The Westerners Part 39

Nor did he hope to escape a typical Indian tirade from the two old hags who, so short a time ago, had been his not unattractive young wives.

But beyond this, and perhaps--as he glanced over the motley indications of their poverty--the promise of gifts, he antic.i.p.ated nothing more serious in the end than a delay. A delay, however, was what he could not at present afford.

"Ah, well," he acknowledged in the Indian tongue, "I am he, Man-who-speaks-Medicine. You have known me. It is I. It is many moons that I have not seen my brothers, but I have accomplished many things, and I have gathered gifts for my brothers which will rejoice their hearts. I go to the lodges of the white men near Swift-water now, and I haste; so I cannot linger to clasp my brothers' hands; but to-morrow I return bearing the gifts."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MY LITTLE MOLLY," HE CHOKED.]

He took up his reins with all confidence, for in those days no one was afraid of Indians--at least when they were accompanied by their women and children. The two bucks at the horses' heads did not move, however; and at a signal from Lone Wolf three others leaped lightly into the wagon-body behind the half-breed and pinned his arms to his sides. So suddenly was it done that Lafond could not even struggle.

His captors tied his elbows together at the back and lifted him to the ground, where a number of others hustled him into a wigwam, and after tying his feet left him lying on the ground. In a moment he heard the faint sound of wheels somewhere above him, by which he knew that Billy Knapp and Buckley were pa.s.sing the point of his intended ambush. He drew a deep breath and shouted. Instantly two young Sioux ran in and threw a blanket over his head, nearly smothering him. The sound of the wheels died into distance.

After perhaps two hours he heard the hoof-beats of a large party of hors.e.m.e.n. They, too, died away. The men composing the party were looking for him, Michal Lafond, but this he did not know. He tried to distinguish from the noises just outside what was taking place in the little camp, but he could not.

At the end of another half-hour the two young men who had been appointed as his guards led him out to a horse, on which, after his feet had been untied, he was compelled to mount. He asked them questions, to which they vouchsafed no reply. Looking about him curiously, he saw that the camp had been struck. The long teepee poles, bound on each side of the ponies, trailed their ends on the ground, and on the litters thus formed, the skins of the lodges, all the household utensils, and many of the younger children had been placed. Squaws bestrode the little animals. The warriors, ridiculously incongruous in their overalls and flannel shirts, sat motionless on their mounts. Lafond recognized his own team, but could not discover either his wagon or the harness. These had been dragged away into the bushes and left, for very good reasons.

The cavalcade took its way directly down the narrow, overgrown little canon, riding in single file. Lafond could not understand this. The road above would have been much easier.

After an hour's hard work in dodging obstructions, getting around fallen trees or between standing timber, the party emerged on the broad, rolling foothills, gra.s.s-covered and bare of trees. Here Lone Wolf led the way south-east for several miles, and finally came to a halt on the brow of a round hill of gentle descent. The band at once dismounted. A number of the squaws deftly relieved the ponies of their burdens, and the younger boys led them away to the bottom-lands for pasture. The women then began without delay to erect the lodges in a wide circle surrounding the brow of the hill, so arranging them that the flaps or doorways opened into the common centre. After this had been done, they built in the middle of the circle a huge fire of wood brought from the Hills, but did not light it as yet. Then all silently disappeared to the bottom-lands, where they made little fires and set about supper.

Before each lodge a warrior established himself, crosslegged, and began to smoke. When the sun dipped behind the Hills and threw their long shadows silently out across to the Bad Lands, the chill of twilight struck in, and so the Indians wrapped themselves closely in their blankets. As by a stroke of enchantment, with the concealment of the shirts and overalls, the Past returned. Against the sky of evening, the silhouettes of the pointed wigwams and the suggestion of the shrouded warriors smoking solemnly, silently, their pipes, all belonged to the nomadic age before such men as Michal Lafond had "civilized"

the country.

After a time they rose and departed silently to the bottom-land for a while, leaving Lafond in charge of the two young men. They had gone to eat their suppers. The half-breed had not tasted food since the early morning, nor slept for thirty odd hours.

The stars came out one by one, and the stillness of that great inland sea men call the prairies fell on the world. Such occasional sounds as rose from the creek bottom seemed but to emphasize the peace. And then suddenly, from the shadows somewhere, without disturbance, the blanketed figures appeared and took their places again. A squaw came bearing a torch, and lit the fire in the centre of the circle, and there sprang up a broad shaft of light which drew about the little scene a great canopy of imminent blackness. From hand to hand pa.s.sed a great red-stone calumet or pipe. Each warrior puffed at it twice and pa.s.sed it to his neighbor. It was not offered to Michal Lafond, whose bonds had now been loosened.

After each of the seated warriors had taken his part in this ceremony, and the pipe had completed the circle to Lone Wolf, that chief arose, throwing back his blanket from his shoulders.

With a sudden chill of fear, Michal Lafond saw that he was to a.s.sist at a state council of the sort held only when the tribe is to sit in judgment on one of its own number.

