Frontier Feud

by Max Brand

  Big Bill Tenney felt this, and then all thought, all feeling went out of him as he bent his efforts toward pointing the nose of the canoe up the stream. Body, brain and spirit, he turned himself into a machine of vast labor.

  In the might of his grasp, the strong ash paddle became a supple thing. He wanted an oar of iron for such work as this. The pull of every stroke sent a numb tingling up shoulder and neck and into the base of his brain. The shore grew hazy; the other canoes that were racing down through the slack water were blurred before his eyes.

  They were shooting blindly down the stream. The first snag that lay in their path would be the end of them. He kept uttering one word, as the breath gushed from his body: “God—God—God—God!”

  Over and over, not knowing what he was saying.

  He forgot what was behind him. He forgot the purpose for which he was striving, except that he had to edge the bobbing, swaying, ducking point of his canoe farther and farther toward the edge of the sweeping current, and closer to the slack. There is a divinity of labor; a blind god. For his worship men need use only the power of the body. And in that black ecstasy Bill Tenney fought on.

  They reached the bend. The water foamed and shouted more heavily than before; its rushing noises seemed to be streaming through Bill Tenney’s soul. The spray whipped his hot face. His shirt at the armpits and down the breast had split open from the force of his mighty effort.

  He could hear voices, thin as the rays of starlight, but they gave him no hope. The shore was blotted out from him. A force pushed behind his eyes, making them bulge out, and a constant strain drew back the corners of his mouth and made his face hideous.

  Then a thin arm grasped his shoulders and froze his arms to his sides. The force of that grasp bit into his hard muscles. He was drawn suddenly forward in the canoe, before he realized that a line had been flung over him.

  He gripped the sides of the canoe. Before him, he saw the length of the braided rawhide, trembling and swaying. Little by little, his eyes cleared. He was aware that he had so far succeeded in his efforts as to bring the canoe close to the verge of the strong current; and now, where the current narrowly rounded the bend, the men on shore had managed to wade far into the slack water and make a successful cast with the lariat.

  After that, his brain cleared rapidly. He saw the crowd on the shore gathering to a greater size. He heard their cheering. Men were galloping their horses down from Fort Marston.

  “Hell!” said Bill Tenney to himself. “Looks like I been a damn hero or something!”

  He wanted to laugh in derision.

  Looking back, he saw the head of the White Horse above water, as he was towing in toward safety. Rusty Sabin’s hand was white with the force of its grip, on the upper edge of the canoe; the other hand still clutched the mane of the stallion.

  And then it was all over. Even Bill Tenney’s strength was gone, so that he could hardly get out of the canoe and stand erect on the shore. The labor had been with his arms, and yet his knees were shaking.

  Men came swarming around him. Their eyes were big; their lips were smiling. They looked at Bill Tenney with a sudden bright love. For in spite of our envies, our hates, our malice, our greed, our cruel self-seeking, when one man serves another and puts his own life in danger, the whole world of men become brothers.

  Tenney suppressed the sneer that kept trying to work onto his lips. These men felt that he had wanted to be a hero; they could not know that he had simply wanted to steal a horse.—Yes, and he would have it yet!

  Burnished by the sun to blazing silver, the great stallion stood on the shore, his head bent low down, for his master’s grasp was still in his mane. And Rusty Sabin’s other hand was fixed on the stern of the canoe.

  The man was senseless, Tenney saw with a peculiar interest, but the grip of the hands that had saved the White Horse was still strong, like the locked jaws of a bulldog. They had to be worked free gradually. Then Rusty Sabin’s body lay inert on the ground.

  CHAPTER 3

  Out of the crowd there came forward those two big Cheyennes who had been pointed out to Bill Tenney on the bank by the dock. Other men were bending over the prostrate, senseless body of Rusty Sabin, but the two Indians brushed past them. One of them was a monster who was naked to the waist, and clad only in moccasins and deerskin leggings. Bigger than Tenney, he suddenly lifted young Sabin in his arms. Under that burden the immense muscles of the Cheyenne’s arms and shoulders stood out like cast bronze. He was an heroic figure.

