by Max Brand
He had finished and disjointed the stem from the clay when he heard voices coming up the side of the creek—the deep speech of men, and the voice of a girl.
He drew back into the brush, and saw Maisry Lester come into the cove. She walked between the two Bailey brothers. As he crouched lower, he found himself fingering the great sixteen-inch knife that he had made for his special use. He was glad of the savage impulse, for it gave him the last proof that the call of blood had no power over him. Or was it perhaps a strange reaction because he saw the girl with the two men? This thought disturbed him.
“Here’s a good place,” said Jeremy Bailey. “We can talk it out here, Joe.”
“Aye. This ought to do,” said Joe Bailey, and he fixed a scowl on his brother.
They had the look of men about to fight, thought Red Hawk, and in that case it would be a fight worth seeing, for they were both of a bigness, with an equal loftiness, and the same weight of shoulders. Being twins, they also had the same flaxen hair and blue eyes. Even their voices had a kindred quality. But Jeremy had the brains of the pair. It was he who had built up the big Bailey trading post by his ventures, although the stamp that distinguished him from his brother was mainly a scar on his forehead, like a slanting stroke of red paint.
They wore store clothes—their boots shone—their shirts were like glistening snow. It was not strange that they had leisure to waste thus in walking the woods with a girl, for they were among those lords of creation at whose bidding others come and go and band in toil.
“Why should we stop here?” said the girl. “If there’s anything to talk about . . . especially . . . we can do that as we walk along.”
“We’ve got to face each other and an important idea,” said Jeremy.
“What idea?” asked Maisry.
“He’s right,” said Joe Bailey. “The only other thing that he’s ever had the good taste to agree with me about is you, Maisry. That’s why we’ve managed to get you out here alone.”
She looked from one to the other.
Red Hawk drew closer in the brush.
“We’ve been wrangling,” explained Jeremy. “And it’s about you. Probably you don’t care a rap about either of us. But if you’re interested in either Joe or me, tell us which one, so that the other fellow can cancel himself out. I ought to find a prettier way of saying all this, but I’m not romantic. I’m a businessman, Maisry.”
“You mean . . . ,” she said, “that really . . . ?” She made a gesture toward them, and then touched her breast lightly. “You really mean that you both think . . . ? Why, I can’t say . . . I’ve known you a long time, Jeremy and Joe. You know I respect you both . . . and admire you both, too.”
“Think a bit, Maisry,” said Jeremy. “This is the time to cancel out one of us. It’s not committing yourself to the other fellow.” “Don’t be so swift and bitter about it, Jeremy,” cautioned his brother. “Confound it, this isn’t bargaining for buffalo hides. But do you think you care especially for either of us, Maisry?”
“I’m flattered . . . and a bit giddy,” said the girl. She seemed to be thinking the thing out carefully, bit by bit, and she kept looking them in the eye. “But, oh, it’s a thousand miles from the real thing, you know.”
“What’s the real thing? Love?” asked Jeremy. “Well, outside of books, what does it all amount to?”
She smiled at that. She said: “Well, it’s a jump of the heart and a stopping of the breath, at least.”
“Hold on,” said Joe. “Did any other man ever make your heart jump, ever stop your breath?”
She hesitated.
“You don’t have to answer,” said Joe. “But I’d like to know.” “I’ll answer,” she said. “Yes, there was one man.”
“And he still does?”
“No, no!” she cried.
The two brothers exchanged glances.
“There’s no use pushing ahead,” said Joe. With divining eyes he kept probing at her. “But if you don’t mind, you’re not seeing the last of us. However, you might tell us something that would drop both of us or one of us out of the list at once. What sort of a man would you like to think of?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “The sort of a man that any woman would admire, I suppose.”
“What sort of a man would that be?”
“Why . . . that’s hard to say. I suppose”—and here she threw back her head suddenly—“oh, I suppose the sort of a man who could catch White Horse and bring him in.”