The savage was naked to the waist. In his hair, worn loose and unbraided after the Sioux fashion, three eagle feathers with white tips were thrust slantwise across the back of his head; and under its heavy ma.s.s his fierce bright eyes and hawk face gleamed impressively. About his neck hung a fringe of bears' claws, from which depended a round silver medal. Now as he stood there--the lithe strength of his bronze torso revealed one arm clasping the blanket about his waist, the other holding loosely at his side the feather-bedecked calumet of sandstone--the stigma of sordidness and drunkenness and squalor seemed to fall away, so that the spectator would have seen in this group of silent men under the silent western heavens only the pomp and pride of a great and savage people in the zenith of its power.

Lone Wolf stood for the s.p.a.ce of several minutes without a sign. Then with a magnificently sweeping gesture he held the calumet aloft and began to speak.

At first his voice was low and monotonous, but as his speech continued it took on more color, until at the close it responded in modulation to every flash of his eye. He began with a recital of the tribe's ancient glory, dwelling rather on concrete examples than on broader generalities. He numbered its warriors, its ponies, its arms, and lodges. He told of the beauty of its women and the greatness of its men, whom he ran over by name. He told of its deeds in war, enumerating the enemies it had struck, the ponies it had stolen, the stratagems it had conceived and carried out. And then he swept his arm and the feather-fluttering calumet abroad as he described the boundless extent of the hunting grounds over which it had used to roam. As he continued, the warriors' expressive eyes brightened and flashed with pride, though they moved not one muscle of their faces or bodies.

Beyond the circle could be dimly descried another not less interested audience of women and older children.

"These and more were ours!" cried Lone Wolf, "these and many more. The favor of Gitche Manitou was ours and the riches of the world. Where are they now?" With an indescribably graceful gesture the orator stooped to the ground and grasped a handful of the loose dry earth.

"Gone!" he said solemnly, letting the sand fall from his outstretched suddenly opened palm.

Then, without pause or transition, he began, in equally vivid objective language, to detail the tribe's misery and poverty of to-day. He recounted its disasters, just as a moment before he had recounted its victories. He told of the Spotted Sickness, the dividing of forces, the battle with the red coats, all the long series of oppressions great and little which had brought them to their present condition. He counted over by name the present members, to show how their numbers had shrunken, and to each name he added others of those who had gone before. So real was the picture that the orator himself faltered, while from outside the circle rose for a single instant a long trembling wail. The warriors had half covered their faces with the folds of their blankets.

"Thus our glory went and our young men are seen no longer on the war path, but only in the white men's towns. And yet our fathers were brave before us and we have struck well in our time. Why is this so?

Why has Gitche Manitou veiled his face from his children?"

Leaving the question unanswered, Lone Wolf unexpectedly took up Lafond's connection with the tribe. In the recounting of this, too, he held to the greatest minuteness of detail, showing plainly the half-breed's rise from despised squaw man to a person of influence in the councils. He gave the half-breed full credit for all he did. He even went out of his way to show that to Lafond was due much of the power that had so distinguished the Brule Sioux among the other tribes.

He described again briefly that power, and told of the battle of the Little Big Horn. He dwelt on that as to some extent the culmination of the tribe's glory. It was the last and greatest of its exploits.

After it misfortune commenced. Gitche Manitou that day veiled his face.

"And he turned his hand against the totem of the Turtle," said Lone Wolf impressively, "because one of its children had committed a sacrilege. The very night of that great victory, a brave from among us arose and took the sacred totem, the great Turtle, from the lodge of his chief, and slew Buffalo Voice, the medicine man favored of Gitche Manitou, and defiled the totem.

"From that time Gitche Manitou has frowned upon his children. From that time misfortune has visited the tribe of Lone Wolf. From that time the man who did these things has lost his old warrior name and has been known as the Defiler."

He paused and looked about the circle until his eye rested on Lafond.

With a sudden fierce enmity he stretched his arm toward the captive.

"That is he," he concluded impressively; "and it has been revealed by Big Thunder that never will Gitche Manitou smile on his children until the Defiler dies!"

x.x.xVII

ASHES

A light night wind had arisen from the lower prairie, and occasionally puffed a stray wisp of smoke or heat across the westernmost curve of the circle. Hot sparks shot up in the air swiftly, paused, and floated dying down the wind. Above, occasionally, the clear stars peeped in through the canopy of blackness which the firelight so jealously guarded. There was a perceptible chill in the air. As the long speech continued and drew to a close, the half-breed, seated on the prairie side of the fire, shivered convulsively from time to time, for he was now almost exhausted by excitement and lack of sleep and food. At first he had submitted to the trial, if so it might be called, unwillingly enough, to tell the truth, but without a suspicion that it could result in anything more serious than a fine for desertion. It might almost be looked upon as a ransom, and this he was willing to pay. His princ.i.p.al emotion had been that of frantic chafing because, for the present, Jim Buckley and Billy Knapp were free to make trouble for him. He had no doubt they would do so, although he did not know exactly how they would go at it.

