The Way of an Indian Part 6

The medicine was bad--the war-prophet had not had free communication with the mystery of the Good G.o.ds. Some one had allowed himself to walk in a beaten path or had violated the sacred rights of the warpath, and the spirit of secrecy had left their moccasins. The skin of the little brown bat did not comfort the Fire Eater in his fallen state. He cast many burning glances back at the logs, now becoming mellowed by the morning light. The sun had apparently thrown his protection over them and the omen struck home to the wondering, savage mind. He remembered that the old men had always said that the medicine of the Yellow-Eyes was very strong and that they always fought insensibly like the gray bears. The flashing rifles which had blown their bodies back from the fort had astonished these Indians less by their execution than by the indication they gave that the powers of darkness were not with them.

They looked askance at the Fire Eater for their ill-success. He was enraged--a sudden madness had overpowered and destroyed his sense of the situation. One of those moods had come upon the savage child-mind when the surging blood made his eyes gleam vacantly like the great cats.

Slowly the dismayed band withdrew to the washout--casting backward glances at the walls which had beaten down their ambitions and would paint the tribes with ashes and blood-sacrifices for the lost. When there, they sat about dejectedly, finding no impulse to do more.

From out of the west, in response to their blue despondency, the clouds blew over the plains--the thunder rumbled--the rain came splashing and beating and then fell in blinding sheets. The Fire Eater arose and standing on the edge of the bank raised his arms in thanks to the Thunder Bird for his interposition in their behalf, saying: "Brothers, the Thunder Bird has come to his poor warriors to drive our enemies back as was promised to the prophet. He will put out the fires of the Yellow-Eyes, behind their medicine-logs. We are not afraid--our medicine is strong."

The rain poured for a time but abated gradually as the crashing Thunder Bird hurried away to the rising sun, and with a final dash it separated into drops, letting the sunlight through the departing drizzle. The warriors began drying their robes and their weapons--preoccupied with the worries so much dampness had wrought for their powder and bow strings. Suddenly one of them raised his head, deerlike, to listen. As wild things they all responded, and the group of men was statuesque as it listened to the beat of horses' hoofs. As a flock of blackbirds leaves a bush--with one motion--the statuary dissolved into a kaleidoscopic twinkle of movement as the warriors grabbed and ran and gathered. They sought their ponies' lariats, but before they could mount a hundred mounted Yellow-Eyes swept down upon them, circling away as the Indians sowed their shots among them. But they were surrounded. The Thunder Bird had lied to the Chis-chis-chash--he had chosen to sacrifice the Fire Eater and the twenty Red-Lodge braves. There was now no thought of arresting the blow--there was but to die as their people always did in war. The keepers of the Red Lodge counting robes might cross the red pipes out with black, but they should not wash them out entirely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 12 The Fire Eater raised his arms to the Thunder Bird]

The beaver-men--the traders--the creoles and the half-breeds slid from their horses and showered their bullets over the washout, throwing clouds of wet dirt over the braves crowding under its banks. The frightened Indian ponies swarmed out of one end of the cut, but were soon brought back and herded together in the sagebrush by the moccasin boys of the Yellow-Eyes.

In maddened bewilderment the Fire Eater leaped upon the flat plain, made insulting gestures and shouted defiant words in his own language at the flashing guns. Above the turmoil could be heard the harsh, jerky voice which came from the bowels of the warrior rather than from his lips. No bullet found him as he stepped back into cover, more composed than when he had gone out. The nervous thrill had expanded itself in the speech.

To his own mind the Fire Eater was a dead man; his medicine had departed; his spiritual protection was gone. He recognized that to live his few remaining hours was all--he had only to do the mere act of dying; and that he would do as his demon nature willed it. His last sun was looking down upon him.

The Yellow-Eyes knew their quarry well. They recognized of old the difference between an Indian cooped up in a hole in a flat plain and one mounted on a swift war-pony, with a free start, and the whole plain for a race-track. They advanced with all caution--crawling, sneaking through sage and tufted gra.s.s. Occasionally as an Indian exposed himself to fire, a swift bullet from a beaver-man's long rifle crashed into his head, rolling him back with oozing brains. The slugs and ounce b.a.l.l.s slapped into the dirt from the muskets of the creole _engages_ and they were losing warrior after warrior. By cutting the dirt with their knives the Indians dug into the banks, avoiding a fire which raked the washout; and by throwing the dirt up on either side they protected their heads as they raised to fire.

