by Max Brand
Blue Bird let her shining eyes rest on Tenney for a moment. “Standing Bull,” she translated, “says that the Cheyennes are coming, bringing gifts to Red Hawk because of the thing he has done. Red Hawk wants no gifts. Hai! If he were as naked as winter, he would not want gifts . . . because there is no pride in him.”
For all that, Red Hawk had to go out and stand in front of the tent, for the people began coming in throngs, some bearing gifts and others to watch the presentations. Every one of the sick who was being cured was able to give some token of regard. One man brought up a whole herd of a dozen horses. Others led horses loaded with guns, axes, knives, beads, flour, sugar (that priceless treasure of the Indian), robes that were furred or tanned or painted, doeskin softer than flannel, moccasins, beaded shirts, and all the wealth that an Indian can cherish. Presently a vast heap was gathered beside the entrance to the teepee.
Afterward, Red Hawk went back into the big lodge and sat down with a gloomy face. Blue Bird carried in the heavy gifts and stacked them here and there. She was panting and laughing from the work. Her laughter was no louder than a whisper, lest it should interrupt the thoughts of the men, her masters. Tenney helped her with the weightier things.
“Thank you, brother,” murmured the girl.
He had picked up a good many Cheyenne words by this time, and he had learned that all of the tribe greeted him by the same term. For, if Red Hawk called him brother, he was brother to all the Cheyennes. That was why they invited him into their lodges. That was why the children came up to him fearlessly and took his hand, just as they took the hand of Red Hawk. That was why, only the day before, a brave had stripped from Tenney’s back the buffalo robe he wore and given him, in exchange, a priceless painted robe that would have made a museum piece. Other warriors had presented him with moccasins, with knives and guns, until he was already able to set up his own lodgings the moment he cared to do so. Thus he was brother, also, to Blue Bird, although brother was not the term he would have liked to hear from her.
When the work of storing away was ended, Tenney heard Lazy Wolf saying: “Why are you unhappy, Rusty?”
And Rusty answered: “They love me, and I love them. But all their gifts and all their kindness cannot fill an empty heart.”
“Why is it empty?” asked Lazy Wolf.
“There was the white girl,” answered Rusty with perfect frankness. “She sent me away. I gave her the green beetle as a sign that we loved one another, and she sent it back to me to show that she cared no longer.”
Blue Bird, again at her beadwork, sat suddenly straight. “Why do you say the thing that is not so?” she demanded.
“I say the thing that is so,” answered Rusty gloomily.
“She won’t believe you,” said Lazy Wolf. “She would have you soon enough. She’d be your second squaw, or your third . . . and still be happy.”
The girl, her face flaming, jumped to her feet and started to leave the lodge, but Lazy Wolf stopped her by saying: “That is what I want to talk about. Stay where you are, Blue Bird, and tell me when I say the wrong thing.”
She paused by the entrance. Her hands were gripped hard at her sides. Tenney’s keen eyes could see the small, wild pulsation of the heart under the closely fitted doeskin shirt. Fires of shame and of love were in her, and an exquisitely cold anguish ran through the body of Bill Tenney, the thief.
“Now look at her, Red Hawk,” said Lazy Wolf. “Or you don’t have to look at the poor girl. You ought to see her in the eye of your mind well enough, and be able to answer me. Your father’s gone, my lad. Well, it will be a long time before Wind Walker comes back to you. He’s as near to the Pawnees as you are to the Cheyennes, or flesh to bone. However, I’ve always been damned fond of you. And if you could put up with a fat, lazy old man, I’d be happy to have you somewhere near.
“If your girl, Maisry, has left you, why do you wring your heart like a wet shirt? You can squeeze plenty of misery out of it, but too much wringing is sure to tear the garment. Let her be, then. One good woman is as like another as two peas in one pod. In color, Blue Bird’s more olive than white, but she’s a pretty thing, if you look at her twice. Look at her now, and tell me, Red Hawk.”
