by Max Brand
Red Hawk’s conscience troubled him a little. He had to take thought for a moment before he could answer: “Well, there is another reason. When I saw him, I could not take him out of my eye. But who am I to hunt down White Horse that whole tribes have failed to take? It was only good luck, and much waiting, that gave him to me.”
“Maisry!” called Lester. “You must come out here, my dear.” The kitchen door opened, and Mrs. Lester’s excited face appeared. “She’ll do no such thing!” she cried. “Richard Lester, what are you thinking of?”
“There’s a mystery here,” said the lawyer. “Maisry, you’ll have to come.”
And suddenly the girl was through the doorway and hurrying down the steps, throwing off her mother’s hand.
Chapter Twenty
It seemed to Red Hawk that he could see the girl’s whole nature as she came down the steps toward him. Where her will was bent, there was no strength in the world that could restrain her. An ecstasy came over him. He started to proclaim himself in a chant that rushed from his lips, crying out: “I am the Red Hawk! Look at me! Wonder at me! I am that man who saw White Horse blow over the green earth like a cloud across the sky. He ran with the wind, and I walked . . . but my steps were longer than his, and I touched him. He ran, but I stepped over the mountains and caught him in my hand. I looked from the mountain top and White Horse moved through the valley like the image of a cloud in still waters. I reached down and caught him.
“Enemies rose up, but their hands were stopped by the spirits. Their hands were charmed by the medicine of Red Hawk. They were helpless to harm him. The Dakotas gave him horses and a rifle. The Blackfeet left their camp and walked into the storm to honor him. The Great Spirit, Sweet Medicine, persuaded them, for he moved in the shadow of Red Hawk . . . he glanced in my eyes. . . .
“The water of the lake is hushed. It is hard as rock and clear as air, and White Horse flees across it. The ice crumbles beneath his hoofs as the clouds crumble away before the thunderbolt. He is lost in the cold, dark water. . . .
“No, White Horse, be brave and strong, for Red Hawk is beside you. He breaks the thick ice. He draws you out to the land. You are hurt and one leg hangs down, but be not afraid. The medicine of Red Hawk is strong. Four times a day he purifies himself with smoke and prays for you. Who shall tell when the prayers will be answered or the cold wind stop blowing?
“Red Hawk has made a house to keep you warm. He has bent the trees and made them lift your weight from the ground. He brings you grass from under the snow. What shall it be, at last? Are you to die, or are you to live, strong and free? Live, White Horse! Be free. Gallop again over the mountains while I turn my face toward my people. I am not sad.
“What follows me? Shadows are not white, but this is shining white that follows me. It is White Horse. He comes to my hand like a hawk from the sky. He bends his head before me. He carries me on wings over the prairie. He stamps and the earth trembles . . . he neighs and the wild ducks scatter in the sky . . . but he comes to my voice and submits to my touch.
“Ah-hai! Do you see him? Is there truth in the tongue of Red Hawk, or is he a double-speaker? He brings White Horse back. He puts him in the hand of the girl. He closes her fingers around him. He makes White Horse belong to her. . . .
“He is yours. Take him. Sit on his back while I walk beside you. Come away with me till we see the smoke going up from the lodges of the Cheyennes. They are my people. They see your face and they laugh with happiness. They fill the pots with back-fat and buffalo meat. They are feasting and singing. They speak of Red Hawk and his squaw, and they are glad. Even the dogs have marrow bones to crack and lick. There is nothing but happiness. Give me your hand. Let me put you on the back of White Horse, and he will carry you over the edge of the world and back again to me.”
The stallion, as his master walked back and forth, chanting, moved restlessly. Now he galloped to the end of the yard, then wheeled and flew back to stand beside Red Hawk, now shook his head as though to deny the words that were spoken. At the end, Red Hawk made a step forward, holding out his hand to the girl.
The mother cried out in a shrill voice of denial, but that was nothing to Red Hawk. What mattered to him was that the girl made no gesture to meet him.
