The Sacred Valley

by Max Brand

  Chapter Three

  Ten Cheyenne warriors, silent, hard-faced, rode down into the town of Witherell and packed on the backs of their led horses the wealth for the tribe that Rusty Sabin had purchased.

  “Where will the Sioux be now?” asked men who watched the procedure. “Where would Witherell be, either, if the red devils ever got it into their heads to tackle us?”

  “They won’t tackle the whites while Sabin is alive,” said others.

  Charlie Galway said nothing. He left the markets and followed Standing Bull and Rusty Sabin back to the Lester house. He followed at a distance through the evening, and as the day darkened into night he remained lurking in the vicinity.

  Whenever anyone came near him, he was always seen walking briskly along. But afterward he would glide into one of the thickets that grew all the way from the crests of the surrounding cup of hills down into the streets of the village of Witherell.

  When the darkness was complete, he heard sounds coming from the house of Lester, sounds of happy rejoicing—and then the enormous voice of Standing Bull raised in an Indian chant of triumph.

  For Standing Bull was to spend this night with the Lesters and on the morrow he would return to his people, with his ten warriors and with the train of gifts that Rusty Sabin was presenting to the tribe.

  What interested Charlie Galway more than anything else was that the windows of the little cottage had been darkened. Only points and lines of light escaped around the shades.

  That was too much for Galway. He went down to investigate. There was no wind, which made every noise more obvious and increased the danger of his approach. But, also, it made it possible to pry up a window without having the shade fan out into the room. And when the window was lifted, he moved the shade aside just enough to take a view of the scene inside.

  What he saw was enough to make the hair lift on his head. In a corner, curled up on one side and regardless of the noise in the room, lay Standing Bull, wrapped in a buffalo robe, sound asleep. For the hour of darkness was the usual retiring time for an Indian. And around a small center table sat Maisry Lester with such beauty in her face as though a special golden light were shining out of her spirit. And on the table before her and her father and Rusty Sabin was heaped raw gold, glorious gold, in dust and in nuggets.

  Charlie Galway felt a stroke in his brain and in his heart. Destiny, he called it afterward. He heard a voice sounding inside him, and he would not resist the call.

  That gold was meant for him.

  They were weighing the treasure in a little balance scale such as a housewife would use in apportioning her cooking materials. And the sight of the gold fed the spirit of Charlie Galway to the lips.

  They were weighing the gold, they were putting it bit by bit back into a buckskin sack. What a magnificent weight must be in that sack. What a joy to bear it. With such a burden he could have flown through the sky, he felt. He could have rivaled an eagle.

  He went back and sat down under a shrub with his rifle turning hot under the grip of his hands. The stars drifted in the slow wind of heaven above his head; the voices died down inside the house.

  Twice he was ready to start and twice he told himself that he must wait.

  Then he went back to the house. When he rounded the place, soft-footed as a wolf, he saw that one light still burned—in the kitchen. Again from the window he peered in around the shade. And yet there was no wind to betray him.

  He could see, now, the form of Standing Bull lying on the same side, as though he had not stirred a muscle since stretching himself on the floor. Richard Lester perhaps had told himself that he would sit by the failing heat of the kitchen stove until he grew more sleepy and his nerves were calm. A book was open in his lap and his head had dropped on his breast in sleep.

  But there was in that room something that never would have allowed big Charlie Galway to close his eyes that night. Yonder on the table lay the little fat-sided buckskin sack of gold. Some of the precious stuff had not been brushed carefully off the table. A few bright grains of it sparkled under the lamplight that shone, also, over the blade of Standing Bull’s tomahawk. This was simply an ordinary hatchet with an extra large head, but along the back of it ran a pipe stem to which a bowl and a mouthpiece could be screwed. In this manner the pipe of peace could be turned into a weapon instantly.

  Charlie Galway grinned as he noticed that idea. It was after his own heart.

  He felt that there had been an instinct, a fate behind this entire day, forcing him toward a definite destiny. And now he saw the thing before him—some $25,000 almost within the reach of his hand.

