by Max Brand
A storm began to scream on that second day, so Red Hawk built of pine branches a windbreak, twisting the branches between the thick standing saplings. When the edge of the wind was turned, he completed the building of a small lean-to. The main poles were up that first day, but it was not until a week later that he completed the thatching of the little structure on the top and on the sides. There was one small, rounded entranceway, and just to the side of that doorway he built a fireplace of stones brought from the margin of the lake.
Starvation threatened him during this time. His traps could still catch rabbits in plenty, but time after time the wolves and a few prowling coyotes emptied the traps of all but a few flying bits of fur. As for fish, he could see the big fellows swimming close to the surface, but on the few occasions when he hooked one on a thorn they easily broke away again. So he made a long pole, with two short barbs in the sharpened end of it, and hardened that end in the fire. With that as a spear, he had fair success, throwing in some bits of frozen rabbit meat for bait, and then impaling the larger fish as they swarmed to eat.
Bringing forage to White Horse required a considerable time, also, and the stallion had to be watered three times a day. But the greatest portion of time Red Hawk spent in carefully massaging the stallion’s injured shoulder. He had found a spot, just above the shoulder bone, where the pressure of his fingers made the horse wince, and all the muscles about that place he massaged, day after day, for hours.
He had other things to do, such as weaving a clumsy, sleeveless jacket out of strips of the under bark of willows. It was not really warm, but it at least turned the edge of the cold March winds. Then he had to put up poles under the bent saplings that supported the weight of White Horse. The stallion himself, even in these cramped quarters, began to grow sleek, and he no longer shuddered whenever the man came near him.
Yet it seemed to Red Hawk that the wary light never grew tame in the animal’s eyes. Far more than that, he could hardly see any diminution in the sensitiveness of the sore place above the shoulder, as he bore in upon it with his fingertips. Every day he removed the leg from the sling, but every day it hung as loosely and helplessly as before, a dangling weight. Gradually, as the weeks went by, it began to shrink, particularly about the lower shoulder. The flesh grew flabby there, and he could feel the structure of the bone through the muscles. Therefore every day was filled with a recurrent misery.
Every day there also arose in Red Hawk a hope that was based upon what he had heard in his childhood from the old tellers of tales in the Cheyenne camp, when they discoursed wonderful stories of how men had tamed the beasts of the wilderness. The red-eyed ferret, blind with blood, had been the friend of men, it was said; even the wise and cruel grizzly had been at one time the pack horse and protector of some friendless warrior, wounded and helpless. Therefore Red Hawk watched and waited for the moment when some light of playfulness might come into the eyes of the stallion—when at least he would take food from the hand.
But that time never came. The hour-long strokings with the hand, the infinite patience and gentleness of voice accomplished nothing, it seemed, and always there was that slight drawing back, as if rather in disgust than in fear, so that sometimes a savage anger burst up in the heart of Red Hawk and made him like a child, ready to destroy the thing for which he had worked so long.
Such was his misery in that cold camp that every day was like the step of a dying man, uphill, until he was awakened one night by a warm breath on his face, and dreamed that White Horse was standing over him.
When he awakened, he heard the trees lashing. His whole body was hot. On the earth about him were whispering sounds of running water, and from the lake he heard the deep groaning of the ice. The great thaw had commenced. In that single night the lower slopes were turned from white to black, the forest became a marsh, and every hour of the day and night, thereafter, he heard the chanting of the waterfalls, high and low, as they stamped continually on the ground nearby. In a week the flowers were everywhere in the open places. Spring dropped out of the pleasant air and rose up from the ground with a murmur, and the free waters of the lake kept up a light-footed dance along the shore.
If spring had come there in the woods, it was already summer on the plains where the Cheyennes roved. Yet Red Hawk waited day after day, once every twenty-four hours releasing the injured leg from the sling and testing its power to uphold its own weight. But always without result.
For another whole month he told himself, from day to day, that he had proved the case to the finish, and that this was the end. On the morrow he must put White Horse out of this wretched, lame existence. But when the next day came he still postponed the killing.
For a whole month after the thaw, therefore, he waited, and on the thirtieth day he cut the network that had so long helped to support the body of the great horse. He also cut the sling that supported the leg, and sadly observed how the leg trailed down on the ground. Then, as he drew his knife, he wondered if he could find strength in his arm to strike the fatal blow, or with what ceremony this famous life ought to be brought to a close.
First, with the smoke of some sweet-smelling bark he purified the place and the horse and his own right hand. Then he threw up his arms to make a sacrificial prayer. At the flash of the raised knife, White Horse wheeled suddenly away through the open gap where Red Hawk had torn down the southern wall of the tree house, and he ran down the edge of the lake between the water and the brush.
With every step the beast staggered, yet it seemed to the incredulous eye of the man that it was not altogether the high-headed tossing of a three-legged horse. It seemed to him, actually, that the fourth hoof was striking the ground.
