The Westerners Part 9

XI

THE BEGINNING OF LAFOND'S REVENGE

The day following the conference, Lone Wolf struck camp. The squaws quickly removed and rolled into convenient bundles the skin coverings of the tepees. The poles of the latter were strapped on each side of the ponies in such a manner that, their ends dragging on the ground, a sort of litter was formed for the transportation of the household goods and the younger children. Before the sun was an hour high, the caravan was under way.

From this, the South Fork of the Cheyenne, the main band, under Lone Wolf, were to push directly through to the Big Horn. Lafond, Rain-in-the-Face, and the warriors detailed for the expedition were to carry out the adventure of Pah-sap-pah to the half-breed's satisfaction, and were then to rejoin the main body as soon as possible.

The smaller band cut in to the Black Hills shortly after daybreak one morning. It rode up Spanish Gulch a little before noon.

Most of these warriors had never before entered the dark limits of Pah-sap-pah. They were plainly in awe of its frowning cliffs and rustling pines. They rode close together, whispering uneasily. Even Rain-in-the-Face failed to rea.s.sure them. Why should he? He was a little afraid himself.

Lafond's knowledge of the topography of the place was excellent. He had visited it several times. He had watched the doctor, step by step, throughout a long day of geological searching. He knew Jim Buckley's dwelling, where he worked, what hours he kept, and just how late he sat up at night. Innumerable times he had viewed the doctor, Prue, and the scout through the buck-horn sights of his long rifle; yet he had never been even tempted to pull the trigger. Why? Because he was a Latin, and so theatrical effects were dear to him; because he was an Indian, and so revenge with him seemed to lie not so much in the mere infliction of injury as in the victim's realization that he was being come up with. Lafond not only wanted the doctor and his companions to be killed, but he wanted them to know why they were killed, and by whom. It was finer to be able thus to do the thing with all the stage settings. The dramatic instinct was part of the barbaric quality of his nature, like a love for red.

So Lafond had let slip innumerable opportunities of picking off his victims single-handed, merely to gain the local knowledge necessary to a final _coup de theatre_. Consequently, he knew where the cabin was situated, and quickly scouted the state of affairs. The coast was clear. He gave the required signal; the savages silently approached on foot, and they entered the little house together.

Now at this time of year, in the Black Hills, there occurs a daily meteorological phenomenon of a rather peculiar character. The hot air from the prairies sweeps over from the Missouri River, crossing a number of lesser streams in its pa.s.sage, until it strikes the slope of the hills. There it is deflected upward, gradually becoming colder as the elevation rises, until, at the barrier of Harney, it gathers in rain clouds. These are at first mere wisps of down, streaming in ragged ribbons from the peak; but with incredible rapidity they gain in density and extent, until they spread over a considerable area of the surrounding country. Then they empty themselves in a terrific deluge of water and hail, accompanied by thunderclaps so reverberant that they seem to arise from the rending of the hills themselves. After this short crisis, the dismembered clouds float out over the prairie and are dissipated in the hot air, even before they reach the first white turrets of the Bad Lands.

So rapidly does the storm gather and break, that there is but a short half hour between the morning and the afternoon clearness of the skies.

To those who have never experienced this phenomenon, it is startling in the extreme; to those who have, it is a matter of seeking temporary shelter until the disturbance blows over. In any case, the first indications are but scant warning.

By the time the little band of Indians had reached the doctor's cabin, the first wisps of cloud were clinging to Harney. While they were in the house, the blackness gathered and loomed and darkened until the sun was obscured and the western hills lost themselves in rain.

The doctor was in the hills. Prue was making the bed in the little bedroom, and little Miss Prue was asleep on a rug in one corner of the larger apartment. The savages stole in with noiseless, moccasined feet behind the stooping woman. Lafond, forgetting in his excitement everything but the l.u.s.t of killing, stabbed her deeply twice in the broad of the back. She fell forward on the bed without a murmur, and the murderer, seizing the k.n.o.b of her hair, circled her brow with his knife's edge, and ripped loose the scalp. Then they all glided back into the other room.

Three of the savages took from the wood box near the crude fireplace some of the dried kindling with which Jim Buckley had supplied the family, and began to build a little wigwam-shaped pyramid against the side of the wall. Others moved about furtively, prying here and there for possible plunder. They preserved absolute silence, for the superst.i.tious terror of the place was working on them, and they had begun to experience that panic-like tremor which seems to create an invisible clutch ready to seize from behind.

Even the encouraging presence of Rain-in-the-Face was not potent enough to prevent this. Out on the plains the personality of the man had loomed large, but here the legend was greater than he. The warriors felt the imminence of the frowning, brooding manitou of Harney; they almost heard the moaned syllables of the Soulless Ones' complaint.

Their movements were those of timid mice, advancing a little, hesitating much, ready to flee in panic.

