Frontier Feud

by Max Brand

  “No! Not all gone. For I have you, brother! And as for the rest, I have my tribe—I have the Cheyennes—I have my own people!”

  Suffering made his face seem suddenly older, and yet his voice rose louder as he added:

  “They are my happiness. My people are my happiness. Ah, Sweet Medicine, make my heart so wide that there is room in it for every Cheyenne, both the old and the young.—Give me the power! Give me the power to help them!”

  He went, after all this, straight to the lodges where the sick people had been gathered. In the three big tepees the women, the men, and the children lay, each group with its separate shelter.

  Into the lodges of the children Rusty went first, and their voices rose up to greet him in a soft chirruping, like that of so many birds. It was a terrible and a touching thing to see, their trust and their perfect faith in the big White Indian.

  Only the lad who had crawled to Tenney’s feet that evening was incapable of movement now. He lay on his back like a corpse, and the puckering of his starved cheeks appeared to make him smile.

  They would die, thought Tenney. They would all die, and in some way the grief for their deaths would revert upon Rusty Sabin’s head.

  Tenney drew back by the entrance flap and bowed his head. If he had known a prayer, there was that in his spirit which would have made him utter it now.

  CHAPTER 19

  The women and the men who were the parents of the sick children crouched beside them motionless. They looked like figures of doom. Well, they would probably be roused when Rusty Sabin began to dance and prance. He was a “medicine man,” the Cheyennes said, and Bill Tenney knew that all medicine men dance and howl and contort themselves.

  But Rusty did not so much as speak. He merely stared down for a long time on the bodies of the sick. For Indians, they were dusty pale; and, above all, the eyes were strange. The whites were not luminous and translucent. They were dead white, like paint or snow.

  After a moment, Rusty turned from the lodge with Bill Tenney at his heels. Right out of the camp Rusty proceeded, to a low hillock from which Tenney could look back on the entire circle of the village, thinly glowing with spots of firelight.

  “What’s comin’ up now?” asked Tenney.

  But Rusty merely raised a hand for silence. He pulled off his shirt and sat down cross-legged, in front of a handful of fire which he had made with a few dead twigs from a bush. Into that fire he sprinkled sweet grass from his pouch, and with the thick, odorous smoke he bathed himself thoroughly. The fire died as the ceremony of purification ended, and Rusty stood up with his arms raised to the sky.

  He remained in that frozen attitude for a long time, silent. It seemed to Tenney that the man must be made of metal to endure the posture so rigidly and for such a time. A sudden gasp of breath from Rusty made Tenney look quickly around him; and then, far in the east, he saw a dim hand of light that freshened quickly and became a point of white fire. This, in turn, grew into a full moon, stretching like a vast golden disk on the horizon.

  Rusty, with a faint groan of content, dropped down on the ground and lay at full length, exhausted, panting, while awe such as Tenney never had known before spread over him. Magic, silent magic had seemed to be in Rusty’s prayer. There was not much room for superstition in the soul of Tenney, but small cold shudders ran through his heart as he stared at that rising moon. If a prayer had raised it, might it not vanish again like a breath, an exhalation?

  Still it rose, shining ever more brightly, while the wavering prairie came into wider view. And Tenney, closely wrapped in a buffalo robe against the chill of the night, waited for other and stranger things to happen.

  Again, again, and yet again, he saw Rusty rise from the ground and offer up that silent prayer, with upraised arms. But nothing further happened. Each time, Rusty sank back to the ground more exhausted, and the interval was longer before he could rise once more.

  He spoke only once in the Cheyenne tongue, and once again in English, when he said to himself, loud enough for Tenney to hear:

  “Sweet Medicine, they are hungry. Teach me what food to give my children!”

  The poor, starved youngsters, the withered women, the skeleton braves who were wasted by the mysterious disease, all of them were the “children” of Rusty Sabin.

  The coolness of the night began to make Tenney shiver under his robe; yet Rusty, though half naked, appeared to be unconscious of the discomfort, rising time and again to stand there until the arms which he lifted wavered with weakness and slowly sank of their own leaden weight. Then he would drop to the ground, rest, and renew his effort.