  Once his mind was fixed, he abandoned all hesitation. He pushed the window shade aside, deliberately, and stepped in over the low sill.

  The moment he was inside the room, the warmth of the atmosphere and the faint sweetness of cookery closed around him, breathing into his face. The very furniture in the room, the look of the walls, the worn, scrubbed floor were all friendly to the inhabitants and actively hostile to the invader.

  He made two steps to the table and laid his grasp on the buckskin sack. His back was to Richard Lester, then, but from the corner of his eye he could see Standing Bull’s sleeping face and the great, motionless arm that was flung out on the floor. The fingers of that hand opened and contracted slowly. There was a frown on the brow of the warrior. Perhaps he dreamed at that moment of battle.

  “Galway!” gasped a quiet, startled voice behind the thief.

  The right hand of Galway slid from the sack of gold to the handle of the tomahawk. Over his shoulder he had a glimpse of Richard Lester starting out of his chair with a horrified face. The book fell from the knee of the sick man to the floor with a crash.

  And the nerves and the great muscles of the thief reacted with an instant violence. He whirled and struck as instinctively as a wild beast. The sharp, weighty head of the hatchet buried itself in the skull of Lester. He did not fall. He was crushed down against the floor by the force of the blow.

  A harsh voice cried out from the corner of the room. Galway was aware, without turning his head, of a mighty shadow rising, and he plunged straight through the open window into the night.

  Outside, he struck the ground running. Behind him he saw the bulky form of the Indian slip through the window to pursue, but at that moment Galway reached the brush. He dropped to hands and knees in the shadow there.

  From that covert he saw the big redskin range to right and left, running with wonderful lightness and speed for a man of such bulk. The gleam of a knife was visible now and again in the hand of the warrior, and Galway crouched lower, his heart racing. He began to wipe his right hand on the ground. There was something wet on it, and he knew that it was blood. Had more blood spattered over his deerskins, a telltale symbol of the murder he had just committed?

  Then, out of the house, a woman’s voice began to scream. The shrill sound tore through the brain of Galway. There was no ending to it. He saw the big Indian go back through the rear door into the house. A fresh outburst of the shrieking started, on a higher note. Doors of adjacent houses in the village were slamming. Men were running, calling out to know what had happened.

  Then Galway got up to his feet and circled out into the winding, irregular street that once had been a cow trail. Lights were coming on in various windows. The chatter of women sounded inside the houses. The voices of the men boomed with a hollow note in the open air.

  He stepped into the shaft of dim lamplight that streamed out a window and studied his hands, his clothes. There were no spots that he could see.

  He went back into the street. The screaming of Maisry Lester had ended, but the soft noise of her sobbing continued inside the house. There was a growing crowd of men outside the place. And big Charlie Galway walked into that knot of people. He could hear Tom Lorrance, that famous frontiersman, saying: “Who done the job? That’s the main thing. Who done it? Who would smash in the skull of a poor fellow like Lester that didn’t have any enemies?
”

  “There’s an Indian in that house,” said Charlie Galway. “There’s a big, red Cheyenne Indian in there. Why isn’t he the man that killed Lester?”

  “You mean big Standing Bull?” asked Lorrance. “It ain’t likely that he’d do such a thing in the same house where Rusty Sabin is.”

  “To hell with what’s likely,” said Galway. “He sure must’ve done it. Who but an Indian would murder a fellow like Lester? We’ll go in there and have a look.”

  There was a muttering of assent. Instantly they started for the door of the house and Galway rapped on it.

  Rusty Sabin came and pulled the door open.

  “You can’t come in, friends,” he said. “Miss Lester isn’t able to see people.”

  “We wanna see what’s happened,” said Galway. “We’re the law and order of the town of Witherell, Sabin. There’s been a murder done here, and we gotta know all about it.”

  “Is that right?” asked Rusty.

  “Sure it’s right,” said several voices from the crowd.

  “Walk softly, please, and don’t speak loudly,” said Rusty Sabin. “I’ll go before you.”

  He paused in the hallway at a bedroom door that was ajar. He drew it shut, saying quietly: “They will be gone in a few moments, Maisry.” Then he went on to the kitchen.