A man walking over the flats by midday would have seen nothing but feeding ponies and occasional flashes of fire close to the gra.s.s, but a flying raven would have gloated over a scene of many future gorges.

It would have seen many lying on their backs in the ditch--lying quite still and gazing up at his wheeling flight with stony gaze.

The white men had no means of knowing how successful had been the rifle-fire and they hesitated to crawl closer. Each party in turn taunted the other in unknown tongues, but they well knew that the strange voices carried fearful insult from the loud defiance of the intonation. The gray bears or the mountain cats were as merciful as any there. As the sun started on its downward course the nature of the Gothic blood a.s.serted itself. The white men had sat still until they could sit still no longer. They had fasted too long. They talked to each other through the sagebrush, and this is what happened when they cast the dice between Death and Dinner: A tall, long-haired man clad in the fringed buckskin of a Rocky Mountain trapper of the period, pa.s.sed slowly around the circle of the siege, shouting loudly to those concealed among the brush and gra.s.ses. What he said the Chis-chis-chash did not know, but they could see him pointing at them continually.

The Fire Eater raised his voice: "Brothers, keep your guns full of fire; lay all your arrows beside you; put your war-ax under you. The Yellow-Eyes are going to kill us as we do the buffalo in a surround.

Brothers, if the Thunder Bird does not come our fires will go out now.

We will take many to the spirit-land."

Having completed the circle the tall white man waved a red blanket and started on a run toward the place where the Indians lay. From all sides sprang the besiegers converging with flying feet. When nearly in contact the Indians fired their guns, killing and wounding. The whites in turn excitedly emptied theirs and through the smoke with lowered heads charged like the buffalo. The bowstrings tw.a.n.ged and the ravens could only see the lightning sweep of axes and furious gun-b.u.t.ts going over the pall of mingled dust and powder smoke. If the ravens were watching they would have seen nothing more except a single naked Indian run out of the turmoil, and after a quick glance backward speed away through the sagebrush. He could not fight for victory now; he only sought to escape; he was deserted by his G.o.ds; he ran on the tightened muscles of a desperate hope.

A bunch of horses had been left huddled by a squad of the enemy who had gone in with the charge on post and for these the Fire Eater made. No one seemed to notice the lone runner until a small herds-boy spied him, and though he raised his childish treble it made no impression. The Fire Eater picked up a dropped pony-whip and leading two ponies out of the bunch, mounted and lashed away. He pa.s.sed the screaming boy within killing distance, but it was an evil day.

Before the small herder's voice a.s.serted itself he was long out of rifleshot though not out of pony-reach.

A dozen men dashed after him. The warrior plied his whip mercilessly in alternate slaps on each pony-quarter and the bareback savage drew steadily away to the hills. For many miles the white men lathered their horses after, but one by one gave up the chase. The dice doubtless said dinner as against an Indian with a double mount and many will think they gave a wise choice.

On flew the Fire Eater. Confusion had come to him. The bat on his scalp-lock said never a word. His heart was upside down within him. His shadow flew away before him. The great mystery of his tribe had betrayed and bewitched him. The Yellow-Eyed medicine would find him yet.

From a high divide the fugitive stopped beside a great rock to blow his horses and he turned his eyes on the scene of ill-fate. He saw the Yellow-Eyes ride slowly back to their medicine-logs--he saw the ravens lighting down on the dry watercourse and for a long time he stood--not thinking--only gazing heavy-headed and vacant.

After a time he pulled his ponies' heads up from the gra.s.s and trotted them away. Growing composed, with his blood stilled, thoughts came slowly. He thanked the little brown bat when it reminded him of his savior. A furious flood of disappointment overcame him when he thought of his lifelong ambitions as a warrior--now only dry, white ashes.

Could he go back to the village and tell all? The council of the Red Lodges would not listen to his voice as they had before. When he spoke they would cast their eyes on the ground in sorrow. The Thunder Bird had demanded a sacrifice from him when he returned. He could not bear the thoughts of the wailing women and the screaming children and the old men smoking in silence as he pa.s.sed through the camp. He could not wash the ashes from the faces of his people. The thoughts of it all deadened his soul, and he turned his ponies to the west. He would not go back. He had died with his warriors.

