by Max Brand
His father, in the meantime, had raised from a bit of tinder a small welter of flame. When Red Hawk had whipped most of the water from his body, he stood near the fire into which Spotted Antelope was sprinkling sweet grass. Of the smoke he took imaginary handfuls and passed them slowly over his naked son, while the fragrance entered the nostrils of Red Hawk. It made him feel much better, and his heart grew lighter. He seemed to cast off evil and become a truer Cheyenne upon whom perhaps the eye of the mystical Sweet Medicine might fall with pleasure.
When this ceremony ended, Spotted Antelope led the way onward, very slowly, for that is the way a man should walk when he wants the spirits to see his whole heart laid bare.
Thrice he paused, and at the fourth halt Red Hawk dropped without command to his knees, for they had passed the elbow turn of the ravine and he saw before him the entrance gate of the Sacred Valley. Red Hawk’s mind conceived a form that extended to the sky and rested one hand on the leaning stone. He fell on his face, groaning.
After that, he dared not move. He had bruised his knees and elbows; the rock was cold against his belly, but he only ventured to open his eyes slowly, in order to see that his father—be his name praised!—had not left him alone in this dreadful place. Spotted Antelope now sat cross-legged, tamping the tobacco into his pipe with four ceremonial pressures of his thumb. With four gestures he stroked the stem of the pipe, fitted it to the bowl, and lighted the tobacco with a coal that he had brought from the fire of purification. Therefore it was sacred smoke he drew at, his withered cheeks pulling into great hollows as he puffed. Now he blew a breath to the ground, a breath to the sky, four breaths to the four corners of the world, and a last cloud of smoke toward the gate of the Sacred Valley.
The old man prayed: “Underground Listeners, be quiet long enough to hear me. Listeners Above, take pity on me. Sweet Medicine, I am asking not for horses or buffalo or scalps, but only honor for my son. If I have done bad things, I have already been punished. You know that Short Lance was my son, and that a woman killed him . . . but, after she died, I would not take her scalp because I saw a male child. He stood straight . . . he was not afraid . . . I took him home and gave him to my squaw. I knew that the spirits had taken away one son to punish me, but they had given me another because they did not wish to break my heart.
“I began to be glad. Red Hawk was both bold and happy. Soon he was the swiftest runner among the boys, and he could live in the water like a fish. The wild horses could not fling him from their backs. But I grew unhappy, for he left my teepee too often and sat beside the white man, Lazy Wolf, the interpreter and hunter, learning the tongue of the white man until he had two speeches . . . and is it not hard enough to make one tongue talk straight? Also, from Lazy Wolf he learned the same evil laziness of lying for hours looking at the fire as though it were herds of buffalo in a time of famine.
“In our proper ways, in practicing the scalp dance and in the sham battles he took no delight, and at the fighting with wooden knives among the boys, he smiled. Still, he laughed much, and talked much among the women and with the white man, and for three seasons he has shrunk from the initiation and the sacrifice of blood without which he can never go on the warpath or be a man.
“For these reasons I am sad, and I bring him here to your feet, Sweet Medicine, asking you why my own son was taken from me, when he had become a man, and why this son was given to me, who seems to be a woman? His foot is swift and his hand is sure. In wrestling he throws all the young men by the force of many cunning devices, but let him now hunger for glory and a good name, and for the shedding of blood.
“Have pity on me, Sweet Medicine. I have tried to be a good man. I have taken scalps and sacrificed some of them. I have made a scalp shirt . . . there are ceremonial paintings on my lodge. And now that I am old and my horse herd shrinks and my hands weaken, let Red Hawk bring riches and triumph back to my teepee again.”
With this the old man ended by pressing his hands to the ground, raising them to the sky, and extending them finally to the entrance gate of the Sacred Valley.
“Stand!” his father suddenly commanded Red Hawk, and the young man rose slowly to his feet. “Pray,” said Spotted Antelope.
Before the eyes of Red Hawk there was no longer the glimmering vision of the giant between earth and sky. He wanted to pray that he should be given victory in war, many scalps, and, above all, the counting of coups. But all he could find to say was: “Sweet Medicine, give me whatever is in your heart to give to a Cheyenne.”
He had barely finished speaking, his hands were still outstretched when Spotted Antelope fell to the earth with a great cry.
Red Hawk saw a miracle performed before his eyes. A great night owl sailed out past the leaning pillar. The boy fell flat beside his foster father, and close above him he heard the pinions in the air like the whisper of an unknown word.
Afterward, with the cold of his dread still working in his spinal marrow like worms of ice, he heard the broken, gasping voice of his father muttering: “Give thanks, my son. For this give thanks. Your prayer has been heard. Oh, son of my lodge, Sweet Medicine has heard your prayer and come forth to you.”
Chapter Three
The darkness was coming down when they returned to their horses, and the voices from the distant cataract in the Sacred Valley followed them down the lower canon. Red Hawk had not been allowed to dress. He had to keep his clothes in a bundle, all the way back through the hills until they came to the ring of plain in which the camp was pitched.
The moon was up now, silvering the white new teepees. Through the entrances the rosy firelight made a step or two into the night.
Spotted Antelope, swathed to the ears in his robe, went on slowly, while the boy followed at a little distance. He knew that for his foster father the world had been new-made, and in himself he seemed to feel the working of a new spirit, a transfiguring glory that could not be far away.
They went not to their own lodge, but to that of Running Elk, the great medicine man. Mysterious fumes of sweetness were rising from the fire in his teepee; the two squaws were at some bead-work in the firelight, and Running Elk rose on the farther side of the lodge to greet his guests. He was a tall, bent man, his long face placidly cruel and smiling with age. When he heard the story of the apparition of the owl, he made them sit down and smoke a ceremonial pipe with him, his low-lidded eyes constantly fixed on the boy. At last he spoke these words: “It was truly Sweet Medicine. If he came out in kindness, then Red Hawk shall be so great that he can pull the rain down out of the sky and raise the buffalo from the ground for the Cheyennes. If he came in anger, then all the tribe will be shamed by Red Hawk and every father will give thanks that he has not such a son.”
After that they walked to their own lodge, Red Hawk still naked. But no one looked at him, because it was clear, from the swathed form of the father and the bare skin of the son, that a ceremony was going forward or a vow being performed. Not until they had come into their own teepee, not until Spotted Antelope with trembling hands and a cloud of smoke from sweet grass had purified his scalp shirt, his shield of painted bull’s hide, Bitter Root, his squaw, his own person, and the clothes of Red Hawk, did he permit his son to dress again.
The big face of the squaw, sodden, wrinkled, loosened by time, turned slowly from one of them to the other, as she sat cross-legged; she knew better than to ask a question. Red Hawk went to the great pot where buffalo meat simmered over the fire night and day, and would have helped himself, but his father forbade him.
Then, in phrases that were separated by moments of hard breathing, Spotted Antelope told his squaw what had happened, and what interpretation had been placed upon it by Running Elk. She, when she had heard, covered her face with a robe, as a decent woman should do when she hears of a mystery.
After a time, Spotted Antelope left the teepee. Bitter Root came to the seated boy and put her hands on his head, while her guttural voice prayed: “Let the scalps of the Pawnees, oh, Underground L
isteners, oh, Listeners Above . . . let the scalps of Pawnees hang from the center pole and dry above our fire.” She had not turned her thoughts to glory or riches, for Bitter Root was a practical woman.
When she in turn was gone, Red Hawk leaned against a feathered backrest for a time, gloomily. His stomach raged for the food that had been forbidden. He thought of unrolling his bed and lying down to sleep. Instead, he suddenly found himself on the way to the teepee of Lazy Wolf.
At this season of the year, Lazy Wolf’s teepee was different from the others. In the winter the white man might use a regular lodge of the skins of buffalo cows, unless he left the tribe and went to live alone in a forest cabin through the cold season. But in the summer he used a strong, light canvas that was but a tenth of the weight of the hides, and therefore wonderfully portable.
The firelight glimmered through its frailer texture as Red Hawk stopped outside the entrance flap. The cheerful voice of Lazy Wolf called him in at once.
“Hau,” said Red Hawk as he stood on the threshold with raised hand.
“Hau,” said Lazy Wolf.
As usual, he reclined on a heap of buffalo robes, with a book resting on his stomach. A lantern gave him light. It was fed with a strange, treble-refined fat that was odorless, and the flame was protected by a stretched, transparent membrane. Red Hawk had seen the contrivance many times before, but it remained a great marvel, and a strong evidence of medicine.
Blue Bird, the daughter of the white man, merely turned and smiled at the visitor. She had hair and eyes as dark as those of her Cheyenne mother, but the hair was like wavering silk, and she had that olive complexion that is easily illumined. To Red Hawk, she was the chief miracle to be found in the teepee of Lazy Wolf, and, because he feared her, he always joked a good deal when she was near.
She was stirring the meat pot over the central fire. It was not such a huge affair as that which appeared in the lodges of the Cheyennes, and in this summer weather merely a handful of flames was maintained beneath it, but out of that smaller cauldron there came savors more varied and pleasant than the greasy, eternal smell of stewing back-fat and dried buffalo meat. Unless the sensitive nostrils of Red Hawk betrayed him, the flesh of small birds was seasoning and softening in that pot. He turned, half faint with hunger.
“Sit down by me,” said Lazy Wolf, turning on one elbow, but not enough to disturb the comfort of his fat paunch on which he laid his open book, face down. “Sit down here and tell me the news of your ride.” He pushed a pair of spectacles up on his forehead and looked at Red Hawk with his misty blue eyes. He began to comb his beard. He never shaved himself clean; he merely shaped, from time to time, the hair that grew on his face, trimming it to a point below the chin. All day long his fat fingers would be curling and uncurling it. Truly he had earned his name of Lazy Wolf, for he never bestirred himself except to hunt a little, now and then. He rarely went to the feasts, took small part in the ceremonies, and, above all, would never go on the warpath.
He was valued by the Cheyennes, however, for three important reasons. One was that he was a perfect interpreter and a shrewd trader in their behalf. Another was that in time of winter famines his accuracy at long range made his rifle worth more in getting meat than all the guns and arrows of the tribe. Finally, when on two occasions the Pawnees had found the camp stripped of its young warriors and had tried to rush it, the guns of the white man had seemed to be everywhere. That was why they dealt out to him his full name of Lazy Wolf. He was prized, revered, and at the same time despised by all the Cheyennes.
Red Hawk sat down against a backrest and lounged. He pulled out a long, heavy knife and began to spin it in the air, so that it came down on its point, almost always with the first try. No man among the Cheyennes could rival him in that clever trick. He did it with an air of indifference, but, when his eyes rose following the flash and spin of the blade, they always flicked aside a trifle in the hope of finding admiration or wonder in the eyes of the girl. However, as usual, she was a disappointment; she seemed to regard his knife work as no more than so many conventional gestures of the hand.
“There is not a great deal for me to tell, Lazy Wolf,” said Red Hawk. “What has happened in the camp?”
“There is not a great deal for me to tell, either,” said Lazy Wolf, smiling a little. “But the three braves who went toward the western mountains still have not come back, and people are saying that Wind Walker may have met them.”
“Could Wind Walker kill three Cheyenne braves?” asked the boy, staring.
“He’s done it before,” answered Lazy Wolf. “He has twenty-five scalps to his credit, people say.”
“You, Lazy Wolf, are a white man,” said Red Hawk angrily.
“So are you.” The other smiled.
“But my heart is all red!” exclaimed the boy.
“Good!” cried Blue Bird, and he thought that the fire could not light her eyes as much as they shone now with her smiling.
“Besides,” said Lazy Wolf, “I have seen the scalps and have talked to Wind Walker.”
“Without aiming your rifle at his heart?” cried Red Hawk.
“You have to understand what I’ve told you before,” said Lazy Wolf. “I am only a Cheyenne while I’m in their camp. But if it makes you any happier, I’ll tell you that Wind Walker hates me because I stay with the tribe, and therefore I can’t like him very well. As a matter of fact, I went to see him in the hope that I could find out why he spends his life hunting down the tribe.”
“And why?” demanded the boy.
“Because he happened to have a wife who was murdered by the Cheyennes . . . there’s the only reason. Some white men put a value on women. Not I . . . but some white men like their wives and daughters better than herds of horses and hundreds of scalps.” He laughed and looked at the girl. “Give Red Hawk some food,” said Lazy Wolf to her.
“My father says that I should fast,” answered the boy.
“In your father’s lodge, therefore, you ought not to eat. But this is a different teepee, and I can see by the way your nostrils tremble when the steam of the pot blows to them that you’re starving. Blue Bird, give him some of that stew.”
Her lips and her eyes parted for a moment before she could cry out: “No! Spotted Antelope has given commands.”
“In his own lodge. But this lodge is mine,” said Lazy Wolf. “Bring him some food!”
She brought two bowls, one filled with a stiff mash of cold boiled corn and the other with the stew, then she retreated, walking backward, her eyes fixed on Red Hawk so that he actually seemed to feel them, like the touch of a hand.
Suppose he should so much as look at the food, how would he sink in her esteem to the level of a blasphemous character, a disobedient son? So he turned his head toward Lazy Wolf, saying: “What is the white name of Wind Walker?”
“Marshall Sabin,” said the other. “He is a big man, my lad. Not young, now . . . a good forty-five years old, I should say. But he is as tough as ash and oak. By his hands and his jaw and his eyes you can see that he’s a man-killer. Some of your warrior Cheyennes are bigger men, and younger . . . but I wouldn’t gamble on their chances if he managed to get a grip on them. Are you wasting that good food, you hungry coyote?” Lazy Wolf smiled. He was always smiling, making light of the most sacred of the Cheyenne customs, which was the reason that old Running Elk and some of the other famous makers of medicine hated him with a special fervor.
“I think of my father,” said the boy uneasily.
“Then I shall take the food away,” broke in the girl, hurrying across the lodge.
“No, let it alone,” commanded Lazy Wolf. “Perhaps he’ll change his mind. And now that he’s about to become a man, it’s good for him to endure temptation.” The father began to badger her, saying: “If she obeys her husband as well as she wants you to obey your father, she’ll make a fine squaw for one of the bucks. And she’s fifteen, Red Hawk. High time that she should marry and let me make a little profit on her. Th
ere was Crazy Bull, only this morning, who tied eight horses outside my lodge.
“But I had to let him take them away again. And yet there were eight of those horses against the girl . . . and they were good ponies, too, the pick of his herd. Crazy Bull spread out enough bright beads to cover three suits of clothes. But I had to let those go, too, because when I looked at Blue Bird, she was making faces.”
“Crazy Bull is a very strong brave,” said Red Hawk. “True, he has a broken nose . . . but he is a great hunter. He has a good many children in his lodge, but he has three old squaws to take care of them. You should marry Crazy Bull, Blue Bird.”
“I would,” answered the girl, “but I can’t leave my father with no woman to take care of him.”
“Tut, tut,” said Lazy Wolf. “I would have a good handy squaw in the lodge in no time . . . a thorough worker, and one who never tires of dressing hides, carrying water, cooking, sewing on beads, making arrows, molding bullets. One with hands that are busy all day long. There’s Grass Woman, for instance, who has gone back to her father since Wind Walker met her husband, one bright day. For one horse . . . for a colt, even . . . I think I could buy her. And she’s the proper type . . . built close to the ground, and able to bear burdens. She would never waste her time making dresses of white doeskin that fit her body to the hips as though she had dipped herself in water . . . and all for the sake of honoring the initiation day of a boy . . . a mere long-legged, time-wasting boy named Red Hawk.”
Red Hawk sat up and looked at the girl, at the white doeskin dress that held the roundness of her body as the skin holds a fruit, and then flared out in a wide skirt of many folds. It was true, he suddenly realized, that she was fifteen and marriageable, according to the Cheyenne custom. She was looking at her father with a quiet eye, darkened by anger, but the flush began to run up her throat and over her face.
