by Max Brand
Suddenly the major called out with a strange ring in his voice: “Blood! Blood, man! Tap the red, and let it run a while.”
The teamster, without pausing in his swaying motions, spat yellow through his teeth and turned his wide, horrible grin over his shoulder toward the major. At the same time, the whip struck with a different sound; there was a smart popping, and instantly a trickle of red flowed down Bill Tenney’s back. A shudder ran through him at the same time. And the major, marking this with a cheerful eye, shouted: “That’s it! Let him have it, now. Let’s see the red come out of him.”
Every stroke of the whip sliced the flesh, and in a few moments Tenney’s back was crimson. The red ran down over his trousers. But after the first slight movement, he did not stir.
The major kept drawing closer and closer, until a flicker of thin red drops flew off the end of the lash and streaked his face. At that, he leaped back with an oath. He pulled out a handkerchief and scrubbed at his face.
“All right!” he called finally. “Let up on him now. We’ll just have his dirty back washed clean. Get some salt and water and pour a little vinegar into it. We’ll clean the wounds the whip made, for him.”
They brought the acrid solution, and mopped Tenney’s back with it. As the torture struck into his flesh, the salt soaking in, the vinegar biting him, he permitted his shoulders to jerk upward, once. Then he remained still, even as he was freed from the post. His shirt was pulled over his head again, and dragged violently down over his tortured body.
He stood up straight and shook the long hair back from his face. His running sweat had clogged the hair in long, ugly locks. He was utterly colorless. At several paces, the sound of his breathing was audible. And his eyes rolled with a yellow fire as he stared at the major.
Major Marston laughed again as he stepped closer. “You don’t like it, eh?” he said. “Having dreams of stabbing me in the back one night, are you? But I know how to turn wolves like you into dogs, and dogs into curs. And I make the curs crawl and lick the hand that beats ’em. Now take him away, and put him in the coolest and the deepest room you can find.”
Chapter Eight
If Rusty Sabin’s face had been empty when he saw Tenney as he was marched past, it was because Rusty was seeing before him, very clearly, a distant thing that meant more than the realities at hand. He was seeing duty, on which he would never turn his back.
Afterward, he went through the crowd and found his two Cheyennes, shoulder to shoulder. He laid his hand on the naked arm of Broken Arrow, and his fingers moved rapidly. There are few Indians who cannot read the sign language of the plains by touch, in the midst of darkness.
As Rusty left the spot, Broken Arrow and Little Porcupine did not follow him at once. It was some time before they appeared behind the blacksmith shop, and then they had with them three strong-bodied ponies.
Rusty stood in the starlight and made them a brief speech: “I lay in the river, and the Underwater People took hold on me and were pulling me down. Then my white brother came and drew me out. That was a thing that you saw. Also, you have seen him taken captive by his enemies. They have brought him into the fort. Therefore, we must follow him and bring him out again.”
After this, there was a breath of silence in which the chill of fear could sink into the soul like the starlight into staring eyes. But finally Broken Arrow said: “The war chief of the white men is in the fort. His best warriors are around him. They have many guns and their eyes never close.”
“Sweet Medicine shall help us,” said Rusty Sabin confidently.
“Then we may go safely?” asked Broken Arrow.
“A man with fear in his heart is never safe,” answered Rusty.
Little Porcupine had not spoken before. Now he said: “Where we were closed in the place of the firewater, we never should have come out alive except for Red Hawk. If he asks for our lives now, they are not ours . . . they belong to him.”
“Go up to the gate of the fort,” said Rusty. “You can look between the big bars. Perhaps you will see where they are taking my brother.”
The two left him at once, and Rusty turned back into the blacksmith shop with a lighted lantern. The smell of the smoke reeked from the blackening walls. He picked up the fourteen-pound sledge whose handle was already well polished by his grasp as he swayed the heavy hammer. He glanced toward the bin that he had filled with discarded horseshoes. Then he spread out his hands and stared down at the palms, where the skin had grown thick.
He might be leaving this place and this life. If he managed to take Tenney from the fort, doubtless he would have to flee with him, and in that case there would be no return.
Writing was not easy for him, but he sat down and laboriously spelled out a letter.
I go back to my people, perhaps. I go for a little time or for a long time. The Green Beetle will tell you every day that my heart remains with you. Farewell.
On the outside of the letter he wrote Maisry, and stuck the paper into a crack of the wall, where it would surely be seen by the first eye. It did not occur to him, at the moment, that people should be identified by two names instead of by one.
Afterward, he got his knife. It was eighteen inches long. He had forged it himself, of the finest steel, and while he was totally unskilled with rifle or pistol or the bows and arrows that had still been in use among the Cheyennes in the days of his boyhood, he was expert in the wielding of that long, heavy blade, whether thrown or used hand to hand. He looked down the blue, curving shimmer of the steel for a moment, now, and then freshened his grip on the handle.
He was still holding the knife when the two Cheyennes returned. Their faces, to an ordinary eye, would have been considered totally expressionless, but to the observance of Rusty’s every feature of them bespoke excitement.
