Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “We are witnesses,” the others admitted.

  Then they looked with a sort of gloomy wonder at Thunder Moon, as though amazed that even such a stupid fellow as he should have risked such a dreadful loss! For to be mounted upon the back of that silver-footed marvel was to be on the back of a great bird. It was to be beyond pursuit, and it was to be able to overtake with ease every living thing that roamed upon the prairie. Even the winged antelope would have to surrender to such a hunter!

  No wonder, therefore, that they stared in pity and in contempt, and in wonder at Thunder Moon.

  But for his part, he had shut his mind resolutely against the possibility of loss.

  He looked askance at the radiant face of his rival, as they stood on the mark.

  “However, Waiting Bear, I shall let you shoot the gun, once in a long time!”

  Waiting Bear started, and scowled bitterly at his companion.

  “You have very little sense, Thunder Moon,” said he. “However, I shall beat you so far that before I finish, I shall stop to pick up some sand and throw it in your face!”

  But Thunder Moon merely laughed. He had a feeling that the nervous rage of his rival might not lend any speed to his feet. And he said in addition:

  “Remember, Waiting Bear. The hawk also thought that I was only a boy. And the hawk is dead!”

  Waiting Bear stamped in impotent rage, and then with his teeth set and his lips strained back from them he waved to the starter to give the signal.

  “Now, People of the Sky,” said Thunder Moon in his heart, looking upward, “make my wits light and quick. Make my eyes see the best place to step. Give wings to my feet. You have killed the hawk and the snake with my hands. And all the honor that you give to me, I give back to you.”

  The starter had stretched out his arms, ready to strike his hands together, which was the starting signal. Waiting Bear leaned far forward, tense with preparedness.

  “Wait a moment,” said Thunder Moon. “I am not yet ready.”

  The starter relaxed.

  “Are we to stand here all day?” exclaimed Waiting Bear.

  He was in a fury, and Thunder Moon merely laughed. He could guess that all of this rage would blind his rival, and blind men do not run well.

  For his own part, he was marking the course with a keen eye. The Sky People had made him calm in spite of the great wager for which he was running; and that meant that they intended him to use his wits. Use them he would, and he saw that the straight line to the tree was through soft sand, but a little to the right, the waters of the river had risen during the flood time of the spring, and there the ground surface was more compacted and firm. It would not slide back half so much beneath his gripping toes.

  In the meantime, he rubbed off the bottom of his feet. He stretched his legs, one at a time, leisurely, and he smiled around him at the tense faces of the spectators, and at Waiting Bear.

  “You are all witnesses,” said he, “that Waiting Bear wanted to make the wager. I did not wish to steal the rifle from him!”

  There was a snort of fury from Waiting Bear.

  “Ready!” called Thunder Moon sharply.

  The starter smote his hands together, and off they leaped. But Waiting Bear, for all his tenseness, was last off the mark, and thus gave his enemy a vital stride of advantage.

  There was a yell of wonder from the onlookers, for they saw the younger contestant swerve suddenly to the right, and thus abandon his advantage.

  Waiting Bear, seeing this swerve, could not help giving a glance to the side, and an excited yelp of triumph, while he drove straightforward toward the mark. But, in the meantime, Thunder Moon had the firmer ground beneath his feet. There was no backward slipping. And as he ran, it seemed to him that his feet had turned wonderfully light, and that his stride was stretched out and lengthened miraculously.

  He gained on his rival, he passed him, and well in the lead he touched the blasted tree and whirled about.

  He saw an expression of frozen terror and incredulity on the face of Waiting Bear — the very look of the beaten man who cannot understand how his defeat has been accomplished. And back went Thunder Moon, veering sharply to the left, this time, to regain the best footing.

  Behind him came the stretching shadow of his rival. The black head and shoulders of the young brave drifted across the sands beside Thunder Moon, gaining fast. But the race was short. Yonder was the line. The screaming voices of the spectators tore the ears of Thunder Moon. He set his teeth and sprang forward with a last effort at the same moment that he was conscious of Waiting Bear rushing up beside him on even terms.

