Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  It was dark when he reached the appointed spot. For a whole hour he waited and watched the stars printing their images in the uncertain surface of the pool. At length the rim of the moon appeared. But still there were no signs of the five whom he had selected for the expedition.

  Half the broad shield of the moon stood above the surface of the earth, and then across it passed a file of five stately forms, walking rapidly. The heart of Thunder Moon leaped in his bosom. Here were his men, true to him in spite of the dangers which he had promised them! Yellow Wolf, Snake-that-talks, Big River, Young Hawk, Standing Bear, clustered silently before him.

  Then Yellow Wolf, as the most celebrated figure in war, said quietly:

  “We have thought much of your words, Thunder Moon. We fear the long marches across the plains. But we have brought out our war gear. Our war bows, and our arrows, and our robes, and our shields, and spears, and knives are with us. We have trusted to you to find us ponies. But why should we not ride our own horses?”

  “Brothers,” said Thunder Moon, quivering with emotion, “I do not see you as you stand here. I see you with thinner faces, and with older eyes that have looked on many strange things. I see you with scalps hanging from the points of your spears, and the dust of captured horses rolls back into your nostrils! The Sky People promise us good fortune. Your good luck begins tonight, for these are the horses you are to ride!”

  He led them past the next coppice, and there they saw before them the tall forms of the chestnut horses of Big Hard Face. Thunder Moon stood aside and watched their delight. It was well controlled by all saving Big River. He was a poor man. He was known to be strong and to be brave, but his father had not five horses to his name, and Big River had always to ride on pot-bellied, scraggy, worthless beasts. Now he leaped on the back of a mare and went careering with her across the plain, managing her with heel and gripping knee, while he brandished shield and spear and thrust his weapon through imaginary foes.

  He came back, with a war whoop shrilling from his lips. “Tell me — how could you persuade Big Hard Face to give up so many to you?”

  “The Sky People,” said Thunder Moon seriously, “have talked to him for me and opened his heart. I had only to ask, and he gave them to me. Take the horses. Go back to the city. Take your saddles and your bridles. Only mind you in riding these horses that their sides are as tender as the ribs of newborn babies. A touch is enough to make them gallop. A word is enough to make them race. Leave only one thing behind you — your whips, for you will never need them. Treat them as your brothers!”

  Five gleaming arrows beneath the moon, they raced across the plain and toward the city, half lost in the dusk; and then five sweeping shadows came back to Thunder Moon. He called them together in brief consultation — a brief one, for they were so wild with joy over the chargers which they were to back on this expedition, that they were incapable of long thought on any subject, even of life and death.

  “Snake-that-talks,” said he, “you have ridden south, though never so far as the way we must go. But have you talked with the old and wise men of our nation? Is the trail a picture in your mind?”

  Snake-that-talks, though young, was already famous for his skill on the trail. There were some Indians who could keep in mind the whole story of a trail, like a memorized book. And each hill, each river, each stretch of sand or loam, each change in vegetation was known to them over vast distances. For that reason they were always at home in the prairies.

  Snake-that-talks smiled in satisfaction on Thunder Moon.

  “Trust all of this to me,” said he. “I shall take you to the great river, if you wish, beyond which the Mexicans live. All the way is known to me and the rivers that we cross and the ways of crossing them! Have no fear!”

  “And you, Big River, went east last year with your father to the fort of the palefaces. Can you take us there again?”

  “Yes,” said Big River. “But do some of us ride south and others east?”

  “We ride together to the east, and when we start for the south, each of us will have two new rifles. The medicine arrows have promised them to us.”

  A yell broke from the lips of the irrepressible Standing Bear.