  The burden-bearer began to speak in a voice that paused, from time to time, filled with emotion. A white man near Tenney translated the speech, softly, not for the sake of others but to impress the words on his own mind; and Tenney never forgot the meaning of the phrases, a kind of prayer.

  “Sweet Medicine, all-seeing spirit—what are you doing on the other side of the mountains?—Lift your head and see what has happened. This is where he lies.—Here is Red Hawk—his body cold against my breast.—Give him back to us, Sweet Medicine.—Is he not the son of your spirit?”

  Before the last phrase had ended, Rusty Sabin—Red Hawk—stirred in the mighty arms that supported him. Instantly he was lowered to the ground, and there he stood erect on his feet, though wavering. With one hand he grasped the wet mane of the White Horse, and the stallion suddenly lifted his head and neighed with a sound like that of a dozen trumpets, all his sleek, shining body trembling with the effort.

  The sound of that neigh carried Bill Tenney away like a strong wind. It seemed to bear him off from danger. In a moment he could feel himself swept over effortless leagues. That was what the great stallion could do.

  The effect of the neighing, also, was to lift Rusty Sabin’s head. He shook back the hair from his face and looked about him wildly for an instant. Then he saw Tenney, and came straight up to him. Tenney noticed that the White Horse followed like a dog, high above the head of his master, staring into the face of the stranger. Ah, for the time when that stallion would follow Bill Tenney in like manner, and look upon all other men with such eyes!

  The two big Cheyennes stood a little back of Rusty Sabin. By their manner, it was plain that they considered that another miracle had been performed and that Sweet Medicine, their Great Spirit, had actually interposed to call his favorite back from death. They stared with great eyes on the white man called Red Hawk. And their bearing gave Bill Tenney clearly to understand that the stealing of the White Horse from such a man would be a most difficult feat. Here were men ready to die for Red Hawk—and these Cheyennes seemed men indeed!

  But Rusty Sabin himself, as he stood before Tenney, suddenly lifted his hand. He advanced one foot, and stamped with it lightly on the ground. His face was pale. Water still dripped down his body. But his eyes were kindling and speech was apparent in him before it reached his lips.

  He uttered first some phrases in a guttural tongue which Bill Tenney could not understand. Then he appeared to recollect himself. When he spoke again, it was as though he translated his thoughts into a foreign tongue. Yet he was speaking English.

  “I was lost, and the Underwater People had laid their hands surely upon me,” he said, referring to his Cheyenne religious beliefs. “The White Horse runs faster than the wind. He is strong as the mountain goats that leap among the high places. When he leaps into the rivers, they fly in white foam away from him. He beats the dry bed of the stream with his feet, and leaps up to the farther shore.

  “But the White Horse also felt the hands of the Underwater People. They were drawing him down. The blue sky and the golden sun spun around above us. Breath that is dear to the body of man began to fail us. And at that moment, where all other men feared, we saw one who feared not. He came; his canoe was like a winged bird that lives in the air, close to the river. It was like the water ouzel that sings where the spray flies. The sweep of his paddle was like the beating of a wing. He lived and laughed in the danger.

  “He came to us. He gave us his hand. With a mighty strength, h
e drew us out of the water. The dear breath—the air which is life—he poured again through our nostrils. He gave back to us the blue sky, the wind, the flying clouds, the wide green earth and the buffalos which herd upon it. For us, once more, the tepee shall be raised and the women bring wood to the fire. The pot seethes with tender tongues and back-fat and strips of choice meat. The sacred smoke of the pipe again fills the lungs. The voices of the wise old men break upon the ear. The young men are singing. The drums still beat. The women are chanting. And the good warm sun falls on the face and the breast.”

  He paused in his half chanted recital, then, taking a deep breath and straightening himself so that he seemed taller, and so that Bill Tenney lost a sense of his own advantage in inches, Rusty Sabin ended briefly, but in a voice that came from his heart:

  “Ah, my brother!”