  The gray dawn had begun to creep around the edges of the sky, suddenly expanding the plains to the vastness of the unbounded sea. The moon, at the zenith, had turned into a pale, strangely-formed cloud, when Rusty stood on his feet again. He had been hardly a minute in this posture before he started so violently that Tenney looked up in haste, and, following the direction in which Rusty stared, he saw an eagle balancing high up, where the light seemed brighter than that which filtered down to the earth. Still higher, another eagle hid itself in distance.

  Now the first one stooped. It struck a rabbit so close to the hillock where the two men were that Tenney could hear the poor little beast cry out with an almost human scream. He heard the loud report, also, as the eagle “exploded” its wings at the end of its stoop. Then the great bird went up with laboring wings, in slow circles.

  It was not very high in the air before trouble came to it. The second pirate of the air shot down with folded wings, swifter than a falling stone. It seemed to Tenney that he could almost hear the hissing of speed. At least the eagle with the rabbit was in some manner warned of danger, and turned on his back in the air like a swimmer in water. The rabbit fell from his talons, the little body streaking downward while the two eagles, forgetting the prey, struggled across the sky with angry screamings.

  Not three paces from Tenney, the dead rabbit struck the ground a heavy blow. Rusty was instantly upon it, raising it in his hands. He was so weary that he was staggering, but there was laughter in the voice which he raised to thank Sweet Medicine for this answer to his prayer.

  “Is that it?” asked Tenney, almost sick with awe. “Is that the thing for the sick folks to eat? Is that what Sweet Medicine says?”

  Rusty shook his head.

  “The Sky People talk a strange language, brother,” he answered. “Their words and their signs are never what they seemed. Now look at what we find! The body of the rabbit has been torn open. It is eviscerated; the entrails are gone. Where? The eagles have flown away with them.—Ah, there is the answer, I think! It is not of the solid body but of the entrails that the sick must eat to become well.”

  “Hold on, Rusty!” said Tenney. “Even starving folks wouldn’t want to eat that!”

  “No,” said Rusty. “That is true. They must not eat what is unclean. But the liver is clean. There are many buffalo. The plains are covered with them, and the sick must be given fresh liver after the hunting.—If I am wrong, I must pray again!”

  The whole village was roused not many minutes later; and throngs of buffalo hunters, riding their swiftest horses, set out, with Tenney in their midst. Rusty Sabin had gone to purify the sick with the fumes of sweet grass before they were given food; but Tenney, mounted on the best of the horses of the war chief, Standing Bull, ranged with the swift hunters far out over the plains. He did not need to know the Cheyenne tongue in order to understand that these were peerless stalkers of game; and when the surround was made and the charge delivered into the thronged masses of the buffalo, he had to admit that he did not exist as a horseman, compared with these bronze monsters.

  They took their mustangs right into the midst of the herd and fired from a yard or more into the huge beasts. What Tenney lacked in skill as a horseman he made up for with his expert handling of the rifle; and he accounted for three cows in the hunt. But he felt himself dwarfed when he saw Standing Bull, disdaining a rifle, ri
de into the herd like a yelling madman, armed only with a powerful bow and a quiver of arrows. One of those arrows Tenney saw drive right through the body of a cow until it thrust out on the farther side!

  When the stampeding herd broke away at last, the grass was spotted with dead buffalo for miles, and the hunters were hurrying here and there to identify their kill and put their mark upon it. Those who had used arrows had signed their game with the tool that killed it, but there was some dispute over those slaughtered with bullets. Those disputes were settled by Standing Bull.

  In the meantime, the women who had trooped at the rear of the hunt with the extra horses came up swiftly and set about the butchering of the meat. There came over Tenney such a sense of abundance, after the joy of the hunt, that he swore he would never leave this life. Then, with a massive chunk of meat loaded on his horse, he started back with the other braves towards the village.

  There was no faith in Tenney that the eating of liver would help the sick Indians. Neither he nor any man of that day could have known that in fresh liver lay the cure of anæmia such as that which had wasted the Cheyennes. But in a single day, strange effects from the new medicine were observed. The dusty look began to leave the faces of the dying. And on the second day, Tenney, with his own eyes, saw that boy who had barely been able to crawl to his feet, now erect and walking, though with staggering knees!

  All doubt left Tenney when he saw this thing. A miracle had been performed, and he was amazed that the Cheyennes took it so calmly. Lazy Wolf offered the only explanation.