  And then they were past the line.

  He turned back, dizzy and half blinded, and as he did so, he saw them all running toward him, and Waiting Bear, his head hanging, was walking slowly back toward the distant tepees, whose pointed tops showed against the sky line.

  He had won!

  The boys surrounded him with shrill clamor, slapping him, praising his speed, his courage, his cleverness, envying him the matchless rifle which was to be his.

  But Thunder Moon, gasping for breath and smiling, looked up to the blue of the sky, and to the shining white cloud which drifted across its face.

  As he looked, it dissolved swiftly. The Sky People had performed their work!

  Chapter Seven

  IT WAS MORE or less a triumphal procession that Thunder Moon led back to the village to the lodge of the father of Waiting Bear. He stood before the tepee and saw Waiting Bear, with a face set like iron, bear forth the great prize, a shining rifle, light, trim, beautifully balanced. Not half the warriors in the tribe possessed firearms, and not a single man had anything to show that was comparable with this.

  Thunder Moon carried that trophy back to the lodge of Big Hard Face and found he had just returned from hunting, with his horse loaded down with buffalo meat. He forgot the results of his hunting trip, however, when he saw his foster child with the rifle in his hands, surrounded by this little herd of admiring youngsters.

  Big Hard Face took the boy and the gun together and lifted them triumphantly above his head toward the sky, and he gave thanks with all his heart.

  And he cried aloud: “You thought that his heart was dead. But it was only sleeping. And there has never before been such a man among the Cheyennes. You shall see hereafter!”

  And then he took the lad to the interior of the tepee and sat him down, shutting out all saving White Crow. She was busy with her evening cookery, and even her hard and withered face lighted with interest as she watched and listened.

  “Now,” said Big Hard Face, taking the rifle with a covetous touch, “tell me everything that has happened, and I shall see that this gun never lacks food, and you shall practice with it until your hand is steadier than a rock and the eagle falls out of the sky when you fire!”

  Thunder Moon smiled. His whole heart was loosened and dissolved and ready to pour itself out in talk, but he restrained himself with a mighty effort, for he remembered the compact that he had made with the Sky People. They had fulfilled their part of the bargain, and they had given him glory enough. For his part, he was not to boast.

  He sighed. He had not dreamed that it would be so fearfully difficult to keep his self-esteem under control.

  “It was nothing,” said Thunder Moon. “It was only that Waiting Bear and I ran a race for a bet. The big stallion, against this gun and two of his horses. He will send the horses to your tepee later!”

  And suddenly he jumped up and bolted from the lodge, but as he went out he heard the voice of his foster father exclaiming, half stifled with pride:

  “Do you hear, White Crow? He is also modest! He will not boast!”

  “Tush!” said that evil-minded old dame. “You will find that at bottom there is something of which he has to be ashamed!”

  In the meantime, Waiting Bear had poured out his story in a passion of grief to his father. The latter listened with a stony face, but his eyes were fire; the possession of tha
t gun had been their greatest family treasure.

  “Big medicine has been working for young Thunder Moon,” said he at the end. “Tell me if there was nothing strange when you ran?”

  “Yes, yes!” answered Waiting Bear passionately. “My feet were as heavy as two stones, and something breathed against me and pushed me back!”

  His father nodded.

  “We shall take the back trail of Thunder Moon,” said he, “and find out what medicine he made, if we can. I have seen you both run, and he can no more beat you in a fair race than a crow can beat a hawk!”

  Accordingly, they picked up the back trail of Thunder Moon on the bank of the river and followed it with scrupulous care until they came to the little lake across which he had swum, and on the farther side, they found the great dead snake, its head smashed in, and trains of ants already making procession toward it. There was no doubt about the identity of him who had killed it. The chief lifted the long, heavy body and held it at arm’s length.