Not so Lafond. He strode roughly over to the corner where the child lay. In his mind, with new vividness, burned that old picture of his humiliation. He began to realize, now that the patient repression of his hate was over, how potent it had been. Alfred and Billy Knapp were out of his reach for the present, but here were the others ready to his hand. He seized little Prue by the hair of her head.

The child, thus suddenly awakened, screamed violently, shriek upon shriek, as her terror became more fully conscious of the savage and his b.l.o.o.d.y knife. About the room the warriors paused nervously.

Accustomed enough to screams of this sort, they were now dominated by superst.i.tion and were thrown off their wonted balance.

And then a fearful thing occurred. Before their eyes, in the open door, groped and staggered the woman Lafond had stabbed but a moment before. From the red raw surface of her scalp blood streamed--streamed over the remaining fringe of her hair, matting it down; streamed down into her eyes, blinding them; over her drawn countenance; over the dabbled, sticky, clinging fabric of her garment, reddened still more by the pulsing flood from the two great wounds in her body. Her breast heaved painfully, the breath coming and going with a strange bubbling gurgle. Her face was turned upward almost to the ceiling above in the agony of her endeavor. Her little hands, become waxen, clutched and unclutched the side of the door. The child screamed yet again, mercifully hidden from this awful sight by the intervention of Lafond's body. The woman made a supreme effort to advance, plunged forward, and rolled over and over on the cabin floor.

At the same instant, with a shriek of wind and a roar of rain, the voice of the thunder spoke.

The savages, who had watched with strained eyes this resurrection from the dead, yelled in an ecstasy of superst.i.tious terror and rushed for the door.

Lafond, utterly unmoved, called to them in Indian and swore at them in French, but they were gone. He hesitated for a moment in evident indecision as to what should be done next. Then he rapidly bundled the little girl in a blanket and threw her across his shoulder. As he hurried to the door, he paused for a moment over the motionless heap of blood and rags on the floor, coolly thrusting his knife again and again into the unresisting flesh.

He caught the fugitives only below the canon of Iron Creek. They had made no pause until well out of the hills, and were still shaking with superst.i.tious dread. Even Rain-in-the-Face, bold and self-confident as he was, had yielded to the panic; nor could the persuasions, threats or ridicule of the half-breed induce them to return.

For a time Lafond was of two minds as to his own course in the matter.

Should he leave things as they were for the present or should he return alone to complete the work? Finally he decided on the former. The Gallic love of the spectacular again intervened; besides, he was possessed of a certain large feeling that the world was not wide enough to save his victims from him when he should judge the time fit. He found much joy in gloating over what he imagined the two men would say, do, and think when they returned to the cabin. And he was a good deal of a savage. He looked forward with fierce delight to the great battle which he foresaw would soon take place between Sitting Bull and his white enemies. So he rode on with the little band of warriors to overtake Lone Wolf.

The savages plainly could not understand his enc.u.mbering himself with the child. The custom had always been to seize such a victim by the ankles, whirl it once about the head to get a good swing, and then to dash its skull violently against a bowlder. They saw no reason why the rule should be departed from in this case. Neither did Lafond; but the queer, zigzag intuition of the half-breed had caused him to feel dimly that he should preserve the child, and as he was in the habit of gratifying his whims, he proceeded to carry out his intention in this case. Once his decision was expressed in emphatic form, his companions acquiesced. The child was Michal's captive; with his own captive he could work his will. That is the Indian code.

So little Miss Prue was carried for seven days on the back of a horse.

She did not cry much, and this saved her from violence. Her two years of outdoor life had made her const.i.tution robust, and this helped her in inevitable privation. At the end of the week, the band caught up with Lone Wolf and his camp, and Miss Prue was given over into the care of Lafond's two young squaws. With them she underwent the customary two days' jealousy, and then entered fully into the heritage of kindliness which every Indian woman squeezes, drop by drop, from her arid life and lavishes on the creatures who are gentle with her.

She had, to be sure, to learn the Indian virtues of silence and obedience. She had to do the little tasks that are set to girl babies everywhere among the savage tribes. And, above all, she had to learn to endure. But, in recompense, the two Indian women adored her. They decked her out in beaded work and white buckskin; they put bright feathers in her hair and bright beads about her little neck; they saved choice bits for her from the family kettle; and when night came they lay on either side of her and softly stroked her hair as she slept.

Over her head, among others, hung her mother's scalp.

XII

THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS

It is not the purpose of this story to describe the battle of the Little Big Horn in detail. That has been done many times. There is little about it that is remarkable, excepting always the heroism of the men who fought so desperately. The scene itself must have been impressive, as viewed by the non-combatants of the Indians from the bluffs near at hand--the swirl of brown about the melting patch of blue. After Custer fell, the savages turned eagerly down the valley to attack Reno, leaving the dead as they lay. Lafond did not accompany them. The sight had aroused certain reflections in his breast, and he wished to work the thing out.