“Hai!’ cried Jeremy Bailey. “Who would have thought that?” But Red Hawk, as he heard White Horse mentioned, had involuntarily started up. He felt the startled eyes of the girl on his face, and he dropped out of sight again, instantly. Then he waited for her to cry out to the others that a third man was hidden beside them, in the brush.
But no outcry came from her.
“Women are like that, I suppose,” chuckled Joe Bailey. “Well, had we better start back?”
“I’m going to stay here alone for a while,” said the girl. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather be here alone.”
The Baileys went off. Only Jeremy paused for an instant beside Maisry. His color had changed so that the red scar was painted on his face much more brightly than before.
“We’ll come to see you and your father, tomorrow,” he said.
Presently Red Hawk came out of the brush.
The girl began to back away from him with small steps. She had the look of one who wants to run away, but who knows that flight is useless.
“Why are you afraid?” asked Red Hawk.
“If they had found you there . . . ,” she said. “That was why I was afraid. Did you follow us?”
That suggestion made him very angry. “A Cheyenne,” he told her, “does not follow a woman. If he wants her, he goes to her father’s lodge and ties a present of horses near the entrance. Or he brings buffalo robes or guns. He does not go like a hunting cat, stealthily, as the white men do.”
“But you are not Cheyenne,” she answered.
“My skin is white, but my heart is red,” he said. He pointed to the running water. The shimmering reflection of it kept a pale tremor of light in the foliage and over the face and figure of the girl.
“But now I have washed away a year among the whites,” he said. “That year has flown away down the stream and left me a pure Cheyenne. Now I may go back to my people.”
“But if you go,” she told him, “do you mean that you are leaving the white men forever? Are you going to live in tents, and to shiver in winter, and starve when the buffalo cannot be found? Are you going out to paint yourself blue and red, and to take scalps and . . . and raise . . . half-breed children?”
There seemed to be sorrow as well as disgust in her. That was why he made no answer at first. Then he said: “You white people like to have four walls around you. You make walls of wood or stone or mud, and live inside them like bears that sleep all winter in holes in the ground. You measure out your days into little hours that keep hurrying away from you. The only thing that can open your eyes is gold. Well, I don’t like your way of living. I could show you a better way, because there is plenty of Indian in you.”
“In me?” she cried.
“You want White Horse. That is the sort of a wish that would come to a Cheyenne maiden . . . a girl who is the daughter of a great chief, with brothers who are famous warriors who have taken many white scalps. That is what she might wish, looking away from the herds of her father . . . looking at the edge of the sky and wishing for White Horse. That was why my heart opened when I first saw you.”
He came up close to her. The closer he came, the wider stretched her eyes. “Are you afraid of me?” asked Red Hawk.
“No,” she answered.
“You are afraid,” he contradicted. “But that is foolish. You could make me unhappy. You are all that I leave behind me among the whites. When I stood in the running water . . . you see? . . . it carried away from me all of the year I have lived among wh
ite men. It carried the noise of the blacksmith shop out of my ears, but it left your voice in them. I have been in the tree outside the church, even in winter, and I have heard you singing. So why should you be afraid of me now?”
“I am not afraid,” said the girl. She looked down at the river and joined her hands together.
“Ha,” cried Red Hawk softly. “When I stand close to you, a happiness comes into me. I drink up happiness like the dry prairies when the first good rain comes in the autumn. It makes me strong. I feel like a man who is leading a war party that shall not fail. And I am going away . . . but I shall return. You are in the midst of the time when the looks of a woman comes into the eyes of a girl and the young men watch her as she walks. The woman comes into the throat of a girl, and the young men listen for her voice . . . they bring presents every day and they are starved with hope. But be patient. I am going away as far as the edge of the world, but perhaps I shall bring something back to you. Farewell.”
Chapter Fourteen
He left Maisry and got swiftly to his mustang. But he had one other thing to do before he got away from Witherell.
He went to the house of the lawyer, Richard Lester, who he found pacing up and down the path in front of his house with hands clasped behind his back and with bowed head.
