The White Indian

by Max Brand

“Lazy Wolf will still be talking,” she said, “but talking won’t raise the sun.”

  “Look Red Hawk in the eye, if you dare,” said Lazy Wolf. “Look him in the eye if you can, and tell him that the dress was not made in honor of his day.”

  She turned her head toward the boy, but, before their eyes met, she gave up with a faint cry and ran out of the lodge.

  Red Hawk sprang to his feet, remembered himself, and sat down, trembling.

  Lazy Wolf continued to stare, rather gloomily, toward the entrance flap, but he said: “Now eat, my son . . . and tell me what is in your mind.”

  Red Hawk hesitated. He wanted very much to follow the wishes of his father, but the advice of Lazy Wolf swayed him like a wind, and just now a special fragrance rose to him from the delicious stew. Instantly his grasp was on the bowl.

  Chapter Four

  Much contentment in his belly. He washed his hands, filled a pipe, without ceremony, and smoked it in long, slow puffs. He told his friend the story of the day. When he had finished with the prophecy of Running Elk, such an awe came over him that he shuddered, unable to lift his eyes from the ground. Then he heard the careless voice of Lazy Wolf.

  “The twilight, of course, is the proper time for an owl to go out hunting . . . and you were in front of the valley gates just at sunset. That owl was not the spirit of Sweet Medicine. He was just a big hungry stomach that was thinking neither of Red Hawk nor of Spotted Antelope, but of field mice and rabbits or anything else he could get into his maw.”

  The heart of Red Hawk fell. “I was brave because the owl flew over me, but now I’m afraid again,” he said. “Yet there was a spirit in the bird. His wings stretched farther than across the floor of this lodge. His eyes were golden balls of fire. His wings whispered as he slid over my head and said a word.”

  “Well,” said Lazy Wolf, “if the flying of that owl gives you any comfort for tomorrow, keep on believing in it. Are you afraid of the blood sacrifice, my lad?”

  Red Hawk half closed his eyes. He realized that the answer was a thing that he could never endure to speak to any Cheyenne, but it was easy to confess even shameful truths to this man. Therefore he gasped: “I am afraid. I think I could stand the cutting of my flesh, even with the notched knives, and the tying of the ropes into my body. But when I think of how they must be torn out again, I am sick.”

  “I would be, too,” said this surprising hero and vagabond.

  “You? Even you?” exclaimed Red Hawk. “But you are a white man! Only your name is Indian.”

  “At least,” said Lazy Wolf, “there are a few brave men among the whites . . . like Wind Walker. He is brave exactly as the Cheyennes are. You remember when he was captured once and tortured, they could not make him stop cursing them and daring them. Yet before the soldiers broke through the camp and saved him, he had been hanging on the pole for two hours. He is brave like the Indians . . . he takes scalps like them . . . and he loves blood as they do. But there are no white men who have ever gone through the blood sacrifice that you’re going to make in order to prove that you’re able to be a man and a warrior. Every white man in the world would have disgust up his nostrils and in his bowels at the mere thought of giving his body to be tormented.”

  The flame of the fire leaped for the last time. Red Hawk, puzzled, merely said: “For the white face and the white mind there is one world . . . but when the heart is red, there is another.” He stood up, for suddenly he wanted to be away from this lodge before he had to endure again the quizzical smile of Lazy Wolf.

  “Go on, my lad,” said the other. “If I thought that it would do you any good, I’d go to the lodge tomorrow and look on through all that beastliness for the sake of cheering you along. But after the first knife cut, nothing will be of any use to you except a crazy, red-eyed frenzy. Good night. Sleep if you can . . . and, if you have to go through with the torment, try hard to make a wild man of yourself.”

  Red Hawk went out into the night. As he stood outside the entrance flap, looking over the moon-washed hides of the teepees and at the stars that scattered down toward the dark horizon like golden sparks, he thought of Blue Bird, and it seemed to him that her touch and the sound of her voice alone could cure his lonely fear. However, it was a matter about which he must see men. Only the day before it had appeared to him that he had a hundred friends. But in this time of need the many shrank to two. Of these, Lazy Wolf had merely smiled and bantered. There remained the second friend, Standing Bull.