As Lone Wolf so dramatically outlined the grounds of his accusation, however, Lafond really began to see the face of fear. He gathered that the very night he had chosen to quit the tribe, some one had killed the tribe's medicine man and defiled the totem in a way not to be mentioned here. This is with Indians the Unforgiveable Sin. Suspicion had naturally coupled the sacrilege with his own coincidental disappearance. Probably even at the time no one had doubted his guilt or had suspected any other cause for his desertion. The real criminal had been able easily to cover his trail; and now, so many years would have hardened even a slight suspicion, let alone a positive certainty, into conviction absolute. Lafond saw that his chances were desperate, and yet so suddenly was the knowledge forced upon him that he could hardly realize it. But a few hours before, he had held in the hollow of his hand more power than any other one man in the territory. Now he was in danger of his life.

He knew well enough that his only chance lay in keeping cool. He must not interrupt the orator with denials. He must try to make his eloquence tell.

Lone Wolf ceased abruptly, drew his blanket about his shoulders and sat down. Two squaws noiselessly entered the circle, bearing wood for the fire. After they had withdrawn, Lafond rose to his feet.

He was at once uncomfortably conscious of the circle of snake eyes. It was for him the predominant note in the scene.

He began haltingly, partly because he did not know what to say, partly because long disuse had impaired his fluency in the Indian tongue. But in a moment, as he began to realize that he was now in the act of making the only plea for his life which his captors would permit him, his speech quickened until it was as rapid as that of Lone Wolf himself.

It was a masterly effort, for Lafond had not lost the old eloquence which had earned him the name of "Man-who-speaks-Medicine." He reviewed, as had Lone Wolf, his services to the tribe. He did it modestly, stating plainly the facts and leaving the savages to draw their own conclusions. He showed further that in so bending his efforts to the tribe's betterment, he had been actuated by no selfish motives, in proof of which proposition he enumerated one by one the various opportunities he had let pa.s.s of decamping enriched beyond any one warrior's dreams of wealth; to which proposition he further pointed out as a corollary that he had in reality departed with but his own weapons and the clothes on his back. This made an impression. Having thus established his disinterestedness as regards his services to the tribe, he went on further to show that these argued, furthermore, an intense personal interest in its welfare. He loved his people. He challenged them to cite one of his deeds which would bear the contrary construction.

And then, with a boldness that almost amounted to genius, he drew before them vividly that night on the battlefield when he had so long contemplated the fallen white chief, and he detailed to them the reasons he had then for believing the Indians' warlike power was from that moment doomed to wane.

"I saw these things," he said, "as one to whom Gitche Manitou had spoken, and I knew they were true. But my brothers were victorious; they saw the blue coats scattered as the dust is scattered by the wind.

My words would have been as the water that slips away or the cloud that vanishes in the heavens. If I had told my brothers these things, they would not have believed. You, Spotted Dog; you, Firebrand; even you, Lone Wolf, would not have believed. Look well within your hearts and acknowledge that I speak words of truth. Then you would have cast me out as one with forked tongue."

Such being the case, Lafond argued that, inasmuch as he could do nothing for his people by sharing their disgrace, he had left them.

"But only for a season," he explained. "You are warriors: I am a man of craft. When your bows are broken and your arrows lost, then must I take my weapons and strive as I can. I went forth to fight for my brothers. Behold me; I have fought and I have won. I am rich. My brothers are to share my riches. Now I can return to the lodges of my brothers as one coming from a far war trail, bringing the ponies and scalps of the enemies my hand has struck."

Then suddenly the speaker took up the question of the crime itself. He dilated on it with horror. He acknowledged no excuse for it. But, he asked them, why should he have committed it? He showed them that he could have had no motive for such a wanton insult. And, most ingenious of all, he pointed out that if, as Lone Wolf had supposed, the tribe's misfortunes had arisen because of Gitche Manitou's wrath over this terrible crime, then that wrath and those misfortunes would indubitably have been visited on him, the accused, with the rest; for he was a member of the tribe, and according to the accusation the guiltiest of them all. Such was not the case. On the contrary he had prospered.

In conclusion he believed he could direct suspicion to the right channel. From his wonderful past knowledge of inter-tribal and individual jealousies, he rapidly constructed a plausible theory.

His defence, as he could observe, made a profound impression. The savages sat silent and thoughtful while the minutes slipped by, and the wavering light from the central fire alternately illuminated and threw into shadow the strong bronze of their faces. The argument was sophistical enough, but for two reasons it carried conviction. In the first place, the half-breed was pleading for his very life; in the second place, he was in reality absolutely innocent as to the main facts. Therefore he had faith and earnestness--two great qualities.

His only misfortune was, that the exigencies of the situation demanded that in the web of truth one falsehood should be woven.

Beyond the circle of light the dim forms of the women and children showed faintly against the dimmer background of the sea-like prairie.

They had followed with great attention the deliberations before them, but in silence and with decorum, as is proper in such cases. Now suddenly one of them slipped forward through the circle before her companions or the warriors between whom she pa.s.sed could detain her.

Before the fire she turned and faced Lone Wolf. It was the old hag who had first recognized Lafond.

The warriors looked on her in cold surprise. Such a thing as a woman intruding on a council was unheard of, unthinkable, punishable by almost any penalty.