Frontier Feud

by Max Brand

  “I shall be safe enough when the darkness comes,” said the Blue Bird.

  And when the darkness came, she was not to be found. She had slipped away to a short distance from the camp, and there, wrapped in a horse blanket she stretched out. Weariness made the ground a soft bed for her.

  But Blue Bird, out of a sound sleep, was awakened late in the night by the sound of beating hoofs. The moon glinted against her eyes as she sat up and saw a dim ghost come wavering toward her over the plains, followed by dusky forms. It was a whole herd of horses, she made out presently; and far, far away, behind the rattling of the hoofbeats, she heard a pouring murmur that seemed to vibrate through the ground even at her feet. The noise worried her. It was like a thin, distant thunder that never stopped. Somewhere before she had heard it. But where?

  The sight of the horses chained her eyes. And presently the ghostly form of the leader grew more defined. He was swinging on, straight toward her. A depression in the ground half covered him; but he emerged again out of the gloom like a leaping fish, and she saw that it was the White Horse! Awe weakened her knees and made her drop down. For this was the horse that belonged to Red Hawk, and therefore to Sweet Medicine. This was the stallion which ten thousand hunters, white and red, had chased for thousands of miles, over plains and mountains, until Red Hawk went out like a god and laid his hand on the neck of the charger.

  It seemed to her that the ghost of the man she loved was swaying on the back of the White Horse, borne along by the long, effortless stride.

  Behind him the heads of the herd bobbed rapidly up and down as they measured his prodigious paces with their shorter strides.

  The White Horse was hardly fifty feet from her, blinded by the glory of his own kingship and his speed and strength, before he was aware of her. He shot suddenly to one side then, and the herd streamed after him—a hundred—no, ten scores of horses!

  She laughed with a strange sort of joy as she saw the monster go leaping away into the darkness. His herd was scattering too much to please him. In the distance, she saw him redouble his speed and turn into a streak that swept around to the rear, where he attacked the laggards and made them bunch up closer toward the leaders. Aye, for he had the mind of a chief; the mind that neglects not the least of his followers!

  Then the herd vanished from view.

  She was still peering through the moon haze after the departed herd, when the noise which she had marked before began to roll closer toward her. A low, dark bank, like a cloud sweeping along the face of the ground, was moving out of the south, toward her.

  Perhaps it was this which had driven the White Horse through the night. Gradually she saw the cloud extending until it seemed to lie for miles to either side.

  And now, thin and dim, she saw the small quiverings of moonshine, here and there.

  Her brain awakened from its dream that instant. She should have recognized the thing long, long before. It was a stampede of buffalo. It was one of those ocean-like herds cast into motion by a panic as strange as the powers that draw the sea in its tides. And now this immensity of thundering hoofs was pouring straight down on the camp of the soldiers. The mere forefronts of the host would be sufficient to smash the camp flat and trample to a red stain all the human lives.

  She turned and raced with all her might toward the bank of the stream. She jerked up the short doeskin skirt and knotted the end of it at her waist. She ran like a boy—like the fleetest of Indian boys, with her body erect and her breath deeply drawn. And she could run very swiftly.

  She reached the edge of the bank; leaped ten feet to the lower level; landed lightly, catlike; rolled to her feet; and sent her scream into every sleeping ear.

  “Buffalo! Buffalo!—The stampede!—White faces! Waken, waken!—Brainless, stupid, sleeping calves, jump up before you die!—The stampede is on you!”

  But would they hear her?

  The soldiers came running, half dressed, half naked, rifles in their hands. The major rushed like a wise and brave man straight for the center of the disturbance. The Blue Bird caught him by the arm and dragged him up the bank, behind him a frightened stream of soldiers.

  Now they could see what was happening. The moon was bright enough to show the whole face of the picture, though the rear of that thundering mass was lost in an uprush of dust, as if in smoke. The front rank of the host was composed of huge bull buffalos, hump-backed, running with their bearded heads low, their horns jerking up with each stride; and the noise of the hoofs was like a great bellowing voice, as though the earth had split apart and was uttering a cry.

