by Max Brand
Ordinarily he would have dodged Blackfeet, because they had as great a passion as any tribe to harvest Cheyenne hair. However, no matter what enemies they might be, they were a red nation. If they did not use the pelt, it would go to waste.
He walked straight into the camp and told his errand. Fifty or more warriors went pelting out on horseback to find the hide of which he spoke. A full fifty others gathered around the white Cheyenne and stared at this man who had made the Vow of White Horse. For that vow was already well known throughout the frontier, where news travels slowly but in ever widening rings.
Many of the whites called anyone a fool who would waste his life for the sake of touching a wild horse with his hand, but the Indians could only regard such a man as a hero.
Red Hawk never forgot the great council lodge in which he sat, the three greatest of the Blackfeet medicine men opposite him, and the famous chiefs and warriors on either hand. He was from an enemy tribe, to be sure, but he was medicine, since no one could commit himself to such a vow as his without becoming to some extent sacred. While they waited, they treated him with much respect, but the whole camp went mad with enthusiasm when the braves who had been sent out returned in triumph, carrying the pelt. It was not strictly white, of course, but the hairs were tipped with silver, so that it made a good approach to the required color.
There was a tremendous commotion. Every woman who touched that hide with a scraper, in the fleshing of it, was thereby half sanctified; it was as good as a big sacrifice in the way of ensuring the birth of children, for instance, or in warding off disease. So all the women in that camp—there were over a hundred and twenty lodges—were avid to have a share in the preparation of the robe.
That first night a heavy snow had fallen, and it was still falling as the Blackfeet hewed down big pine trees and built a campfire whose flames licked the rolling clouds that wandered through the sky. In the light of that blaze they set up the buffalo, with head and hoofs and tail and hide intact, and the scores of Blackfeet warriors became as drunk with excitement as though they had been tilting whiskey bottles all day.
The medicine men came out and went through their most earth-shaking ceremonies; even the children were yelling with excitement because the arrival of a white buffalo robe was enough to bring good luck to the camp for years and years.
Red Hawk was permitting himself this pause in the hunt for White Horse partly because he had completely lost the trail, and partly because he was so exhausted by between four and five thousand miles of steady marching that a rest could not be considered unwise. As he sat there in the lodge of the head chief of the Blackfeet, his face starved and his body a skeleton, puffing slowly at his pipe and listening to the bubbling of the fresh elk meat in the great pot, watching the misty rising of the smoke, Red Hawk assured himself that all his actions had been under the guidance of Sweet Medicine, the invisible spirit of the Sacred Valley.
If he had failed at the blood sacrifice, if he had been a slave for a year and more among the whites, these things were all ordained. Sometimes men are purified by sacrifice; sometimes they are purified by pain and humiliation. It was the latter course that had been chosen for him, and the fall of the white buffalo to his hand was simply the first promise of the spirits that they were pleased with his ways. From that moment he became a convinced fatalist, and he felt that he was in the hands of the gods.
He was with the Blackfeet for a fortnight, putting some flesh on his gaunt ribs, and then word was brought in by a scout that White Horse had been seen to the south. A troop of picked warriors went out with Red Hawk. For his own use, he had the five finest ponies that could be found in the camp, and the entire population turned out to give him a send-off.
Even the sick, even the infants were carried out into the bitterness of that winter wind in order that they might bless their eyes with a sight of the bringer of good fortune. On the edge of the camp, an old woman was brought by her two warrior sons and laid right across the path of Red Hawk. She had been unable to walk for months; her legs, it was said, were lifeless. Now she lay on the ground and shouted a prayer to the white Cheyenne.
So Red Hawk got down from his horse, prayed over the woman, and put his hands under the pits of her arms to lift her to her feet. When she had been raised upright, her arms spread out like a child learning to walk and fighting for its balance, she took several steps. She began to scream with joy.
Red Hawk went on with cold awe and wonder in his heart. He looked down at his hands, which had worked the miracle, then he looked up into the sky, half expecting the gray owl of Sweet Medicine to appear to his eyes.
With a dozen chosen men and five horses for himself, he rode south, and two days later he saw, for the second time in his life, White Horse.
