Dusty Star Part 2

CHAPTER IV

KIOPO FINDS AN ENEMY

After this stormy introduction to the camp, the family settled down quietly enough. Running Wolf's long absence from the tribe had made no difference to his membership or position in it. Half-an-hour after his arrival, his tepee was set up in the place appointed for it by the head chief, and in two days' time the family were living the life of the camp as if they had never left it. To be quite truthful, Running Wolf, Nikana, and Blue Wings were living it. With Dusty Star it was different.

The number of people of all ages, from newly-born papooses, up to braves and old squaws--some of them so wrinkled and bony that it almost seemed as if they had forgotten to be dead; the constant coming and going, the pony-racing, the chanting of medicine songs and the beating of drums;--all these things were so utterly strange and bewildering that, after the long day's experiences, he was almost too excited to sleep.

As for Kiopo, if an animal could have spent the whole of its puppyhood in the moon, and then, one slippery night, have all at once fallen off into the middle of the earth, it could not possibly have felt more an unwelcome intruder than Kiopo in his new surroundings. The fact of his arrival was now known to every husky in the camp, and each husky hated him from the bottom of his husky heart. For the most part they lived on the worst possible terms with each other. This individual dislike did not stand in the way of a combined attack upon a common enemy when opportunity offered. Left to themselves to arrange matters, Kiopo would not have had the ghost of a gra.s.shopper's chance. There were two great obstacles to his immediate destruction. One was his owner, Dusty Star, who kept a pile of stones and a heavy stick, always ready for instant use; and the other was Kiopo himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARRIVAL OF KIOPO WAS NOW KNOWN TO EVERY HUSKY IN THE CAMP, AND EACH HUSKY HATED HIM FROM THE BOTTOM OF HIS HUSKY HEART]

Kiopo was now three parts grown, and was considerably larger than the ordinary wolf of his age. For the average full-grown dog, he was more than a match. The few that had ventured to fight him singly had learnt that to their cost. But against a combined attack of the whole husky rabble, he was naturally powerless. And owing to the peculiar make-up of the general husky mind, you never could tell from one moment to another when the rabble would unite. He knew himself surrounded by enemies. Go where he would, hackles were raised, lips curled back, and glaring eyes were fastened upon him. It was small wonder if, as week after week went by, he became nervous, irritable, and depressed.

Among all his foes, the one of whom he stood most in dread, was a big dog called Stickchi. He was a surly, sour-tempered, evil-eyed brute whom none of the other huskies dared to face, but whom they nevertheless regarded as one of the leaders of the pack. Stealing, fighting, and bullying were accomplishments which had earned for Stickchi this position of authority, and he took a constant delight in showing his power. It was he who had led the attack on Kiopo's arrival in the camp, and now he hated him with a murderous hatred. Kiopo returned the hate in full, though he stood too much in awe of the great bully to venture to attack him when they met. The princ.i.p.al thing that enraged Stickchi was that, while the other huskies at once got out of his way as their acknowledged master, Kiopo only avoided him at the last possible moment after he had fully expressed his feelings by drawing back his lips from his dangerous teeth in a defiant snarl. Then, when infuriated beyond measure by this open defiance of his authority, the bully charged his foe, Kiopo, leaping lightly aside, would seem to send his supple body floating through the air, and land a dozen feet away, only to crouch for a new spring, and bare those evil-looking teeth as before.

Yet in spite of his defiance, Kiopo harboured a great uneasiness at the back of his mind, for his keen wolf-intelligence told him that sooner or later, the day must come when the contest for mastery could be no longer postponed, and that the struggle would be a fight to the death.