Red Hawk had dismounted, tethered the mustang, and entered the yard before Lester was aware of him. For is the mind of the white man ever unimpeded by burdens, unobscured by the mists of thought? For a moment there was no recognition in Lester’s face. Then he came suddenly to himself and took the hand of the youth, saying: “I’ve heard that Sam Calkins has lost an apprentice and learned the taste of his own blood. It may make a better man of him. But why are you dressed like this, Red Hawk? As if you were becoming an Indian again.”
“I leave the whites and return to my own people,” said Red Hawk simply.
“Your own people! Why, my friend, you have a whiter skin than most of us. Why do you talk of leaving? To join the traders, perhaps? To use your Indian knowledge in order to make your fortune? Surely not to return to the Cheyennes!”
“Why should I try to make a fortune?” asked Red Hawk.
“Why? Well, because money can buy any comfort. It builds homes, feeds children, and . . .”
He paused to gather more ideas, and Red Hawk answered: “The best lodge is that which a man’s squaw makes for him . . . the best meat is that which a man shoots and his woman cooks. Money cannot buy a north wind in summer or a south wind in winter ....”
The lofty brow of the lawyer gathered into wrinkles of pain and of thought.
Then Red Hawk took his hand again, continuing: “Kindness has brought you into the blacksmith shop many times, and I have been silent. When sadness darkens the eyes, it closes the throat, also. Father, farewell. I have made a great vow. Now I am going to hunt it as a hawk hunts a bird in the sky . . . but, if I live, I shall return to look into your face again.”
“If you must go,” said Richard Lester, “speak to my wife and to Maisry. She has been unhappy about you all this year. Also, take the gray horse . . . it will be of greater use to you than that shaggy pony.”
“No,” said Red Hawk. “Men say that a gift is always sad when it returns to the giver. And as for your wife and daughter, when I speak to the master of the lodge, I speak to everyone in it. Farewell.”
That was how he left Richard Lester and rode out of the town of Witherell.
At the entrance to the pass through the hills he paused for a moment on the high ground to look back at the fire of the moon, which was showering down over the roofs of the white lodges. Shimmering heat waves rose with an invisible dance. It seemed to Red Hawk that he was looking back upon a prison, or a grimy hand that was closed around a single bright thing. Then he pointed the head of the fiery-eyed pony into the pass and put it to a steady trot. . . .
When he reached the place of the fallen sod house, the heat of the day had gone; the color of the evening had burned up in tall flames and sunk toward the horizon in smoke that was still faintly luminous in the sky and on the face of Witherell Creek. From the edge of the high bank of the stream he called loudly.
That call was answered at once. Horse and man came scrambling up from the gorge, and the voice of Standing Bull shouted joyously to him: “You have counted coup! Tell me that it is so!” “His throat was in the hollow of my arm. I could feel him dying,” said Red Hawk, “but then I remembered that I had eaten his food, and so I let him live. Tell me one thing . . . have you sat by the white stone that has the writing on it?”
“I have,” said the Cheyenne.
“Did the voice come up to you out of the ground?” asked Red Hawk.
“I listened very hard,” said Standing Bull, “but all that I could hear was the wind brushing its bare toes through the grass, and then whistling through the hair of my head. I listened till I could hear the water talking around the stones in the bed of the creek, but not a sound came out of the ground. My medicine was not good enough to make the voice speak to me.”
“I shall go to the stone and sit by it,” said Red Hawk.
He sat by the white stone, his hand feeling the heat of the day run out of it and the cold of the night enter it. He closed his eyes, while memory began in him again, like the work of magic. He stood up with a gasping cry. “I have seen her face, brother! I heard her voice say the word again. The bowstring draws tight in my heart and trembles.”
“Look at the ground and look at the stars,” said Standing Bull. “When the ghosts speak, their voices should be heeded. What does the word mean?”
“You may laugh, Standing Bull,” said Red Hawk. “The word she speaks is the word that among the whites means the red that covers old iron when it begins to rot away after its own nature. That is what Rusty means. Brother, I am about to make a great vow.”
