The Sacred Valley

by Max Brand

“Did you know him?”

  “A little . . . yes.”

  “Not enough to be his friend?”

  “I’d call myself his friend,” said Galway.

  Lazy Wolf rubbed his beard into a staring confusion. He pondered, and then delivered his conclusion: “Different from other people. There was no way of marking where the Indian stopped in him and the white man began. He was more credulous than a Cheyenne about a good many things, and keener than any white man about others. He hated pain, but he loved battle. If you showed him a thing hard to do, he couldn’t help wanting to do it. He saw White Horse . . . and no other horse existed for him afterward. Nothing in the world existed for him. He spent a year chasing that horse. And he caught it . . . on foot . . . and he caught it.”

  “That sounds kind of impossible,” said Galway.

  “A man with a heart like Rusty Sabin’s . . . why, you can’t measure what the man can do unless you can measure the heart. There was no measuring of the heart of Rusty Sabin. No man could tell what a friend he was. It was for a friend that he died. It was for a friend that he was driven out by the whites. The Cheyennes murdered him. But he didn’t fight against it because he believed in the religious ceremony . . . he thought it was the right way of bringing health back to Standing Bull. But there’s one thing he would have prevented, if he had been here today, and that is the sacrifice of a living girl to end the drought.”

  “Could he have stopped them?” asked Galway curiously.

  “He would have found a way,” said the trader. “I don’t know how. He always found a way to do what he wanted in a pinch. Ah, here they come now.”

  The chanting of the women came toward them out of the distance with an accompaniment of blowing horns. It was not music. It was not even melodious noise. To Galway it breathed out a savage fury.

  “You mean that they simply pick out a girl and then murder her?” asked Galway.

  “They don’t pick her out. There’s always some girl that’s willing to make the sacrifice for the sake of the tribe. Then they take her to the Valley of Death . . . a big box cañon that even a bird could hardly fly out of. And the girl will walk in freely. She won’t have to be dragged. Afterward, part of the Cheyennes will keep guard over the mouth of the Valley of Death and the other half will go to the entrance to the Sacred Valley, and pray to Sweet Medicine to send them water to end the drought.”

  “It’s a queer idea,” said Galway. “What’s in the Sacred Valley?”

  “I don’t know,” said the trader. “No living man ever has been inside it and came out to tell what was there. An Indian would rather step into a bonfire than into the Sacred Valley.”

  “No one ever went inside?” demanded Galway again.

  “Don’t try it yourself,” said Lazy Wolf. “If the Indians saw you try it, they’d knife you. If they ever heard that you’d gone inside, they’d trail you to the end of the world and get your scalp to make a sacrifice to Sweet Medicine.”

  “It’s as bad as all that, is it?” asked Galway, setting his fighting chin. “And no one ever dared to go inside?”

  “No one. That is, excepting Rusty Sabin.”

  “Ah?” cried Galway. An idea had taken fire in his mind. “He went in? Rusty Sabin went in . . . and the Indians didn’t know about it?”

  “They knew about it, but it was different with Rusty. He was a sort of chosen spirit . . . a sacred man . . . chosen by Sweet Medicine, I mean. And he brought back to the tribe the sacred arrow, which is the most holy thing they possess today. He saw Sweet Medicine in the form of a huge owl.”

  “The devil he did. You say this as though you believed it.”

  “It isn’t a question of what I believe,” said Lazy Wolf. “It’s merely that Rusty believed it. And that was enough for me. That was enough for the Cheyennes, too.”

  “This here Rusty was a sort of a prophet or something, eh?” asked Galway.

  “You can call him that. He was almost that,” said the trader. “I’ve never known a man like him. I’ll never find another fit to step in his shoes.”

  The noise of the procession began to roar in front of the lodge.

  “Let’s have a look at this,” said Galway, and pushed open the entrance flap of the teepee.

  He saw before him at the head of the rout old Running Elk himself, almost naked, streaked and flaming with paints of all colors, and with a buffalo’s head on his shoulders. He danced with wild boundings; he screeched weird words and phrases that the rout behind him echoed.

