Brand, Max - 1925

by Beyond the Outposts (v2. 1)

  But even for this Bald Eagle did not come forth from his teepee. I was bitterly disappointed. I had been looking forward to the time when I should see the face and features of the famous chief and hear, perhaps, some word of praise from him. Yet there was not a hint of him. Only old Dark Water stepped out and hobbled away with a dozen braves, leading the stallion on ropes. They had not gone ten paces before White Smoke broke from them and came rushing back to me. I spoke to him, and he followed me like a house dog, while, with a swelling heart, I led him through the press and saw him tethered. There I left him and went back to the tent that was appointed for me.

  There, Sitting Wolf came in to see me, but not with a boyish rush and a shout, as I had expected. I had left him a boy. I came back to find him a man. He was only fifteen, but a year among an alien nation had done a great deal for him. He was tall, still slender, but with a promise of bigness. He had a grave and quiet face, more finely featured man any Indian I ever saw with the exception of Zintcallasappa, and she had a strain of white blood, while Sitting Wolf was purest Dakota. Only when he spoke of White Smoke did he become a child again. He had seen the stallion, but he had not been able to come to me through the crowd. He wished to know if it was true that, by magic, I had trained the horse so that he would answer my hand, my voice, and come rushing at my whistle? I told him that it was no magic, simply kindness and patience, but he shook his head. He was irresistibly determined, always, to make me out a superman.

  I asked him how he had been treated, and he told me mat Bald Eagle had allowed him perfect freedom after I left, telling him simply that, if he ran home to the Sioux, I, Black Bear, should lose my life with torments, whether or not I came back with White Smoke. Once again I felt surety that the mysterious chief was a white man. What Indian would have trusted so much to the loyalty of a boy - even such a boy as the son of Three Buck Elk?

  He told me, too, the history of the Pawnee-Dakota war since myself and the twelve had disappeared into the west. In the year the Sioux had organized a great expedition that amounted almost to the dimensions of an army. According to Sitting Wolf, they were as many as a great herd of buffalo, darkening the plains. But no Indians have ever looked at facts without a magnifying glass. They detest scrupulous truth, not like liars but like children. This horde brushed the outlying divisions of the Pawnees before them until Bald Eagle threw himself into their path. He had not numbers, no matter how well trained, to meet the shock of such a swarm. But on the edge of a river, so that he might be sure of water, he entrenched himself, throwing up big mounds - twice as high as a teepee, according to Sitting Wolf. He stored mat rude fort with heaps of dried meat and with corn. He brought in scores of loads of ammunition. Then he waited for the Sioux.

  When they came, they tried to swallow the little fort in one charge. He blew the van of their charge to bits and drove them back. For a whole month they remained before the fort, but it was a miserable month for the Sioux. Their provisions ran out almost at once, and they found no buffalo herds near to supply them with meat. Every night or two Bald Eagle rushed out from the fort and struck them with the sledgehammer-stroke tactics against which barbarians have never known how to stand. They lost men by hundreds and hundreds while the Pawnees were scarcely touched. Finally the Sioux broke up the siege and began a retreat.

  Bald Eagle was not content with this mere repulse. He mounted his men on fat, strong horses, preserved all this time in the center of the camp, and with these he hung on the rear of the Sioux. Twice or thrice they turned back. He evaded their starved ponies easily and returned. Every man who fell behind on the march was swallowed by Bald Eagle. And they straggled by hundreds. It was a cowed and desperate army that finally reached the proper domains of the Dakotas and thence dispersed to their homes. The fame of Bald Eagle was greater than ever. He was both chief and enchanter in the eyes of the Pawnees and of their enemies.

  Sitting Wolf had hardly concluded when Dark Water came to us and showed us two fine horses, saddled, bridled, with bags of provisions tied on. They were for us, and we were free. Bald Eagle was keeping his promise.

  Who has said the Indian does not love horses? Sitting Wolf turned to me and said very gravely: "Do you ride with me, brother, or will you stay here with White Smoke?"

