Red Men and White

by Wister, Owen

  Cheschapah told his victory to the council, with many sentences about himself, and how his medicine had fended all hurt from the Crows. The elder chiefs sat cold.

  “Ump!” said one, at the close of the oration, and “Heh!” remarked another. The sounds were of assent without surprise.

  “It is good,” said Pretty Eagle. His voice seemed to enrage Cheschapah.

  “Heh! it is always pretty good!” remarked Spotted Horse.

  “I have done this too,” said Pounded Meat to his son, simply. “Once, twice, three times. The Crows have always been better warriors than the Piegans.”

  “Have you made water boil like me?” Cheschapah said.

  “I am not a medicine-man,” replied his father. “But I have taken horses and squaws from the Piegans. You make good medicine, maybe; but a cup of water will not kill many white men. Can you make the river boil? Let Cheschapah make bigger medicine, so the white man shall fear him as well as the Piegans, whose hearts are well known to us.”

  Cheschapah scowled. “Pounded Meat shall have this,” said he. “I will make medicine to-morrow, old fool!”

  “Drive him from the council!” said Pretty Eagle.

  “Let him stay,” said Pounded Meat. “His bad talk was not to the council, but to me, and I do not count it.”

  But the medicine-man left the presence of the chiefs, and came to the cabin of Kinney.

  “Hello!” said the white man. “Sit down.”

  “You got that?” said the Indian, standing.

  “More water medicine? I guess so. Take a seat.”

  “No, not boil any more. You got that other?”

  “That other, eh? Well, now, you’re not going to blind them yet? What’s your hurry?”

  “Yes. Make blind to-morrow. Me great chief!”

  A slight uneasiness passed across the bantering face of Kinney. His Seltzer salts performed what he promised, but he had mentioned another miracle, and he did not want his dupe to find him out until a war was thoroughly set agoing. He looked at the young Indian, noticing his eyes.

  “What’s the matter with you, anyway, Cheschapah?”

  “Me great chief!” The raised voice trembled with unearthly conviction.

  “Well, I guess you are. I guess you’ve got pretty far along,” said the frontier cynic. He tilted his chair back and smiled at the child whose primitive brain he had tampered with so easily. The child stood looking at him with intent black eyes. “Better wait, Cheschapah. Come again. Medicine heap better after a while.”

  The Indian’s quick ear caught the insincerity without understanding it. “You give me that quick!” he said, suddenly terrible.

  “Oh, all right, Cheschapah. You know more medicine than me.”

  “Yes, I know more.”

  The white man brought a pot of scarlet paint, and the Indian’s staring eyes contracted. Kinney took the battered cavalry sabre in his hand, and set its point in the earth floor of the cabin. “Stand back,” he said, in mysterious tones, and Cheschapah shrank from the impending sorcery. Now Kinney had been to school once, in his Eastern childhood, and there had committed to memory portions of Shakespeare, Mrs. Hemans, and other poets out of a Reader. He had never forgotten a single word of any of them, and it now occurred to him that for the purposes of an incantation it would be both entertaining for himself and impressive to Cheschapah if he should recite “The Battle of Hohenlinden.” He was drawing squares and circles with the point of the sabre.

  “No,” he said to himself, “that piece won’t do. He knows too much English. Some of them words might strike him as bein’ too usual, and he’d start to kill me, and spoil the whole thing. ‘Munich’ and ‘chivalry’ are snortin’, but ‘sun was low’ ain’t worth a damn. I guess—”

  He stopped guessing, for the noon recess at school came in his mind, like a picture, and with it certain old-time preliminaries to the game of tag.

  “‘Eeny, meeny, money, my,’”

  said Kinney, tapping himself, the sabre, the paint-pot, and Cheschapah in turn, one for each word. The incantation was begun. He held the sabre solemnly upright, while Cheschapah tried to control his excited breathing where he stood flattened against the wall.

  “‘Butter, leather, boney, stry;

  Hare-bit, frost-neck,

  Harrico, barrico, whee, why, whoa, whack!’

  “You’re it, Cheschapah.” After that the weapon was given its fresh coat of paint, and Cheschapah went away with his new miracle in the dark.

  “He is it,” mused Kinney, grave, but inwardly lively. He was one of those sincere artists who need no popular commendation. “And whoever he does catch, it won’t be me,” he concluded. He felt pretty sure there would be war now.

  Dawn showed the summoned troops near the agency at the corral, standing to horse. Cheschapah gathered his hostiles along the brow of the ridge in the rear of the agency buildings, and the two forces watched each other across the intervening four hundred yards.

  “There they are,” said the agent, jumping about. “Shoot them, colonel; shoot them!”

  “You can’t do that, you know,” said the officer, “without an order from the President, or an overt act from the Indians.”

  So nothing happened, and Cheschapah told his friends the white men were already afraid of him. He saw more troops arrive, water their horses in the river, form line outside the corral, and dismount. He made ready at this movement, and all Indian on-lookers scattered from the expected fight. Yet the white man stayed quiet. It was issue day, but no families remained after drawing their rations. They had had no dance the night before, as was usual, and they did not linger a moment now, but came and departed with their beef and flour at once.