Dusty Star, for all his vigilance, did not fully understand. He could not think why it was that Kiopo generally kept so close to the tepee, and rarely ventured any distance away unless he went with him. This was because Stickchi was as cunning as he was cowardly. Whenever he saw Kiopo with any one of the family he did not attempt to attack him, but contented himself with growling deep in his hairy chest, and looking very ugly. Like many other bullies, he was easily frightened, and he never forgot one particular experience when Kiopo had been busily gnawing an elkbone behind the tepee. Stickchi had made up his mind to have the bone. Believing that no one saw him, he had crouched on his stomach in his most cunning manner, and had begun a stealthy game of stalking. If Kiopo had not been so engrossed in his bone no amount of Stickchi's artfulness could have caught him unawares. But the treasure had such flavoury bits of very high meat attaching to it that, for once, he was completely off his guard. So, bit by bit, Kiopo blissfully gnawed, and, bit by bit, Stickchi's stomach drew nearer.

There is nothing much more exciting than to stalk something that is already stalking something else. And so, when Dusty Star, returning from the other side of the camp, came up quietly and saw the game that was being played, he joined in with delight. Inch by inch the artful Stickchi's stomach trailed elaborately over the ground, and, inch by inch, Dusty Star gained upon him.

At last there was only a tuft of wild turnip between Stickchi and his prey, and then open country for at least six feet.

Hardly daring to breathe, Dusty Star gathered his body together very tightly. In his right hand was a heavy stick. Stickchi also was making himself very tight, preparing for the final rush. He wriggled his body slightly, bracing his hind feet firmly against the ground. There was a second's pause before he uncoiled the powerful spring that was himself, and hurled his body on his unprepared victim. In that momentary pause a human whirlwind loosed itself on him from behind, and a heavy blow descended on his head.

With a yelp of fear and pain he bounded aside, twisting half round as he did so, to see what had attacked him. Quick as lightning, Dusty Star struck again, this time in the very middle of the husky's back.

The bully did not wait for another blow. Yelping with terror, he turned with his tail between his legs, and fled across the camp for his life.

After this lesson he observed Running Wolf's tepee from a respectful distance. But it only served to increase his enmity towards Kiopo, and he nursed black revenge at the bottom of his evil heart.

CHAPTER V

"SITTING-ALWAYS"

Among the many odd and unexpected things which Dusty Star found in the new life in the camp, one of the most peculiar and unaccountable was a grandmother, whose name was Sitting-Always.

Up to the present, a grandmother had been entirely wanting in the arrangement he called the World. That there was a great Spirit called the Sun, he knew. He also knew that there was another less great one called the Moon. And there were the stars. These also were spirits. They sat about in the sky and generally had a good time. If you watched them carefully against the tops of the lodge-poles, you could see that they gradually did their sitting a little higher up, or a little lower down; and sometimes, especially in the Mad Moon, they actually _ran_. To watch a star run swiftly down a steep place in the sky and disappear, made your heart jump. When the running stars which did not fall off into the dark reached the prairie, they turned into the puff-b.a.l.l.s the Indians called "dusty-stars."

But a grandmother, it appeared, though neither a spirit nor a star, was a Great Power to be reckoned with. There were days when she painted her face bright yellow. These were solemn occasions. If you made a noise or got in her way, she would wrinkle her skin till the paint cracked. If you continued the annoyance, she would smack. As a painted curiosity Dusty Star observed her with awe.

His first introduction to her was not on one of her painted days.

Without wanting to be rude he thought her face looked more like raw buffalo hide than anything else he had yet met. Her hands also seemed of that material, and did not feel pleasant when they felt his arms and legs. Dusty Star objected to being mauled, even by a Great Power; but he bore it as well as he could, because his mother told him to stand still; only from that day onwards his grandmother's hands were the part of her body he most thoroughly distrusted.

The second time he saw her was when she came to the tepee on her way to take part in a medicine-bundle ceremony. She was very grandly dressed in a beaded buckskin robe, and her face was thickly coated with the famous yellow paint. Dusty Star was squatting with Kiopo at the back of the tepee, watching his mother making pemmican, when this yellow vision peered in upon them through the opening. He stared at it with astonishment. He was not afraid, but it made him feel uncomfortable. It was as if his grandmother's face, like the maple leaves, had gone yellow with the Fall. And from the middle of the yellow, her sunken eyes glared blackly in the hollows of her head.