  Standing Bull sat cross-legged in a corner, smoking. On the floor near the stove there was a dark stain.

  “He must have been reading in this chair,” said Rusty Sabin. “The murderer came in to steal that buckskin sack, because there’s gold in it. He was discovered. He picked up the tomahawk of Standing Bull and struck down Mister Lester. There’s the tomahawk. It was sunk clear into the head of Richard Lester. I took it out and carried him into a bedroom. Maybe, when the morning comes, we’ll be able to find the trail of the killer.”

  “Takes it kind of easy, don’t he?” muttered one of the men.

  “Why not?” answered Charlie Galway, his hungry eyes on the sack of gold. “Fact is that it gets the cripple out of his way. I don’t take no stock in that yarn about the thief coming in. How would a thief come in, anyway, without waking up the Indian or a man sitting by the fire? I tell you what, boys, this looks to me like a murder done by somebody in the house.”

  “In the house? You mean . . . one of the people in the house?” muttered another man, barely in the middle twenties but bearded heavily.

  “That’s what I mean,” said Galway. He caught two of the men by the shoulders and drew them close. “Boys,” he said, “I aim to think that stone-faced Standing Bull, yonder, is the murderer. He seen how much gold would buy, today. He seen the horses of his murdering, thieving Cheyennes loaded down with loot that hadn’t cost any fighting. He seen his tribe made richer in one day with gold than it ever got through a hundred years of stealin’. So in the middle of the night he comes sneakin’ to steal the gold. The old man sits there and sleeps. But he wakes up in time. He makes a holler. Standing Bull smashes in his head. But then, when he grabs the gold, it seems a mite too heavy to run away with. The girl comes in, sees her father dead, starts to screeching. . . . And so Standing Bull, he just stays here and faces it out. He says that he was asleep, too . . . stretched out on the floor, eh? Why, ain’t that a lie on the face of it?”

  “It wouldn’t be a loss if we strung up Standing Bull by the neck,” said Lorrance, nodding. “He’s a friend to Sabin, but he’s not a friend to any other whites. And he’s got several hundred fighting braves at his command. He’s the youngest war chief in the tribe and he carries a lot of weight. It’d be a good thing for us if Standing Bull was wiped off the prairies. It might save the scalps of a whole lot of white men.”

  “Maybe. But we won’t do anything about it,” grumbled big Charlie Galway. “We’ll let him bluff his way right through. Inside his heart the Cheyenne is laughin’ at all of us right now.”

  “I think he is . . . damn him,” muttered Lorrance. “Why not take him out and string him up right now?”

  “Watch Rusty Sabin,” said Galway. “Watch that feller. He’ll turn into a wildcat if you touch Standing Bull. They’re blood brothers, people say. Here . . . Lorrance, you take after Standing Bull. Rush him sudden. I’ll snag Sabin with this lariat. We’re gonna have some justice done here in Witherell before the night gets much older.”

  Chapter Four

  Lorrance said: “Sabin, there’s been a right bad murder done here tonight, and some of the boys think that it was done by somebody inside the house.”

  “Someone inside the house?” repeated Rusty, staring, empty of eye and understanding.

  “Yes . . . you, the girl, or Standing Bull. Leaving you and the girl out of it as not likely, that comes down to Standing Bull. We think that we oughta have a trial of Standing Bull. And a trial is what we’re gonna have. Walk in on him, boys . . . Clary, take him from that side. Justis, grab him from the left.”

  Lorrance pulled out a revolver as he spoke. And, at the same time, big Charlie Galway tossed the noose of the lariat he had picked up over the head of Rusty Sabin.

  That quick gesture should have taken Sabin out of the scene of action at once. Another man could hardly have resisted. But those long years among the Indians had given to Rusty that instant reaction of nerve and body that wakes a cat out of sleep when the teeth of the dog already are parting to catch her and puts her on top of the wall before the teeth have closed. Rusty shrank suddenly under the swift shadow of the lariat, and, as he shrank, the long, curving blade of his knife leaped out of its leather scabbard. As the noose dropped down over his shoulders, the edge of the knife flashed up and gashed it in two at a touch.

