by Max Brand
He turned to the entrance, paused there as though he wanted to say something else, and then hurried through the flap.
CHAPTER 17
Big Bill Tenney sat up until he could endure no longer the eyes of the two guards which devoured him steadily, unwinkingly. Then he lay down again, and the slow hours went by him.
This was his first visit to an Indian camp. He had always imagined them to be places of silence. Instead, this was a continual riot. The dog noises never ceased. Either there was a yelping voice in the distance, howling at the moon, or else an outbreak of snarls and fighting close by, or a whole tide of battling dogs would wash in crescendo and diminuendo across the area.
The dogs were not all. Most of the night, two or three children, near or far, were crying. Now and then a random brave was even inspired to burst out into a war song, or a battle yell that struck cold and hard upon the nerves.
Yet, at last Tenney was able to sleep, and he did not waken until long after sunrise.
He spent the hours of the sweltering day still in the lodge, with only a change of guards to amuse him, the new pair being a shade older and uglier than the first ones. It was late in the afternoon before Lazy Wolf appeared. He came in looking totally spent, and he sank down on a thick, folded buffalo robe and joined his hands together wearily, as he stared at the prisoner.
“I talked most of last night,” he said. “I made ’em put off the decision until they’d slept on the thing. Then I talked to ’em again this afternoon. But no matter what I say, they’ve fixed on the idea that Red Hawk is dead. You’re to be a sacrifice they’ll send after him. Besides, they’ve got an idea that they may be able to wash away their disease in your blood. The sick and ailing ones are going to do the work on you. And—God help you, Tenney!”
One deep note of compassion came into these last words, and Bill Tenney heard them ring all through his soul.
“I’ve gotta die, have I?” he demanded.
“You’ve got to die,” said Lazy Wolf. “The way the people are feeling now, not even the head chiefs of the tribe could handle them or change them, and the only big chief among the lot, just now, is young Standing Bull, who was Red Hawk’s best friend. I spent a long time with Standing Bull; but he wants to tear you to pieces with his own hands.”
“All right,” said Bill Tenney. “I’m their meat—and I guess they’ll spend a long time whittling me away.”
Lazy Wolf sighed as he answered, “I’ve got to tell you the truth, and the truth is that they’ll make you last as long as they can.”
“Pardner,” said Tenney, “you couldn’t do a little thing like picking up that ax and braining me with it, right now, could you? Or passing that knife between my ribs, eh?”
“They’d shred me into mince meat, if I did,” declared Lazy Wolf. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way they’re feeling. I’ve come to say good-bye!”
He rose and held out his hand, but there was a sudden snarl from one of the guards, who leaped between and fenced the two white men apart from one another.
“It don’t matter,” said Tenney. “I’m thanking you for what you’ve tried to do.—I’ll tell you another thing, Lazy Wolf. I’m nothing for a gent to grieve about, at all. I been a thief and a crook and a damned mean man. I sort of wish I’d have a chance.—Well, anything that the Injuns do to me will sure be coming. So long!”
When he was left alone with the guards, Tenney’s courage sank a little; but he took a firm hold on himself. It was the length of the trial that filled him with dread. To face death—to stand before a firing squad—why, a thing like that would be as nothing. But to drag through the frightful hours, always waiting and waiting—and then to feel his own body being plucked and torn and burned, bit by bit, the precious flame of life still cherished and kept active by the skilful fiends who operated on him—that was the prospect which made him shrink. But the heart of a brave man is always greater than his knowledge of it. He set his teeth and made himself smile.
He was still smiling a little, faintly and steadily, when a great noise of voices drew near, focusing on the lodge. He knew that they were coming for him. So he stood up and folded his arms and waited, facing the entrance flap.
He was not bound hand and foot. He was merely led out with a rope around his neck. He saw the night covering the village; he saw the lodges, vaguely illumined by the flutter and the flicker of the fires inside them. He saw the glittering of the stars, and the sky seemed to be turning slowly, like a vast wheel. But all around him, pressing close, were the Indians. The smell of them was different from that of a white crowd. The odor of wood smoke clung to them. And their faces were so hideous that it seemed to Tenney that they were illumined by ugliness as by a light.