Rusty Sabin got up and went to the girl. He took her hand and led her across the lodge, so that she sat down beside him.
“What is your father saying about you, Blue Bird?” he asked. “Sweet Medicine gave me eyes clear enough to see the truth . . . that there is only one maiden among the Cheyennes. Hai! But now you are unhappy. You look down, and there is sweat on your forehead. Tell me why you are sad? Shall I make Lazy Wolf stop talking like this?”
With the clean white of his deerskin sleeve he wiped her forehead, and the girl looked up with sudden resolution.
“I am not sad,” she said. “But I am seeing so much happiness that I am afraid. Like a hunter who is thirsty in summer and is afraid that the blue water he sees may not be true.”
“Good girl! Brave girl,” said Lazy Wolf. “By the Lord, Blue Bird, I’m proud of you. There’s no lying or sneakery about you. You see what she is, Red Hawk. The bravest and the rightest and the truest woman that a man could find . . . and loving you these many years, if you’ll look back and have a thought about it. And if. . . .”
“Hush,” said Rusty Sabin. “Is it true, Blue Bird? Hai! What a fool and a blind fool I have been. I seem to remember certain things. That time when I went out to die in the Sacred Valley and you stopped me and talked to me . . . I remember that. I remember many things now.” He took her hand and patted it. His eye looked on her with a grave concern.
“Now, then,” said Lazy Wolf, “since Maisry is gone from you, Red Hawk, be a wise man and listen to me. Take Blue Bird for your wife . . . and, before many years, you’ll have children squalling in your lodge and you’ll be as happy as any fool of a man in the world. What more do you want? Houses and carpets and glasses on the table don’t make happiness. You may never be much more than a blacksmith among the whites, but you’re a great chief among the Cheyennes. And here’s a Cheyenne girl for you. Why don’t you take her?”
The same thoughtful seriousness remained in the face of Red Hawk as he asked: “Do you want me to take you, Blue Bird?”
Tenney, with the blood roaring in his ears and aching in his temples, waited for the assent. Then he saw that she was sitting straighter than ever, staring at Rusty.
She said: “If I don’t want you, why have I sacrificed every year the best beaded dress that I could make? Why have I prayed to Sweet Medicine to put me in your thoughts? But I know this about you. You had one father . . . and, when you found him, there was no other. You had many horses, but, when you found White Horse, there was no other horse. You left your people to follow your father. You will leave the Cheyennes soon, to follow the way of White Horse. Of each kind, there is only room in your heart for one. So if you make me your wife, one day, you may see this Maisry again, and then all thought of me may run out of your heart like water out of a basket made only to hold corn.”
“Hai,” said Red Hawk softly. “She speaks like a wise old man at the council. She speaks better than a medicine man. Blue Bird, you are beautiful and you are also wise. You are half white, and the Indian blood only makes you more beautiful. It is true that I keep seeing another face that comes between us. I try to think of it frowning and scorning me, but all I can remember is the smiling. However, your father is older and wiser than I am. If you can be happy with me, we shall be married.”
She stared at him again through a long moment. “I don’t want to paint the surface of water,” she said. “I don’t want my happiness to be drawn on the wind that will change. I am going out to walk and think.”
With that, she got up and left the lodge.
“See how wise she is . . . and how good,” said Rusty to Tenney.
But Bill Tenney could not speak; a fist seemed to be stuffed down his throat.
“She’ll be back,” said Lazy Wolf, “as soon as enough sun has sho
ne on her to make her believe that this miracle is true.”
But she was not back. And at the close of the day there was no sight of her. When inquiries were made, one of the young braves who circled the camp continually at a distance from the lodges, as a guard, said that he had seen her riding a pinto toward the south.
“She has gone to a little distance to think and to be alone. There’s a brain behind that pretty face,” said Lazy Wolf.
Chapter Twenty-One
Blue Bird rode far, because she was riding to find the truth. She rode south, which should be the way to warmth and easiness, but, because she rode to find truth, she rode also to find sorrow. That is the fate of human lives.