They had ridden through a gulley, and as they came out on a level plateau they saw the wild herd scattered, pawing through the snow to get at the grass beneath. Red Hawk knew the clarion call of the stallion. It rang through certain chambers of the brain that had heard the great horse neighing once before, and which would unclose to no other sound. Then he saw the great horse marshal his host till they had been gathered into a dark troop, and once more he saw them fly like a lance, with a shining point.
He, and the Blackfeet with him, rode in pursuit till the horses were staggering under them, but they could not gain on a single one of the fugitives.
White Horse went south as straight, and almost as fast, as a migrating wild duck. Red Hawk followed him, hardly pausing to sleep or to eat. In three days half his Blackfeet companions were left behind him. In a week, the hardiest warrior of the lot had fallen hopelessly to the rear, without a farewell, still flogging the flanks of a horse that could not go faster than a trot.
But Red Hawk still had three horses that were in fair condition, and he clung to the trail. He crossed mountains, deserts, wild plateaus. Sitting his horse at the verge of the monstrous gorge and looking across the broken, painted lands, he saw the Colorado. It seemed to him the sort of place that the souls of dead men might fly to.
Then he came north. The exhausted mares and colts of the herd of White Horse fell back and beside him, by this time mere straggling skeletons. One of his own horses broke its leg in a hole. Another fell down and could not rise. Another day, the third stopped trotting, stopped walking, stood with hanging head. Thereupon he dismounted and went on foot, with only the great White Horse before him.
He followed the stallion out from the mountains and into the sweep of the plains, and still White Horse was sleek with undiminished strength. Red Hawk kept himself running, but two days later the stallion vanished out of his ken.
It was in midsummer, as he followed a rumor from a trapper toward the north and as he lay one day, exhausted and sleeping, in the red of the evening, that he was roused by a rustling in the dryness of the grass beside him. He opened his eyes to see the russet gold of the sunset light dripping like thin blood over the faces of Indians who had stolen up while he slept. By the headgear he knew that they were Dakotas, those most relentless enemies of the Cheyennes.
“It is the white Cheyenne,” said one of the crew almost reverently. “It is Red Hawk, who follows White Horse. Brother, you are safe among us. Your medicine is strong, and we are your friends.”
Red Hawk stood up and looked over that score of braves, painted for the warpath, half naked, gaunt from their long marches. Their bodies were still relaxing, little by little, from the tension that comes before the kill.
The Sioux who had spoken was Rising Bull, and he had ennobled himself by his treatment of an enemy brave. He could have hung in his lodge the scalp of a famous man, but, instead, he honored the stranger. There were not many spare horses in the herd that the young braves drove along the trail of the warriors, but Rising Bull gave two to the white Cheyenne, as well as two pairs of strong moccasins, a new rifle in exchange for the old one, and two pairs of leggings, well made and strong. He filled a bag with parched corn, another with dried meat, and gave to Red
Hawk the latest news of White Horse to come across the plains.
The stallion had raised the herd of Murray Quale, the half-breed squawman, hunter, and man-killer, and the whole herd had been swept away. Murray Quale was now following White Horse not to capture but to kill it.
That was the word that sent Red Hawk riding hard into the northwest, with the vision before him, night and day, of that glorious white thunderbolt robbed of his fire and stretched out upon the earth.
It was hardly strange that, since they both followed one trail, he met the half-breed on the way. From a summit among the foothills of the Rockies he had seen the dark, spreading herd in a valley below. He had seen it gather, as he descended the slope, and form again into the familiar flying wedge with the shining lance point leading the way.
The next day, as he followed the plain trail of the herd, he came on a long-haired frontiersman who balanced a leather-cased rifle across the pommel of his saddle. He rode on a strong mule, with two Indian ponies led behind. This stranger threw the case of his rifle when he heard behind him the hoofs of Red Hawk’s horses, and turned a broad face with malignant, scarred features.