  I did not make an answer until we had ridden clear of the outskirts of the village. Then I said, as I drew my rein: "They have tethered White Smoke with only one rope. I myself saw to that. Perhaps he will prefer us to the Pawnees."

  There were half a dozen Pawnee scoundrels on the edge of the horizon at that moment, but I put two fingers against my lips and raised a whistle like the scream of hawk mat swings to earth through half a mile of rushing wind. White Smoke would hear, and he would either come or break his neck, of that I had no doubt. I knew at once what had happened. There was a dull roar of shouting from the town, then a silver streak flashed toward us through the sunset light with mounted men rushing behind him. Oh, how he came to me, like a creature of the air, scorning the ground he touched with his bright hoofs. I did not wait to change saddles. I stripped the bridle from my horse, tossed its rope to Sitting Wolf, and was instantly on the back of the stallion. By the time I was sitting there, the Pawnee hoofbeats were loud behind me as they came screeching like demons, and Sitting Wolf streaked far away.

  My danger ended there. In half a minute I had put those Pawnee scoundrels hopelessly behind me, and Sitting Wolf was drawing back at every stride. I had never loosed White Smoke before. I felt as though I were clinging to the back of a great arrow launched from the bow of a giant, save that the flight of this shaft that bore me never slackened, never failed. The wind of that gallop cut my face and seared my eyes. I found myself yelling like an Indian - and half with fear that White Smoke was beyond my control. But, when Sitting Wolf was just before me again, a single word brought him down to the pace of the other horses. Those horses were gallant runners. The pride of Bald Eagle would not have allowed him to mount us on any but the best for our return from his people. Now Sitting Wolf was jockeying the uttermost speed from them, but White Smoke floated effortlessly over the ground as he ran at their side. Never, never, was such a horse before or since.

  I was as safe as though I rode a thunderbolt. Sitting Wolf was another matter, but the second horse attended to that. For three miles he whipped the mount he bestrode until it staggered - and still some half dozen in the van of the Pawnees gained on us. Then we halted our horses. I jerked my rifle to my shoulder and dropped the leader of the Pawnees into eternity, the others scattering to the side, yelling. By that time Sitting Wolf was on the back of the led horse and off to a fresh start. The danger ended. The Pawnees had given the best that was in their horses, and now they dropped gradually to the rear, until at last we rode into the darkness of the eastern horizon alone, untroubled by any fear.

  There followed one of the merriest fortnights of my life as Sitting Wolf and I roamed over the prairies, hunting for a sign of the Dakotas. He was keen as starvation to find his people once more, but also he was reveling in his freedom and, like myself, in the magic beauty of the white stallion. We found a trail and a broken arrow of a make that assured us we were after a band of Sioux. Sitting Wolf even declared that he recognized the handicraft of one of the old arrow makers of his uncle's band. Three days later he proved that he was right, for we came into the village of Standing Bear himself. That chief was away hunting buffalo. We went straight to the teepee of Three Buck Elk with the entire camp laughing and shouting for joy around us. It was as though I had come back to my own people. The young children held up their hands to me joyously. The young braves waved and shouted. The women were screaming like so many hawks. But, of course, if they cheered me, they went mad over the return of Sitting Wolf. He had been given up for dead long, long ago, just as I had been given up. Now they were looking on two ghosts, one of whom came back from the dead on the horse that the Great Spirit Himself might have been proud to ride.

  There was a cleavage through the mas
s of people before us. Through this opened lane the mother of Sitting Wolf came running, and in an instant he was off his horse and in her arms. Three Buck Elk left his son, who was the hope of the tribe, to the arms of his mother. He himself looked on with shining eyes. Joyous laughter kept swelling in his throat. He choked it back and subdued it to a groan.

  "Brother, brother," he said to me, "the Great Spirit has sent you back to us as a sign that our troubles are ended. Three Buck Elk has become an old man, ready to die. The sun had no warmth for his cold blood. Now he is young again."