Kiopo also disapproved of the vision. That was very plain by the way his hair bristled along his back, and his upper lip curled back to show his fangs while he snarled.

The yellow face of Sitting-Always scowled between the eyes, and made the paint crack. She declared she would not enter the tepee unless the husky was first driven out. When Nikana explained that Kiopo was not a husky but a true wild wolf, and that when he snarled through his teeth it was best to let him be, Sitting-Always was more displeased than ever. Like most old Indians she firmly believed that the wolves had a "medicine,"

and by a "medicine" she meant a power that was stronger than either wolves or men. She herself was a great believer in "medicine." Half the things with which her tepee was stuffed were supposed to possess a medicine of one kind or another. Only she infinitely preferred tame medicine--the sort you stored in painted parfleches--to the wild kind on four legs that bared its fangs and snarled. So when she had shot out a few biting remarks about beasts and boys in general, she took her yellow face out of the opening and stalked angrily away.

After that Dusty Star saw her quite often when Nikana took him with her on visits to her tepee, and the yellow maple-leaf face had given way to the buffalo-hide one, and her teeth were the only yellow things she had in her head. By degrees, his awe of her wore away, till one day when she presented him with a rich plateful of sarvis-berry stew, he arrived at the conclusion that, after all, a grandmother, like the buffalo, could have her uses, and be very nearly pleasant when she did not paint her face.

Kiopo, however, never changed his mind. Not even the richest stew could have made any difference. With or without her paint, his deep wolf wisdom taught him that here was an enemy, and whenever she came near him, he always showed his teeth.

It was in the moon that the Indians call the Mad Moon, or, as we call it, November, that Kiopo began to take on strange ways, and to stay away, for days together. When he returned from these mysterious absences, he was in the habit of sneaking back into camp under cover of the darkness. In the morning, when Dusty Star spoke to him very plainly, and asked him where he had been, Kiopo would turn his head away with an uncomfortable expression in his eyes. Dusty Star began to watch the wolf's movements, growing more and more anxious to find out where he went. And the closer the human brother watched, the deeper grew the wolf-brother's cunning day by day. Neither going, nor returning, did Kiopo let himself be seen.

Dusty Star grew afraid lest he should disappear once for all, and never return. His fear was so torturing that he tied him with a raw-hide thong, and fastened it to one of the lodge-poles. There was a high wind that night, and the poles strained and creaked; but it was not entirely owing to the wind; and, in the morning, Kiopo had gone.

Those were the evenings when Dusty Star, lying awake in the tepee, could hear the coyotes raise that eerie song of theirs which they love to sing after sunset on the high b.u.t.tes. It always began in the same way, with a succession of short barks, growing gradually louder and higher, and always ending with a long-drawn, squalling howl. And as the boy caught the high-pitched, yowling cries ringing out in the dusky air, he knew that G.o.d's Dog, as the Indians called him, was at his medicine-making again, making medicine with his voice. Through enormous s.p.a.ces of the twilight, these uncanny cries set his brain spinning. The cries ceased to be mere coyote notes; they became voices crying the names of unfamiliar, yet unforgettable things; until at last, when the unearthly chorus became too piercing to be borne, he pulled the buffalo robe over his head, to deaden the terrible sound.

If the coyote cries affected Dusty Star so powerfully, they affected Kiopo equally, though in a different way. At times they made him angry, at others, wholly miserable. When Kiopo felt upset, he always wanted to get hold of something to worry with his teeth. So the raw-hide thong came in very useful, and after gnawing for half the night, Kiopo was free. Once his own master again, he did not waste valuable time sitting down to think. Softly as a trail of mist, he drifted out of camp, and not a husky of them all winded him or saw him go.