Sudden joy broke on him, blinded him; for the first time in his life, hope that was not for himself rushed through his heart like the spring wind over the cold mountains of winter. Among the trees he ran madly. Through the brush he burst, heedless of the thorns that tore at his flesh with claws, and so came out on a wide meadow and into view of White Horse, who was frolicking in the grass. It was true that four legs supported him, and that the right foreleg, although very feebly, helped to maintain the burden. But the limping was no matter. The strength would return. The long-grown hoofs would wear down to the right dimensions, and White Horse be king once more.
Red Hawk began to dance like a madman, shouting in such a way that a single yell made him hoarse. In his ecstasy he totally forgot that his rope was no longer on the neck of the stallion, until White Horse swept away through a grove of trees.
Now, left alone, it seemed to Red Hawk that all the mountains drew suddenly nearer and looked down upon him. Or was it only that he looked into his own heart as he told himself that his vow, after all, had been accomplished. He had sworn that he would put his hand on White Horse, and that he had accomplished. As for that other purpose of carrying the stallion back to Witherell and giving it as the marriage price into the hand of the girl, that was not a part of his vow. It had not been properly recorded in the ears of Listeners Above or Underground.
There was no reason for him to return to the camp except to get a lariat, which would be useless to him now. So he turned his face immediately to the southwest and began his march through the Blue Water Mountains. He was sad, yet strange to say he was exalted. In him there was no sense of the time that had been wasted; rather, he felt that these days, of all his life, had been by far the most significant portion. To something he was infinitely nearer, though he could not find a name for it.
He went by slow marches, pausing to set traps for rabbits or birds, digging up roots here and there like a browsing bear. When at last he had advanced through the Blue Waters, and from a lofty peak looked over the foothills to the smoking plains beyond, it was near sunset time. He had filled his eyes with that sight, when the neigh of a horse rang through the pass behind him. No voice but one could send such echoes through his brain, and, as he turned, he saw White Horse on a hillock in the middle of the pass, the glow of the sunset
on him.
The sunset faded before the great horse moved.
It was a week later, far down on the edge of the plains where he had killed a mountain grouse and was roasting it, that he heard that whinny once more, nearby. He saw that the stallion had come up out of the mouth of a draw. The morning sun burnished him; the morning wind blew out his mane and tail. But Red Hawk forgot to admire that beauty, as the tremendous certainty came home to him that he was being followed.
He forgot the good red meat that he needed so sorely, and hurried out toward the horse. From a distance he held out one hand, palm up, in the ancient gesture of friendship to man or to beast. But when he was near, the stallion left his stand like an arrow, to go winging out over the plain.
He turns. He comes back. If he so much as turns his head, he is mine, Red Hawk thought to his soul.
Yonder, in the distance, White Horse was indeed wheeling, sweeping back, charging with head stretched out and with flattened ears, and with mane lifted erect by the wind of that gallop as though it was the headdress of a chief. Every trace of limp, or even weakness, was gone from him. He planted his four hoofs and skidded to a halt, throwing up the clotted turf before him. He was not ten strides away, but Red Hawk folded his arms in the savage ecstasy of possession.
He raised his hand as though to address a chief in council. “You are mine,” he said. “I let you wander for a little while behind me . . . but, when I wish, I shall put out my hand and take you.”
Then he turned his back and marched for three days across the prairies.
Sometimes the stallion was out of sight; sometimes he was a glimmering point on the horizon. But more often he was grazing nearby. It was on the morning of the fourth day that he walked up to Red Hawk and looked the man in the eye.
What is it to strike a beast dead? What is it to ensnare the wild living? What is it to wear them to a ghost of weakness and force them to surrender? All of these things are nothing to the joy that rioted in the soul of Red Hawk as he touched this glory that had freely come to him.
It was three days before he could sit on the back of White Horse, but what did that matter? It was enough to see the beauty by the sheen of the dazzling sun or by the golden waves of firelight. It was enough to speak, and see that head turn, to hold out a hand and have this winged king come to him.
When he swung onto the stallion’s back for the first time, the horse turned into a whip-snake of white silk that flung him headlong at the sky. But afterward White Horse came to inquire why he lay so long on the ground.
So, at the end of the third day, Red Hawk sat on the stallion’s back, and White Horse understood. There was no doubt of that, for first he walked, then he cantered, then he galloped, with his head turned a trifle as though to make sure that all went well with that weak, spindling, two-legged creature who was pegged on his back, clinging with blind hands to the flutter of the mane. And at last he raced at full speed, faster and faster, until it seemed to Red Hawk that he saw the wind go by in dark streaks.
There followed delirious days. That horizon which is set like a blue wall around the world was lifted. In a stride, in a gesture, so it seemed, Red Hawk could be over the rim of it on the back of the great horse.
Fear, which lies curled in the flat, green hand of the plains like an invisible snake, was now banished from it. For what had he to fear, day or night? He need not so much as consult his own eyes and ears, for White Horse had been unapproachable on the prairie, and he still gave token of every danger that came near, whether by day or by night. In the day, he called with a whinny. In the night, he went to the place where his master lay and sniffed at his face like a dog.
To Red Hawk all this was like being translated from the earth to heaven, endowed with wings. Hate could not pursue him; envy could never catch him; White Horse was a throne from which he looked down happily upon the world.