Little Porcupine said briefly: “They tied your white brother to a post and beat him like a dog, and the white war chief stood close by and laughed. They beat your brother till his back was red, and then they took him away. And the white war chief is still laughing.”
Rusty closed his eyes. When he opened them again, a thin fingertip of light was running rapidly up and down the edge of his knife as it wavered slightly in the fierceness of his grip.
Together, they went all around the fort, walking quietly and apart. When men walk together, they all see the same things. When they go one by one, each man looks for himself.
When they had joined each other again, each gave his report, but not a single detail was useful to Rusty Sabin except that Little Porcupine had surely seen the war chief walking up and down behind an open window on the river side of the fort.
Rusty, looking wildly around him, found no inspiration in the dark of the night, so he sat down, cross-legged, jointed his pipe, filled it, sprinkled tinder from his pouch on top of the tobacco, and then kindled the smoke. He blew out puffs that were faintly visible in the starlight, and then he held up his hands, the pipe fixed upside down in one of them. He would hold up his arms in this manner until the ache of weariness turned them to lead and made them fall, unless, before that time, Sweet Medicine brought wisdom to his mind.
Broken Arrow whispered to his companion. “Be very still. He prays to Sweet Medicine.”
Then, gradually, all the sounds from the village died out of Rusty’s ears. He no longer heard the barking of the two dogs, one of them yipping in soprano and one howling a deep bass. A jangle of strings, and the sound of two men singing, also faded from his ears. The lights blurred and went out.
In the intensity of his concentration he felt himself swept far away, and once more he was before the great pillar at the mouth of the Sacred Valley of the Cheyennes, praying to the Great Spirit, Sweet Medicine. He thought of the wide, whispering wings of the owl that had flown over his head on that day, long ago. And it seemed to Rusty that the same whisper stole through his ears again.
Then, blindingly bright, he saw the face of the major, laughing. He had marked Major Marston long before this, on the o
utskirts of his attention, and he had not marked him with favor. The major’s superior airs were perfectly patent. If Rusty paid no attention to them, it was because he chose to overlook those annoying mannerisms that always drew attention, subtly, from the rough manners of Rusty and to the major’s gentility.
Above all, there had been the day when the major had walked into the blacksmith shop, accompanied by Maisry, and sneeringly remarked: “Well, there have to be some honest laborers in the world. Every man cannot work with his brain.”
These words floated back into Rusty’s recollection. And then he thought, also, of Tenney under the lash, his back flowing crimson.
Still the face of the major persisted before him. And suddenly Rusty’s arms dropped.
“Hai,” whispered Little Porcupine. “There is no answer?”
“There is the war chief of the whites,” said Rusty. “That is the answer.”
“Is the name of the man an answer to this prayer, my father?” asked Broken Arrow.
“It is the answer which was given to me,” Rusty said briefly, as he stood up.
“What does it mean?”
“The Sky People,” said Rusty sternly, “do not always speak out clearly. They give a sound, they give a vision, and wise men know its meaning.”
“We wait for you to tell us, father,” said Broken Arrow humbly. “Our minds are empty, but our hands belong to you.”
Rusty began to pace up and down. His arms still ached at the shoulders. The darkness of his moment of prayer was gone. He could hear the singing, the barking of the dogs again. The slamming of a door not far off startled him.
What was the meaning of the thing he had seen? And still it persisted in his brain—the face of Major Marston, laughing!
He stopped short. “We are to go to him,” he said.
Broken Arrow uttered an exclamation. “Go to him?” he said. “Break open the gate or leap over the wall? Father, if all the Cheyennes were gathered together here, it still would be a mighty day of work for them to do that thing. How shall we come to him?”
“By the open window, behind which you saw him walking,” said Rusty.
“It is high up the wall,” said Broken Arrow.
“We shall climb to the place,” said Rusty. “A voice has spoken to me from the sky. Shall we not follow it, brothers?”
Chapter Nine
The wall, as it turned out, was high indeed, up to the window behind which the major still strolled back and forth, now and then singing a note or two from some Negro melody. But the face of the wall, for greater strength, sloped outward, toward the base, and the stones of which it was built were so huge and so roughly bound together that there were ten thousand small fingerholds and toeholds scattered across the face of it. Little Porcupine, when he had examined the wall, uttered a whispering laugh.
“See,” he said. “Already Sweet Medicine is with us. He has given us a ladder and a path up the height.”
It was not even necessary to strip away the moccasins so that the toes could get a better grip.
Little Porcupine was the first up the wall, and, grasping the sill of the window, he waited until the other two were beside him.
Inside, Rusty could see a big, comfortably furnished bedroom, with a fireplace built into one wall and a range of books along a shelf. When he looked at those books and considered the millions of words that must fill them, his heart shrank a little. A man who had read so much must surely have mastered some strong medicine—even something as strong, perhaps, as the power of the Sky People of the Cheyennes.
The major, contented by his thoughts, kept smiling as he walked. He kept his hands folded behind his back, most of the time, but occasionally he made a gesture as though snapping a whip before him. And once, as he did this, he actually laughed aloud. So that it was clear that he was remembering the flogging of big Bill Tenney. When Rusty was sure of this, a terrible rage blinded him. He shuddered so that he seemed about to fall, and the powerful arm of Broken Arrow steadied him in his place.