Something about the squat, powerful body and the readiness with which the muzzle of the rifle was pointed toward him told Red Hawk that this was his quarry, although he had received no detailed description of Murray Quale’s appearance. It was no more difficult for Murray Quale to spot the White Indian with red hair, and he pointed his rifle more directly at the breast of Red Hawk as he yelled: “Hey, you! Ain’t you Red Hawk? Back up that pony and tell me if you ain’t Red Hawk!”
Red Hawk drew up the pony slowly. He knew that he had come unwarily upon this man-killer. For now he could not possibly unlimber his own holstered rifle, and, since he had no revolver or pistol, he had no weapon except the long knife that he had forged for himself in the shop at Witherell. And what would that be, compared with the straight-driven bullets from the muzzle of Quale’s rifle?
“Are you the man called Murray Quale?” he asked, allowing his pony to idle a step or two nearer to the half-breed.
“Keep that hoss in its tracks,” said Quale sharply. “Maybe you know my name, but I know every sneakin’ Cheyenne trick in the calendar. You’re that fool of a white man who trails White Horse around, ain’t you?”
“I’m following White Horse.”
“If it wasn’t for you drivin’ him, he’d keep out of half the hell that he raises for folks. You know what that herd is that he’s got with now? You know who they belong to? To me! And I’m the man that’s seen the old mares break down and the colts drop dead, tryin’ to foller that white devil. If you got a claim on White Horse, why don’t you keep him up in your corral?” He began to roll his head from side to side, gathering his wrath to a storm and letting himself blow with it.
“I’ve never had White Horse,” said Red Hawk. “I’ve only followed him.”
“Like a coyote follows a wolf, like a wolf follows the buffalo . . . just to enjoy the hell that White Horse raises!” shouted Murray Quale. “What excuse for livin’ is there for a fool like you? What room is there on earth for you? That’s what I wanna know.”
He began to shift his left hand up and down the barrel of the rifle, but his right hand remained at the trigger. He was thrusting his head forward, and narrowing his eyes as though already he was squinting through the sights at his target. Never since Red Hawk had stood in the medicine lodge of the Cheyennes, with the blood-dripping hand of Running Elk grasping his breast, had he felt such terror as was in him now.
But the other experience had been the fear of an unending agony and the dread of shaming himself before many eyes. This was different, for death would enter and leave him on the wing, he knew; it would take his soul with a touch, and his scalp would join the two that now dangled from the bridle reins of the half-breed before him. And what more inducement would this scarfaced beast need for a murder than the desire to take such a scalp as that of Red Hawk, now that the hair had regrown long and heavy?
With his eye, Red Hawk measured the distance between himself and the half-breed; in the nerves of his right hand and arm, he was already drawing and hurling the long knife. He said: “What have I done to make you angry, Murray Quale? I have never seen you before . . . so how can I have harmed you?”
“You dirty rat of a Cheyenne!” yelled Murray Quale. “Am I a half-wit? Don’t I know that you aim to stop me from puttin’ into White Horse a bullet that’ll finish his thieving? What difference does it make to you that he’s robbed me of my horse herd? None. You’re glad, is what you are. And the first chance you got, you’d sneak up on me in the middle of the night and wake me up with a cut throat. There ain’t nothing but Cheyenne murder in you, and that’s why I’m gonna let a streak of hell right through the middle of you, you . . .”
It had seemed to Red Hawk that he could delay until he saw the butt of the rifle raised to the hollow of Murray Quale’s shoulder, but he was wrong. For warning, he had only the stiff, spreading grin on the half-breed’s face as he pulled the trigger, the long rifle still held under his arm.
It was no chance shot, however. For as the Cheyenne marked that stretching leer on the face of the other, and jerked suddenly at his pony, Red Hawk’s horse suddenly threw his head up and back, and the ounce of lead struck into bone and brain with a sound like that of an axe cleaving home in a great, soft log. Red Hawk had already brought out the heavy length of his knife, and now he threw it with an overhand motion. The horse crumpled under him, and the next instant he was flung heavily on his side, the loose bulk of the dead horse pinning him by the right leg.