The very morning after Kiopo's departure, Sitting-Always was taken ill.

She lay on her couch of antelope skins and moaned with pain. While Nikana went to summon the medicine-man, Little Fish, Dusty Star was left to watch his grandmother. He had never seen any one ill before, and the noises she uttered made him feel uncomfortable. When he asked her if the pain was in her chest, she said it was lower down. Dusty Star nodded his head wisely. He had suffered pain in that part himself. It was the place that made you wish you had not eaten berries before they were ripe. He observed his grandmother gravely for some time. Suddenly without warning, he doubled up his fist and thumped her on the spot where she complained of the pain. This he did, because he knew that if you hit things, they sometimes went away. He hoped that if he could hit his grandmother's pain right in the middle, it might drive it out.

Sitting-Always uttered a loud cry. Mistaking it for a shout of triumph, Dusty Star struck her again. This was more than she could bear, and she uttered such a piercing scream that the boy was startled. Still it seemed to prove that the thumping was taking effect. He was preparing to smite her for the third time when his mother came hurrying into the tepee.

With groans of pain and anger, Sitting-Always explained what had happened. Naturally Nikana was very angry. She could hardly believe that the boy could have dared to take advantage of his grandmother's helplessness to play her so evil a trick. Without waiting to hear his own account of the matter, she gave him a sound cuff or two, and ordered him to go at once and fetch Lone Chief, the medicine-man, since Little Fish had said he could not come.

Only too glad to escape, Dusty Star rushed indignantly out of the tepee.

Lone Chief's tepee lay at some distance from the camp, round the north-west corner of Eagle Bluff. He was understood to be a great medicine-man. His medicine, or Supernatural Power, was very strong, though it was not always that he could be prevailed upon to put it to the test. Among the many mysterious things about Lone Chief was that no one could ever say with certainty where he was to be found. Wandering across vast s.p.a.ces or journeying to the edge of the world, had got into his feet. Hunters from the far west would bring tidings of his camp on the sh.o.r.e of the mighty lake that washes the feet of the Rockies for half-a-hundred miles. Deep in the North, on the lonely barrens where the wolves howled at sundown, and the red-fringed pools were a-glimmer in an unearthly light, his slightly drooping figure might be seen moving soundlessly in the windy twilight along the deep-worn trails of the caribou. Or in the torrid south lands where the salt lakes were caked with brine, and the antelopes, startled by the solitary figure, floated across the desert like vapours carried by the air, Lone Chief travelled till he filled his head with the roar of the gulf of Mexico.

To the tepee of this extraordinary, and much-travelled person, Dusty Star went with a reluctant tread, and a feeling, which, if it was not exactly fear, was certainly one of awe. When he came at last within sight of the camp, he saw that Lone Chief was at home, smoking his pipe in the doorway of his tepee.

Dusty Star advanced slowly. When he reached the tepee he sat down in front of the medicine-man. Neither of them spoke for some time, although no one had told the boy that this was the politest way of beginning a conversation, when it is not necessary to talk about the weather. So Lone Chief gazed politely beyond Dusty Star's head, and Dusty Star stared politely at Lone Chief's moccasins, while now and then a maple leaf drifted down beside them.

When the fourth leaf had fallen, Dusty Star explained the reason of his visit.

Lone Chief waited a little before he replied, because of his habit of being very sure about his thoughts before he made words to fit them.

And while Lone Chief made his words, his gaze struck into his visitor's face with the edge of a tomahawk. Dusty Star returned the look without flinching and noted the way in which Lone Chief painted his face. And indeed it was something to observe, for across his forehead and down his cheeks went bars of black and yellow and red, as if his face were a cage to keep his eyes from rushing out.

"My grandmother has a pain here," Dusty Star began abruptly, indicating the place.

He did not say any more then, knowing that Lone Chief would know quite well why he had come, so that any further explanation would be merely throwing words away.

"When did it begin?" the medicine man asked.