  “Look, brothers!” cried he. “I have six Comanche scalps already at my girdle. Hurry, Big River. Lead us to the east!”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  WHEN THUNDER MOON saw before him the looming outlines of Fort Humphrey Brown, he halted his party and examined the place with care; for, even from this distance, there seemed more solid strength in that place than in all the Indian cities he had ever looked on. And he knew, instinctively, that greater things than White Rain had even dreamed of could be found in that fortress and in the town around it. He prepared to go in alone, because, as he told the others, it takes two men twice as long to accomplish what one man can do with ease.

  He would not go in on one of the best horses, because he felt that if curious eyes fell upon one of those splendid creatures, the horse might be taken away from him by the force of numbers. But he had with him, as his own second mount, the worst appearing of all of the chestnuts. It had been born a dwarf, and it had grown to a maturity which was comparatively stunted. Not an inch over fifteen hands, with a belly which was incurably potted, and with a long, scrawny neck and a heavy, ugly head, and with high-standing, bony withers, it looked the very caricature of a horse. And yet it had its fine points. If one could look past the first features and get down to the running mechanism itself, then The Minnow, as she was called, was a truly admirable running machine. Her legs were perfection; and there was much power in her quarters and such beautiful strength in her sloping shoulders, that Thunder Moon had particularly let his choice fall upon her, feeling that she would best be able to support his crushing weight on the long journeys, leaving Sunset free for the brilliant work of battle, flight, or pursuit. She had won her name, in fact, by the fashion in which, as a yearling, she had been able to dart out and away from the rest of the colts, when they raced together across the grazing lands and that ability to dart, as well as to jog quietly over vast distances, she still retained.

  But when her master had heaped the buffalo robes for barter over her, and when he got into the saddle himself, with his knees thrust up awkwardly high by the short Indian stirrups, she looked like the very sittings of a very poor herd of ponies.

  His shield, his spear, and even his war bow, he left behind him, and he went on into the camp with only one rifle, and his knife. Once or twice, as he drew nearer to the fort, he turned and cast anxious glances behind him, but his party had already vanished on the face of the broad prairie, and he stood alone before the gates of a new civilization.

  The nearer he drew, the more massive and wonderful the buildings seemed to be. There was a cluster of wooden structures about the knees of the fortress itself, and above them were reared the heavy walls of Fort Humphrey Brown, with a cannon glistening here and there. He recognized them from afar, by the size and the brightness of the metal, and he knew that these were the thunder voices of which even the most gallant Indian tribes were mortally afraid. Then he came before the gate, and found there a little cluster of men, with rifles in their hands, talking with very loud voices. They called out sharply to him, in the white man’s strange tongue, which he could not understand, but presently an Indian appeared. It was a Pawnee; and his very eyes turned fire when he saw a Cheyenne. However, since he was a paid interpreter, he went through the usual formula. He asked what Thunder Moon wished to do in the fort, and when the latter said that he had come to barter buffalo robes for the rifles of the white man, he made him swear that Thunder Moon did not enter the fort with the purpose of seeking out any enemy.

  When this colloquy ended, he beckoned to the Cheyenne to advance through the gate; and as he did so, he said: “What is your name, Cheyenne?”

  Thunder Moon turned and looked the Pawnee full in the face.

  “If you knew it,” said he, “you would hide your head in a hole t
he rest of the day, like a prairie dog when the hawk sails over him.”

  Well pleased because he had come out best in the encounter of words, he passed on through the gates and found himself in the town itself.

  He drew The Minnow to a halt before he had gone a hundred yards; for so many new things were rushing upon his senses that he could not very well grasp them all at once. There was the voice of the place, above all. It was not as noisy as an average Indian village, he thought, and there was a great difference in the quality of the sounds which he heard. In an Indian town, all was helter-skelter, and careless, and pointless. There were the wailing of children, and the howling and barking of dogs, and the ring of laughter, and the snorting and neighing of horses — all in a wild hubbub; but in this place, the noises, on the whole, came not from human throats. There was rather a deep, humming sound, blended with a few shrill notes, though even these were not uttered by lips. He passed a darkened house of which the big doors were opened; and, inside, he saw the fierce light of fire, and a man standing with a piece of white-hot iron on which he beat with a hammer, shaping the metal rapidly to his will. A bellows squeaked and moaned under the hand of a boy who helped the blacksmith.