  “Shoot them down or you’re lost!” screamed the girl. “Fire! Fire!”

  She seemed to forget her own safety. She was only a woman, and these were men—so many strong men, even if their skins were only white!

  The major went out two steps before the rest. He was perfectly calm. His shouting voice cut through the uproar, giving orders. Twenty men were all that he had with him, properly armed.

  “Stand ready!” he commanded. “Take aim. Shoot straight past me when I give the word. Shoot at the center of the herd. You on my right, shoot first when I give the word. On my left, shoot when I raise my hand again—”

  Then he waited. Courage, for that moment, made the hypocrite and the liar seem noble in the eyes of the girl.

  He shouted, lifting a hand, and the first volley of shots struck the front of the herd like so many pebbles hurled against a cliff. Two or three bulls—no more—tumbled headlong. The places where they fell were marked by long succeeding ripples behind them, as the remainder of the herd flowed like water over the obstacles.

  It seemed to Blue Bird that the breathing of the bulls was already in her face, like the spume and dash of spray before a wave. The horns, rattling together, had a metallic sound. An irresistible river of fear was pouring down on them when the second half of the soldiers in line fired; and then all of them, of a single accord, started leaping and shouting and waving their guns.

  The buffalo divided, not slowly but as though the point where the three bulls had dropped in a heap were the head of a great rock that made the currents sheer off to either side. They spilled out at a sharp angle and seemed to increase their speed.

  Dust, as though driven by a heavy wind, poured out into the faces of the watchers; and the rank, moist smell of the herd closed over them. But the thundering death had been diverted. Still widening the gap, the great herd sloped around the sides of the camp. They shot off the high bank in a steady torrent, many buffalos breaking their necks in the fall, many toppling and being trampled to death by the succeeding ranks, until the bank was bevelled off by the compacted surface of the dead and hammered bodies over which the other thousands passed. The front ranks dashed the water of the creek to spray. The stream was dammed up by swiftly moving masses of flesh.

  Up the farther bank the swarm mounted, with speed that seemed undiminished.

  A thick haze rolled overhead and like a little cloud, made the stars small and the moon dim and lifeless. For an endless time the soldiers watched, anxiously, dreading lest the later masses of the herd should close in and sweep the camp away in the flood. But always the rear ranks followed their leaders, and still the heap of three dead buffalos made the exact point of the division from which the two halves swept away, very much like the point at which the long hair of a woman is parted.

  At last, gaps appeared in the throng. The last few hundreds came scattering, and sheered away in their turn and were lost from view across the stream. Only the departing thunder of the hooves rolled back to the command of the major.

  For a brief moment, then, he looked about him to find the girl and thank her; because he knew that she had saved him as well as all the rest.

  “Lost in a buffalo stampede!”—That would have been a foolish epitaph to end such a life as his. And the girl had prevented it. He could at least thank her with a string of beads, to-morrow.

  “You can sleep in the supply tent,” he told her. “It will be
day before very long.”

  He opened the flaps of the big tent, around the sides of which were stored the supplies from the pack horses which accompanied the march. And pulling down a stack of blankets, he told her to make herself comfortable on them; she was stretched out upon them with a sigh of weariness even before he left the tent.

  Half an hour later, the major went back to the provision tent and opened the flap, listening until he was sure that she slept. When he was confident of that, it was still difficult to find Blue Bird, and by light touches to locate the pouch at her side.

  Within it, he felt the paper of the letter, and drew it out, hushing the noisy crinkling by the stealthy movements of his hand.

  Sweat was running on his face before he was outside the tent again, then he went to his own tent and read the letter, written with a big, rushing hand that showed the words had tumbled headlong out of Maisry’s heart.

  Rusty, dear,

  I didn’t understand. I thought the major said you wanted the scarab back because you had lost your luck with it. How could you doubt me? Send it back to me—bring it back to me so that I can have you with it. The days have gone like lead, walking on my heart. Come soon, and if you love me half as much as I love you, I’ll always be the happiest girl in the world.