  “Look!” said he. “What medicine gave him the power to beat you in the race, to shoot the hawk out of the sky, and the courage to taunt you to your face? It was the medicine of the snake, which he caught in the bottom of the river and carried to the land and killed. Could he have swum down and back with such a weight, except for his medicine that was helping him? Therefore, do not be ashamed. He has a big medicine; it is the medicine that beat you, and not Thunder Moon!”

  They went back to the village, and instantly the tale was repeated, and it was everywhere believed, because this awakening of Thunder Moon was almost the strangest thing that had ever happened in the Cheyenne tribe. Incidentally, affairs were magnified a good deal. It was only natural that the size of the snake should be multiplied by two or three, and that the height at which the hawk had been flying should be doubled, and that the ease with which Thunder Moon had beaten Waiting Bear in the race should be turned into a prodigious thing, so that it was accepted that a miracle had been wrought for Thunder Moon on this day.

  Such was the manner in which the story was made known, and the more perfectly Thunder Moon kept his silence about the subject, the more it was romanced about, until it had become a thing of epic proportions.

  Thunder Moon was himself more than a little frightened by the disturbance this had caused. Now that he looked back upon the day, he could hardly tell whether it had been a dream or not, and something told him that the Sky People, who had so manifestly befriended him, would never do so again.

  However, he bent himself desperately to a great effort, in order that he might afterward be able to prove himself at least as good as the other boys of the tribe. He knew that he was slow and clumsy of foot, and that his running powers sufficed only for a short sprint, and that he was awkward with knife or bow and arrows, and that he could not scorn pain as the other youngsters did, and that he was far from being their equal in sharpness of eye. But at least a magnificent weapon had been confided to his hands. Should he not make the most of that? That, and the fleet horses which his father owned?

  He had Big Hard Face show him all about the care of a rifle. And that delighted Indian gave an ample supply of precious ammunition into his hands. After that, from dawn to dark, the gun was never out of his hands.

  It had become a religion to Thunder Moon. Having failed at all else, he dared not fail at this. He lay awake at night, pondering his faults of the day and the manner of correcting them. He awakened from his sleep with sudden twitchings and jerkings, and found himself in the middle of a great dream in which the rifle was achieving monstrous things. The crease between his eyes was sunk deeper than ever, but at the same time, those eyes grew brighter and steadier. The dullness of continual bafflement began to leave them, and a grim resolution took its place. Big Hard Face, all of these days, watched the progress of his son with an intense anxiety and joy. He could hardly believe that his hopes were in process of being fulfilled. And yet here were the indubitable signs of it.

  There was only one poison in his life, and that was supplied by his withered aunt, White Crow, whose croaking voice never dwelt upon anything except the deficiencies of Thunder Moon.

  “You will see how it is in the end,” she said. “Now he lies and speaks like a man. But he is still a coward, and he will always be a coward! I saw him yesterday knock his shin against your bow, and his face wrinkled up like the face of a baby about to cry.”

  “Look!” said Big Hard Face sullenly and savagely. “All the goodness and the kindness has been taken from you. There was once enough of it in you to make you smooth. Now it is gone and you are full of wrinkles and emptiness! I tell you, Thunder Moon will be a great chief!”

  “You yourself are afraid to test him!” she cried.

  “Afraid? White Crow, I do not wish to say that you lie, but I fear that I shall have to.”

  “Do I lie?” she answered. “Then I shall tell you a way to know whether or not he is a coward.”

  “What way?” he asked. “Would you have him fight a bear hand to hand?”

  “Not that. But a little thing. Every good Cheyenne boy is not afraid to do it when he comes close to manhood.”

  “Very well, tell me.”

  “What do the boys do in honor of Tarawa, and to give themselves good luck on the warpath? They have their breasts pierced, and thongs passed through them, and they try to tear the thongs through the flesh.”

  Big Hard Face started to answer, and then, remembering the horror with which his son looked upon pain, he checked himself. He wished with all his heart that this subject had never been brought up.

