by Max Brand
At this moment it was possible to look at her more closely than he ever had observed her before, so that he was able to see without the consciousness of being seen.
She was by no means beautiful, as perfect things are beautiful. The skin was pinched a little between her eyes and at their corners, and the upper lip was pressed down firmly upon the lower, as though she had learned how to endure. The pain that was now in her face did not appear to be a stranger there, and pain can never be beautiful. Red Hawk knew, suddenly, that he was seeing her not only as she was at that moment, but also by a clear foreshadowing as she would appear in a future time, when by the years her features are altered to pulp and bone. Yet this foreglimpse, this prefiguring, did not alarm him. He was only bent on learning what it was that occupied her—a thing as near as himself, yet as distant as unseen mountains. He was half tempted to turn and glance over his shoulder, but he knew that her look was inward.
Out of that moment of quiet she said to him: “So you have bought me, Red Hawk?”
“How can I buy you?” he asked her. “I can tie a hundred horses to the poles in front of your father’s lodge . . . but if you will not have me, and if he will not give you to me, still you are not mine. However, I have showed Jeremy Bailey the body of his god, and I am going to take him where he can get the rest of it. What I showed to him I can also give to you. If your god is strong, perhaps there is enough of him here in this bag to take care of your father and mother. If not, perhaps I can bring more.”
Unslinging the bag from his shoulder, he poured the contents suddenly on the ground before her feet. Some of the nuggets jumped away and sank out of sight in the soft, liquid mud of the vegetable patch. Others lay half buried, half dimmed by the dust.
As he straightened, he was surprised to see that she was not looking at the gold, but into his face; she was smiling as women smile at a child.
“My father is a proud man,” said the girl. “What do you think he will say when I show him this and say it is offered for me?”
“He will say,” said Red Hawk instantly, “that first I brought White Horse and then I brought gold, and that after that there is something greater, which is a need that I have of you. For the knife that fits the hand is not thrown away, even when it is old and almost worn away by grinding. That is how you fit into my mind. When I think of having you with me, of being able to give you my thoughts freely, in the palm of my hand, it is as though clothes were put upon me to cover my nakedness. But I could never buy you. I could not buy White Horse, either . . . but each of us belongs to the other, and cannot be put out of mind.”
To this she made an answer that seemed to him evasive, though she no longer smiled at him. She began to move her eyes by pauses over his face. “You were sick when you were last in Witherell,” she said. “Your face was all bones and sorrow, but now you are happier. You look younger, and you look able to laugh. Why is that? Is there something in the wild story that has drifted into the town about the white Cheyenne who went to the Sacred Valley and saw Sweet Medicine, and brought back a sacred arrow to his tribes?” She was smiling again, but there was a poison of whimsical mockery in the smile.
Very troubled, he said: “That is true.”
“True?” she exclaimed. “True that you saw Sweet Medicine . . . and that he gave you a sacred arrow with his own hand? I’d like to hear about it.”
In that moment she had withdrawn to a great distance from him. He put out his hand, but saw that no physical effort could draw her back to him. He said simply: “Yes, it is true. I alone, with White Horse, entered the Sacred Valley. I went beyond the leaning pillar that no Indian had ever passed. I went on through the herds of buffalo and of antelope that had no fear . . . even the fawns nibbled at my hand. It was the dawn of the day. And I came close up to the feet of the speaking waters. I looked up and saw the owl of Sweet Medicine fly into a cave far up the rock. I climbed up the cliff and stood before the dark of the cave.”
“Were you terribly afraid?” she asked him.
He sighed, answering: “If we are to know one another, we must have the whole truth. Yes, I was terribly afraid. I was so afraid that my knees shuddered . . . my brain turned . . . my belly was sick . . . and every breath I drew froze my heart. Only my feet carried me inside, and there in the darkness I saw the two golden eyes of Sweet Medicine. I fell on my face, and heard the rushing of his robes over my head, and a whisper that said . . . ‘peace.’ When I stood up, I found that in my hand there was a broken arrow, very ancient. No man has seen an arrowhead chipped like the one I found in the cave of Sweet Medicine.”