  A glance over his shoulder told him that Galway had made that attack from the rear, but he had no time to think about trouble from the rear. There was Standing Bull on the other side of the room with a rush about to start for him.

  Rusty Sabin dived into the legs of that crowd like a fish into water and came up through a sudden confusion at the side of the gigantic Indian.

  “Ah hai, brother!” shouted Standing Bull. “Shall we charge?”

  He balanced over his head the long weight of his rifle, making it wonderfully light in the grasp of his huge hands, and the men in the room shrank back a little from him. They shrank still more from the look of Rusty Sabin, his red hair on end, his eyes a double dance of blue flame. The long blade of his knife already seemed to drip with blood, and in his left hand there was a heavy Colt revolver. All the tales concerning this strange fellow returned to the minds of the men of Witherell. One problem such as big Standing Bull was enough for them to handle. The addition of Rusty Sabin made the dish entirely a sour affair.

  “Now what will you have?” called Sabin. “Is it a fight, or is it talking?”

  “This is too bad, Rusty,” said Galway. “You oughta know that we simply want to give Standing Bull a fair trial, kind of legal and everything. I knew you wouldn’t understand, and that was why I tried to hold you back with that lariat.”

  “There’s such a thing as law, ain’t there, Rusty?” asked Lorrance.

  “Yes,” said Rusty. “That’s true, of course.”

  He looked helplessly toward Standing Bull and said: “Brother, this is not a battle to be fought with the hands. It is a thing of law. And the white man’s law never does wrong. They think you may have killed the old man. How can they tell that you are a great chief and that your hands are clean? But the law makes the truth appear. Even if we fight a way through them now, the trouble would not be ended. For such a thing, the white men would make war.”

  “Let them make their war,” said Standing Bull. “The Cheyennes are ready.”

  “Ah, brother,” said Rusty, “what do you know of the great cities and the tens of thousands of white men? There are more white warriors, all with good rifles, than there are buffalo on the plains. The Cheyennes are a great people, but when their bullets were gone and their hands weary with killing, there still would be white men by thousands and thousands. It is bet
ter to let the law wash your hands clean.”

  Standing Bull said: “It is very bad for a Cheyenne to take the law of the Sioux. Each people has a different language and a different mind. Their laws are different, too. White justice would not be Cheyenne law, brother.”

  “No, no,” protested Rusty. “I have heard about this. Wise men have written great books about law. They have printed more words, Standing Bull, than there are blades of grass on the prairies. They have gathered together so much wisdom that they cannot help but be right. It is better to let the white men use their justice. It is much better.”

  “Brother,” said Standing Bull, “I am in your hands. Shall I put down my rifle?”

  Rusty said: “Wait still for one moment.” He turned to the crowd of men. “Standing Bull will not fight to get away. He will stay quietly to be tried, because he is not guilty. But I have told him that white men have good laws. Will it be fair? Will you use only true laws for Standing Bull?”

  “Aye, we’ll give him a good chance,” said Lorrance and Galway almost in the same breath.

  Galway added: “Let’s get out in the open. There’s a moon coming up. We need more room than we got inside the house.”

  This was agreed to, and the crowd streamed out into the open street. It had grown, now, to include practically every man and most of the boys in Witherell, and at the windows of the adjacent houses appeared the women, looking on with a tense curiosity. The moon, newly up, was turning from golden to silver as it sailed into the sky.

  There was a heavy wagon at the side of the street, and into this the Indian and Sabin were escorted. Galway said: “When you’re up here before ’em, the lads can see what’s what. You can talk to ’em better, Rusty. And of course you’ll have to do the translating. There’s nobody in the town that understands Cheyenne the way you do.”

  Rusty Sabin, looking over that crowd, found that his heart was falling every moment. Every man in that mob was armed, and there was a restless fierceness in their faces. Men did not come clear out to Witherell, on the edge of the prairies, except for important reasons. Here were long-haired hunters of the buffalo, and trappers who returned to the verge of civilization once every two years.