When the lodges lay covered with snow the Chis-chis-chash sang songs to the absent ones of the Fire Eater's band. Through the long, cold nights the women sat rocking and begging the G.o.ds to bring them back their warriors. The "green-gra.s.s" came and the prophet of the Red Lodges admitted that the medicine spoke no more of the absent band. By "yellow-gra.s.s" hope grew cold in the village and socially they had readjusted themselves. It had happened in times past that even after two snows had come and gone warriors had found the path back to the camp, but now men saw the ghost of the Fire Eater in dreams, together with his lost warriors.

Another snow pa.s.sed and still another. The Past had grown white in the shadows of an all-enduring Present when the Chis-chis-chash began to hear vague tales from their traders of a mighty war-chief who had come down to the Shoshones from the clouds. He was a great "wakan" and he spoke the same language as the Chis-chis-chash. This chief said he had been a Cheyenne in his former life on earth, but had been sent back to be a Shoshone for another life. The Indians were overcome by an insatiate curiosity to see this being and urged the traders to bring him from the Shoshones--promising to protect and honor him. The traders dominated by avarice, hoping to better their business, humored the stories and enlarged upon them. They half understood that the mystery of life and death are inextricably mixed in savage minds--that they come and go, pa.s.sing in every form from bears to inanimate things or living in ghosts which grow out of a lodge fire. So for heavy considerations in beaver skins they sent representatives to the Sho-shones and there for an armful of baubles they prevailed upon those people to allow their supernatural war-chief to visit his other race out on the great meadows.

"If in the time of the next green-gra.s.s," said the trader, "the Chis-chis-chash have enough beaver, we will bring their brother who died back to their camp. We will lead him into the tribal council. If on the other hand they do not have enough skins, our medicine will be weak."

In the following spring the tribe gathered at the appointed time and place, camping near the post. The big council-lodge was erected--everything was arranged--the great ceremonial-pipe was filled and the council-fire kept smoldering. Many packages of beaver-skins were unloaded by squaws at the gate of the traders and all important persons foregathered in the lodge.

When the pipe had pa.s.sed slowly and in form the head-chief asked the trader if he saw beaver enough outside his window. This one replied that he did and sent for the man who had been dead.

The council sat in silence with its eyes upon the ground. From the commotion outside they felt an awe of the strange approach. Never before had the Chis-chis-chash been so near the great mystery. The door-flap was lifted and a fully painted, gorgeously arrayed warrior stepped into the centre of the circle and stood silently with raised chin.

There was a loud murmur on the outside but the lodge was like a grave. A loud grunt came from one man--followed by another until the hollow walls gave back like a hundred tom-toms. They recognized the Fire Eater, but no Indian calls another by his name.

Raising his hand with the dignity which Indians have in excess of all other men the Fire Eater said: "Brothers, it makes my heart big to look at you again. I have been dead but I came to life again. I was sent back by the G.o.ds to complete another life on earth. The Thunder Bird made the Yellow-Eyes kill all my band when we went against the Absaroke. My medicine grew weak before the white man's medicine. Brothers, they are very strong. Always beware of the medicine of the traders and the beaver-men. They are fools and women themselves but the G.o.ds give them guns and other medicine things. He can make them see what is to happen long before he tells the Indians. They can see us before we come and know what we are thinking about. They have brought me back to my people, and my medicine says I must be a Chis-chis-chash until I die again.

Brothers, I have made my talk."

VII. Among the Pony-Soldiers

The burial scaffold of the Fire Eater's father had rotted and fallen down with years. Time had even bent his own shoulders, filled his belly and shrunken his flanks. He now had two sons who were of sufficient age to have forgotten their first sun-dance medicine, so long had they been warriors of distinction. He also had boys and girls of less years, but a child of five snows was the only thing which could relax the old man's features, set hard with thought and time and toil.

Evil days had come to the Buffalo Indians. The Yellow-Eyes swarmed in the Indian country, and although the red warriors rode their ponies thin in war, they could not drive the invaders away. The little bands of traders and beaver-men who came to the camps of the Fire Eater's boyhood with open hands were succeeded by immense trains of wagons, drawn by the white man's buffalo. The trains wound endlessly toward the setting sun--paying no heed to the Indians. Yellow-Eyes came to the mountains where they dug and washed for the white man's great medicine, the yellow-iron. The fire boats came up the great river with a noise like the Thunder Bird--firing big medicine-guns which shot twice at one discharge.