  Already, at twenty, Standing Bull was a famous warrior because of an exploit of the year before, when, in the narrows of a ravine at sunset time, as he fled with a companion before the rush of a war party of Pawnees, his friend had been wounded and the youth had turned back to hold the narrows until the injured man could draw away. With his rifle and lance he had killed two of the Pawnees, had counted grand coup on both, and had secured the scalp of one of them. Before the Pawnees could surround him, he escaped. For that heroic effort he was given the name of Standing Bull.

  In front of the lodge of his friend, Red Hawk now paused and looked for a moment at the crescent moon painted above the entrance flap. Black in the moon shine, he knew that it was a rich blue in daylight. Within, the brave was chanting a song, very softly.

  Braid your singing with my song

  And the music will be strong.

  And the voice of Bending Willow, the wife of Standing Bull, joined with an undertone in the chorus.

  One voice cannot rise so high,

  But two voices reach the sky.

  Then Red Hawk, unwilling to hear more by stealth, called: “Standing Bull, a friend is at your door!”

  Bending Willow cried out in alarm, but Standing Bull said: “It is only Red Hawk. Hush and be still. Come in, my friend.”

  Red Hawk entered, instantly drawing shut the entrance flap behind him, for he saw the girl reclining on a willow bed, still half struggling to raise her head from her husband’s lap, while he restrained her and continued to brush her hair with a porcupine comb. As a last resort, she tried to throw the corner of a robe over her head, but Standing Bull prevented this, also, saying: “This is no storm to tear up willows by the roots . . . this is no flood to rip them out of the banks and tumble them down the stream . . . this is my friend, Red Hawk. Lie still. Hush. He wants no greeting. Sing some more of the song. If Red Hawk is to be a brave tomorrow, he will want a squaw the next day, and he will need to know love songs.”

  In a moment the three were laughing and singing, while Red Hawk capered around the fire in a slow dance that he finished by kneeling in front of his friend, and crossing his arms on his breast.

  The wife of Standing Bull, when she saw this, at once slipped away to the side of the lodge near the pole where the painted shield of bull’s hide was hanging, with a festoon of eagle feathers suspended from the center of it. Twice it had been slashed by bullets, and three times it had turned the point of a charging lance.

  The brave now stood up, and Red Hawk extended one hand to him. Looking up, he saw nothing but the ragged scars on the breast of Standing Bull, the proof of how he had torn the rawhide thongs out of his flesh quickly at the blood sacrifice. He had made it in his fourteenth year. He was big, with a shoulder like a buffalo bull, and legs like a deer’s, for speed.

  “What is it?” asked the warrior. “If you hold out your hand to me, take whatever I have to fill it. There are nine good horses tethered outside my lodge . . . they are yours. There are two rifles . . . and knives . . . and that bag is filled with beads. You see the pemmican, the dried meat, the knives, the robes, the backrests. Whatever I have is yours, except the scalp of the center pole, and the coup stick and the shield and the medicine bag. These are my medicine, and they would not be good for you. But if you want something more, tell me and I shall kneel with you and pray for it, or go out with you to fight for it.”

  Red Hawk looked higher still, into the face of his friend. There was still a boyish softness and beauty about the features of St
anding Bull. It was only when he stared fixedly, as now, that one could see how the nostrils pinched in a trifle, and how the eyes grew dangerously bright.

  “I have not come to beg for horses or guns,” said Red Hawk. “I want some of the strength of your heart.”

  “You would have it all, if I could dip it out with both hands and pour it upon you,” answered the brave. “I still remember, whenever I see still water, how the Underwater People fixed my feet in the quicksands, long ago . . . six years, or five years ago. All the other boys were gone from the side of the pool except you, and you were small. Nevertheless, you dived for me, like a bright fish. You tangled your hands in my hair and jerked me free. We swam to the bank and lay gasping and biting at the air. With every breath I tasted, I knew that life was good, and that you were my brother. When you are a warrior, Red Hawk, we shall exchange blood, and after that we shall be like the son of one mother.”

  At this, Red Hawk looked suddenly down because tears were stinging his eyes, and such weakness shamed him. He was able to say, at last: “Tomorrow I must go into the medicine lodge to make the sacrifice. I am weak at heart, Standing Bull.”