After sunset, he went alone and on foot over to the battlefield. The troopers lay as they had fallen--first, Calhoun's company in line, with its officers in place; then Keogh's; finally, on the knoll, the remnant, scattered irregularly among the dead of their enemies. In the cold light their faces shone white and still, even yet instinct with the eagerness of battle; an eagerness which death had trans.m.u.ted from flesh to marble. Near the centre lay Custer, his long yellow hair framing his face, his hands crossed on his breast. He alone was unmutilated, save by the shot that had taken his life.

The half-breed did not hesitate on the outer circle of the combat, but picked his way among the corpses until he stood on the summit of the little knoll. Then he folded his arms and looked steadily down on the white man's inscrutable face.

Whatever might be Lafond's intellectual or moral deficiencies, lack of perspicacity was not among them. Through the red glory of this apparent victory, the most sweeping ever accomplished by the plains Indians, he saw clearly the imminence of final defeat. The dead man before him lay smiling, and Lafond perceived that he smiled because he saw his people arising to avenge him. The beat of the muster drum calling the avengers to the frontier now sounded in prophecy to his hearing, and the echoes of the last battle shot merged into the clang of an iron civilization, which was destined to push these exulting victors dispa.s.sionately aside. It was a striking picture of light and of shadow--this dark, savage figure silhouetted against the softened brightness of the sky, this bright-haired warrior lying bathed in the glorification of a Western night; the white man humiliated, defeated, slain, but seeing with closed eyes that at which he smiled with deep content; the savage, proud in success, triumphant, victor, but perceiving somehow, in the very evidences of his achievement, that which made him knit his brows. How little was this great victory against the background of the people whom it had outraged, and yet how mightily it would stir that people when once it became known!

Michal Lafond the savage stood before the body of Custer the fallen, for an hour, moving not one muscle all the time. At the end of the hour Michal Lafond the civilized turned slowly away, and walked thoughtfully toward the lodges on the other bank of the Little Big Horn River. The sight of a brave man, who had died as he lived, had reformed Lafond, but whether moralists would have approved of the reformation is to be doubted.

The night ran well along toward morning. The squaws, who had been plundering and mutilating the dead, had long since returned to hear the report of the warriors who had gone to attack Reno. The attack had failed, but the fight had been desperate and the losses on both sides heavy. Six of Custer's command, captured alive, were burned to death.

At last, the entire camp, with the exception of the women sentinels, had gone to rest. Toward daybreak, even these became drowsy.

Lafond arose quietly. He gathered a few necessaries into a pack, placed them outside the doorway of the lodge, hesitated a moment, and then returned. His two squaws slept, as usual, one each side of the little girl. Lafond lifted the child carefully in order that he might not awaken her guardians or herself, and wrapped her closely in his blanket. At the doorway he again hesitated. Then, chuckling grimly, he deposited the child by the bundle he had already prepared, and returning, took down from the tent pole the string of scalps which went to show how successful and how savage a warrior he had been. By the light of the stars he selected one of these and laid it carefully between the two sleeping women. It was the scalp of the little girl's mother. Then he rehung the string on the tent pole, and went outside immensely pleased with his bit of humor.

It was his good-by to the wild life. From that time on he dwelt in the towns, where in a very few years his name became known as standing for a shrewdness in management, a keenness in seizing opportunities, and an inflexibility of purpose rarely to be met with among his Anglo-Saxon compet.i.tors. His present objective point, however, was the Spotted Tail Agency, which was, from the valley of the Little Big Horn, an affair of five days. Michal Lafond did it in four; or at least at the end of the fourth he was within a few miles of the agency buildings.

By the evening of the third day, he had transformed both himself and the little girl into an appearance of civilization, reclothing her in the garments she had worn at the time of her capture, and himself in a complete outfit which he had collected piece by piece on that last night with the savages. The change was truly astonishing.

His last camp in the open was pitched within sight of the Spotted Tail reservation. The darkness was almost at hand. He had fed himself and the child, had put the latter to rest under one blanket and was just about to wrap himself in the other, when he became aware of a prairie schooner swaying leisurely across the plains in his direction. He at once sat up again. Every man was to him an object of suspicion.

Not until the wagon had halted within a few feet of him could he distinguish the occupant. Then he perceived that the latter was a gentle-faced, silver-haired individual of mild aspect, dressed decently but strangely, and possessed of introspective blue eyes, which he turned dreamily on Lafond.

"May I camp here?" he inquired deprecatingly.

The half-breed considered.

"I s'pose so," he said without enthusiasm.

The old man descended and uncoupled his two animals. After he had picketed them, he returned, and, extracting from the wagon body the materials for a meal, he proceeded to make himself at home over Lafond's fire.

"I never did like to camp alone," he confided to the latter.

Lafond watched him intently. No further words were exchanged until the stranger had finished his supper and had restored his kit to the wagon.

Then the younger man offered the hospitality of the plains.