  Maisry

  When the major had finished this letter, freezing cold puckered his forehead and dimmed his eyes. He could see only one picture—Rusty Sabin facing a firing squad.

  Then, from his pack, he got out some white paper, measured it by the letter, and cut it to the right size. After that he practiced the scrip for some time. He had a good, steady hand, and a natural talent as a penman. Presently he felt that he was able to make a forgery good enough to pass the unsuspicious eye of Rusty Sabin. Then he wrote:

  Dear Rusty,

  Why not try to do a little forgetting? It hasn’t been hard for me, and it ought to be easy for you.—Besides you have Blue Bird. Isn’t she enough?

  You and I would never get on. Now that I’ve had time to think, I see that I never could like Indians—even white ones.

  Have a good time with the green beetle.

  Maisry

  The major, after he had finished the writing, resealed the envelope and stole back to the provision tent. He could hear the soft breathing of the girl in the darkness. A fragrance, thin and dim and pure, rose from her, and a strange feeling of pity came over the major; a queer regret for all the things that he was not.

  Then he went to waken his two captains, and took them into his own tent.

  Blue Bird, not a minute after she had been left, awakened suddenly, with a fast-beating heart. She had that intimate and guilty sense that some one had been near her. The feeling choked her and made her hurry outside the big tent, free from the smell of food and blankets and gunpowder.

  Then she went toward the major’s tent, simply because she knew him better than she knew the rest of the command, and because she wanted to be near some one who was a friend, in this queer time of fear.

  CHAPTER 26

  Inside the tent, a little fire sprang up. It cast a rosy light through the canvas, and sometimes a vast, wavering, uncertain shadow moved across the side of the tent before the Blue Bird. The major’s first words, however, struck her almost blind with terror. She only lived in the sense of hearing, after that. For Marston was saying:

  “Now, my friends, we’ve come far enough for me to let you understand that this isn’t simply a practice march. The object of it is to wipe out Standing Bull’s Cheyenne camp. There are only sixty braves with him, and—”

  “Hold on!” said one of the officers. “They’re peaceful, those Cheyennes.”

  “Peaceful?” exclaimed the major. “There’s no such thing as a peaceful Indian! One of my chief jobs,” went on the major, “is to put Rusty Sabin out of the way. Red Hawk, as they call him, will make trouble till he dies. Well, I want him dead before another day ends!”

  When she heard this, a small, faint cry came from the throat of Blue Bird. She swayed to her feet, scarcely realizing that she had called out, still half blinded by what she had been overhearing. And that was why the major found her when, in answer to that sound of woe, he sprang out of the tent.

  He took her by both arms and thrust her before him into the tent.

  “We’ve got a spy with us!” said Marston. “By heaven, she’s a spy—and I’ve a mind to treat her as one!”

  Captain Dell, lean and hard of face, and with the sparkling eyes of a terrier, turned his shoulder to the scene, perfectly indifferent. But stocky Captain Wilbur’s face wrinkled with pain and disgust.

  “It’s she who saved our necks tonight,” he pointed out. “As for the plan you have—it’s murder!”

  The major glared savagely at Wilbur.

  “Wilbur,” he said, “it’s beginning to be plain to me that you’re not cut out for Indian fighting.”

  “For Indian fighting, I hope,” said Wilbur. “But not for Indian massacres!”

  A deep, angry exclamation broke from the major’s throat, but he was never able to finish that remark because Blue Bird, who had been standing limp and weak, as though about to sink to the ground, turned suddenly into a twisting, dodging, darting snake. She jerked her hand from the major’s arm, ducked under Captain Dell’s clutch, and whipped back through the entrance flap. The major, with a warning shout, plunged after her, and was in time to see her slip, a flying shadow, onto the back of his favorite black charger, which was tethered near the tent.