“Do you think it might not have been Sweet Medicine, but only an owl that you frightened out of its cave?” she asked him.
He smiled at her, for he could see that she was coming back to him swiftly, that she was drawing very near again.
“Let me tell you this,” said Red Hawk. “Every tribe on the plains sees different spirits. The Pawnees see a Corn Mother. The Sioux see other Listeners under the ground and above. Perhaps the gods take many shapes, and, if a white man had been able to see in that darkness of the cave, he would have said that the rustling of the robe was only the wing of a bird beating the air and that the golden moons were the eyes of an owl. I cannot tell. To the Cheyennes, it was Sweet Medicine, and the Great Spirit will grant us good fortune because of the broken arrow. But what will you say to me, Maisry? I am not trying to buy words of you with the yellow god of the white man. What will you say to me?”
“First,” she said, “take up the gold. It is yours. My father will not accept it, and neither may I.”
“If it is not good for you, it is not good for me. Let it sink in the mud, therefore,” he said.
She looked down from his face, suddenly, as though she were seeing the glimmering little pile of metal for the first time. “Will you give me a little more time?” she said anxiously. “If I were free, I would follow you this moment. Do you believe me?”
“Your lips have said it. Therefore, it is true,” said Red Hawk. “I knew that this would be true, because the strength of Sweet Medicine came with me all the way across the plains. Therefore, I have been sure of happiness. I must go away now. From now until the moon is full and has worn away again to the first quarter, I shall be busy. At the end of that time I shall come again.”
“What is it you wish to do in all that time?” she asked.
“I have promised to show Jeremy Bailey where the yellow body of the white man’s god lies,” he said, “and then I return.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When Red Hawk saw the Bailey brothers coming up the street a moment later and sent White Horse vaulting over the fences to meet them, he halted them and the string of pack mules that had been prepared so quickly for the two traders. Then he rode down to the square and halted at each corner of it.
“Friends of Wind Walker, tell him that between the full of the moon and the half, Dull Hatchet and Standing Bull and Red Hawk shall hunt for him among the Witherell Hills, between the peak with two summits and the white hill. Let him come, and bring two friends with strong hands, because three Cheyennes will be waiting for him.”
Four times he called that speech, from the four corners of the square. Then he turned and smiled as he found the eyes of the many clinging to him, following him—and most of all huge Sam Calkins, who stood in front of his shop, all soot and shimmering sweat. For how could all of these people know that in fact there was little or no danger to the Cheyennes in the battle to come, since Sweet Medicine had given to the tribe freshly favoring good fortune?
Once they were started, the mules reached across the plains in long marches, for mules take short steps, but they are never tired. There were six of those mules, besides the riding horses of the Bailey brothers, and every one of the mules, they said, would be loaded with the yellow god before they turned back to the towns of men. They talked as though they could pack heaven on the backs of the six mules.
“We’ll pack half a million,
” said Jeremy to Joe.
Red Hawk, listening indifferently, said to them: “I am your guide and not your guard. You know that the Sacred Valley has been entered by only one man. I am that man. Are you not foolish, then, to enter the valley? Are you not foolish to go past the leaning pillar?”
They laughed at him. “How will Sweet Medicine hit us, Red Hawk?” they asked him. “With thunder and lightning?”
They kept on laughing while he watched them with calm, incurious disgust, as though they were walking deaths.
Yet he went first, when they came to the leaning pillar at the entrance to the Sacred Valley, and they followed, with their rifles prepared, looking cautiously from side to side. Blind fools who thought that they could see a god, as it seemed to Red Hawk. He was amazed when, looking back, he saw that they had safely passed the pillar. He had been sure that they would die on the threshold of this holy place. However, who can determine the mind or predict the ways of the spirits?
