The Shagganappi Part 15

Five Feathers sprang to his feet. "Good! Good!" he exclaimed. "I scared he would not see them. If he see red flowers, he all right. Sometimes, when they don't see it, they not get well soon." Then, under his breath, "The Scarlet Eye!"

"I saw them all right!" almost laughed the boy. "Miles of them. I could see and smell them. They smelled like smoke--like prairie fires."

"Get well right away!" chuckled the Indian. "_Very_ good to smell them."

Then to Billy: "You eat. You get ready. You ride now to Fort o'

Farewell."

So they built up the dying fire, made tea, cooked a little bacon, and all three ate heartily.

"I'll leave you the teapot, of course," said Billy, taking a dozen hardtack and one tin of sardines. "Slough water's good enough for me."

But Five Feathers gripped him by the arm--an iron grip--not at all with the gentle fingers that had so recently dressed the other boy's wounded ankle. "You not go that way!" he glared, his fine eyes dark and scowling. "Yes, we keep teapot, but you take bread, and antelope, and more fat fish," pointing to the sardines. "Fat fish very good for long ride. You take, or I not let you go!"

There was such a strange severity in his dark face that Billy did not argue the matter, but quietly obeyed, taking one loaf of bread, half the antelope, and three tins of the "fat fish."

"Plenty prairie chicken here," explained the Indian. "I make good soup for Little Brave."

"What a nice name to call me, Five Feathers!" smiled Jerry.

"Yes, you Little Brave," replied the Indian. "Little boy, but very big brave."

At the last moment Jerry and his brother clasped hands. "I hate to leave you, old man," said Billy, a little unsteadily.

"Why, I'm not afraid," answered the boy. "You and father and I all know that I am with the best Indian in the Hudson's Bay country--we _do_ know it, don't we, Billy?"

"I'll stake my life on that," replied Billy, swinging into his saddle.

"Remember, Jerry, it's only a hundred miles. I'll be there in two days, and the wagon will be here in another two."

"Yes, I'll remember," replied the sick boy.

Then Billy struck rather abruptly up the half-obliterated buffalo trail.

Several times he turned in his saddle, looking back and waving his bandanna, and each time the Indian stood erect and lifted his open palm.

The receding horse and rider grew smaller, less, fainter, then they blurred into the horizon. The sick boy closed his eyes, that ached from watching the fading figure. He was utterly alone, with leagues of untracked prairie about him, alone with Five Feathers, a strange Indian, who sat silently nearby.

When Jerry awoke, the sun was almost setting, and Five Feathers was in precisely the same place and in precisely the same att.i.tude. Once, in his dreams, wherein he still wandered through fields of scarlet flowers, he watched a bud unfolding. It opened with a sound like a revolver shot, or was it really a revolver? The boy turned over on his side, for a savory odor greeted his nostrils, and he looked wonderingly around. Five Feathers had evidently not been sitting there throughout that long June afternoon, for, within an arm's length was the jolliest little tepee made of many branches of poplar and cottonwood, sides and roof all one thick ma.s.s of green leaves and branches woven together like basketwork, a bed of short, dry prairie gra.s.s, fragrant and brown, his own saddlebags and single blanket for pillow and mattress. And on the fire the teapot, steaming with that delicious savory odor.

"What is it?" asked the boy, indicating the cooking.

"Prairie chicken," smiled the Indian. "I shoot while you sleep."

So _that_ was the bursting of the scarlet bud!

"Very good chicken," continued the Indian. "Very fat--good for eat, good soup, both."

So they made their supper off the tender stew, and soaked some hardtack in the soup. It seemed to Jerry a royal meal, and he made up his mind that, when he arrived home, he would get his mother to stew a prairie hen in the teapot some day; it tasted so much better than anything he had ever eaten before.

The sun had set, and the long, long twilight of the north was gathering.

Five Feathers built up the fire, for the prairie night brings a chill, even in June.

"Did you see them again, the red flowers, while you slept?" he asked the boy.