The hand that he extended to her turned to lead and fell back to his side. Then he heard Richard Lester saying: “What is it, Maisry? You must tell me what this is all about?”
“There is something,” she answered. “Go inside with Mother and see if you can quiet her. I’m not going to run away, if that’s what she’s afraid of. And I must find out what Red Hawk is thinking about. I must be alone with him in order to find out.”
“You’re right,” said Lester, and walked past her into the house.
It had been growing gradually to the dimness of twilight, but the sudden darkening was all in the mind of Red Hawk as he stared at the girl. There was still enough of the day left to keep a faint glow in her hair, but it seemed to him that she was a picture against a background of black.
The kitchen door closed. The sharp voice of the wife and the deeper, quieter voice of Lester trailed forward through the house and were silent.
“Now, Red Hawk,” said the girl. “Will you tell me why you thought that White Horse was a marriage price for me . . . as you call it?”
She spoke with the gentleness, he felt, of one who does not wish to deceive, but who would make everything clear, even to the mind of a child.
He said sadly: “Even the good and the brave forget. One winter may cover a deep trail. But I remember that when I was a slave in this camp, one day I was free again. I went to the creek and washed the filth of the slavery away from my body. I came down to a place where I heard voices, and one of them was yours. Two men were with you. Both asked for you to come to their lodges, and then you made a choice. You told them that you would follow the man who brought you White Horse. And that is why White Horse is here.”
She had uttered a faint cry before he came to the last words. She was saying, over and over: “It was but a joke, Red Hawk. It was but a joke. It was a way of saying that I liked them both, but that I wouldn’t marry either of them. It was a way of saying that I cared for neither Jeremy nor Joe enough to marry. It was only an extravagant way of talking. It was only a joke, Red Hawk!”
“Hai” said Red Hawk softly. He moved his arms as if to draw a robe about him. “It was a joke. Ought I to laugh? I cannot laugh. I am only a Cheyenne, and the whites laugh at me. Even the women laugh at me.”
“I do not laugh at you,” she told him earnestly. “I’m sick at heart.”
“White Horse is not what you want, then. And Red Hawk you don’t want. What is he? He is not a chief. Maisry waits for a great man of her own people . . . and Red Hawk is but a dirty Indian.”
“If I had known what you were going through for my sake,” she said, “I would have. . . . No, there is nothing that I could have done. My father is very ill, Red Hawk. I must find a husband who can take care of him, and of my mother and of me.”
“To look on the face of a mother-in-law is not permitted. It is a bad thing,” said Red Hawk. “But I can find a lodge for them, and another for you and me. I am a good hunter, and there will always be meat for the pot. Not one of the three of you will ever be hungry. And you will have White Horse. Hai! Think of how he will put his head through the entrance flap in the morning and tell us that the sun is rising.”
“Let me try to explain,” she continued. “I want you to know, exactly. I couldn’t speak of it to another person, but I must tell you, Red Hawk. I’ve never known another being who was more to me than . . . No, what I must tell you is that my father needs the care of very wise doctors. He has to go to a different part of the world, where even the wind at night is never cold. Do you understand? I must have money to take care of him . . . a great deal of money.”
“I shall take the three of you so far south that we will be inside the lodge of the sun,” he told her. He went close and stood
over her. “Why do you put up words for me to jump over?” he said. “If I went out and caught White Horse, do you think that the talking of a squaw will hold me away? Don’t speak to me like a girl, but like a man . . . honestly, so that I can understand you. Women talk over their shoulder. They run away, and their eyes ask a man to follow them. But I shall not follow you like a foolish boy. Will you talk to me as men talk?”
White Horse suddenly tried to pass between them. Red Hawk put out his hand on the muzzle of the great stallion, and for a moment White Horse amused himself by tossing the hand up and down.
“I’ll try to talk as you wish,” said the girl.
“Tell me, then, if you feel what I feel, that it is happiness to be near you and sickness to be away . . . that to be near you is like eating when I am very hungry, and to be away is like having a full belly that loathes food. It is strength to be close to you, and weakness to be away from you. Have you felt like that? Say quickly as a man would say.”
