The Steel Box

by Max Brand

  Red Shirt exclaimed impatiently: “I, Standing Bull, know the white men, and I know that they put more value on their women than they do on their scalps!”

  Standing Bull scowled at this opposition. He said at length, bitterly: “I shall take the chief risk. I cannot make you help me. But if you stay here, I shall go down alone and bring the girl away, or die in that work. I am trying to do something for all the people of the Cheyennes. Who will help me? Let us bring the girl to White Thunder, and he will stay with us as contentedly as a bird in a nest.”

  They stared at him, hardly able to believe. Red Shirt suggested that there were pretty maidens among the Cheyennes. But Standing Bull waved him to scorn.

  “White Thunder,” he explained, “does not think like a man, but like a foolish boy that is sick. We, like parents, must try to please him. Because the boy has been given power.”

  This simple reasoning appeared conclusive. One and all agreed that they would do their best. If they succeeded, even though they returned without scalps or horses, certainly they would be gloriously received by the Cheyennes. So they loosed their reins and went on toward the fort.

  X

  Once before, Standing Bull had gone to Fort Kendry. But though he had come there in the daylight, he had done his work in the night and escaped again under cover of the dark. He had no fear that he would be recognized now, or suspected of any evil intention. To mask the real purpose of his journey, he had seen to it that some of the extra horses were loaded with buffalo robes of good quality. To all intents, they would appear like a small band of warriors who had come in to trade and get what they could. In the meantime, they would look around them for the girl.

  They hardly had come into the village before they were welcomed. The more important traders had their quarters within the fort itself, where they worked for the fur company. But in the village were independents that picked up a little business here and there from just such small parties as these. As the Cheyennes entered, wrapped to the eyes in their robes, their long rifles balanced across the pommels of their saddles, first one and then another agent greeted them fluently in their own tongue and tempted them with bottles of whiskey. Both of these, Standing Bull passed by, but a third man he followed into his booth and looked at the display of goods. There were beads of all kinds, together with hatchets, knives, tobacco, tea, sugar, coffee, flour, calico, clothes, and ribbons of many colors, blankets, and a hundred little foolish trinkets. Standing Bull himself was enchanted by the appearance of some little bells that, as the agent pointed out, could be tied in the mane of the horse, or in the hair of the warrior.

  “So,” said Standing Bull to Red Shirt, “a brave would be known before he was seen. His friends would be glad. He would walk with music.” And he jangled the bells.

  But Red Shirt was entirely absorbed in the contemplation of a jug of whiskey; the pungent fragrance of it already was in his nostrils.

  However, nothing would be done, no matter what the temptation, until Standing Bull gave the signal, and certainly he would not give such a signal on this day. The number of the robes was small, barely large enough to excuse their offering in trade, after so long a journey to present them. On the first day there should be no trafficking. Indeed, if possible, Standing Bull intended to get his party away from the fort before the warriors had tasted the unnerving fire of the whiskey. One bottle of that would be enough to start a debauch that would ruin all plans.

  In the midst of all this confusion, while the trader and his boy were panting with eagerness for plunder, another form appeared, a tall and magnificently made frontiersman, garbed in the finest of deerskin, heavily beaded, with his long, blond hair flowing down about his shoulders. A pistol in one side of his belt balanced a heavy knife that was in front, and in his hands he carried a long, heavy rifle, using it as lightly as though it were a walking staff. He went straight to Standing Bull and raised a hand in greeting.

  “Hau!” grunted the Cheyenne in response.

  “Hau!” said the other cheerfully, and speaking the Indian tongue well enough. “Men tell me that you are Standing Bull, the chief of the Cheyennes?”

  Standing Bull wanted nothing so little as to be recognized. He maintained a grim silence and looked the other in the eye.

  The white man continued: “We have heard of you. The Dakotas have been here. They had something to say of you and your big medicine.”