  He passed on to where many smaller hammers were tapping at the sides of a house, fastening on strips of wood and building it a thousand times stronger than any Indian tepee.

  Then he passed a sawmill on the edge of the river, and he looked in and beheld the great circular saws sinking through the logs which were fed to them, with deep, nasal whines. But these were only samples; and everywhere such sights and sounds flowed in upon him, that it seemed to Thunder Moon that every person in the town was working.

  He had heard that among the palefaces even the chiefs were not ashamed to labor more than women; and he had also heard the Indians despise that custom, and he himself had often curled his lip when he heard of it. But it seemed to Thunder Moon that there were differences between this sort of work and that of a squaw. Here was a labor of swift creation which was thrilling to watch and thrilling to think of. Five years before, Fort Humphrey Brown had not been so much as dreamed of; but now it seemed to be rooted in the soil, so that it was impossible to conceive of time or misfortune destroying it.

  A horn sounded just down the street.

  He reined The Minnow to one side of the street just in time to avoid a column of riders that swept around the elbow turn.

  There were fifty cavalry troopers, with jingling sabers at their sides, and well-kept carbines thrust deep into the leather holsters; and, in addition, each of them carried two of the newly invented revolvers.

  Their horses were not like the matchless chestnuts of his father, but, still, they were all big, strong, and well-groomed. The men were all dressed in uniforms and everything about them seemed perfectly kept, and perfectly efficient. At their head rode a splendid figure upon a beautiful horse; and each of the troopers behind him kept his eyes straight forward.

  Each was part of a machine, it seemed to Thunder Moon. Each had submitted himself to the loss of his free will, had made himself into a cog or a lever, or a tooth of a great destructive mechanism. Suddenly the boy understood why it was that often a thousand Indian braves, no matter how gallant, were not able to break the ranks of even a small group of fighters such as these.

  He watched them out of sight, until the dust cloud which they had raised had melted away and left the air pure once more.

  Then he turned around with a sigh, and his eyes met those of a tall man who leaned upon a rifle at the side of the street — a man in deerskin clothes, richly fringed. He was smiling half in amusement and half in contempt at Thunder Moon. But something made the latter draw himself stiffly up in the saddle, and he rode past the white man with his head turned, looking boldly and steadily into the eyes of the latter, and giving him glance for glance.

  The smile of the trapper went out. He scowled and gripped the barrel of his rifle with a significant force. Yet it pleased Thunder Moon that he had been able to extinguish that half-contemptuous and half-hostile smile.

  He went on down the street until he saw something which made him stop The Minnow with a word which was almost a shout. Then he turned in the saddle, and resting his left hand upon his knee, he stared, with mouth agape, at the greatest treasure that it had ever been his good fortune to see, upon a greater treasure than he had even so much as dreamed about.

  There was a long awning before a store, the open interior of which was heaped up with all manner of goods, and from which a strange mingling of smells came forth to the nostrils of the boy. Yonder, he could spy the colors of bright clothes, and the glint of many sorts of metal.

  But all of this was as nothing compared with what he saw directly before him in the front of the store; for there were exposed, under the care of a guard who constantly marched up and down with the most vigilant demeanor, all manner of arms from rifles to revolvers, and from axes and hatchets to knives of every conceivable size.

  A blur of madness swept across the brain of Thunder Moon. With these things in his possession, he felt that he could master the entire world of the plains. Pawnees, Comanches, all the world of red men would go down before him.

  Yet what a prodigious fortune would be required to pay for such weapons! Or, if not fortune, what a tremendous exertion of power, to burst into this fort, and reach this store, and carry away these most desired treasures!