  The braves were beginning to cluster around me and my horse. It was growing embarrassing. I said: "I do not see my brother, Rising Sun. Just where is his teepee?"

  There was a little pause at this. Then Three Buck Elk said in a marked voice: "His teepee is yonder."

  I found it at once by the yellow disk that was painted near its top. When I raised the flap and entered, I found Zintcallasappa sitting on a robe with a nursing infant at her breast - a child whose hair was a tender fluff of gold. She was as lovely as ever, but how changed. When she raised her great dark eyes to me, full of fear of a dying hope, I knew without a word from her all that had happened. Chuck Morris had left her and gone back to his kind.

  AT THE FORT

  I was too choked with pity and with a sort of horror to speak. But The Blackbird? She simply rolled the infant in a blanket and then made herself come to me with a smile and welcomed me with both hands. Then, because White Smoke had put his head through the entrance flap, sniffing and snorting because he wanted to come to me but feared the fire, she went up to him with a handful of corn. I have seen one other woman, as lovely, as gentle of voice and eye, but even she could never come near his head. To my bewilderment, he submitted quietly to her touch and began to nibble the corn from her palm. So, stroking his neck, she turned back to me, smiling still.

  "I knew that you would come safely home," said Zintcallasappa. "And I have heard them shouting. You brought Sitting Wolf also. Ah, what happiness there is in the teepee of Three Buck Elk... for him who has returned."

  There was the slightest tremor in her voice, as she ended, and a shade across her eyes through which I could look into her soul and see, for an instant, the deep agony of her grief. But then, in another moment, she was smiling again.

  Afterward, I got the story from Three Buck Elk - a story brutally simple. Morris had simply gone in to a new frontier trading post and fort, and, while he was there, he had seen a white girl. He had not come back. He had sent back a rich present of horses, loaded with a thousand trinkets, together with a message that he was not worthy of her, that she was free, and that she should find happiness with one of her own kind.

  I had no doubt that it was a gentle message, for I knew Morris. But when I listened to Three Buck Elk, the first foreshadowing of anger and sadness came over my heart. All the happiness of that return was wiped out of my soul. I cannot tell you what a bitter loneliness came to me at the same time. What a pull there is of like to like - of dog to dog, of hawk to hawk, of white man to his kin. But Zintcallasappa was neither white nor red. She lived on a sad borderland with her heart turned from her people.

  I could not endure remaining near her, inactive in her cause. I could not even wait for the great feast that on the next day was to celebrate our return from the land of the dead. In the morning I saddled White Smoke, and I said a brief farewell to Three Buck Elk. I shall never forget how the great chief looked silently at me before he said: "You leave us, my son?"

  "I shall come again," I said, "and bring Rising Sun with me."

  He merely said: "When the bear sees his brother trapped, he should run from the place before he himself is caught."

  I hardly appreciated that. My mind was full of only one thing, and that was how I should bring Morris back to his duty. For it seemed to my blind self then that, when I put the picture of the poor girl and his child before him, he could not help but come with me.

  For an ordinary horse, traveling fast, the journey to the fort on the river from the place where I started was a full fifteen-day march. But on the tenth morning I rode into the fort. The fort itself was simply a big, low structure of wood, faced with heaps of dirt and a palisade around it. The town was a scattering street that half surrounded the fortress. It was composed chiefly of canvas and of little wretched shacks. No one would invest in permanent structures when they could not tell at what moment an Indian raid might sweep everything flat as the palm of the hand. In the streets of the village I saw such a population as one might have expected in that country - Indians, halfbreeds, trappers who were more wild than the Indians themselves, hunters, scouts in deerskins, and now and then the shrewd face of a trader, full of anxiety, full of schemes. I looked not half as wild as most of the people I passed. What drew their eyes to me, of course, was White Smoke. He would have made a congress of wise elders leap to their feet and gape as he came in from his ten-day whirl across the prairie as fresh as a lark.