Chapter Nineteen
After that, Red Hawk headed straight for Witherell. Even with this swift mount, the miles were long, but in the sunset of a certain day he came through the pass and looked down on the town, all its western windows filled with wavering golden light, from every chimney the smoke slanting south on a quiet breeze. Two things he saw like two well-known faces: the roof of the blacksmith shop, and the roof of Richard Lester’s house. Then the White Indian went down the slope.
It was not easy to persuade the horse to go. Those thousand odors of ever-dreaded man thronged the air, and the strange sights and sounds of the village filled White Horse with terror so that Red Hawk had to dismount and lead him by the mane, speaking constant words of comfort.
They were on the edge of the town before they were noticed, and then the whole populace turned out. Boys came first of all. They did not run at Red Hawk with loud jibes now. There was no flinging of stones. They scarcely seemed to notice the ragged misery of the patched skins in which he was dressed. Instead, they held back to a distance, with muffled exclamations.
Women and men came running, also. They filled in the sides of the street, and a clamoring began from which White Horse shrank closer and closer to his master, and the more he cowered beside Red Hawk, the more the murmuring rose. It seemed as though that horse had been brought home to be the possession of every human being in the gathering, to judge from the shining of their eyes and the caressing gestures of their hands as they drew the figure of the stallion in air.
Red Hawk could not pick out many individual voices, but he afterward remembered one thing—how Sam Calkins bawled out: “There he comes! I knew he’d do it. A blacksmith is the boy for a hard job, every time. Brains’ll take more than horses!”
Now Red Hawk was in front of Richard Lester’s house, where he saw the lawyer lying in a chair that was half a bed, placed on the front verandah, facing to the south and west as though to enjoy the last heat of the day.
The girl whipped out the door, then stood with one hand gripping the edge of it as Red Hawk turned in at the gate. He stared ahead at her, and then aside at the stallion. He could not tell which was the greater: the painful thought of surrendering the horse, or the pleasure at the knowledge that her heart had been great enough to ask for that king of the prairies as her marriage price. Then he walked up the gravel of the path, with White Horse crowding at his heels.
Now he stood at the bottom of the steps. The girl was standing as one enchanted. Now he was lifting his right hand in greeting.
There was a ceremonial solemnity in his manner that had hushed the voices of the crowd following him, and that was why every one for a great distance could hear him so perfectly as he said: “This is the price you named. I give you White Horse, and I take you as my squaw. Bring a rope so that you may lead him. Then come with me to my lodge.”
There followed a moment of pause. In it he seemed to see the girl’s widening eyes. Then from behind him, up and down the street, laughter burst out like water from a broken dam, mirth and mockery that screamed in shrill trebles and thundered in deep bass notes. For there was hardly a child so small that the jest lacked a point, it seemed.
The uproar made White Horse flash about, shouldering heavily against his master. And then, baffled by the loathed scent of human flesh and by the braying sound of human voices, the stallion threw up his head and neighed until it seemed that he was giving some sort of an answer to the crowd.
Red Hawk turned, also, to glance over his shoulder at the crowd. When he looked toward the house again, the girl was gone and Richard Lester was rising from his chair. He walked slowly down the steps, leaning on a cane, and Red Hawk saw the face of a sick man, very white, so that the veins that were traced across the temples were doubly blue. There was no laughter about Richard Lester as he took the hand of Red Hawk.
“Come inside with me,” he said.
“White Horse would break through the wooden floors,” said Red Hawk, “and I cannot leave him. Where is Maisry? Has she gone to say good bye to her mother? Has she gone to make her pack? I want her to come to me with empty hands.”
“You’ll see Maisry. I promise you that,” Lester assured him. “But come with me around to the back of the house, out of sight of these foolish people.”
He led the way to the rear, but still the laughter washed up and down the street in waves. Inside the house, Red Hawk heard the sharp and angry outcry of Mrs. Lester.
Richard Lester sat on a sawbuck beside the woodpile, his hands folded over the head of his cane. White Horse was still shouldering close to his master, while the happy eye of Red Hawk roved over the golden western sky, and over the deep blue of the hills, contentedly. It seemed to him a proper moment for his woman to come out and put her hand in his and follow him.
“This matter of a marriage price . . . and my daughter,” said Lester. “What is that about, Red Hawk?”
“She has told you, of course,” he answered. “I know that among the whites a girl is not sold as among the Indians . . . but she gives herself away for whatever she pleases. I have heard that some give themselves even for bright beads. But Maisry is not like others. She has the proud heart of a Cheyenne. She would not sell herself for a sparrow, but for an eagle. So fortune was kind to me, and I have brought her the eagle out of the air.”
He smiled happily at Lester, and the lawyer, half frowning, answered: “Do I understand, Red Hawk, that you have been trailing White Horse for these two years on account of my girl? Oh, we’ve heard the tales of you in the plains and in the mountains. I’ve read the colonel’s report, too, and it’s a very fine story. I hear, also, that the Blackfeet have buried the hatchet and made peace with the Cheyennes, because of you. But you have been hunting White Horse all on account of my daughter?”