  However, this was the place to see whether or not he had with him enough buffalo robes to buy nine rifles and ammunition, and he dismounted to make inquiries.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  WHEN THUNDER MOON went up the steps to the store, The Minnow would have followed him, but he stopped the mare with a word, and went on until he was opposite the racks of rifles.

  “What will you have, my friend?” inquired a voice in the tongue of the Sioux.

  He looked up sharply, glad to hear one speak in the language of that nation allied to the Cheyennes, and, as he did so, he saw a fat, wide-shouldered man approaching. No, the fellow was not fat; that was all muscle which bulged beneath his coat. His long arms dangled far down, and he walked with a springing step. He had the air, too, and the sharp, steady eyes, of a man who is sure of himself.

  “Rifles,” said Thunder Moon, and held up his fingers to indicate the number.

  The storekeeper looked at the tall youth, and then at the ugly-headed, pot-bellied mare which the latter was riding.

  “Here!” said he.

  He led the way inside the store, past the racks of shining new weapons, and to a corner where there was a group of perhaps a hundred guns standing against the wall.

  “Choose among these!” said he.

  Thunder Moon picked up one, glanced down the barrel, and handed it back. He looked at the others.

  “These are not the ones,” said he.

  It seemed to him that the face of the white man fell a little.

  “All these guns shoot strongly,” said the trader. “All of these guns have already been handled by famous warriors!”

  “Yes,” said Thunder Moon, “and all of those famous warriors are now dead! And perhaps these guns were buried with their masters for a while?”

  The trader stared at him, amazed. Then, with a broad grin, but in silence, he conducted his client to the front of the store, and pointed to the new stock.

  “And what about these?” said he.

  Thunder Moon picked up one and then another. He could not help a grunt of delight. One by one, he selected nine rifles. When he had laid them aside, he went to the mare and lifted from her back the load of robes under which she was staggering. He spread them out on the floor of the store porch. Every one of them was of the finest manufacture of which the Cheyenne women were capable. And every one of them was a painted robe, which might have served as a museum piece.

  The trader, who knew that he could take in a fat sum for each of the pieces from Eastern patrons, ran his eye over the list of them and again glanced at Thunder Moon
.

  So much wealth had never before been brought to him by such a young man, and yet he could see that this was not a chief, nor even the son of a chief; and certainly this was a man who had never taken a scalp.

  As for the rifles, they were good ones; and though they had cost the trader a scant third of their usual wholesale price, owing to certain clandestine relations which he had established with an army commissioner, still he wanted to get something like ten times their actual value.

  He pushed to one side four of the rifles.

  “The robes will buy these four guns,” said he.

  “Only four?” said Thunder Moon.

  The trader scowled.

  “Are not each of these guns big medicine?” he demanded harshly. “Are they not guaranteed to take a life every time they are fired in a battle? Do they not shoot straight and never fail? Yes, they are a gift, for such a price!”

  Thunder Moon looked at him; and then returned to the mare and brought in his last articles of trade.

  These were two new suits of deerskin. They, also, were of the finest manufacture, and they were covered with beads. How many hundreds of hours had been spent upon the decoration of these garments it would have been hard to guess, but certainly the trader had never seen finer costumes in his life. He laid aside three more rifles.

  “Here is the price,” said he. “What else have you?”

  And he scanned the saddlebags of the mare with a hungry eye.

  “Is not this enough?” asked Thunder Moon.

  The trader scowled again.

  “I have offered to treat you,” he said, “as a father would treat his son. Here are seven such rifles as you have never had in your tribe before — all new, all strong, all in good condition, and then you would ask me for more!”

  Thunder Moon sighed bitterly. He had ten rifles, now, counting the three he had brought from home; but his heart was set on having, not the rifles only, but also plenty of ammunition, as well. For of what use were the guns, unless he had enough powder and ball for his men to practice with on their long march to the south and the west? He was familiar with such marksmanship as was to be found among the Cheyennes, and he knew that practice is the only thing that makes perfect with firearms.