  “I have done all this,” said Cheschapah to Two Whistles.

  “Cheschapah is a great man,” assented the friend and follower. He had gone at once to his hay-field on his return from the Piegans, but some one had broken the little Indian’s fence, and cattle were wandering in what remained of his crop.

  “Our nation knows I will make a war, and therefore they do not stay here,” said the medicine-man, caring nothing what Two Whistles might have suffered. “And now they will see that the white soldiers dare not fight with Cheschapah. The sun is high now, but they have not moved because I have stopped them. Do you not see it is my medicine?”

  “We see it.” It was the voice of the people.

  But a chief spoke. “Maybe they wait for us to come.”

  Cheschapah answered. “Their eyes shall be made sick. I will ride among them, but they will not know it.” He galloped away alone, and lifted his red sword as he sped along the ridge of the hills, showing against the sky. Below at the corral the white soldiers waited ready, and heard him chanting his war song through the silence of the day. He turned in a long curve, and came in near the watching troops and through the agency, and then, made bolder by their motionless figures and guns held idle, he turned again and flew, singing, along close to the line, so they saw his eyes; and a few that had been talking low as they stood side by side fell silent at the spectacle. They could not shoot until some Indian should shoot. They watched him and the gray pony pass and return to the hostiles on the hill. Then they saw the hostiles melt away like magic. Their prophet had told them to go to their tepees and wait for the great rain he would now bring. It was noon, and the sky utterly blue over the bright valley. The sun rode a space nearer the west, and the thick black clouds assembled in the mountains and descended; their shadow flooded the valley with a lake of slatish blue, and presently the sudden torrents sluiced down with flashes and the ample thunder of Montana. Thus not alone the law against our soldiers firing the first shot in an Indian excitement, but now also the elements coincided to help the medicine-man’s destiny.

  Cheschapah sat in a tepee with his father, and as the rain splashed heavily on the earth the old man gazed at the young one.

  “Why do you tremble, my son? You have made the white soldier’s heart soft,” said Pounded Meat.
“You are indeed a great man, my son.”

  Cheschapah rose. “Do not call me your son,” said he. “That is a lie.” He went out into the fury of the rain, lifting his face against the drops, and exultingly calling out at each glare of the lightning. He went to Pretty Eagle’s young squaw, who held off from him no longer, but got on a horse, and the two rode into the mountains. Before the sun had set, the sky was again utterly blue, and a cool scent rose everywhere in the shining valley.

  The Crows came out of their tepees, and there were the white soldiers obeying orders and going away. They watched the column slowly move across the flat land below the bluffs, where the road led down the river twelve miles to the post.

  “They are afraid,” said new converts. “Cheschapah’s rain has made their hearts soft.”

  “They have not all gone,” said Pretty Eagle. “Maybe he did not make enough rain.” But even Pretty Eagle began to be shaken, and he heard several of his brother chiefs during the next few days openly declare for the medicine-man. Cheschapah with his woman came from the mountains, and Pretty Eagle did not dare to harm him. Then another coincidence followed that was certainly most reassuring to the war party. Some of them had no meat, and told Cheschapah they were hungry. With consummate audacity he informed them he would give them plenty at once. On the same day another timely electric storm occurred up the river, and six steers were struck by lightning.

  When the officers at Fort Custer heard of this they became serious.

  “If this was not the nineteenth century,” said Haines, “I should begin to think the elements were deliberately against us.”

  “It’s very careless of the weather,” said Stirling. “Very inconsiderate, at such a juncture.”

  Yet nothing more dangerous than red-tape happened for a while. There was an expensive quantity of investigation from Washington, and this gave the hostiles time to increase both in faith and numbers.

  Among the excited Crows only a few wise old men held out. As for Cheschapah himself, ambition and success had brought him to the weird enthusiasm of a fanatic. He was still a charlatan, but a charlatan who believed utterly in his star. He moved among his people with growing mystery, and his hapless adjutant, Two Whistles, rode with him, slaved for him, abandoned the plans he had for making himself a farm, and, desiring peace in his heart, weakly cast his lot with war. Then one day there came an order from the agent to all the Indians: they were to come in by a certain fixed day. The department commander had assembled six hundred troops at the post, and these moved up the river and went into camp. The usually empty ridges, and the bottom where the road ran, filled with white and red men. Half a mile to the north of the buildings, on the first rise from the river, lay the cavalry, and some infantry above them with a howitzer, while across the level, three hundred yards opposite, along the river-bank, was the main Indian camp. Even the hostiles had obeyed the agent’s order, and came in close to the troops, totally unlike hostiles in general; for Cheschapah had told them he would protect them with his medicine, and they shouted and sang all through this last night. The women joined with harsh cries and shriekings, and a scalp-dance went on, besides lesser commotions and gatherings, with the throbbing of drums everywhere. Through the sleepless din ran the barking of a hundred dogs, that herded and hurried in crowds of twenty at a time, meeting, crossing from fire to fire among the tepees. Their yelps rose to the high bench of land, summoning a horde of coyotes. These cringing nomads gathered from the desert in a tramp army, and, skulking down the bluffs, sat in their outer darkness and ceaselessly howled their long, shrill greeting to the dogs that sat in the circle of light. The general sent scouts to find the nature of the dance and hubbub, and these brought word it was peaceful; and in the morning another scout summoned the elder chiefs to a talk with the friend who had come from the Great Father at Washington to see them and find if their hearts were good.