Still, he was not able to take in the full terror of the moment until he had been led into a central circle, which was an open space in the middle of the camp, with the tepees all around, pointing their blunted fingers at the sky. In the middle of this space he was tied to a thick post. Two lengths of small iron chain were used to bind his feet and his hands to the pole. He could imagine why the iron was required. Flame would too quickly eat its way through cords or ropes.
In the four quarters of the circle, fires had been already kindled, to give light for the proceedings. Perhaps at the climax, the materials of the four fires would be heaped suddenly around him, and so the flames would eat their share.
Could he stand it? It came on Tenney with a fresh shock of surprise that the torture itself was not the thing that weakened him in prospect; it was the savage ugliness of these Cheyennes. They were, to be sure, the handsomest race of red men on the whole of the plains, but they were now hideously transformed by passion. Furthermore, the normal men and women of the race could not be seen so clearly. They were masked by five score or more of the sick who occupied the center of the area.
These last were a grisly lot. The disease, whatever it was, had withered them like famine. Their flesh had shrunk to the bone. Their skin was in many folds. Their eyes burned at the bottoms of black pits, and when they opened their mouths it seemed certain that the teeth must clamp down afterward on the skin of the sunken cheeks. So starved by pain and suffering were they that there seemed to be nothing left in them except the ghost of life; and that ghost was now frenzied.
Off to one side, some drums began to beat in a steady rhythm, and this cadence threw the line of invalids into movement. What a dance! A Dance of Death. Fleshless knees were staggering; skeleton arms wavered in the air. Those who could not walk crawled, and paused, now and then, to beat the earth with one hand. And at certain pauses and accents in the drumming, the whole crowd looked suddenly up and cast a hand toward the sky, shouting a few syllables.
In that shout the dim multitude on the verge of the firelight joined, and the roar of the voices surged in a wave over big Bill Tenney’s heart and brain. He could pick out details, now. In the first place, every man, woman and child was armed, and all with knives which they brandished at him in turn as they staggered by, their skinny breasts heaving so that sometimes the ribs looked empty—a mad, ominous dance.
At a little distance from the rest was one form so feeble that it had not yet been able to work its way into the line of the walking, crawling dancers. That meager body was naked except for the loin cloth, and there was so little strength in the Indian that he had to wriggle slowly forward, snakelike.
Now and again, he paused and lay stretched out at full length; and as he came closer, Bill Tenney could count the ribs down the back, and the lumps of the vertebræ. He could see the hip bones standing out like elbows, and the shoulder blades that did not even seem to be covered with flesh. Now the face of the crawling Indian turned up toward him, and he was shocked to realize that it was that of a mere boy, a child of fourteen years or even less, the skin drawn across his face as tightly as the membrane over the face of a frog.
Horribly he grinned, when he saw Bill Tenney, and stretched out a knife toward the prisoner. Literally, then, the sic
k were going to try to wash away their diseases in the captive’s blood. And perhaps those shouts which they occasionally raised to the sky contained the name of Red Hawk, in whose honor all of this sacrifice was performed.
The crawling, wriggling boy now came to the line of the dancers. They stamped and jumped and sprawled and stumbled across him. But he advanced, until with one hand he could grasp the toe of Tenney’s boot. Then, gradually, the youngster began to raise himself. It was a process of the most infinite pain. Tenney could hear the gasping breath, with a rattle in it.
Slowly the boy gained his knees. By the dreadful grin of hate and hope in the lad’s face, Tenney knew that the knife would be buried in his flesh the next moment.—Ah, if only that stroke would find the heart!
Then, out of the distance, a wild voice came toward the camp, shouting. And what it cried made the dancers halt in the middle of a gesture. The drums ceased their beating.