  Marston leaped for the head of the horse, but the flash of a knife stopped him. He saw the tie-line slashed in two, and then the fierce yell of the Cheyenne girl sent the big horse away at full gallop.

  Chivalry was at fault, to the mind of Major Marston. He had no hesitation, therefore, in pulling his revolver and blazing away with the best intent in the world to pick that slender feminine body off the back of the horse. But the rider swerved behind a supply tent, then into brush.

  “Catch her!—After her!” yelled the major. “Get her alive—or get her dead!”

  That was why the men of the Marston command were presently rushing their horses furiously across the prairie. But the black was a chosen horse, and so Blue Bird walked away from those hungry-hearted soldiers, and at last the moon haze covered her.

  She did not flee straight toward the distant Cheyenne camp. Instead, she angled far away to the west of that course. The day rolled on almost to the evening, and the black horse was cruelly fretted with foam and streaked with whip-welts before she came into sight of the thin smoke that rose over the Cheyenne camp.

  She went straight into the presence of Standing Bull, who sat in his tent, smoking a long-stemmed pipe, making his cheeks into hollows as he sucked on the mouthpiece, and closing his eyes as he breathed out the smoke. Beside him, almost as a matter of course, lolled Red Hawk, now dressed from head to foot like an Indian, his blanket thrown back from his shoulders in the warmth of the tent, and visible on his breast a hawk, very cunningly painted in red.

  He jumped up when he saw the excited girl. It seemed to her that there was a flash of happiness in his eyes, like a spark, and that the toss of his red hair was like a lifting of flame.

  “The soldiers are coming to murder us, Standing Bull!” she cried to the young chief.

  He opened his eyes and looked wearily up at her.

  “They are going to kill the sick and the well,” she continued. “But there are only five twenties of them.” She was clapping her hands above her head, and exclaiming, “You can swallow them up with your braves.—You can swallow them as a snake swallows a mouse.”

  CHAPTER 27

  It was infinitely beneath the dignity of Standing Bull to be startled by anything that a woman might report to him. He drew another long puff from his pipe, rose slowly, laid the pipe aside with certain ceremonial gestures, threw a buffalo robe about him, took up a seven-foot spear, by way of a staff. Then he left the lodge in silence.

  Intimate though
the friendship was between him and the young war chief, Rusty had not dared to speak until Standing Bull had made his exit. Then he grasped the Blue Bird by both wrists, hard enough to hurt her, though she only smiled back into his face, as though she loved the pain.

  “And Maisry?” he demanded. “And Maisry?”

  She bowed her head as she took the letter from the pouch, so that he would not be able to look too closely into her heart and see the pain that was rising there. When she raised her head again, her face was calm. There was enough Indian in her for that.

  He tore open the letter in a frenzy. She, held by a perverse torment, waited to see joy spring into his face. But she only saw the widening of his eyes, and the color leaving his face. He read aloud, slowly, in a breathless voice no bigger than a whisper:

  Dear Rusty,

  Why not try to do a little forgetting? It hasn’t been hard for me, and it ought to be easy for you.—Besides you have Blue Bird. Isn’t she enough?

  You and I would never get on. Now that I’ve had time to think, I see that I never could like Indians—even white ones.

  Have a good time with the green beetle.

  Maisry

  He lowered the letter with a jerk of his arm, and stared at the girl. His eyes were as empty as the eyes of a child. Certainly there was not enough Indian in him. And shame struck the girl deep as she saw the grief in his face. She, woman though she was, knew better how to manage such things.

  “But what is it, Red Hawk?” she asked. “The white girl was happy. When I talked about you her eyes shone, and she laughed.”

  “Aye,” said Rusty, slowly. “She laughed.”

  He dropped the letter into the small fire that burned under the stew pot. It threw up one flare of brightness that died at once, and left a small dance of gray ashes over the coal.

  After that, Rusty lifted his head again.

  “The whites,” he said, “are not like the Indians. They are not true.—Look at me, Blue Bird!”