  He heard Standing Bull sigh. The sinewy hands of the Cheyenne raised him to his feet. “Come,” said the warrior. “We shall go out and face the east until the sunrise, and I shall give you strength.”

  But as Red Hawk left the lodge, he saw the eyes of the young wife lift from the beading of a moccasin with a flash of scorn. That glance kept rankling coldly in his vitals, all the way to the low hillock outside the camp, where he stood with Standing Bull through that night, facing east.

  When the color of the dawn began, the warrior took his hand and held it, as the huge brilliance rolled over the edge of the earth and started up the hill to heaven.

  Red Hawk smiled as he looked at the display. His hand was warm from the clasp of his friend, and he felt that borrowed strength had filled his heart.

  Chapter Five

  When Red Hawk returned to the teepee of his father, he found the sixty-year-old warrior doing a hatchet dance around and around in narrow circles before the lodge, now and then springing into the air to strike down enemies. Other people passed back and forth before the teepee, never regarding the dancer. The younger boys were taking out the horses of the camp to graze, but they would be back in time to enjoy the spectacle of the blood sacrifices.

  Spotted Antelope stopped dancing when he saw his foster son. “You are almost late!” he called to Red Hawk. “The sacrifices already have begun, and you must be painted. Quickly, my son.”

  They hurried to the lodge. Outside, there were women and children waiting for the happy moment when some tortured youth fainted in the lodge and was taken from the enclosure to be dragged around and around at the end of a rawhide rope tied into his flesh. Then the young boys would throw themselves at the prostrate body so as to jerk it free, and, if that failed, the horseman halted, backed up twenty feet, and made his pony bolt away at full speed. The whiplash at the end could not fail to tear the rawhide free from the tough flesh. More than once, from his childhood on, Red Hawk had seen that ceremony, and the dull noise of the rending flesh was still fresh in his mind and felt in his body. Now he saw some of the youngsters dance on their toes, pointing at him, gibbering to one another. Well, because he had delayed the torture at least two years beyond the usual time, he could be sure that his treatment would be of the roughest.

  Now he was entering the medicine lodge, making the proper ceremonial gestures, aware of the customary trappings of the rite. He looked at the gaudy center pole, at the two naked Indian lads who already were tied to it by long thongs. Dancing, chanting loud prayers, from time to time they wrenched back their weight in an effort to tear out of their flesh the ropes that had been tied into their pectoral muscles. For the more quickly a man freed himself, the greater his honor, the more perfect his prayer, the more certain the strength of his resolution.

  Not far away, Running Elk was now at work with two more candidates, and the blood that ran down the scrawny arms of the medicine man dripped steadily from his elbows. One glance showed thus much of the picture to Red Hawk. After that, with black mist spinning before his eyes and with sagging knees, he looked down at the paint that Spotted Antelope was putting on him. There was a band of red, half an inch wide, painted around the body just above the hips, and another around his right arm just below the elbow. On his breast appeared a sun, with red rays running from it to the hips and shoulders. His forearms and legs were now being reddened, then the trunk would be blackened except where the other designs had been drawn.

  The heart of Red Hawk was soothed by these lavish adornings; this magic made it impossible for him to fail in the ordeal. Red Hawk knew of but one Cheyenne who had blenched under the torture. That unfortunate was literally a nameless creature, never to be mentioned, never to be called by the crier to a feast or a ceremony, never taken on the warpath, never admitted to the medicine lodge.

  The painting had ended.

  The tall form of Standing Bull came to his friend and took his hand.

  “Look on your own blood,” said Standing Bull, “as though you looked upon the blood of your enemy. Do you think that the spirits can fail to see? As the blood runs from you, the beat of your feet will be on their breasts, and their ears will be opened as you pray to them for glory for scalps, and for many coups.” He stepped closer and murmured: “Breathe deeply . . . look high. Think of your spirit as of the mountains, and of your flesh as the grass that dies on them every year. I shall pray for you, brother.”

  It seemed to Red Hawk that he was smiling in answer, and murmuring thanks, and then he found that his father had led him close to Running Elk and had retired. He was alone. His knees shuddered. Was it the smoke that made him choke?