CHAPTER 18
A rattle of hoofbeats sped toward the crowd. A youth appeared, his bronze body flashing out of the night like a hurled spear as he raced his horse through the crowd and around the circle within, always yelling that same brief group of syllables which Bill Tenney had already begun to suspect stood for the name of Red Hawk in the Cheyenne tongue.
The effect of the outcry of this rider was to drive the audience completely frantic. The seated men leaped to their feet and turned to rush into the outer darkness, toward that point from which the jubilant shouts had already begun to issue. Proud chiefs with great headdresses of feathers sweeping down to their heels, men with the many brightly stained coup-feathers bristling in their regalia, old fellows full of dignity, one and all poured off, leaping and screaming, toward the unseen thing in the night.
Only the sick remained in place, and they gathered into a closely packed group. The lad who had drawn himself up on his knees, ready to strike the first blow at the prisoner, now turned a little and spilled down on the ground, where he lay inert, with his head on Tenney’s feet.
Tenney, straining his eyes, first thought he saw a slowly stalking giant, tall and slender, a yard higher than the loftiest of the big Cheyennes. But now he was able to make out that the man was carried forward, literally standing in the mighty hands that supported him.
Before this advancing figure, borne along like an idol, came a scattering, scampering troop of young boys who cut enough capers to fill the brains of ten thousand designers. Guns exploded. And out of the throats of the sick there went up a united screech of joy.
That scream was still piercing Bill Tenney’s brain when he recognized the newcomer as Rusty Sabin!
Tenney closed his eyes then, and the groan that came out of his throat made his entire body tremble a little.
When he looked again, he saw that Rusty was no longer being carried. Instead, he was walking slowly through the cluster of the sick. He had to go slowly, because the ground before him was covered by the meager bodies of those who implored his aid. They reached up for his hands. They clutched at his legs as he went by. Tenney saw a woman on her knees, alternately beating her breast and throwing out her hands toward Red Hawk. And so Rusty Sabin at last managed to get clear of them all and come to the post where Tenney was bound to the stake.
“It’s over!” Rusty called, from a little distance. “There’s no more danger. I’m telling these people things that will make you like a chief in this tribe. You will be every man’s brother, from to-day!”
With that, he turned and shouted a few more words to the assembled tribe. Then he laid his hand on Tenney’s shoulder, as he spoke, and a great yell widened still further the distended throats of those Indians.
“I have told them you are my brother,” said Rusty Sabin. “I told them you have given me my life.—You will see, now!”
There was plenty to see. Tenney, weak with happy relief, began to laugh foolishly, as scores of hands reached to take part in the work of liberating him. But even through his laughter, he could mark the tender manner in which Rusty picked up the prostrate form of the lad who had so nearly drawn the blood of Tenney. Cradling that body, mummified by disease, in his strong arms, Rusty was calling out to the happy, milling crowd of the Cheyennes. A huge, middle-aged warrior came out of the throng and laid his hands, also, on the body of the boy.
That would be the lad’s father, for an expression of infinite fear and care was in his face when he looked down to the boy; and infinite joy and hope lighted his eyes when he looked up to Rusty.
Tenney, so suddenly freed, found himself being patted and spoken to kindly by all the men around him. Lazy Wolf, appearing at his side, found his hand and grasped it heartily.
“I thought there was to be one brave man less in this world,” said Lazy Wolf. “I’m happy about you, Tenney.”
“They would have had me dead yesterday, but for you,” answered Tenney, truthfully. “You were the one who kept them off until Rusty had a chance to come here. My God, man, when I see how they love this fellow Sabin, I don’t wonder that they wanted to tear me to shreds!”
“Aye, they love him—and they need him,” nodded the other. “Put need and love together and it makes a pretty bright fire. A very bright fire, in fact. This tribe is dazzled by the light, just now. Aye, but later on how will they feel when they find out that Rusty can’t really help these poor sick devils?”
“He could make a bluff, I suppose,” said Tenney.