  “Our hearts are good,” said Pretty Eagle. “We do not want war. If you want Cheschapah, we will drive him out from the Crows to you.”

  “There are other young chiefs with bad hearts,” said the commissioner, naming the ringleaders that were known. He made a speech, but Pretty Eagle grew sullen. “It is well,” said the commissioner; “you will not help me to make things smooth, and now I step aside and the war chief will talk.”

  “If you want any other chiefs,” said Pretty Eagle, “come and take them.”

  “Pretty Eagle shall have an hour and a half to think on my words,” said the general. “I have plenty of men behind me to make my words good. You must send me all those Indians who fired at the agency.”

  The Crow chiefs returned to the council, which was apart from the war party’s camp; and Cheschapah walked in among them, and after him, slowly, old Pounded Meat, to learn how the conference had gone.

  “You have made a long talk with the white man,” said Cheschapah. “Talk is pretty good for old men. I and the young chiefs will fight now and kill our enemies.”

  “Cheschapah,” said Pounded Meat, “if your medicine is good, it may be the young chiefs will kill our enemies to-day. But there are other days to come, and after them still others; there are many, many days. My son, the years are a long road. The life of one man is not long, but enough to learn this thing truly: the white man will always return. There was a day on this river when the dead soldiers of Yellow Hair lay in hills, and the squaws of the Sioux warriors climbed among them with their knives. What do the Sioux warriors do now when they meet the white man on this river? Their hearts are on the ground, and they go home like children when the white man says, ‘You shall not visit your friends.’ My son, I thought war was good once. I have kept you from the arrows of our enemies on many trails when you were so little that my blankets were enough for both. Your mother was not here any more, and the chiefs laughed because I carried you. Oh, my son, I have seen the hearts of the Sioux broken by the white man, and I do not think war is good.”

  “The talk of Pounded Meat is very good,” said Pretty Eagle. “If Cheschapah were wise like his father, this trouble would not have come to the Crows. But we could not give the white chief so many of our chiefs that he asked for to-day.”

  Cheschapah laughed. “Did he ask for so many? He wanted only Cheschapah, who is not wise like Pounded Meat.”

  “You would have been given to him,” said Pretty Eagle.

  “Did Pretty Eagle tell the white chief that? Did he say he would give Cheschapah? How would he give me? In one hand, or two? Or would the old warrior take me to the white man’s camp on the horse his young squaw left?”

  Pretty Eagle raised his rifle, and Pounded Meat, quick as a boy, seized the barrel and pointed it up among the poles of the tepee, where the quiet black fire smoke was oozing out into the air. “Have you lived so long,” said Pounded Meat to his ancient comrade, “and do this in the council?” His wrinkled head and hands shook, the sudden strength left him, and the rifle fell free.

  “Let Pretty Eagle shoot,” said Cheschapah, looking at the council. He stood calm, and the seated chiefs turned their grim eyes upon him. Certainty was in his face, and doubt in theirs. “Let him send his bullet five times—ten times. Then I will go and let the white soldiers shoot at me until they all lie dead.”

  “It is heavy for me,” began Pounded Meat, “that my friend should be the enemy of my son.”

  “Tell that lie no more,” said Cheschapah. “You are not my father. I have made the white man blind, and I have softened his heart with the rain. I will call the rain to-day.” He raised his red sword, and there was a movement among the sitting figures. “The clouds will come from my father’s place, where I have talked with him as one chief to another. My mother went into the mountains to gather berries. She was young, and the thunder-maker saw her face. He brought the black clouds, so her feet turned from home, and she walked where the river goes into the great walls of the mountain, and that day she was stricken fruitful by the lightning. You are not the father of Cheschapah.” He dealt Pounded Meat a blow
, and the old man fell. But the council sat still until the sound of Cheschapah’s galloping horse died away. They were ready now to risk everything. Their scepticism was conquered.

  The medicine-man galloped to his camp of hostiles, and, seeing him, they yelled and quickly finished plaiting their horses’ tails. Cheschapah had accomplished his wish; he had become the prophet of all the Crows, and he led the armies of the faithful. Each man stripped his blanket off and painted his body for the fight. The forms slipped in and out of the brush, buckling their cartridge-belts, bringing their ponies, while many families struck their tepees and moved up nearer the agency. The spare horses were run across the river into the hills, and through the yelling that shifted and swept like flames along the wind the hostiles made ready and gathered, their crowds quivering with motion, and changing place and shape as more mounted Indians appeared.

  “Are the holes dug deep as I marked them on the earth?” said Cheschapah to Two Whistles. “That is good. We shall soon have to go into them from the great rain I will bring. Make these strong, to stay as we ride. They are good medicine, and with them the white soldiers will not see you any more than they saw me when I rode among them that day.”

  He had strips and capes of red flannel, and he and Two Whistles fastened them to their painted bodies.