  Their voices I paid not the slightest attention to. How long it had been since I had seen any white face other than Morris's I could hardly guess, but this return to my kind meant nothing to me. I was too full of the sorrows of Zintcallasappa, who waited yonder in the huge bosom of the prairie, hoping, praying, begging the Great Spirit or the white man's God to put wisdom and eloquence in the words I spoke to Morris. Their voices did not really touch my ears, until I heard the golden voice of a girl cry out: "Look, Dad, look! Oh, what a king of horses!"

  I turned like a horse that starts under a spur, and, riding up the street beside her big-shouldered father, I had my first sight of Mary Kearney. To me, fresh from the Dakotas, she looked very like an Indian girl at first, what with her dark olive skin and her glossy black hair. Yet, even before she came near enough for me to see that her eyes were blue, I could have had no doubt of her race. For she rode with an easy, graceful carelessness, and she had a way as bold as a man's, except that it was all a woman's - and more than all this, there was something of mind that spoke in her face.

  I knew in a trice everything about her, except her name. I knew that she was brave, that she was gay, that she was full of wit and laughter, and that at heart she was as honest as she was gentle. I knew more than this - that here was the girl who had swept Chuck Morris out of his old life and into a new one. There could not be two like her - not at a small trading post or even in a great city - no more than two horses like White Smoke have ever trod the earth.

  They pressed straight up to me, she still full of excitement, chattering to her father while he smiled and nodded. With every step of their horses her beauty grew out on me as though I were watching the unfolding of a great rose from bud to fall flower in a single moment.

  Her father said, as he came closer and reined his horse: "My man, I wish to buy that horse for my daughter. What is your price? My name," he added, "is John Kearney."

  To the end he had always a lofty manner and a proud habit of speech. But to me, accustomed to Three Buck Elk and Standing Bear and other chiefs with their natural dignity, the pride of white men, even the greatest of them, has always seemed an affectation. I prefer a downright, plain, frank man who doesn't wear his name as if it were a tide.

  "My name," I said, "is Lewis Dorset."

  Before I could go any further he broke in: "Dorset? Dorset? My dear boy, are you one of the Rhode Island Dorsets? I heard that young Harry Dorset came west...."

  I said: "I am not a Rhode Island Dorset, Mister Kearney. I come from Virginia."

  I saw the nose of the girl go up in the air a bit, and I said to myself: Young filly, for all your pride, perhaps I could teach you

  your paces. The face of Kearney had turned cold at once as he went on: "Very well, Dorset. Now, the price of your horse. I'm in a trifling hurry and cannot wait."

  "This horse," I said, "no woman can ride."

  There was a faint exclamation of injured pride from the girl. "Give me time, Dad," she hastened to assure him, "and I'll ride anythin
g that calls itself a horse. You know that I can."

  "Certainly. Certainly," said Kearney, and he brushed my objection into the thinnest air. He continued: "Now, Dorset, let me have your price, if you please. I suppose it will be high enough. But I am not here to strike a bargain. I must have that horse."

  "Very well," I said, "then we have to find a basis for working out the price. What would you say the lives of six men are worth?"

  He stared at me for a moment, and then he said with a bit of acid in his voice: "You come from a slave state, Dorset. I abhor slavery. Therefore, I presume you can answer that question better than I?"

  There was a flare of red across my eyes. He was only about forty-five, fit as a fiddle, not a whit too old for a fight. I wanted to smash him to bits. But the very sense of my greater strength held me back, as such a sense will hold any man of decency.

  "I am speaking of free men," I said.

  "The price of freedom," said Kearney with a ring in his voice, "is ten hundredweight of diamonds."

  He had been in politics, and he couldn't help turning out these stump-speech phrases every now and then. No more than he could help running his eyes over the little crowd that had gathered around us, harvesting the murmur of their applause and smiling as they nodded.