“A bluff? There’s no pretending in Red Hawk! He’ll do the things that he thinks Sweet Medicine tells him to do. He’ll pray, and have a fool dream, and then he’ll do what the dream says.”
“Aye, but if the dream don’t say nothing?”
“Them that are hungry to believe can always find something to believe in,” answered Lazy Wolf. “We’ve got to find my girl, somewhere. When Red Hawk shouted to the tribe that you were his brother, and that you had given him his life, she pulled her hair down over her eyes and began to moan as though her best blood had died. She wants to see you, Tenney. She wants to get down on her knees and beg your pardon. If you don’t forgive her for the way she talked to you yesterday, she’ll cut off her long hair and slash her body with a knife, and she’ll sit on a hill outside the camp and howl and mourn for seven days and nights. When a Cheyenne gets excited, there’s a fire in the blood—and my girl’s dying of grief, just now. She’s afraid that you’ll tell Rusty about her.”
Tenney laughed.
When they came through the happy, shouting crowd to where the girl stood, drawn back against a tepee, he saw that Blue Bird had in fact thrown her hair forward over her face, and that she stood disconsolate, her head bowed. When her father spoke to her in Cheyenne, she flung her head up suddenly. And all at once, as the dark hair flowed back against her shoulders, her beauty dawned on Bill Tenney like the brightness of day. She came to him quickly, with her hands stretched out. Her knees were already bending as she tried to cast herself to the ground, but Tenney caught the hands and held her up.
“There ain’t anything to get worried about,” said Tenney, as gently as he could manage. “And even if there was, I’d forget it.—I’ve forgot it already, in fact. I’ve sure forgot it so much that I wouldn’t be able to tell Rusty even if I wanted to.”
What he said so filled her that her happiness overflowed in a sharp cry.
“Look!” she said to her father. “He is not only a brave man, but he is a good man.—How kind he is! There is pain in me when I think what I have said.”
She took one of Bill Tenney’s hands between hers and patted it. There was strength in her touch, and soft gentleness, also.
“Red Hawk is not cruel,” she said, explaining. “But he thinks very much. He can even think himself away from people. And I don’t want him to think himself away from me.”
* * * *
After that, the night became a whirling confusion, in the mind of Bill Tenney. For wherever Rusty went, Tenney had to go with him; and Rusty had to go everywhere through the camp.
The crowd
poured along with him. What happy laughter brightened the air about the returned “medicine man”! He had to go into lodge after lodge. He had to take a bit of the buffalo meat which would be brought out of the stew-pot over every fire; he had to blow one whiff of smoke from every pipe; he had to look at the children who stared up at him in trusting confidence; he had to grasp the withered hands of old men and, with lifted head, offer up a prayer to Sweet Medicine to increase their strength and their remaining days.
And always, no matter where he appeared, he was greeted with looks of hushed expectancy, as though a miracle might at any moment happen.
If there was a strength in belief, Bill Tenney saw, Rusty had enough power to move mountains in this camp!
It was when Rusty Sabin was turning out of a tepee that he said to Tenney,
“And the White Horse? Where is he, brother?”
That question stunned Tenney. He had to take a long breath and steady himself before he could answer: “He’s gone, Rusty!”
But the blow was so great that the full weight of it missed Rusty utterly. He merely halted and looked back at Tenney with uncomprehending eyes.
“Gone!” repeated Tenney. “When the Cheyennes come on me in that gulley, where I was down out of the saddle, they scared him off. He went right up the side of the bluff like a goat—and—he’s gone. God knows I’m sorry!”
Rusty made a queer gesture with both hands reaching in front of him, like one who is walking through thick darkness and feeling his way.
“The White Horse!” he said. “The White Horse! I thought that he was to be taken away only for a little while. But he is gone.—Everything is gone from me.”
And then, with a gentleness and a sudden movement of tact that brought the tears’ sting to Tenney’s eyes, Rusty laid his hand on the big fellow’s arm and added quickly: