Red Fire

by Max Brand

  Seeing nothing between him and the horizon, however, the young Cheyenne returned to his patient horse and took from the case strapped behind his saddle a strong war bow made of the toughest horn of the mountain sheep, boiled, straightened, and then glued and bound together in strips. It was flexible enough to stand infinite bending and yet stiff enough to require all the weight of a strong man’s shoulder to draw an arrow home against such resistance.

  He had a long and heavy rifle as well, but, as usual, he was abroad with a most scanty supply of the precious powder and lead. He had to save that for human enemies. He strung the bow with some difficulty, tried the strength of the beautifully made cord by drawing it to his shoulder several times, and then selected from the quiver several hunting arrows—that is, arrows that having been shot into game could be drawn forth, and the head, at least, used again and again. The arrows for war, of which he had an additional small supply, were barbed so that it would be a murderous task to draw them from the flesh.

  When he had made sure that the bow was in good condition and the arrows all that he desired, he planted in the ground his long lance, hung his shield upon it, with the festoon of eagle feathers hanging from its face, and then carefully leaned the invaluable rifle against this stand. Next he loosed the packs from behind the saddle of the pony.

  It might be that the chase would be long. In any case, the pony needed all its agility in the dangerous task that lay before it. After that, he stood before the head of the horse and looked keenly into its eyes.

  They were like the eyes of a beast of prey—bright, treacherous, wild. But the Indian looked for no softness and kindness there. He would have been suspicious of a friendly glance. What he wanted was what he found—untamable fierceness, endurance, force of heart.

  Assured of this, he bounded into the saddle and began to work the pony around the edge of the hill with much caution, for the buffalo sometimes seemed to be endowed with an extra sense that told them of approaching danger.

  In fact, as he rounded the hill, he saw the entire little herd rushing off at full speed, their hoofs clacking sharply together, the ground trembling under the beat of their heavy striding.

  He was after them with a yell. Heavy and cumbersome as the buffalo looks, he can run at a good pace, and he can maintain it through a wonderful length of time. It takes a good horse to come up with them, but the pony that this young brave bestrode was the best of his herd, and his own herd was a hand-picked lot.

  Like an antelope it flashed forward. It passed a lumbering yearling. It ranged beside a three-year-old cow. Then the bow was at work at once. Drawn to the shoulder, it drove a shaft with wonderful force. At four hundred yards a Cheyenne bow had been known to strike game and to kill it. And if Rushing Wind was an archer not quite up to such a mark as this, at least he sent the shaft into the side of the cow behind the shoulder almost up to the feathers.

  The big animal swerved, coughed, and then dropped upon its knees, skidding forward through the grass.

  That was food for the Cheyenne. His sport was still ahead of him, and with a yell he sent the pony forward. The bull ran well, but there was still a burst of sprinting left in the horse. It carried its master straight up to the panting bull, and a second arrow went from the bow. This time it struck dense bull hide. It sank deep in the flesh of the big fellow, but the roll of muscles and the looseness of the skin itself forced the arrow upward. The bull was merely stung, and he whirled toward the rider with such suddenness that the second arrow that flew from the string merely ripped a furrow in the tough back of the buffalo.

  With a roar came the bull, a veteran of many a battle with his kind and ready to fight once more against such a strange foe. The surge of its head swept past the flank of the pony narrowly as the active little horse bounded to the side.

  Presenting his battle front, circling as the Indian circled, the bull waited, tearing up the ground, sending his long, strange bellow booming, so that it seemed to be flooding up from the earth itself and rising now here, now there.

  Rushing Wind, his eyes on fire, began to maneuver the little pony like a dancer, but it was some moments before the foaming horse caused the bull make a false step that left the tender flank open again. Then loudly twanged the bow string, and the arrow sank into the side of the monster half the length of the shaft.

  The bull charged, but blindly. He came to a halt, tossing his head. His hide twitched convulsively, so that the two arrows imbedded in him jerked back and forth. His head lowered. Blood burst from his mouth. He sank to his knees, and even then, with more courage than strength, he strove to rise, and still he boomed his defiance. Life was passing from him quickly, however. Before the last of his fleeing herd was out of sight, he rolled upon his side, dead.

  From the carcass, the Cheyenne took only the tongue. He returned to the cow, took from her the tongue, also, and then prepared to remove some other choice bits. He would gorge himself in a great feast, dry the flesh that remained in strips, and then set himself for the homeward journey. It was not a great thing to have killed two buffalo, but it was better than nothing, and it was, perhaps, the explanation of the dream that had sent him forth to try his fortune in the open country alone. At least, he had not so much as broken the shaft of an arrow in this encounter. The arrows, soon cleaned and restored to his quiver, were as good as ever, though they might be the better for a little sharpening.

  On the whole, the heart of Rushing Wind was high, and he returned cheerfully to the point where he had left his other weapons, hastening a little on his still sweating horse, because he was as anxious about the welfare of the rifle as though it were a favorite child.

  He sighed with relief when he found that lance and shield and rifle and pack were all in place, and, dismounting, he looked first to the gun, stroking it with a smile. It was half weapon and half medicine, in the eyes of Rushing Wind. He had only one thing more precious, and that was the richly ornamented hunting knife in his belt, the gift of that prince of doctors and medicine men, White Thunder.

  Something stirred just behind the Indian. It was no more than the slightest of whispers in the grass, but it made the young Cheyenne twist sharply around.

  He found a white hunter risen to his knees in the grass, a long rifle at his shoulder, and a deadly aim taken upon his own heart.

  “Stand fast,” said the white man. “Drop your rifle. You still may live to return to your lodge.”

  He spoke in fairly good Cheyenne, and the young brave said with a groan: “Roger Lincoln!” Clumsily the English words came upon his tongue. “And the dream was a lying dream that was sent to me.”

  II

  In the first place, Rushing Wind was disarmed. Some brush grew nearby, hardly ankle high. Then, at the suggestion of the white man, they gathered some of this brush. They made a fire and began to roast bits of the tender buffalo tongues on the ends of twigs. While they cooked, they talked, the Cheyenne with a rising heart.

  Roger Lincoln said in the beginning: “You were with Standing Bull when he came to Fort Kendry and first stole away Paul Torridon, who you call White Thunder?”

  “I was not,” said the Cheyenne.

  “But you were with Standing Bull when he came up again and captured the white girl, Nancy Brett, and took her away across the plains?”

  The young Indian raised his head and was silent. His eyes grew a little larger, as though he were in expectation of an outburst of enmity. But Roger Lincoln pointed to the little fire that was burning so cheerfully.

  “We are cooking food together. When we eat together we are friends, Rushing Wind, are we not?”

  The other hesitated: “It was I who was with Standing Bull,” he said. “Why should I deny it? You saw me with him. I was with him when you offered all the guns and horses if he would set White Thunder free.”

  “But he would not do that.”

  “How could Standing Bull promise? How could any of us promise? Not even High Wolf, the greatest of our chiefs, could send him away. T
he people would not endure to see him go. They know what he has done for us.”

  Roger Lincoln nodded and frowned. “He has made rain for you, and through him you’ve killed a good many Dakotas.”

  “And he has healed the sick and given good luck to the men on the warpath. He brings the buffalo to the side of the village,” added Rushing Wind.

  “Those things have happened now and then. He doesn’t do them every day.

  “A man cannot hope to take scalps every day of his life,” said Rushing Wind naïvely. “And,” he added, growing sadder, “I never have taken a single one.”

  “All is in the hands of Heammawihio,” said the white man. “All that a warrior can do is to be brave and ready. Heammawihio sends the good fortune and the bad. Tell me, are you a friend of White Thunder in the camp?”

  The eye of the youth brightened. He took from his belt the hunting knife with the gaudy handle. Roger Lincoln had not troubled to remove that means of attack from his captive, as though he knew that his own great name and fame would be sufficient to keep the youngster from attacking hand to hand.

  “This,” said the young Cheyenne, “was given to me by White Thunder. You may judge if he is my friend.”

  “And Standing Bull. He also is your friend?”

  “He is a friend to White Thunder. Not to me. Standing Bull,” went on the boy carefully, “is a great chief.” He explained still further: “White Thunder has made him great.”

  “No,” said Lincoln. “Any man who dared to come into the middle of Fort Kendry twice and steal away whites is great without any help. But although this man is a great chief, he is not a great friend of yours?”

  The boy was silent.

  “Very well,” said Roger Lincoln. “We cannot be friends with everyone. That isn’t to be expected. But now I want you to look at everything with my eyes.”

  “I shall try,” said the boy. “You are a great hunter of bears and buffalo . . . and men.” He let his brow darken a little as he said this.

  “Tell me,” said Roger Lincoln. “Before White Thunder was stolen away, was I not a friend to the Cheyennes?”

  “It is true,” said the boy.

  “He is my best of companions and friends,” said Roger Lincoln. “Once my life lay at his feet like this fire at ours. He could have let it be stamped out, but he would not do that. He saved my life. And at that time I was a stranger to him. I was large and he was small. I was strong and he was weak. Now, after he had done that much for me, I ask you to tell me if he should not be my friend?”

  The Cheyenne listened to this story with glistening eyes. “It is true,” he said, and his harsh voice became soft and pleasant.

  “However, he was stolen away by Standing Bull, whose life also White Thunder had saved,” continued Roger Lincoln.

  “Yes,” said Rushing Wind, “and more than his life, his spirit.”

  “And after he was taken away, what should I do? Should I sit in my lodge and fold my hands?”

  “No,” Rushing Wind replied carefully. “You should have put on the war paint and gone on the warpath. And you have done it,” he added. A glitter came in his eyes. “Six Cheyennes have died. Their names are gone. Their souls have rotted with their bodies on the prairies.” He looked keenly at Roger Lincoln. “I am the seventh man,” he said.

  “You are not,” replied the great hunter. “We eat together, side-by-side. I give you my friendship.”

  Rushing Wind replied, still hesitant: “The hawk and the eagle never fly side-by-side.”

  “Listen to me, hear with my ears and believe with my mind. In my day I have killed warriors. The list of them is not short. It would be a small pleasure to me to add one more man to the number who have gone stumbling before me to the house of darkness. But you can do a great service to me out of good will and with your life still yours.”

  The Cheyenne was silent, but obviously he was listening with all his might to this novel suggestion.

  “I cannot buy your good will,” said Roger Lincoln, “but I give your life back to you as a peace offering. This thing I will do, and I promise that I shall not take my gift back. Besides this, I ask no promise in return from you. I shall tell you the thing that I wish to do. Afterward, you will think. Perhaps you will wish to do what I want. Perhaps you will merely smile and laugh to yourself and say that I have talked like a fool.”

  He made a pause and began to eat heartily of the roasted tongue. The Cheyenne imitated that good example, and though he was a smaller man by far than Roger Lincoln, and though the white man had fasted the longer of the two, yet the Indian fairly ate two pounds for the one of his captor.

  At last, Roger Lincoln pushed back a little from the fire. He filled a short-stemmed pipe and began to smoke strong tobacco. The Indian, however, took out a bowl of red catlinite, which he filled with a mixture, always holding the stem up as he worked. Then he lighted the tobacco and flavoring herbs with a coal from the little dying fire and began to smoke, after first blowing, as it were, libations to the spirit world.

  Neither of them spoke until after a few minutes. Then Roger Lincoln said: “How did the girl come to the village?”

  “She was very tired.”

  “Was she taken to the teepee of White Thunder?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he receive her?”