He knew, for an instant, that he was lost, that Murray Quale could kill him easily with whatever torments he chose. Then he began to struggle, planting his left heel against the saddle and thrusting with all his might. He seemed to be stripping his flesh from the bone, and the leg moved hardly an inch. But when he lifted head and shoulders, frantic with curiosity, he saw Murray Quale spilling out of the saddle with a singular looseness, so that when his feet struck the ground his knees sagged and his whole body gave.
With one hand clinging to the stirrup leather, the half-breed turned. His face was like that of one helpless with alcohol; the mouth hung open, the eyes were as dull as leaded glass, and in his side the great knife was buried almost to the hilt. One hand held a skinning knife; the other hand stretched out before him like a man who fumbles for his way through the dark. The skinning knife rose in the swift hand of the half-breed; the flash of the steel went down past Red Hawk’s eyes, and the knife stood quivering in the ground.
Red Hawk snatched it out, bewildered, and raised it to strike before he saw that there was no need. For Quale was falling, his body and bones turning to pulp, as it seemed. His knees struck the ground; he buckled into a heap so that his long hair flowed forward from the back of his head.
Chapter Sixteen
When Red Hawk was free to rise, before he so much as drew his knife from the body of the dead man, he filled a pipe and smoked it in honor of the spirit, Sweet Medicine. The cold of the wind washed over him like running water, but he forgot comfort while he considered that this—knife against rifle—had been a grand coup; such a thing as gives honor to a brave all his life long, and hushes the young men with wonder and envy when the coup is counted.
Then he stood up, put away his pipe, drew the heavy knife from the body of Murray Quale, and looked critically at the point and the edges. Perhaps his heart was colder than the hearts of other men, or perhaps in some ways he was simply more of a child, for he smiled with pleasure to see that there was nowhere a nicking or even a turning of the sharp-ground edges. So he grasped the greasy black hair of Murray Quale and prepared to take his first scalp.
Something stopped him. It was not the consideration that the soul of a scalped warrior cannot leave the body but must rot away with the flesh; it was simply that he remembered the faces of Richard Lester and Maisry as, on that first night, they had watched him tearing at the
roasted meat that they had given to him. White men, unless they had gone Indian-wild on the frontier, do not mutilate the dead. It seemed to Red Hawk that Maisry stood beside him in the cold and windy pass, watching everything he did, with eyes as soft as those of a child, but recording forever.
Thereupon he simply drew the edge of the knife around the central section of the hair, in ceremonial fashion, and in a few words offered that untaken scalp to Sweet Medicine as a sacrifice.
Of the guns and ammunition of the dead man he took nothing, nor anything that was on his person, for the dead thing had grown unspeakably vile in the eyes of Red Hawk. As for the livestock, it was a different matter. He took the mule and the two horses, so that, as he took up the trail of White Horse once more, he now had a string of four animals.
The winter came on early that year. In October it was like December; in November it was like January, and in the middle of November, as he followed the diminishing herd of White Horse south, over the Mountain Desert, Red Hawk had that meeting with Colonel Oliver Dodge about which so many stories have been told.
The colonel was a precise man who made notes of everything that befell, and from his naked narrative the following facts appear: That the caravan, of which he was the elected captain, California bound, had made good progress all the way from Fort Benton. That an unseasonable blizzard of terrible strength overwhelmed them in a desert valley, so that half of the livestock were frozen to death and the whole caravan lodged in the snow. That the blizzard continuing, it was necessary to make a temporary camp here, bringing wood from a distance for fires. That the frightful strength of the hurricane continuing, every ox and mule in the train was frozen, and that almost none of this meat was properly preserved by smoking, but that the cold was depended upon to keep it edible. That the sudden thaw that followed spoiled nearly every pound of the provisions. That the women and children were rapidly weakening. That three men, with Dave Gleason, the scout, as their chief, were sent out to bring help. That game was not to be shot. That leather harness was boiled to make a wretched soup, and that the weaker members of the party began to sicken rapidly. That continual hunting could not turn up game of any sort. And that on a day there rode into the camp the celebrated character who was famous all through the plains and among the mountain tribes as the hunter of White Horse. He rode a mule and led a staggering horse. Both animals were very thin, but they were turned over to the starving camp and rationed out.