These two men now hurried on with stony faces, as though fate already had entered them. They passed the thunder of the waterfall, speaking magic with deep tones, and in a short time they were entering the narrow upper ravine where the gold had been found.
The Sacred Valley seemed to have shrunk in size since Red Hawk had first come there. But what may not a god do in his own dwelling?
They were halfway up the stream when Joe Bailey screamed out an unintelligible word. With pain, but not with surprise, Red Hawk looked back, expecting to see that Sweet Medicine had already struck and that the man would be lying dead on the ground. Instead, he was on his knees, scooping sand and gravel up from the shallow bottom of the creek, and letting it drip out of his fingers. Showing his yellow-gilded palms to his brother, they laughed and shrieked. Then Joe hurled the first gold he had washed far away into the grass. He was mad, Red Hawk concluded. Sweet Medicine was touching the minds of the white men before he touched their bodies.
Jeremy was in the water, too, now. Then the pair of them was out and at one of the mule packs, tearing it apart and feverishly bringing out the shovels and wooden cradles for washing the gravel. They laid down buckskin sacks. Without pausing to remove more than that one pack, they worked on wildly all the rest of that day.
Truly it was wonderful to see how the stream turned yellow and black, and, when they trenched into the sod beside the stream, they washed out portions of the deeply underlying stratum of sand, and this was as rich as the creek bed itself.
For some time Red Hawk watched them. They were already soaked to the skin, and their voices were already hoarse from shouting. They had become grimly patient now, but their eyes were like the eyes of hungry beasts. He felt that he could endure the sight of them no more.
He looked up to the blue peace of the sky, and saw a single white cloud floating and melting in it. Perhaps that was Sweet Medicine, watching and smiling at these fools who thought that they could invade his house without punishment. Let not the blow that involved the pair strike on the faithful heart of a white Cheyenne!
Finally he set about unpacking. When the mules had been hobbled to graze, he built an open fireplace of rocks, cementing them together with mixed mud and long grass. Then he put up the shelter tent made of thick sail cloth, strong and light, cutting a good center pole and pegging down the flaps. He felled a quantity of branches out of which he built three soft, deep beds, for he would remain with them that one night, if indeed Sweet Medicine held his hand so long.
Then he took a rifle and went out to hunt. He passed a group of black-tailed deer almost at once, but he could not murder creatures that looked at him without fear. Luck, in the late afternoon, gave him sight of a mountain sheep that stood on the verge of a cliff, facing the brightness in the west. He tumbled it to the valley floor with a bullet through the head, and took off as much of the best meat as he could carry.
That burden he brought back to the camp that he had pitched beneath the spread of a mighty tree, and found that the Bailey brothers had glutted their first hunger for gold and now lay with their backs against the trunk of a tree, smoking.
The sun was out of sight behind the western heights, but it was not yet down. All the upper sky was brilliant with the pure light as Red Hawk put down the fresh meat and called to the brothers: “Here is something to put in hungry bellies. Make your coffee as you choose to make it, while I roast some of this on spits.”
They said nothing in reply. They looked at one another in silence, as though each was too tired to fall to any sort of work, even for the sake of hunger. In the meantime, Red Hawk busied himself in the kindling of the fire, the cutting up of the meat in small gobbets that would fit on some long splinters of wood that he had prepared. He was intent on this work, blessing his appetite with the promise that meat would soon be between his teeth.
All at once he heard one of the brothers come up behind him, dragging a rope that made a whispering sound in the grass. He did not even look aside as he said: “That noise is like a snake coming, friend.”
Something cut the air over his head with a whispering sound. The noose of the rope fell over his body and jerked tight. He was flung on his back, with his arms pinned against his sides and bound fast below the elbows. Above him appeared the scarred face of Jeremy Bailey.
“Easy, Joe, eh?” he said.
“It don’t take a man to handle a blind fool like him,” said Joe Bailey.
Red Hawk lay still and looked at the sky. His mind was clear. He felt the damp cool of the turf seeping through his deerskin shirt at the hips and the shoulders.