  “In his arms. He . . .” The Cheyenne paused. And Roger Lincoln was silent, frowning with a desperate blackness at the sky before him.

  “He received her, also,” said Rushing Wind, “with tears.”

  His face was actually puckered with emotion as he said this. Plainly he could hardly connect the word tears with the word man and control his disgust. A flicker of contempt went over the face of Roger Lincoln, also. Men told their stories of how Roger Lincoln, on a time, had been tormented almost to death by a party of Crows, and how he had laughed at them and reviled them with scorn, heedless of his pain, until he was rescued by the luckiest of chances. So, being such a man as he was, he could not help that touch of scorn appearing in his face. However, he came instantly to the defense of his absent friend.

  “No man can have all the strength in the world,” he said.

  “It is true,” said the Cheyenne earnestly. “I would not have White Thunder think that I have spoken with scorn about him.”

  He glanced upward with awe and trouble in his face, as though he feared that a circling buzzard far above them might be an emissary sent by the medicine man to spy upon his words.

  “However,” said the Cheyenne, “everything is as I have told you. She began to wake up and hold out her arms to him. She was tired but happy.”

  “So,” said the hunter. Then he kept silence, being deep in thought. At last he went on in a changed and gruffer voice: “He took her into his teepee?”

  “Yes.”

  “He has kept her there ever since?”

  “Yes.”

  Roger Lincoln exclaimed with something between disgust, impatience, and anger: “Then he has taken her as his wife, as an Indian takes a wife?”

  At this, the Cheyenne shook his head.

  “Who is to understand the ways of people who are guided by the spirits and the Sky People?” he said naïvely. “I, at least, cannot understand them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It is a big lodge,” said the young warrior. “There is no whiter or finer lodge in all the camp of the Cheyennes. And now one part of it is walled off with curtains of deer skin from another part. And when they sleep, the girl goes into one side as though it were a separate lodge, and White Thunder goes into another part.”

  The light reappeared in the eye of Roger Lincoln. “A good lad!” he exclaimed. “I had written him down a good lad. I would have wagered my blood on him.”

  “Ha?” grunted Rushing Wind. “Then is this a mystery which you, also, understand?”

  III

  They stared for a moment at one another. But, since it was not the first time in the life of either that he ha
d been aware of the great difference and distinction between the viewpoint of red man and white, they passed on in their conversation, Roger Lincoln taking the lead.

  “The girl is now happy?” he asked. “Or does she sit and weep?”

  “Weep?” said the Indian. “Why should a woman weep when she has become the squaw of a great medicine man such as White Thunder? No, she is singing and laughing all day long.”

  The white man smiled a little.

  “Besides,” said the Cheyenne, “she does little work. Her hands are not as big as my two fingers. Young Willow still keeps the lodge for White Thunder.”

  “And what of White Thunder himself? Is he happy, also?”

  “He is more happy than he was,” said the boy. “He is able to ride out now on the great black horse.”

  “Is he free, then?”

  “Yes. He is not guarded except when the girl rides out with him. But when she is left behind in the lodge, the chiefs know that he will not go far.”

  “How far does he go?”

  “Sometimes he is gone in the morning and when he comes back in the evening even the black horse is tired.”

  “There is no other horse like that one,” admitted Roger Lincoln. “Though there was a time when I thought that Comanche was the swiftest foot on the prairie.” He pointed to her and she, hearing her name and marking the gesture, came forward fearlessly, gently toward her master.

  “It is plain that White Thunder put a spirit in her when he had her,” said Rushing Wind. “She also understands man talk, as the black horse does.”

  “Does the black horse understand man talk?” queried Roger Lincoln, suppressing a smile.

  “Perfectly,” said the Cheyenne in all seriousness. “So well does the stallion understand, that he repeated to his master what the herd boys said to one another when they were out watching the horse.” He began to fill his pipe again, observing the same careful formula as before.

  “Ah, then,” said Roger Lincoln, “people must be careful of what they say in front of this clever horse.”