  Here the boy interrupted: “Hey, you! Are you gonna try to swipe these half-wits out of our booth? Back up, will you, and let us finish our trade with them, or else we’ll . . .”

  His employer silenced him with a back-handed cuff that sent the youngster staggering. “It’s Roger Lincoln, you little fool,” he said, and added: “Glad to see you, Mister Lincoln.”

  Now at that name there was a little stir among the Cheyennes. In fact, it was known from the Dakotas to the Kiowas and Comanches, over the length and breadth of the plains. They moved back a little, partly as though they did not know what to expect, and partly as if they wanted a better chance to examine and admire the white man. They found him perfect in his appointments, from his hat to his beaded moccasins. Except for the whiteness of his skin—and that was weather-browned enough—he might have stepped into the ranks of any Indian tribe of the plains, a chief, or the favored son of some rich brave.

  “I have a house close by,” said Roger Lincoln. “I do not wish to make a trade with a friend. I wish to talk to you about better things than buffalo robes. Will you come?”

  He added to the trader a brief sentence, promising that he would not barter for a single one of the robes or any other possession of the Cheyennes. The trader, biting his lip, nodded, and watched in silence while the troop filed off at the heels of Lincoln.

  The latter took the Indians to his own trading booth a short distance away, and there he seated them in a circle in his room and offered them tea, sweetened with heaps of sugar. With loud smackings, the red men tasted it, rolled their eyes, and poured down the scalding hot tea. They held out their cups for another service, and again the cups were filled brimming. A pipe was passed. Good humor began to possess Standing Bull, greater than the doubt and suspicion in which he had stood when the white man first greeted them. He waited for the meaning of this to be expounded, and presently the meaning was made clear.

  “Now, my friend,” said Roger Lincoln, “look around you at everything. You see rifles here and pistols there. Here are some barrels of powder. There is lead for making bullets. There are some bullet molds. Here are some knives. See them. Take this one for a present and feel its edge. Also, there are saddles and bridles. Here you see the clothes. There is enough red cloth to put a headband around the head of every Cheyenne . . . man, and woman, and child. There are beads in these boxes. And here is a little chest stored with all sorts of wonderful things. Back in this corner you can see the hatchets and the axes.”

  The nostrils of Standing Bull fanned out and quickly contracted as he drew in an envious breath. “The white men,” he said, “are rich. The Indians are very poor.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Roger Lincoln quickly, “they are men, and a man is worth more than you can put on his back or into his hands.”

  Standing Bull smiled, touched with pleasure almost in spite of himself. “Perhaps it is true,” he agreed.

  “Have you looked at all these things?” asked Lincoln.

  “I have seen them very well.”

  “But look at them again. Examine them. Feel them with your hands. Try the weight of this axe. You see that it has a tooth that will never grow dull, and that hatchet was made to sink into the brainpan of a Dakota.”

  Standing Bull sighed with a great delight.

  “Here, also, are buttons brighter than silver to put along the edges of your trousers. Here are some coils of rope, and look at these iron tent pegs. You know how they are used? And here is an iron-headed hammer that never will break.”

  The Indians followed every word with intense pleasure and inter
est.

  “Come back with me,” went on Roger Lincoln. He led the way out of the shack and in the rear a large corral opened. In it were fifty or sixty horses to which an attendant was forking out well-cured hay. “You have the eye which sees horses,” said Roger Lincoln. “When you look at these, you will see that they are not like the other horses of the plains. They are taller. Their legs are longer and stronger. They are crossbred. They are not soft like other horses of white men. They are bred out of plains ponies by fine stallions. Mounted on such horses as these, Standing Bull, you would sweep away from an enemy. You could strike and fly off again out of danger like a hawk playing with a buzzard.”

  The Cheyennes devoured those horses with greedy looks. It was true that they understood horseflesh perfectly, and now they proved it by the red-eyed silence in which they observed these animals.