Joe Bailey stood by and kicked him heavily in the ribs. “What does Sweet Medicine say about this, you half-wit?” he asked.
“Get that other rope and we’ll tie him hard,” said Jeremy.
“Why not bash him over the head now and have done with it?” asked Joe.
“Because I want to talk to him for a minute. I want to tell him a few things about his Sweet Medicine. Yeah, sweet medicine it’s going to be for you, Red Hawk.”
Red Hawk made no effort to struggle. They had revolvers at their hips, and knives in their belts, and they could cut him to pieces before he moved twice. More than that, this was the very floor of the house of the god—his voice spoke yonder and seemed to fill the sky. Therefore it was plain that all things were in his hands and that nothing could happen here except of his will.
He was tied hand and foot. Jeremy Bailey took him by the hair of the head, with one hand, and dragged him until his shoulders were propped against the trunk of the tree. Then the two brothers filled pipes and sat down cross-legged before him. They blew the smoke toward his face.
He merely said: “Why do you want to kill me? People kill men they hate or men they’re afraid of. Why do you hate me, or why do you fear me?”
“Tell him, Jeremy,” said Joe. “I hate to talk to the damned Cheyenne. I’d rather take and smash in his head for him and have it finished. You tell him why, will you?”
“Did you think, you poor idiot,” said Jeremy, smiling into the eyes of Red Hawk, “that we’d let you get away from here to sell the news about this placer strike to somebody else? Look yonder.” He pointed. “You see those two little snaky-looking buckskin sacks?” he demanded.
“I see them,” said Red Hawk.
“There’s about twenty-five pounds of dust in each of ’em,” explained Jeremy. “We’ve washed around twelve thousand dollars’ worth of gold . . . in a part of one day. Hell, we’ve taken out of the ground in one day more than we’ve worked for all the other years of our lives. And you think that we’d let you walk free out of here to tell other people?”
“I understand,” said Red Hawk.
“Good,” said Jeremy. “Then you understand one reason why you’ve got to be shut up for good and all. There’s other reasons of my own. I’ll tell you the best of ’em. I didn’t like the way Maisry looked at you the other day. She sort of rested her eyes on you as if you were a nice spot to see. She looked at you, and seemed to forget th
at I was on the face of the earth. Understand? It made me a little sick to see a white girl look like that at a damned Cheyenne. It made me a little sick at the stomach. Well, that’s another good reason why you’re going to die. It’s your face that’s harming you, brother. It’s that handsome mug you wear that’s giving you trouble. It’s those big blue eyes and the nice cut of your map that’s hurting you under the fifth rib.” He laughed again, sprawling at his ease and smoking his pipe.
Joe got up and stretched himself. “We’d better get it over with,” he said, and pulled out a revolver.
“Wait a minute,” said Jeremy. “I want to talk to the fool for another minute. I want to ask him how much faith he has in his damned red god, just now. What’s Sweet Medicine going to do for you, Red Hawk? Eh? You’re the brave boy who got the sacred arrow out of the sacred cave, in the sacred mountain of the sacred valley. Eh? And what’s the god going to do for the scared Red Hawk who managed all of these sacred things? You tell me, will you?”
“Yeah,” sneered Joe. “How scared are you?”
Red Hawk looked up at the sky through the wide design that the branches spread against the color. The sun was down. Red and gold mounted in deepening waves out of the west and flooded the zenith, spreading out and giving more light and less warmth of the staining dyes. It was not exactly fear that he felt, rather a holy awe. He said: “I am not afraid. I am only excited. I am excited as people are when they have a bet on a horse race and the horses are standing ready at the start.”
“And a damned long race you’re gonna run, in a couple of seconds,” commented Jeremy. “So you ain’t scared? You’re only excited, eh?”
“You have guns,” said Red Hawk. “And with a touch of your fingers you may send me death. But Sweet Medicine is swifter and stranger by far. That is why I am excited, because I wait to see how he will touch you before my eyes.”