Then Rusty whispered in the ear of his companions: “I go first. Follow when I give the sign.”
At this moment, the major was at the farther end of the room, about to turn. Before he had swung around, Rusty was standing inside the window, with his arms folded high on his breast. The major started and actually sprang back a pace, when he turned and saw this unexpected sight. Then he exclaimed: “The blacksmith, eh? Now, how the devil did you get there, Sabin?”
Rusty smiled in his turn, and almost without malice. “When a friend calls to a friend,” he said, “the call must be answered.”
“Am I your friend, Sabin?” asked the major, his eyes working over the blacksmith’s still sooty face.
Rusty shrugged his shoulders at that apparent sneer. “My friend,” he answered, “is now closed up in the fort. His back is raw . . . from the whip. I have come to talk about him.”
“Ah. So he’s your friend, is he? You shouldn’t have friends among thieves, Sabin. You know what they say . . . ‘birds of a feather flock together.’ Eh?”
He laughed as he made his point, but Rusty answered. “He has given me my life. Shall I call the hand that saves me unclean?”
He made a gesture, as he said this, and the major’s lip twitched as he saw the grime on the fingers.
“Some people like dirty hands as well as clean ones,” remarked Marston. “What can you say to me about Bill Tenney?”
“He took the gold of another man,” said Rusty. “Therefore he was tied to a post and flogged. What else will be done with him?”
“He may be flogged again,” said the major. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided what to do with him, yet. There are too many thieves and scoundrels in this part of the world, and we must teach them lessons. I have to be the teacher . . . and I don’t really mind the work. I may keep Tenney in irons, and send him down the river to the first prison. I don’t know. I haven’t decided what to do. Have you any ideas about it, Sabin?”
Curiosity and malice joined equally in his voice. “I will give you money . . . I will give you horses, if you set him free,” Rusty answered.
“Buying him, are you?”
“Money buys all things from the white men,” answered Rusty confidently.
“You’ll give horses for him?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll give White Horse?”
At this, Rusty started violently and lifted his eyes toward the ceiling as if he might find the answer written there. Then he replied: “White Horse is not mine to give away. He stays with me because he loves me. How could I give him away, except to his old freedom?”
There was such obvious sincerity in this speech that it troubled the major. He had looked upon Rusty as a wild man—a freak—a strange creature of fortune. He saw now that there was something else in the man, and a profundity of goodness and justice that made his own soul seem both small and evil. And to a man of the major’s pride and self-sufficiency, this discovery was merely an injection of poison. He had scorned and derided Rusty before; now he hated him with a whole and perfect hatred. For he understood now that Maisry saw in this man not merely a striking figure of the frontier—a romantic hero—but a man whose soul was of the true steel of integrity. If Rusty Sabin’s manners were still, very often, those of a wild Indian, his spirit was both wise and brave.
Rusty had previously made the major feel the superiority of civilization over the barbaric life. Now he made sure that his only superiority was that of greater place and power. The major was not abashed by that discovery. He was simply offended. So he said: “You’re willing to give away anything for Bill Tenney, who saved your life. You’re willing to give everything except the things you care about. Well, Sabin, you may have bought off other white men with your gold, but you can’t buy me off. I represent justice, out here on the plains, and justice is going to run its course with Bill Tenney. The man’s a wolf, and he has to be treated like the beast that he is. In the meantime, it’s late and I’m going to
bed. You had better get out of here by the way you came.”
To his amazement, Rusty merely shook his head.
“You’re not going?” demanded Marston, thrusting out his jaw a little.
“We have only begun to talk,” answered Rusty gently. “I am asking you to be generous and kind to a helpless man. You have hurt him and shamed him a great deal. Pain of hunger is bad . . . pain of fire is worse . . . but these things can be cured and forgotten. Shame is a sickness that never leaves the soul of a man. You have shamed my brother. Now you must set him free and let him try to be a man again in his own eyes. For that, he will need much time and many great deeds.”
The temper of the major snapped short. He pointed suddenly at the door and exclaimed: “Get out!” He added: “I’ve had enough of this damned nonsense! I’ve given you enough hints, and now I’ll give you facts. Get out of this fort!”
The major, as anger and enthusiasm grew within him, squared himself close to the window, confronting Rusty. Rusty now spoke one deep-voiced word in Cheyenne, and instantly two long, naked, copper-colored arms leaped through the window square, and two mighty hands fastened on Major Marston.
He tried to yell, but one of those hands was grasping his throat, shutting off the sound. He tried to wrench his revolver from the holster at his hip, but Rusty Sabin caught his wrist with a grip that was iron-strong from the swinging of heavy sledges. The major stopped struggling. Rusty touched the hand that was throttling the white war chief, and that hand fell away.
Major Marston, for a moment, was fully occupied in getting his breath again; after that, as his eyes cleared, he stared at Rusty. There was plenty of courage in the major; he showed it now in this time of high danger.