“Never before,” said the girl. “But when you brought White Horse back with you . . . now I know what it is. I shall be unhappy when you go away again.”
“That is good,” said Red Hawk. “Hai! When you say that, I step to the top of a mountain and see the world. I want to talk more about you. Even if there were more light, I should not be able to see you more clearly, because my eyes have moved over you little by little, slowly, as the sun moves, eating up the shadow. My eyes have gone over the tips of your fingers, over your knuckles, over your wrists, over your arms, over your throat slowly . . . and slowly over your face, so that even when I was far away your lips and your eyelids must have felt a warmth as I thought of you.
“Now listen to me. I am not a great chief among my people. I am not even a warrior to sit in the council, because I shrank from the sacrifice of blood. You see that I have put all my heart nakedly before you, as a child is naked in the arms of its mother. But still I have friends in the tribe. There are people who love Red Hawk and wait for him. My father sits with his head covered, and he hopes for my voice. I see the white lodges and the green plains, and the horses grazing, sleeking their sides with good pasture. I have been far away from all of these things, and I have been hungry for them. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” said a broken voice.
“Hai! Ah-hai! exclaimed Red Hawk. “Now you understand truly. You are sad. But if I can make you sad, then I can also make you happy.”
“Yes,” said the girl. “It is true.”
“It is dark now,” he said. “But here is my hand, close to the nose of White Horse. I shall not touch you, Maisry . . . but, if you put the tip of a finger against my hand, then you are mine as much as though you had lived a year in my lodge.”
He heard vague, faint sounds of grief in her throat. Then she said: “I have given myself away to another man.”
He caught hold of White Horse’s mane and clung to it. “Jeremy Bailey,” she said, “is rich enough and strong enough to take care of all of us. I have given myself away to him. In another month I shall marry him.”
He waited, unable to speak. At last he could say: “So! I have been away hunting for a long time. And the old trails are covered so that my feet cannot find them again. Maisry, farewell.”
It was so dark, now, that he could only make out the glimmering of her face, but as he walked around the side of the house, with White Horse behind him, he could hear a sound of grief coming from her. Very subdued it was, as though she was afraid that someone asleep might be wakened.
Chapter Twenty-One
Red Hawk knew that he was about to die. He was enmeshed in such a net that he could not possibly escape from the coils, and, even if escape were possible, it seemed to him that there was no worth in existence. As he walked slowly down a byway of the town of Witherell, it was merely the means of a quick release from this living misery that he thought about.
Far away, he heard the voice of Richard Lester, high-pitched, repeating his name in a piercing call. Well he knew that that man had enough kindness in him to regret that even the White Indian had been involuntarily deceived, but there was nothing in the power of words to relieve Red Hawk’s mind. He was caught between two irresistible hands and crushed.
The lane he followed brought him to the side of the central square, so that he could now hear the tumult in the saloons. Each throat opened its outcry on a separate note, as the swinging doors at the entrance vibrated to and fro. Inside, he could see men in skin caps, in felt hats, in sombreros—men in woven cloth or deerskins, who went around the square locked arm in arm, staggering, dead drunk. Now two groups stuck together, and instantly the men had fallen to the ground in couples, wrestling, cursing. Then knives began to flicker.
Spectators poured out from the saloons and stood about, making no attempt to intervene. They cheered on the combatants, as though it had been dogs that struggled on the ground.
Then there was a scream, a long, high-drawn death note that might have been from either a man or a woman, because there was nothing but the last agony in it. And the grinding of the knife against bone and through tender flesh as it found the life.
Red Hawk struck his hands against his ears, but could not shut out the last of that yell. He turned back across an open field, walking with no strength in his knees, and repeating in his mind that he was caught between two hands and crushed. Among the Indians he could be what? A man of some dignity and importance, perhaps, because he had caught White Horse. But no matter what his deeds might be, the old shame of his failure in the medicine lodge would cling to him, and the medicine men and certain of the older warriors would always feel that the mere sight of him was a bane and a frightful example for the rising youth of the Cheyennes.