  He offered his right hand.

  Bill Tenney was a trifle slow in answering that gesture. For one thing, the extravagant poetical words of the speech had bewildered him more than a little. For another thing, he felt vaguely that he was being approached in a ceremonial manner, and that if he took the hand of Rusty Sabin he was committing himself to a sacred pledge. Pledges and holy things meant very little in the life of Bill Tenney; yet he hesitated because of Rusty Sabin’s blazing eyes.

  He remembered, then, that he had wanted to steal this man’s horse, and that, therefore, nothing could be more valuable to Tenney than to have Sabin’s confidence. So he took the hand with a sudden gesture.

  The grip which was returned to him was surprising. His own enormous strength could hardly brook that pressure. Madmen have a strength beyond their physique. Was this fellow a little touched in the brain?

  No, he was smiling now, and most calmly. The ecstasy seemed to have left him the moment that his hand closed over Bill Tenney’s hand.

  “I am very happy,” said Rusty, quietly. “In the world there are more men than there are wild ducks, even when the ducks fill the sky. But there are only a few friends.”

  With that, he held up one hand and slowly closed the fingers together. Bill Tenney had a queer feeling that his own soul lay within the grip.

  There was another ceremony that followed; a ceremony which seemed, so far as Rusty Sabin was concerned, almost as important as the first, for now he turned to the two Cheyennes and introduced them to Tenney. Their names had no meaning for Bill Tenney. He merely knew that he was being presented; and from the scarred fronts of these men he could guess that they were men of considerable importance, in the warfare of their tribe.

  The body of the one who was naked to the waist showed the dim, silver gleaming of half a dozen great scars, besides those huge breast scars that told of his tribal initiation. The other, probably, was just as well adorned under his buckskin shirt. Each of them in turn took Bill Tenney’s hand, in imitation of the white man’s style, and pumped it ardently up and down several times, then took a long stride to the rear. This was important, also. For Tenney had a distinct feeling that he had been inducted into the friendship of the entire Cheyenne tribe.

  CHAPTER 4

  A great many other things had been happening since the Minnie P. Larsen had heeled over against the sandbank. Righting herself at once, with the full thrust of her engines driving her ahead, she had slid rapidly forward until her nose touched the dock. The strong hawsers then drew her in beside the floating platform which kept pace with the sudden changes in the height of the stream.

  Even before the ship was made fast, several of the passengers were on the dock; but first of all sprang a huge man whose bulk seemed no weight to his lightness of foot.

  Major Arthur Marston marked this man well. The major, though he was only in his early thirties, already had made for himself a considerable name. That name was perhaps better established in Washington than it was on the plains, because in the capital city the major had certain friends who had pulled vital strings for him. He had been able to secure Federal backing for the erection of the fort which bore his own name, a compliment which was rarely paid to soldiers during their lives.

  Besides, the man certainly had done some distinguished Indian fighting. The motto of Major Marston, when it came to Indian warfare, was “Be thorough.” He believed the old adage that the only good Indians are the dead ones, and he lived up to his belief. Midnight attacks on Indian villages were his forte; and like the redskins themselves, he counted all scalps, no matter of what origin.

  If the hail of bullets which the major directed happened to strike down women or children, he expressed regret for the moment, but he was sure to include all the fallen in his list of “enemy killed.”

  His troops hated him with all their hearts, but they respected him because he was always successful in whatever he set out to do.

  The major was a fellow with a fine eye for a good military position, but he was even keener in spotting a pretty face in the distance. That was why he had picked out Maisry Lester, on the forward deck of the boat as it came in toward the dock. He had at hand good informants to name the principal members of that interesting group, and even before the White Horse had plunged over the rail, the major spotted all five of the group travelers to which Rusty Sabin belonged. He knew that it was Rusty who dived after the stallion. He knew, also, that it was Rusty’s father who strove like a giant to follow his son, and was barely subdued by force of numbers and was thus prevented from making the leap.