She was bound for the town of Fort Marston to find the girl called Maisry Lester. Once she heard Maisry renounce Red Hawk by word of mouth, then she would believe that the miracle was true.
Trouble came early on her march. It seemed as though God, out of His heaven, had marked Blue Bird down, because before the night was over He sent down a sweeping storm of rain, and then one of hail so huge and heavy that neither horse nor man could hardly live in it.
The wild mustang on which Blue Bird rode tried to buck her weight off its back, but it might as well have tried to pitch off its skin. The bronco grew tired of bucking, and the half-breed girl was still on its back.
The hailstones struck like small pebbles, thrown from an unsure hand. Some of them were roaring on the face of the prairie. Others were beating against her body. One of them, almost as big as an egg, landed squarely between the eyes on the smooth of her forehead, and split the skin so that the blood ran down. That was a blow from heaven, but she rode on.
In a great, raw-edged gulley in the badlands, she found a huge boulder, and on the leeside of that she remained with the horse. The pony huddled against the rock, and she huddled against the horse. The fear and the terrible roar of the heavy storm made horse and girl alike silent and cringing.
The water began to rise in the bottom of the gulley. It rose and flowed. It swept over her feet, over her ankles. It grew higher and noisier, and sucked and gurgled and pulled at her legs, halfway to the knee. Still she remained there, because the fury that rushed out of the sky was more dreadful than the torrent that was flooding over the earth. She looked up, and the glare of the lightnings dazzled her eyes.
She began to say, softly, loudly enough for her ears to hear her sweet voice: “Oh, god of Red Hawk, greatest of the Sky People, lord of all the spirits . . . Sweet Medicine . . . be good to me. Do not strike me down with the pelting ice. Do not burn me with the great sky fires. Let me go on to the end of my way.”
Afterward, the uproar from the sky was less than the rushing noises of the water about her. Then she left the shelter of the rock and made the unwilling mustang cross the bed of the gulley.
They dropped into deep, whirling water, which swept her around and around. She could feel the pony fighting for life beneath her. But after that they gained shoal water, and found before them a sloping bank up which the mustang could climb. So they came out on the level prairie again.
Compared with the terrible beating of the hail, and the coldness of it, that pouring of the rain was like the shining of warm summer skies. There was no wetness to the water, because it was so warm. She parted her lips, and the rain stung them softly, and she laughed.
“Sweet Medicine has heard my prayer,” she said to herself. “It may be that he will let me take back in my heart all of the happiness that it wishes to hold.”
Afterward, the rain fell to a drizzle. Still there was darkness for a long time, and the sucking sound of the hoofs of her mustang as they pulled out of the sticky earth. They came to the sight of the dawn, which was moving in grayness out of the earth, all around the circle of the sky.
The rain stopped. She almost felt in her flesh the movement of the wind that carried the clouds away from the surface of the sky. The bright sun came up and struck at her from the due east, so that she was sure that she had held her course steadily to the south through the night.
The sun climbed higher. She felt the warmth and the sleepy comfort. As the sleepiness increased, she knew that it would not be well for her to go into the town and speak to the white girl while she was in that weary state. Therefore, when she came to a gulley, with its bank pitching out like a roof, she lay down there after sidelining her horse so that it would not wander far.
The moment that the softness of her body was stretched on the hard pebbles she was sound asleep, and smiling in her sleep. God sends this peculiar grace to those that labor hard. The lax strings of her strength grew gradually taut again, and, when they were pulling hard enough, suddenly she was awake.
There was a flaring brightness of sun in the sky. She was hot, her body fevered, and there was a sound of running water in her ears. And so she pulled off her fitted clothes, and gave one half-shy, half-laughing look about her at the emptiness of the gulley and the sky. Then she dived into the blue of a pool, and swam at her will.
She began to laugh as she sported. She dived to the bottom and touched the sticky mud and the rough, big stones. Her olive skin, tinted with rose, flashed on the surface and glided beneath again.
