But my son is a good man.”
The father again extended his hand, which trembled a little. The Sioux had listened, looking at him with respect, and forgetful of Cheschapah, who now stood before them with a cup of cold water.
“You shall see,” he said, “who it is that talks words without sense.”
Two Whistles and the young bucks crowded to watch, but the old men sat where they were. As Cheschapah stood relishing his audience, Pounded Meat stepped up suddenly and upset the cup. He went to the stream and refilled it himself. “Now make it boil,” said he.
Cheschapah smiled, and as he spread his hand quickly over the cup, the water foamed up.
“Huh!” said Two Whistles, startled.
The medicine-man quickly seized his moment. “What does Pounded Meat know of my medicine?” said he. “The dog is cooked. Let the dance begin.”
The drums set up their dull, blunt beating, and the crowd of young and less important bucks came from the outer circle nearer to the council. Cheschapah set the pot in the midst of the flat camp, to be the centre of the dance. None of the old chiefs said more to him, but sat apart
with the empty cup, having words among themselves. The flame reared high into the dark, and showed the rock wall towering close, and at its feet the light lay red on the streaming water. The young Sioux stripped naked of their blankets, hanging them in a screen against the wind from the jaws of the cañon, with more constant shouts as the drumming beat louder, and strokes of echo fell from the black cliffs. The figures twinkled across each other in the glare, drifting and alert, till the dog-dance shaped itself into twelve dancers with a united sway of body and arms, one and another singing his song against the lifted sound of the drums. The twelve sank crouching in simulated hunt for an enemy back and forth over the same space, swinging together.
Presently they sprang with a shout upon their feet, for they had taken the enemy. Cheschapah, leading the line closer to the central pot, began a new figure, dancing the pursuit of the bear. This went faster; and after the bear was taken, followed the elk-hunt, and a new sway and crouch of the twelve gesturing bodies. The thudding drums were ceaseless; and as the dance went always faster and always nearer the dog pot, the steady blows of sound inflamed the dancers; their chests heaved, and their arms and bodies swung alike as the excited crew filed and circled closer to the pot, following Cheschapah, and shouting uncontrollably. They came to firing pistols and slashing the air with knives, when suddenly Cheschapah caught up a piece of steaming dog from the pot, gave it to his best friend, and the dance was done. The dripping figures sat quietly, shining and smooth with sweat, eating their dog-flesh in the ardent light of the fire and the cool splendor of the moon. By-and-by they lay in their blankets to sleep at ease.
The elder chiefs had looked with distrust at Cheschapah as he led the dance; now that the entertainment was over, they rose with gravity to go to their beds.
“It is good for the Sioux and the Crows to be friends,” said Pounded Meat to Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses. “But we want no war with the white man. It is a few young men who say that war is good now.”
“We have not come for war,” replied the Sioux. “We have come to eat much meat together, and remember that day when war was good on the Little Horn, and our warriors killed Yellow Hair and all his soldiers.”
Pounded Meat came to where he and Cheschapah had their blankets.
“We shall have war,” said the confident son to his father. “My medicine is good.”
“Peace is also pretty good,” said Pounded Meat. “Get new thoughts. My son, do you not care any more for my words?”
Cheschapah did not reply.
“I have lived a long while. Yet one man may be wrong. But all cannot be. The other chiefs say what I say. The white men are too strong.”
“They would not be too strong if the old men were not cowards.”
“Have done,” said the father, sternly. “If you are a medicine-man, do not talk like a light fool.”
The Indian has an “honor thy father” deep in his religion too, and Cheschapah was silent. But after he was asleep, Pounded Meat lay brooding. He felt himself dishonored, and his son to be an evil in the tribe. With these sore notions keeping him awake, he saw the night wane into gray, and then he heard the distant snort of a horse. He looked, and started from his blankets, for the soldiers had come, and he ran to wake the sleeping Indians. Frightened, and ignorant why they should be surrounded, the Sioux leaped to their feet; and Stirling, from where he sat on his horse, saw their rushing, frantic figures.
“Go quick, Kinney,” he said to the interpreter, “and tell them it’s peace, or they’ll be firing on us.”
Kinney rode forward alone, with one hand raised; and seeing that sign, they paused, and crept nearer, like crafty rabbits, while the sun rose and turned the place pink. And then came the parley, and the long explanation; and Stirling thanked his stars to see they were going to allow themselves to be peaceably arrested. Bullets you get used to; but after the firing’s done, you must justify it to important personages who live comfortably in Eastern towns and have never seen an Indian in their lives, and are rancid with philanthropy and ignorance.
Stirling would sooner have faced Sioux than sentimentalists, and he was fervently grateful to these savages for coming with him quietly without obliging him to shoot them. Cheschapah was not behaving so amiably; and recognizing him, Stirling understood about the dog. The medicine-man, with his faithful Two Whistles, was endeavoring to excite the prisoners as they were marched down the river to the Crow Agency.
Stirling sent for Kinney. “Send that rascal away,” he said. “I’ll not have him bothering here.”
The interpreter obeyed, but with a singular smile to himself. When he had ordered Cheschapah away, he rode so as to overhear Stirling and Haines talking. When they speculated about the soda-water, Kinney smiled again. He was a quiet sort of man. The people in the valley admired his business head. He supplied grain and steers to Fort Custer, and used to say that business was always slow in time of peace.