Kindling a fire no larger than the palm of his hand, Red Hawk sprinkled into it some sweet grass that his friend gave to him, and, as the fragrant smoke arose, he bathed himself with it. Then he offered four handfuls of it to the corners of the sky, to the earth, to the Listeners Above. After that, he lifted his hands until he could see stars trembling and shining at the tips of his fingers, as he said: “All you Listeners Above and Underground, this is the vow of Red Hawk . . . that he will sacrifice to you, now, the thing that is most useful to him. He will sacrifice it to you and to the dead squaw of Wind Walker, whose ghost is my friend. Look well at Red Hawk, because if from this moment you ever see his feet pointed away from the trail, he asks you to strike him with sickness or with fire. Or if ever he turns his face until he has put his hand on the mane of White Horse.”
A faint cry came from Standing Bull, but Red Hawk maintained his attitude for a long time, until the stars began to swim before his eyes.
As his hands fell to his sides, he said: “Tell me, Standing Bull. What is the most precious thing that I have with me, if I am to hunt White Horse? Is it my gun?”
“No, it is the horse you now have. Oh, my brother, the wise men and the strong men of four great nations . . . and the white men, also . . . have hunted White Horse. He is a medicine horse. He is a ghost. How shall you put your hand on his mane?”
“Hush!” commanded Red Hawk. “Speak no words that come between me and my vow. This is a very hard thing . . . to sacrifice my horse and go on foot after one that runs like the wind. But, after all, it is not by the speed of my horse but by the pain of my body and soul that I shall win the indulgence of the Listeners.”
He led the horse, saddled as it was, to the white stone, now but a vague, starlit blur against the shadow of the ground. The pony he held by the under jaw, drew the bright length of his knife, and offered its point to the ground and to the sky. Then he drove it deep into the animal’s body behind the shoulder. The horse fell. Red Hawk drew out the knife, cleaned it on the grass, restored it to the sheath. He took up his rifle, a weight of ammunition, and faced the west.
“Rest here till the morning,” said Stan
ding Bull, “or else let me make one march with you.”
“I must go by myself. When you come to my father’s lodge, tell him that, when he sees me again, I shall be riding White Horse . . . unless it has died. But living or dead, I shall either touch the stallion or wander forever.”
Briefly he took the hand of the brave, and then he marched toward the west with a long stride. When he had gone a distance, he heard behind him, faintly, the Cheyenne chant for the dead, and he knew that Standing Bull was singing the lament.
Chapter Fifteen
Many people have heard of the hunting of White Horse.
The two names come ding-dong into the memory, like sound and echo—Red Hawk and White Horse. It is generally known, also, that the hunt ran from the Canadian River on the south, to the Milk River on the north, up the Yellowstone and the Powder Rivers, and up the forks of the Platte, both North and South. It is also known that the drama was concluded among the Blue Water Mountains.
One thing is true: that all during the first autumn of his hunt, as he drifted vaguely, guided by reports that he picked up from a Cheyenne scouting party and from a white trapper, Red Hawk never had a horse or any other means of transportation. He had walked his clothes to rags when he came into the country of the Blackfeet, in the high mountains, and one day he saw before him the figure of a mighty old bull buffalo, one of those outcasts from the herds. A gray mist was rolling in the mountain pass, and all was so dim that the grass seemed green only for a few steps before him. That was why Red Hawk thought the monster bull was simply turned pale by the fog.
But when his rifle exploded and the bull had fallen, he went up and found that his hand was touching medicine, for it was a white buffalo, the greatest single treasure that could come into the life of an Indian. Had he had a horse, he would have taken off the priceless hide and cured it as well as he could, then taken it back to the Cheyennes. For that pelt alone would have made him welcome and set him on a pedestal above the other braves. But since he was on foot, he remembered his vow. He merely took off the hide, rolled it up, and went on till he found the smoke of a big Blackfoot camp.