  But these things were of small account. What chiefly mattered to Major Marston was the agony of Maisry Lester. Her torment pleased Marston almost more than her beauty, because it showed that she could and would be true to her lover. That lover had been stolen away by the river. She would grieve heartily for a time, and then—Well, the major, like all good strategists, was a fellow who was able to look far into the future. Already he could see himself sitting close to that brown, rosy loveliness and making it smile.

  All this must be understood in order to interpret the perfect calm and mildness of Marston when he saw Marshall Sabin, as he leaped from the boat to the dock, suddenly pluck a cavalry trooper out of the saddle and drop the man on the ground, then leap into the empty saddle.

  The major issued not a single order to apprehend the giant; but as Marshall Sabin, with set teeth, and with hair windblown over his shoulders, galloped his stolen horse furiously down the river bank, Major Marston followed. The officer’s long-striding black gelding quickly overtook Sabin, and a few of those who looked after the pair expected to see the major attack the horse thief. Instead, they saw the major ride straight on, for he was seeing on the river, toward the first bend of the stream, some very odd things indeed.

  He was seeing both the White Horse and Rusty Sabin as they were taken in tow by a canoeist who must have had the courage of a madman. He saw the other paddlers, too, as they streamed their canoes down the slack water in pursuit, but carefully avoided coming near to the boiling verge of the central current. He saw still other men, on foot and on horseback, gathered at the bend. Then he lost sight of all that was happening.

  When he hove into view again, after his black had labored through a stretch of deep, soft sand, he saw Rusty Sabin, alive and on his feet, talking to his rescuer.

  The major was not pleased. The charming scenes in which he had pictured himself and Maisry Lester, and in which he had been consoler, tempter and lover, now vanished. He hated Rusty Sabin with a sudden, deep, quiet hate. The man had been about to lose his life; and now he was restored to the two possessions for which he was famous—the loveliest of girls, and the greatest horse on the prairies.

  The major felt that he had been insulted. His own life and fame were made to appear empty and thin, compared with the wealth of this youth. In a world properly adjusted, thought the major, such things could not be; and an officer in the United States Army surely ought to take precedence in every way over mere civilians.

  It may seem strange that the major should have burned with so much emotion about a man and a woman to neither of whom h
e had as yet spoken a word. But for years Marston had been master of all he surveyed, and few men can be given the power of a tyrant without becoming tyrannical.

  His second thought was that since he could not directly supplant Rusty Sabin, he would at least use him as an entering wedge to make the girl’s acquaintance. And so he came straight up to the group, flung himself out of the saddle, and confronted Bill Tenney’s wolfish face. The man had a dangerously bright eye and a calculating look, but the major grasped his hand with a hearty force.

  “As fine a thing as I ever saw!” he said to Tenney. “A thing that ought to be written in brass. You’d be an honor to any race. You’re worthy of a command, my friend. Tell me your name, because I want to remember it!”

  For an instant the thief steadied his bright eyes on those of the soldier. There was more to this officer than one could detect at the first glance, he decided.

  “I’m Bill Tenney,” he said then. “I didn’t do so much. Things just—happened.”

  The major laughed this modesty aside, and next wrung the hand of Rusty Sabin.

  “We’ve heard of you, Sabin,” he said. “You and the White Horse have ridden pretty far into our minds. If you’d passed out of the picture in the Tulmac, just now, it would have been a black day for the Fort. Come on, my friends! You’re going to sit at my table, and we’ll celebrate. We don’t have enough wine to drink it every day, but this is a special occasion.”

  Here Marshall Sabin came up, his borrowed horse panting and straining under the crushing weight of the huge man. Dismounting as actively as any youth, the man known as Wind Walker laid a hand on the shoulder of his son. Major Marston, watching closely, saw them look at one another with a wordless smile. And again, savage jealousy entered the heart of the major. For this red-headed fellow—this younger Sabin—seemed to be surrounded by nothing except faith and affection. What a welcome would be awaiting him, for instance, when he eventually returned from the shadow of death to the Lester girl?