"Yes; fields of them," replied Jerry. Then added, "Why?"

"It is good," said the Indian. "Very good. You will now have what we call 'The Scarlet Eye.'"

"What's that?" asked Jerry, half frightened.

"It's very good. You will yourself be a great medicine man--what you white men call 'doctor.' You like to be that?"

"I never thought of studying medicine until to-day," said the boy, excitedly; "but, just as Billy rode away, something seemed to grip me.

I made up my mind then and there to be a doctor."

"That is because you have seen 'The Scarlet Eye,'" said the Indian, quietly.

"Tell me of it, will you, Five Feathers?" asked the boy, gently.

"Yes, but first I lift you on to bed." And, gathering Jerry in his strong, lean arms, he laid him on the gra.s.s couch in the green tepee, looked at his foot, loosened all his clothing, spread the one blanket over him, stirred up the fire, and, sitting at the tepee door, began the story.

THE SCARLET EYE

"Only the great, the good, the kindly people ever see it. One must live well, must be manly and brave, and talk straight without lies, without meanness, or 'The Scarlet Eye' will never come to them. They tell me that, over the great salt water, in your white man's big camping-ground named London, in far-off England, the medicine man hangs before his tepee door a scarlet lamp, so that all who are sick may see it, even in the darkness.* It is the sign that a good man lives within that tepee, a man whose life is given to help and heal sick bodies. We redskins of the North-West have heard this story, so we, too, want a sign of a scarlet lamp, to show where lives a great, good man. The blood of the red flower shows us this. If you drink it and see no red flowers, you are selfish, unkind; your talk is not true; your life is not clear; but, if you see the flowers, as you did to-day, you are good, kind, n.o.ble.

You will be a great and humane medicine man. You have seen the Scarlet Eye. It is the sign of kindness to your fellowmen."

[*Some of the Indian tribes of the Canadian North-West are familiar with the fact that in London, England, the sign of a physician's office is a scarlet lamp suspended outside the street door.]

The voice of Five Feathers ceased, but his fingers were clasping the small hand of the white boy, clasping it very gently.

"Thank you, Five Feathers," Jerry said, softly. "Yes, I shall study medicine. Father always said it was the n.o.blest of all the professions, and I know to-night that it is."

A moment later, Jerry lay sleeping like a very little child. For a while the Indian watched him silently. Then, arising, he took off his buckskin shirt, folded it neatly, and, lifting the sleeping boy's head, arranged it as a pillow. Then, naked to the waist, he laid himself down outside near the fire--and he, too, slept.

The third day a tiny speck loomed across the rim of sky and prairie. It grew larger with the hours--nearer, clearer. The Indian, shading his keen eyes with his palm, peered over the miles.

"Little brave," he said, after some silent moments, "they are coming, one day sooner than we hoped. Your brother, he must have ride like the prairie wind. Yes, one, no, two buckboards--Hudson's Bay horses. I know them, those horses."

The boy sat up, staring into the distance. "I don't know whether I'm glad or sorry," he said. "Father will be driving one buckboard, I know, and I'd like to see him, but, oh, I don't want to leave you, Five Feathers!"

"You not leave me, not for long," said the Indian. "You come back some day, when you great doctor. Maybe you doctor my own people. I wait for that time."

But the buckboards were spinning rapidly nearer, and nearer. Yes, there was his father, Factor MacIntyre, of the Hudson's Bay, driving the first rig, but who was that beside him?--Billy? No, not Billy. "Oh, it's _mother_!" fairly yelled Jerry. And the next moment he was in her arms.

"Couldn't keep her away, simply couldn't!" stormed Mr. MacIntyre. "No, sir, she had to come--one hundred and seventeen miles by the clock!

Couldn't trust me! Couldn't trust Billy! Just _had_ to come herself!"

And the genial Factor stamped around the little camp, wringing Five Feathers' hand, and watching with anxious look the pale face and thin fingers of his smallest son.

"Oh, father, mother, he's been so good!" said Jerry, excitedly, nodding towards the Indian.