  There came, first of all, a dozen braves on horseback with their spears reversed, their faces blackened. Behind them, on a beautiful little black pony, rode a girl crowned with flowers and shining in the finest of soft, white doeskin dresses. Her horse was led by two warriors. She herself sat on the saddle with uplifted face, smiling, her hands folded in her lap. And it seemed to the startled eyes of Galway that not even the blue and golden beauty of Maisry Lester approached the loveliness of the Cheyenne. She was not the dark copper but much lighter; there was only enough stain in her skin to give it a luminous richness. And she was the sacrifice. Galway knew that. He caught his breath at the thought of such a creature going willingly to death,

  Then Lazy Wolf rushed violently past him shouting: “Blue Bird! Blue Bird!”

  The girl rode on as though she had not heard. Several of the warriors who followed the sacrifice turned and put the points of their spears at the breast of the trader. He fell on his knees and began to beat his fists against his face.

  Chapter Eleven

  The beating of drums, the blowing of horns, and the chanting of voices poured into the Sacred Valley, so that the antelope flashed their white disks of warning and fled up toward the peaceful waters of the lake. The huge buffalo lifted their heads to listen and let the dry grass drip down from their mouths, unchewed; the elk made their proud stand, and one of the grizzlies, as Rusty Sabin watched, stood up with his vast paws folded on his breast in an attitude very like that of prayer.

  Rusty whistled. White Horse gleamed through the brush and came dazzling out into the sunset light. He had to make a frisking turn or two before Rusty could leap onto his back, and then at a dizzy gallop, like water shooting down a long flume, they swept through the Sacred Valley, over the dry meadows deep in standing pasture, through the grooves, and beside the lower pools of standing water. For the river no longer ran, and the chanting of the waterfall was silent in the valley. Only a small trickle darkened the face of the cliff where the waterfall usually fell in a white thunder.

  Near the foot of the Sacred Valley, Rusty dismounted and stood at the head of the narrow entrance gorge. The big trees arose on one side. On the other, the cavernous wall of the ravine rose in successive hollows above him.

  He could hear a tumultuous uproar of instruments and chanting. And this having died down to a murmur, he recognized the voice of Running Elk, chanting to Sweet Medicine a solo that was the old Cheyenne prayer for rain.

  He had an impulse to rush out among them. He was overcome with a vast desire to see their faces. The human sound of the voices, the familiar words of the prayer brought tears to his eyes. He was young, and he had been long alone.

  But he turned and went back to the place where White Horse was waiting. On the back of the stallion he returned moodily to the upper end of the valley and looked up toward the mouth of the cave of Sweet Medicine.

  Would the god appear to make an answer to his worshippers? Or was Sweet Medicine hovering, now, over the Valley of Death?

  He dismounted from the horse. It was the end of the day. Only a dim greenness remained around the horizon, where a big, boat-shaped moon was floating upward.

  There was no sign at the mouth of the cave. And suddenly Rusty knew that he would have to look into the Valley of Death. He lifted his hands, palm upward, and prayed silently to the god. Then he climbed the face of the rock, where he had cut, with much labor, the rough flight of steps all the way to the lip of the cave. When he reached the place, he peere
d earnestly into the darkness of the hollow cavern; his knees were weak and trembling.

  Then he entered the cave, saying in a voice that wavered with fear: “It’s I. It is Red Hawk. It is your servant. Be merciful, Sweet Medicine.”

  So he went on through the thick darkness, breathing hard, feeling his way. Once he thought that a whisper ran past him, and his blood turned to ice. But at last he came to the other end of the passage and looked down into the moonlit valley. Over it hovered dim shapes, the buzzards waiting on the wing for their prey. And in the white hollow of the cañon he saw the Indian girl, a tiny shape kneeling with hands lifted. The heart of Rusty Sabin swelled; a great stroke of blood rushed through his brain. And he swore that it was the voice of the god speaking inside him.

  Therefore he climbed down the great slope of broken rocks to the floor of the ravine. Once he was there, the old shudder of horror came over him. He felt minutely small as he looked up to the towering lift of the cliffs. So it was when mere mortality measured itself against the gods. He had to stop and pray again, looking back toward that place on the western cliff from which he had seen the god issue in his usual guise, as a night owl. But there was no sign except that stroke of hot blood through his brain.

  He went on again, keeping some of the big boulders between himself and the girl, until he could hear her voice, still praying: “This life which I give away to you, Sweet Medicine, is not a great gift. It is no more to you than a single bead on a moccasin is to me. Perhaps you do not want unhappy souls in your heaven. But if you will have me, I go gladly. Give me a sign, if it is your will to accept me. . . .”

  Rusty, drawn by the words, stepped suddenly from the side of the rock.

  The girl, starting up from her knees, screamed. The scream stopped as though a hand had throttled it. Blue Bird fell in an odd little heap of shining white doeskin.

  “She is dead,” said Rusty, staring down at her. “The god has taken her.”

  He was afraid to touch her. He kneeled beside the motionless body. If he laid hand on her, perhaps the god would strike him, also, and was he ready to die?

  At last, steeling himself, he touched her cheek with tentative fingers. It was strangely warm. But death, after all, had not had time to turn her cold. He laid his hand over her heart. Through the supple softness of the deerskin he surely could feel the slight stirring of the pulse, but he could not distinguish the throbbing.

  She was dead, then, and this was the way Sweet Medicine accepted the chosen souls that were offered as a sacrifice.

  He lifted her and her head and arms and legs fell loosely down. He had to make a cradle of his arms to support her limp weight, with her head against his shoulder.

  A thin shadow streaked over him. He heard the small whisper of wings and, looking up, saw the moon strained through the wing feathers of a buzzard.

  Since the god had accepted her it was not right that she should be harried by the things of evil and go mangled to the other world. Sweet Medicine should see her as she was among the Cheyennes. The god should see the long, delicate curling of the eyelashes. He should touch this softness of flesh. Even on the blue fields of heaven the Sky People never could have seen a miracle more wonderful than the curving beauty of her lips.

  Then he realized that it was for this special mission that he had been drawn, at the will of the god, out of the Sacred Valley and into the Valley of Death. It was because Sweet Medicine wished to have her borne up to his own dwelling in the rock.

  He bore her to the bottom of the slope of rocks. There he rested a moment. For one made so slenderly, so light-footed, she was surprisingly heavy, he thought. Now he was climbing over the boulders, panting, straining, until he reached the top and the hidden entrance to the cave.

  He had to pause there. Looking down earnestly into the face of the girl, he moved into the cave and saw the steep shadow slide over her face. It was the last he would see of her. He stood for a moment with that thought, and then went on into the tunnel. It was not easy to get her through some of the narrow and low places, but at last he came to the largest part, near the entrance on the side of the Sacred Valley. Here he kneeled and laid the body on the floor. In the darkness he found her hands and crossed them on her breast. He smoothed her hair. He put her feet together and drew down the velvet softness of the doeskin skirt. When the god, whose immortal eyes do not need the light of day, should look on her for the first time, he would cry out with astonishment at her beauty. He would cover his open mouth with his hand. And then Sweet Medicine would laugh with pleasure.

  He said: “Sweet Medicine, I lift my hands to you. I have brought the sacrifice to the floor of your lodging. I hope to hear you laugh with joy when you see her. But remember, god that you are, that she is young and she is only a woman. If you come to her in the likeness of an owl with great burning eyes and a hooked beak, fear might kill her spirit a second time. Come to her as you were in the years long ago, when you walked the earth as a man, with your lance in your hand, and the wind in your hair, and the green springtime following you over the prairies.”

  A murmur whispered beneath him: “Red Hawk . . .”

  “It is I!” exclaimed Rusty. “Blue Bird. Where are you? How far away are you? Where is your spirit walking? Can you see me from heaven?”

  “Am I dead?” said the girl.

  “Yes, yes!” cried Rusty. “You are dead. Only your voice has been put into your throat for a moment to give me a last message. Do you find yourself in the high blue of the Happy Hunting Grounds?