  He saw, in front of Running Elk, a lad of fourteen whose boy name was Leaping Frog. He was a half-deformed, stunted youngster with very wide shoulders and a meager, starved body. The bony roundness of his face had given him the important half of his name. Now, as Running Elk laid hold of the right breast of the boy with thumb and finger, pulling out the loose skin, the Frog caught the glance of Red Hawk and pointed into his own eyes, smiling an invitation to watch closely and see if even the flicker of a lid gave token of the pain he was about to endure.

  Running Antelope slashed quickly on the right and on the left of the flesh that he held. Blood spurted, but as Red Hawk stared into the eyes of Leaping Frog, they smiled calmly back at him while the medicine man drove the knife through between the cuts. With two fingers the old man stretched out the band of loosened flesh, carelessly, like one handling dead meat, so that he could easily pass under the loop the end of a strong rawhide thong that he now tied, drawing the knot up hard. Still Leaping Frog continued to smile, and Red Hawk turned his dizzy eyes away.

  In Red Hawk’s ears ran the wild chant of White Wolf, one of those already tied to the center pole. He was not more than fifteen, but already he had the height of a man, and now he was throwing back his weight against the thong that tied him by his bleeding muscles. A frenzy had come on him.

  At the side of the lodge a number of warriors, hideously painted, were beating drums and singing a chant, but the yelling voice of White Wolf soared over all other sound as he shouted: “Underground Listeners, hear me and drink my blood . . . I am giving it to you. I am White Wolf. I shall find many buffalo . . . I shall count many coups . . . I see my days all full of green and sunshine! I take Pawnee hair in my left hand, and I cut the scalp! So . . . so . . . so.” He flung himself back against the rawhide with such force that the thong tore through on the right side with an audible sound, and Red Hawk saw the crimson fly in a spray. The tattered ends of the flesh hung down on White Wolf’s breast, but he went on capering and yelling in louder exultation than before. On the dim margin of his mind, Red Hawk was aware that the braves were standing up to look at this wild young hero, to applaud him, to point him out to one another.

  A hand grasped Red Hawk�
��s own right breast. He looked down and saw the bloodstained hand of Running Elk. Even the eyes of the terrible old man seemed to be washed in blood.

  “Wait!” said Red Hawk, gasping. “There is someone else to come before me. There is Leaping Frog to finish.”

  “Ah . . . dog,” said Running Elk. “It is true that Sweet Medicine flew over you . . . but it was his shadow that he trailed over your spirit. Hear me, son of Spotted Antelope.” He raised his voice suddenly, so that it ran through the whole of the medicine lodge and brought upon Red Hawk a dreadful battery of eyes. The drumming ceased, or fell to a murmur that was fainter than Red Hawk’s thundering heart. Even the dancers around the center pole of the lodge, even White Wolf, stood still, frozen with dread lest a frightful disgrace now fall upon the tribe.

  “Do you give yourself freely?” shouted Running Elk. “Do you give your body and your blood freely to the knife?”

  The words began to ring back and forth through the mind of Red Hawk like windy echoes that fly down the narrowness of a ravine. He parted his lips, and thought that he had said “Yes.” But the blood-dripping hand of Running Elk was still held high in suspense.

  Then a faint voice drifting across the air touched Red Hawk’s ears, for it was saying: “Strength. Give him strength. I offer six good horses . . . I sacrifice a beaded shirt and a new rifle ....” That was Spotted Antelope, praying for more than the worth of his soul.

  “Answer!” thundered Running Elk.

  Red Hawk’s head dropped, his knees sank under him, and the knife of Running Elk cut the air just before his face.

  “Go out of the lodge!” cried the infuriated medicine man. “It is forever closed to you. I see the face of a man and the heart of a dog. Sweet Medicine has breathed darkness over you . . . your name is forgotten in my ears.”

  The drums, suddenly, began to beat; the dancers moved again around the center pole, shouting their prayers. But what Red Hawk heard as he turned toward the entrance was a cry of grief, short and sharp, wrung from the heart of an old man. He saw the dark sweep of the buffalo robe as it was flung over the head of Spotted Antelope.