  “Tomorrow,” said White Crow, “Waiting Bear will have his breasts slashed, and the thong will be passed through the cuts. Now, nephew, if you have faith in your son, place him on the hill by the side of Waiting Bear. Let us see your son bear pain!”

  Big Hard Face rubbed his knuckles across his forehead, and then he shouted hoarsely: “I shall do it! I shall do it, White Crow! Go tell all the old women! They may go tomorrow and watch, and they will see what a man Thunder Moon has become!”

  Chapter Eight

  “TARAWA, WHO RULES in the top of the sky and the bottom of the earth, and who made everything and watches over everything — Tarawa,” said Big Hard Face, “loves the Cheyennes more than all the other peoples of the earth; more than he loves the Dakotas, or the Pawnees, or the Osages, or the Comanches, or the whites.”

  Here he paused a little and looked fixedly at the boy; but the eyes of Thunder Moon did not waver. It was plain that, as yet, he did not suspect that his blood was really different from that of the tribe. There had been a sort of unvoiced understanding through the tribe that the real parentage of Thunder Moon should never be discussed in his hearing.

  No, the eyes of the boy were fixed upon the face of his foster father merely with a deep interest. Of late, he had adopted this manner whenever his elders spoke about the Sky People; as though he weighed these matters in his mind. Therefore, all of the Cheyennes felt that this boy knew some big medicine. They were the more sure of it because he never spoke of the matter.

  “Tarawa,” went on the father, “loves the Cheyennes, but he wishes to make sure that the Cheyennes are worthy of him. And when he looks down at a party on the warpath, how is Tarawa to know the good Cheyennes from the bad ones?”

  He made another pause.

  Thunder Moon frowned, but he could not penetrate to the hidden meaning.

  “I can’t tell,” said he.

  And Big Hard Face, looking down again at the arrow which his hands were almost automatically shaping and smoothing, said in continuation:

  “He must have some sign. The eyes of Tarawa can see everything, but they must see a sign so that he can distinguish man from man. Look! There is Lame Eagle!”

  Both Big Hard Face and his son forgot all else for the moment and fixed their attention upon the great war leader of the tribe, who was at that moment passing in the company of the great medicine man, White Rain. The latter, as usual, had his head
bowed, and his scowling glance fixed upon the earth, as though he were reading a trail; but Lame Eagle’s face was ever lifted; and the wind stirred the magnificent feathers that rose straight above his head and drooped down his back. He greeted them with a pleasant word.

  “May your days be long, and may buffalo meat be ever in your lodge, Big Hard Face!”

  Then he passed on, touching the ground lightly with his staff; and, as he went by, the sun made the bright bead work arabesques on his deerskin suit gleam.

  Gentle in speech, slow in counsel, a thunderbolt in war, it had been long since that tribe of the Cheyennes had possessed such a leader; and the eyes of both the boy and his foster father glistened as they watched the great man out of sight.

  “But even the face of Lame Eagle,” went on the older man, turning back to his theme, “cannot always be known to Tarawa. For there is a hurrying and sweeping of men, in the battle. But first, he sees the feathers of the chief, then he looks more closely. He sees that the arms of Lame Eagle are covered with scars where he has torn away the skin in honor of the gods. And he looks more closely still; and he sees a great, ragged white scar over each breast. Then he knows that this is a brave man, who loves the Sky People; and Tarawa puts strength into the hand of Lame Eagle.”

  “It may be so,” said Thunder Moon slowly.

  His foster father’s face darkened.

  “It is always thus!” said he impatiently. “When the other young men of the Cheyennes sit with their elders, they write down in their minds the words which they hear and strive only to remember them; but Thunder Moon first thinks and tries to judge for himself. Is he a man to judge and think? Has he killed so much as a buffalo calf in all his life?”

  Tears brimmed the eyes of the boy, and his foster father, more disturbed than ever, glanced hastily away. There was so much woman in this boy, that half the time his heart failed him; and he was filled with doubts about the future of the lad.