  After this, Roger Lincoln went on slowly and impressively: “I am not a rich man, my friends. I have worked many years, and what you have just seen is what I have saved. I have paid for these things with blood, you may be sure. I had hoped that with them I could trade and make more money. At last I could go back among my people and sit quietly in a pleasant lodge by the side of a stream, with trees around me, and take a squaw, and raise many children.

  “But dearer than peace and happiness are the life and the happiness of a friend. Do you hear me, Standing Bull? You have in your lodges a man with a white skin, and you call him White Thunder. Is it true?” He said the words as one who puts a statement in question form for the sake of politeness. The Cheyenne leader stiffened a little. His keen eyes turned gravely upon the other, and he said nothing.

  “For that man,” said Roger Lincoln, “if you will bring him in safety to Fort Kendry, I will pay you everything that your eyes have seen. If you find anything more, you are welcome. I will give you also even the house in which you find all these things and everything down to the ground on which it stands. I have promised. No man has heard me say the thing that is not so.”

  This speech made a vast impression upon the Cheyennes. They drew back a little, murmuring, and among the companions of Standing Bull there was only one opinion. Such a princely offer of dazzling wealth should be accepted at once. Never had they seen such riches heaped together. The whole tribe would be rejoiced.

  Standing Bull simply replied: “He is not ours to sell. The Sky People sent him to us, and, if we let him go, they will send us bad luck. Besides, High Wolf never would sell him. And who but a fool, after all, would give up a power that can turn the bullets of the Dakotas as if they were pebbles thrown by children? Do not talk foolishness any more. Besides, Roger Lincoln is a wise man. Would he pay such things except for a man who is worth twice as much? If White Thunder is worth so much to the whites, he is worth ten times more to us!”

  He turned to the big, white man and shook his head solemnly. “Our eyes have not seen White Thunder,” he said. “We do not know about what you are speaking.”

  XI

  Those men who early went to the Western frontier were, almost without exception, children. Great-shouldered, hard-handed, often hard-hearted children, but, nevertheless, children they were. Nothing but childish reasoning could have induced them to leave the cities and the comfortable lands east of the Mississippi for all the chances, the labor, the dangers of the prairie, except that in their heart of hearts they loved a game more than they loved anything else.

  So it was with Roger Lincoln. Well-born, well-educated, calm-minded, brave as steel and as keen, he could have had the world at his feet, if he had chosen to live among the civilized. But rather than his knowledge of books he preferred to use his knowledge of the wilderness. Rather than his knowledge of civilized society he preferred to use his knowledge of the barbarians. A fine horse was more to him than a learned companion, and a good rifle better than a rich inheritance.

  Stately, gentle, soft of voice, beautiful of face, and mighty of hand, he looked the type of some Homeric hero. There was no cloud of trouble on his brow. His eye was as clear as the clearest heavens.

  Yet beneath all this there was the heart of a child. It began to work in him now that he heard the lying reply of Standing Bull. His lips trembled and then compressed. His breast swelled. An almost uncontrollable passion enthralled Roger Lincoln, and the Cheyennes drew a little closer together, overawed and frightened.

  “I have been to the Cheyennes a good friend,” said Roger Lincoln. “There are many in your tribe who know that I never have harmed them. Your own chief, High Wolf, remembers a day on the waters of the Little Bender when the Crows were closing around him and there was no hope of help. On that day he was glad that Roger Lincoln was his friend and a friend to the Cheyennes. I split the Crows as a child splits a twig. They ran away, and the Cheyennes followed them and took a great many scalps. There were other days of which I could speak. I have kept the Cheyennes from trouble whenever I was near them. I respected them and thought that they were men and truth speakers. When they came to a trading post where I was, I saw that the traders did not cheat them. I used to stand up in the councils of the white men and say that no matter what they thought of the other red men of the plains, the Cheyennes were real men and brave men and that they spoke the truth.