By evening Stirling had brought his prisoners to the agency, and there was the lieutenant of Indian police of the Sioux come over from Pine Ridge to bring them home. There was restlessness in the air as night fell round the prisoners and their guard. It was Cheschapah’s hour, and the young Crows listened while he declaimed against the white man for thwarting their hospitality. The strong chain of sentinels was kept busy preventing these hosts from breaking through to fraternize with their guests. Cheschapah did not care that the old Crow chiefs would not listen. When Pretty Eagle remarked laconically that peace was good, the agitator laughed; he was gaining a faction, and the faction was feeling its oats. Accordingly, next morning, though the prisoners were meek on being started home by Stirling with twenty soldiers, and the majority of the Crows were meek at seeing them thus started, this was not all. Cheschapah, with a yelling swarm of his young friends, began to buzz about the column as it marched up the river. All had rifles.
“It’s an interesting state of affairs,” said Stirling to Haines. “There are at least fifty of these devils at our heels now, and more coming. We’ve got twenty men. Haines, your Indian experiences may begin quite early in your career.”
“Yes, especially if our prisoners take to kicking.”
“Well, to compensate for spoiling their dinner-party, the agent gave them some rations and his parting blessing. It may suffice.”
The line of march had been taken up by ten men in advance, followed in the usual straggling fashion by the prisoners, and the rear-guard was composed of the other ten soldiers under Stirling and Haines. With them rode the chief of the Crow police and the lieutenant of the Sioux. This little band was, of course, far separated from the advance-guard, and it listened to the young Crow bucks yelling at its heels. They yelled in English. Every Indian knows at least two English words; they are pungent, and far from complimentary.
“It’s got to stop here,” said Stirling, as they came to a ford known as Reno’s Crossing. “They’ve got to be kept on this side.”
“Can it be done without gunpowder?” Haines asked.
“If a shot is fired now, my friend, it’s war, and a court of inquiry in Washington for you and me, if we’re not buried here. Sergeant, you will take five men and see the column is kept moving. The rest remain with me. The prisoners must be got across and away from their friends.”
The fording began, and the two officers went over to the east bank to see that the instructions were carried out.
“See that?” observed Stirling. As the last of the rear-guard stepped into the stream, the shore they were leaving filled instantly with the Crows. “Every man jack of them is armed. And here’s an interesting development,” he continued.
It was Cheschapah riding out into the water, and with him Two Whistles. The rear guard passed up the trail, and the little knot of men with the officers stood halted on the bank. There were nine—the two Indian police, the two lieutenants, and five long muscular boys of K troop of the First Cavalry. They remained on the bank, looking at the thick painted swarm that yelled across the ford.
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br /> “Bet you there’s a hundred,” remarked Haines.
“You forget I never gamble,” murmured Stirling. Two of the five long boys overheard this, and grinned at each other, which Stirling noted; and he loved them. It was curious to mark the two shores: the feathered multitude and its yells and its fifty yards of rifles that fronted a small spot of white men sitting easily in the saddle, and the clear, pleasant water speeding between. Cheschapah and Two Whistles came tauntingly towards this spot, and the mass of Crows on the other side drew forward a little.
“You tell them,” said Stirling to the chief of the Crow police, “that they must go back.”
Cheschapah came nearer, by way of obedience.
“Take them over, then,” the officer ordered.
The chief of Crow police rode to Cheschapah, speaking and pointing. His horse drew close, shoving the horse of the medicine-man, who now launched an insult that with Indians calls for blood. He struck the man’s horse with his whip, and at that a volume of yells chorussed from the other bank.
“Looks like the court of inquiry,” remarked Stirling. “Don’t shoot, boys,” he commanded aloud.
The amazed Sioux policeman gasped. “You not shoot?” he said. “But he hit that man’s horse—all the same hit your horse, all the same hit you.”
“Right. Quite right,” growled Stirling. “All the same hit Uncle Sam. But we soldier devils have orders to temporize.” His eye rested hard and serious on the party in the water as he went on speaking with jocular unconcern. “Tem-po-rize, Johnny,” said he. “You savvy temporize?”
“Ump! Me no savvy.”
“Bully for you, Johnny. Too many syllables. Well, now! he’s hit that horse again. One more for the court of inquiry. Steady, men! There’s Two Whistles switching now. They ought to call that lad Young Dog Tray. And there’s a chap in paint fooling with his gun. If any more do that—it’s very catching—Yes, we’re going to have a circus. Attention! Now what’s that, do you suppose?”
An apparition, an old chief, came suddenly on the other bank, pushing through the crowd, grizzled and little and lean, among the smooth, full-limbed young blood. They turned and saw him, and slunk from the tones of his voice and the light in his ancient eye. They swerved and melted among the cottonwoods, so that the ford’s edge grew bare of dusky bodies and looked sandy and green again. Cheschapah saw the wrinkled figure coming, and his face sank tame. He stood uncertain in the stream, seeing his banded companions gone and the few white soldiers firm on the bank. The old chief rode to him through the water, his face brightened with a last flare of command.
The Second Western Megapack Page 134