The Fire Eater, with his brothers of the Chis-chis-chash, had run off with the horses and buffalo of these helpless Yellow-Eyes until they wanted no more. They had knocked them on the head with battle-axes in order to save powder. They had burned the gra.s.s in front of the slow-moving trains and sat on the hills laughing at the discomfiture caused by the playful fires. Notwithstanding, all their efforts did not check the ceaseless flow and a vague feeling of alarm began to pervade them.

Talking men came to them and spoke of their Great Father in Washington.

It made them laugh. These talking men gave them enough blankets and medicine goods to make the travvis poles squeak under the burden. When these men also told them that they must live like white men, the secret council lost its dignity entirely and roared long and loud at the quaint suggestion.

Steadily flowed the stream of wagons over the plains though the Indians plied them with ax and rifle and fire. Sober-minded old chiefs began to recall many prophecies of the poor trappers who told how their people swarmed behind them and would soon come on.

Then began to appear great lines of the Great Father's warriors--all dressed alike and marching steadily with their wagons drawn along by half-brothers to the horse. These men built log forts on the Indian lands and they had come to stay.

The time for action had come. Runners went through the tribes calling great councils which made a universal peace between the red brothers.

Many and fierce were the fights with these blue soldiers of the Great Father. The Indians slew them by hundreds at times and were slain in turn. In a grand a.s.sault on some of these which lay behind medicine-wagons and shot medicine-guns the Indian dead blackened the gra.s.s and the white soldiers gave them bad dreams for many days.

The talking-wives and the fire wagon found their way, and the white hunters slew the buffalo of the Indians by millions, for their hides.

Every year brought more soldiers who made more log forts from which they emerged with their wagons, dragging after the trace of the Chis-chis-chash camp, and disturbing the buffalo and the elk. To be sure, the soldiers never came up because the squaws could move the travvis more rapidly than the others could their wagons, but it took many young men to watch their movements and keep the gra.s.s burning before them. Since the Indians had made the wagon fight, they no longer tried to charge the soldiers, thinking it easier to avoid them. The young men were made to run their ponies around the Yellow-Eyes before it was light enough in the morning for them to shoot, and they always found the Yellow-Eyes heavy with sleep; but they did not grapple with the white soldiers because they found them too slow to run away and enemies who always fought wildly, like bears. Occasionally the Indians caught one of them alive, staked him out on a hill, and burned him in sight of his camp. These Yellow-Eyes were poor warriors, for they always whined and yelled under the torture. Half-breeds who came from the camp of the Yellow-Eyes said that this sight always made the white soldiers' blood turn to water. Still the invaders continued to crawl slowly along the dusty valleys. The buffalo did not come up from the south--from the caves of the Good G.o.ds where they were made--in such numbers as they once did, and the marching soldiers frightened those which did and kept them away. The young warriors never wearied of the excitement of these times, with its perpetual war-party, but old men remembered the prophecies of the beaver-men and that the times had changed.

The Fire Eater, as he talked to old Weasel Bear over their pipes and kettles, said:

"Brother, we used to think Yellow Horse had lost the Power of his Eyes when he came from his journey with the talking white man. We thought he had been made to dream by the Yellow-Eyes. We have seen the talking wives and we have seen the fire wagon. We have seen the white men come until there are as many as all the warriors in this camp. All the foolish half-breeds say it is as the talking men say. Brother, I have seen in my dreams that there are more of them than the buffalo. They have their caves to the east as the buffalo do to the south, and they come out of them in the time of the green-gra.s.s just as the buffalo do.

The Bad G.o.ds send the Yellow-Eyes and the Good G.o.ds send the buffalo.

The G.o.ds are fighting each other in the air."

Weasel Bear smoked in silence until he had digested the thoughts of his friend, when he replied:

"Your talk is good. Two gra.s.ses ago I was with a war-party and we caught a white man between the bends of the Tois-ta-to-e-o. He had four eyes and also a medicine-box which we did not touch. All the hair on his head and face was white as the snow. While we were making the fire to burn him with, he talked much strong talk. Before we could burn him he sank down at our feet and died a medicine-death. We all ran away. Bad Arm, the half-breed who was with us, said the man had prophesied that before ten snows all our fires would be put out by his people. Brother, that man had the Power of the Eyes. I looked at him strong while he talked. I have seen him in my dreams--I am afraid."

Weasel Bear continued:

"You hear our young scouts who come in tell us how the white soldiers are coming in droves this gra.s.s. There are walking-soldiers, pony-soldiers, big guns on wheels and more wagons than they can count.

Many of their scalps shall dry in our lodges, but, brother, we cannot kill them all."