  “Because I thought all these things, today I was willing to do more than is just. My dearest friend is among your lodges. You keep him there. His heart is breaking. What wrong had he done you or any other Indian? He was young and had harmed no one. He was my friend. I have no other friend half so dear to me as this White Thunder. But you stole him and kept him, after he had done good to one of you. I do not want to name the warrior whose life he saved on the island at the forking of the river. I would not like to say that any man would be so base as to betray the friend who saved him. And yet this is what happened.

  “I did not want to talk of these things. Instead, I offered to make a bargain with you. I offered you a ransom. What do you do when a most hated enemy is taken in battle? If his friends offer you horses and guns, you take them and set him free. But you did not take White Thunder in battle. You tricked him into coming to your camp and, after that, you surrounded him with guards. You threatened to kill him if he did not work great medicine for you. And all that I say is true. Now you will not take such a ransom as never was offered to Cheyennes before.

  “You forgot the wrong you have done to White Thunder. Instead of keeping him, you should cover him with presents. You should give him whole herds of horses, and then you should set him free.

  “Or when Roger Lincoln asks, because of the good I have done for you, you should set White Thunder free even if he had killed one of your chiefs. But he has killed no one and he has done you no harm. Only out of the wickedness of your hearts you are keeping him to be a slave to you, to bring rain to your crops and make medicine against the other Indians.

  “Now, I tell you that you will come to a day when you will groan at the thought of White Thunder. You will tremble when his name is mentioned. You will wish that you had starved of hunger without corn rather than that he should have been kept in the tribe like a prisoner.

  “I tell you this, and, when I speak, it is not the whistling of the wind. I have been your friend. Now I am your friend no longer. From the moment that you leave Fort Kendry I am your enemy, and you shall pay for the evil that is in you. This is my token of what I will do and of how much I hate you!”

  There was a big chopping block nearby and in it was stuck a splitting axe—an old and rusted blade with a wide bevel, useless for felling trees but acting like a wedge to tear open sections for firewood. This axe the frontiersman caught up. His childish fury had reached its climax, and with fury in his eye he swung the axe and cast it from him. With one hand he had wielded its heavy mass and it spun lightly away and drove its blade into a post of the corral. So heavy was the shock that the whole fence trembled. And the bright eyes of the Cheyennes flashed at one another.

  That blow would have driven the axe head well nigh through the
body of a warrior.

  “Go!” said Roger Lincoln, and before the wave of his hand the Indians drew back.

  They filed through the store. They reached the street and turned down it, still walking one behind the other, their muffling robes high about their faces. They took their horses with them to the edge of the town and there they sat down in a clearing in a circle.

  Standing Bull took out a pipe bowl of red catlinite. This he filled with tobacco, mixed with dried, powdered bark to make it burn freely and give pungency to the taste. He fitted in the long stem and lighted the mixture. He blew a puff to the earth spirits. He blew a puff to the cardinal points. Then he held up the pipe to the Great Spirit and chanted slowly a sacred song that, rudely translated, ran somewhat as follows:

  Heammawihio, lord of the air,

  We are not even master of the ground.

  But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

  In this last line the entire band joined, singing like a chorus, singing heavily.

  Heammawihio, your way is the way of the eagle.

  Our way is the way of the prairie dog, creeping in holes.

  But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

  Heammawihio, your eye sees all things and all thoughts.

  But even in the sunlight our eyes are darkened.

  But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

  Heammawihio, for your enemies you keep

  the polished spears of the lightning.

  And we have nothing but our weak hands

  with which to strike.

  But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

  Give us good council, open our minds, be pitiful.

  We have no words or thoughts, except to pray to you.

  But we are your children, and we are in trouble.

  Between the verses of this solemn song, Standing Bull had smoked a few pulls from his pipe. Now it was handed around the circle. Each man smoked. Each man was silent. When the pipe was empty, the ashes were knocked from the bowl, and then the council began. Standing Bull invited all to speak who had an idea that might be of service in their present difficulty.