But if he were not to live among the Cheyennes, how could he exist with the whites of Witherell? If he could endure their brutality, he still could not withstand their mocking laughter.
He looked up, and the white faces of the stars struck a mortal cold through his soul; he looked down, and the darkness rose out of the ground and covered his mind. So, with White Horse following him, he found himself at the verge of a small hollow through which a rivulet twisted, and by the edge of the running water there was a shack no larger than the lodge of an Indian, with one dim light shining through the window.
At first the place dawned on his brain like a dream that is being repeated with a familiar expectancy of something to come. It was only after a long moment that he remembered that this was the house of Marshall Sabin, who the Cheyennes called Wind Walker. The instant he realized that, he felt that he understood why his feet had been led to the place. The thing was clear in his mind now. When a man is caught in a trap, it is best to keep fighting to the last, and so win a quick death. What death could be quicker and surer than for him to stand alone in front of Wind Walker, who had faced the chosen Cheyenne warriors three and four at a time and had left dead men behind him?
As for the chance of reward, if fortune were willing to favor him, and lay the Wind Walker dead at his feet, then, indeed, he would he able to return to the tribe with all the omissions of his past forgiven and forgotten. He would become the hero of the nation. Running Elk would have to regard his medicine with awe, and Dull Hatchet would be forced to admit him to the council.
He whispered a farewell to White Horse, when he was close to the house, and took his last look at the stallion, more by touch of hand than by eye. Then he went on to the window. When he came close to it, he could understand why the light had streamed from it with such a dull ray, because the window was simply an oiled tissue and not glass at all. It was impossible for him to spy on the man inside without breaking the membrane, and that sound would, of course, be ample warning to Wind Walker, even if his favoring spirits had not already told him that an enemy was near.
Red Hawk went to the door, tried the latch with a soft hand, and flung the door suddenly wide open. He saw Wind Walker rise from a small table in the middle of the room, where he had been reading a
book. With one hand the white man gripped the lamp, as if ready to dash it to the ground and give himself the protection of darkness. With the other hand he leveled a revolver at the door.
“Wind Walker!” called Red Hawk, using the Indian name, but speaking in English. “Do you hear me? I am Red Hawk. I have come to fight with you, and to see which of us is to die and which of us has the stronger medicine. I come with no gun . . . with only a knife. Are you ready to face me?”
Sabin, when he heard his name called out, at first lifted the lamp higher to throw more light on the threshold. Now he stepped back, letting his revolver fall down the length of his arm.
“Well,” said Sabin, “come in peace, Red Hawk. No matter how you may happen to leave. Show yourself.”
It was true that, if he entered the room, the white man might tilt up the muzzle of his revolver and make an end of one more Cheyenne, but Red Hawk did not hesitate. Great men of war were apt to fight fairly, and at any rate Wind Walker was so certain to conquer that he would hardly take an advantage, for that would give the kill no savor to him. For these reasons, Red Hawk stepped fearlessly upon the threshold and then into the room. He held the knife in his hand and now he cast it, in an access of desperate confidence, upon the floor.
“There is my knife,” he said, “and here am I.”
He saw the muzzle of the revolver tilt upward a little, as if an involuntary twitch of the muscles had stirred it. Then it hung down idly again, and presently Wind Walker put the gun back on the table beside the book that he had been reading. All this while he was taking hold of Red Hawk with his eyes, and Red Hawk, in turn, had a chance to glance about the room.
It was as simple a place as could be built with logs by two men in a pair of days. Mud had been used to stop, or partially stop, the gaps between the roughly faced logs, and the trimming had been done so carelessly that here and there the stub of a branch projected. There were even a few dead, brown leaves curled close on a few of the twigs. For furnishings there was a bunk built against the wall, with a few blankets tossed carelessly on top of it, and no sign of even a pallet of straw. The floor was beaten earth merely.