Afterward, she dried herself like an Indian, with the whipping edge of her hand. She was in no haste. The force and the brightness of the sun polished her legs and her swinging arms. She was as hard as any active boy, and yet Nature clad her in such a grace of curving lines that she looked softly feminine. This made her laugh still.
She knew that she was beautiful, because all women have objective knowledge of themselves. She understood perfectly how her beauty showed through the clinging doeskins in which she was always dressed, and she wondered, like a child and also like a woman, how Red Hawk could look at her calmly, and how he could take her hand and talk to her like a brother.
She knew what men are like, because she had seen a great many men, and she had learned how to be unconscious of their eyes, which is the one lesson that God teaches all good women. But she wondered about Red Hawk.
At last she mounted and continued on her way. And after a time, out of the wide flat of the prairie, she saw the flat head of Fort Marston rising from the ground. These white men, wolf-like or fox-like, were creatures to be dreaded. When she saw the pointed roofs of the houses in the town, she was shuddering.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When she came into the town, the first person she passed was a man carrying a heavy sack over his shoulders. White men work like women. In all ways, all white men were wrong. The very smell of the cookery, the very odor of the town, made her nostrils quiver with disgust.
She said in English that had only a small touch of accent in it: “Will you tell me where I can find Maisry?”
“In me,” said the man who carried the sack. “You can find plenty of misery in me.” He walked on, slowly, his knees giving a trifle to the weight upon his back.
Puzzled, she rode on, and presently she was in the main street of the town. The houses looked out at her with many eyes. The street was worn by a thousand interwoven ruts, all black from the rainfall, with welters of sun-brightened waters here and there. Why should men live in one place, beside one trail, when there is the glorious wide earth to wander over? Why should they fix their houses in one place, like old bulls bogged down, instead of making for themselves the light, warm, beautiful lodges that can be taken down and packed on horses, and made to travel swiftly over the plains?
Around a corner came a prancing horse, with a man in uniform on its back. Blue Bird wanted to pull a robe over her face and go on, shamefaced. But she had no robe with her, and, besides, she had to ask questions. So she lifted her right hand in the Indian salute, and her open eyes looked straight into the leering eyes of the sergeant.
“Hau,” she said.
“Hello, sweetheart,” said the sergeant.
The word struck her like a whiplash. But her face did not change.
“Will you tell me where I can find Maisry
?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you where you can find me,” he said. “Damned if I wouldn’t let you find me any day. You ask for Sergeant Tim O’Connor, and you’ll be finding me. I’ll be right at your hand. I’ll always be there, damn my heart, if you want to ask for me.”
Disgust stiffened her lips. She kept on looking the sergeant straight in the eyes, and repeated: “Can you tell me where to find Maisry?”
He was abashed. He answered: “Try the house at the corner of the fort. The cabin with the two chimneys. That’s the place where Maisry Lester lives, if she’s who you want to see.”
He went on, the feet of his horse making sucking sounds in the wet of the mud, and the water spurting out like flames from the hollow of the hoofs.
Blue Bird went on to the house with the two chimneys. In the doorway, on the step, she saw a girl knitting, making the needles flash in the sun. Her head was bent, and Blue Bird knew that she was not very happy, this girl on the doorstep.
It was Maisry. Blue Bird knew it was Maisry before the head was lifted. She knew by the delicate round of the neck, by the glow of color like that which strikes through the skin of an Indian baby. Her brow was smooth, when she lifted her head, and on her lips was that faint smile that beauty places there. As for her eyes—well, the eyes of Blue Bird were blue, also, but the color of these was like a stain in the face.
Blue Bird swung down from her horse, and the other girl stood up. She was just the height of Blue Bird, but she was dressed in an ugly dress of printed calico. But Blue Bird knew where to look. She looked at the ankles and the hands, and the wrists, and the throat. To an Indian, beauty does not lie in the face alone, and certainly not in the dress. Blue Bird saw the other girl as the Creator had meant her to be to the world.