  “I seem to be in thick darkness,” she murmured. “It’s as though I had been falling. . . .”

  “Is the god sending you back to earth?” cried Rusty.

  “I don’t know. I thought I was in the Valley of Death, and then I saw you . . . and I knew that you were a ghost. Where are we?”

  “We are on the earth, in the house of Sweet Medicine. Have no fear. Has your spirit really returned to you? Does the god wish you to live again?” He laid his hand over her heart. Unquestionably there was a steady pulsation.

  “Blue Bird, we both are living!” shouted Rusty suddenly. “Sweet Medicine took you away and gave you back again when I prayed to him. . . . Shall I carry you, or can you stand. . . . So? Walk close to me. Keep one hand out to ward off the wall of the cave. There . . . you can see the moonlight ahead of us. . . .”

  “How can you be flesh and warm blood?” asked the girl. “They carried you to the Valley of Death.”

  “When the god wills it, what is life or death?” asked Rusty, laughing with joy. “He takes and he gives again. He made me go to you . . . he made me carry you to his house . . . and there he breathed on you while I prayed. I heard a whisper go by me. It was the unseen god. He touched you when I could not see. He laid his finger on your lips, and you began to breathe. He touched your heart and it beat once more. And he gave me happiness. Do you feel it also?”

  “If this were the blue path across the sky and we were walking it together, I could not be happier,” said the girl.

  Now they stood at the mouth of the cave.

  “Do you see?” he asked her.

  “What is it? I never have seen such a valley.”

  “Hush. This is the Sacred Valley.”

  She uttered a cry and caught up her hands across her eyes. “Shall I die because I have seen it?” she asked.

  “You will live because you have seen it. It is Sweet Medicine who has brought you here. This is his will and pleasure. Look again.”

  She slowly drew down her hands from her eyes.

  “How is it with you now?”

  “My eyes drink in happiness. My soul tastes it,” she said. “All the prairies are burned and dry, but see how much water Sweet Medicine keeps here in his hand. Will he pour it out upon the Cheyennes before they die of thirst, and before they have killed all their horses?”

  “He will save his people,” said Rusty confidently. “And I think that I see how he will do it. Come down with me. Be careful. The steps in
the rock are not cut very deep. And yet if you fell, I think that the god would spread his wings under you. Your spirit is fresh from heaven . . . that is why I feel such a delight to be with you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  They stood by the lake. The water was still. The moon path lay broad and bright before them and the stars looked up from either side.

  “Red Hawk, I am not dead?” whispered the girl. “This must be heaven, and you are no ghost beside me.”

  “Ghosts have no shadows,” he told her. “And see our reflections at our feet.”

  “Is that whispering the wind in the trees?”

  “It may also be the god,” said Rusty. “I don’t know, except that, when he passes, I feel the wind blow through my spirit.”

  “And you are not afraid?”

  “He is a father and protects me.”

  “Will he never appear before you?”

  “Yes, in the early morning or the evening, or often on a moonlit night like this. He comes as a great, wide-winged owl.”

  “Ai! Ai! Do not call him. I am afraid.”

  “There is nothing to fear. He loves me. He will keep harm far away from everything that is dear to me.”

  “Ah . . . do you say that with your heart or with your lips only?”

  “I say it from my heart, of course. Look.”

  A huge buffalo bull came from among the trees, waded into the lake, belly deep, and drank. He was not seven steps away from them.

  “Shall we run?” the girl said breathlessly.

  But he answered in a calm voice that was not lowered: “There is no reason to be afraid. The buffalo are the wise souls of dead warriors who Sweet Medicine loved. He brought them here and gave them happiness in the Sacred Valley.”

  The big bull, lifting his head, turned it slowly toward them. Water streamed in dribblings from his muzzle. His eyes were two dangerous little points of brightness under the shag of hair on his brow. He blew out a great breath and darkened the water with the wind of his breathing.

  “Ah, how beautiful,” said the girl, still whispering. “See how silken fat his flanks are. And his horns are polished . . . they are waxed and polished more than war bows.”