  “They just expect it of Red Hawk,” he said. “They think that Sweet Medicine hears every word of his prayers, and so they’re ready for whatever happens. He couldn’t surprise them, now. If he turned himself into a cloud of smoke under their eyes, they would merely grunt and cover their mouths.”

  “Aye, but how did he do it?—How did it happen?” demanded Tenney.

  “How would I know?” asked Lazy Wolf. “It must have been half luck and half chance. But the thing worked. And Red Hawk’s a happy fellow just now. He sees a promise in this.”

  “What kind of a promise?” asked Tenney.

  “Why, he was being wiped out. His father had left him; he had lost his girl; and the White Horse had run away. That showed him that Sweet Medicine was turning his back. But now comes the cure of the Indians. The whole tribe is laughing, it’s so happy. And Red Hawk begins to feel that Sweet Medicine is looking his way again. For him, it’s almost as though he had the White Horse again, and his girl on the back of the horse.”

  Tenney rubbed his knuckles across his chin.

  “You don’t think there’s anything queer about this, do you? You don’t think that things are likely to happen—queer things, I mean?”

  Lazy Wolf looked sharply at him.

  “Of course queer things will happen,” he answered. “Whenever a man has perfect faith, he’s sure to start doing ten times as much as any other man could do!”

  CHAPTER 20

  When the heart of an Indian overflows with joy, he must express his pleasure in acts of kindness. And that was what big Bill Tenney discovered before long. The whole thing began as though upon a signal.

  That morning he was taking his ease in the lodge of Lazy Wolf, where he and Red Hawk were given hospitality. He had beneath him five or six folds of heavy buffalo robes to ease the hardness of the ground, and his strong shoulders were made comfortable against an embroidered back-rest. Near the entrance of the lodge, the Blue Bird was beading a pair of moccasins. She worked continually, smiling, her fingers apparently guided through the intricacies of their work by instinct so that her eyes were left free to travel where they would.

  Now and then her glance, as she lifted her head, touched on Tenney and gave him her smile; but more often, she looked towards her father and Red Hawk, until it was plain to Tenney that the joy in her heart sprang from Rusty Sabin’s nearness. If she occasionally smiled at the stranger, that was merely because her eyes would have had to shed kindness on the entire world, on this day. And Tenney, sick with longing because of the blue of her eyes, began to hate Rusty Sabin as only a jealous lover can.

  As for Rusty, he sat up, cross-legged, and listened eagerly to the words of Lazy Wolf who, as inert as his name, lounged against a padded back-rest and talked at random of many things—of trapping in the cold north, or trading across the burning deserts of the southwest, and, above all, of the scenes and incidents of his life among his own race of white men. To this Rusty paid attention of the most childish sort. He was generally simple and naïve in his manner, but on occasion, among the rest of the tribe he could wrap himself in a very sufficient dignity. In the lodge, however, dignity was laid aside. He uncrossed his legs now, and lay flat on his belly, with his chin in his hands, staring with wide eyes at Lazy Wolf. He was like a small boy. Perhaps that was why Blue Bird now and then frowned a mere shade and shook her head.

  Aye, but she loved him. And she knew that no matter how he acted, he was the savior of the tribe, the friend of Sweet Medicine, the hero of battles, and on a day the master of the White Horse.

  Such savage pains of jealousy disturbed Tenney that he looked around the tent, gloomily. In it there was piled all manner of Indian wealth, for in his double rôle of trader and interpreter, Lazy Wolf kept himself supplied with all the luxuries that an Indian camp could provide. There were whole bales of blankets and robes, still corded and untouched. Even the inside of the lodge had been painted with gaudy Indian designs. There were half a dozen rifles and some shotguns, boxes of ammunition, costly painted robes, fine willow beds decorated from end to end, fishing tackle, bags of pemican against the winter, bales of dried meat, heaped baskets of corn and roots, a whole stack of garments for Lazy Wolf, and another for the Blue Bird.

  Into this scene of plenty more was suddenly poured, for a voice spoke at the entrance to the tent and Standing Bull, the war chief, appeared. The huge man was dressed in his full regalia, with a feathered shield of tough bull’s hide, almost strong enough to turn a rifle bullet, a lance in his hand, his fringed shirt covered with delicate embroideries of colored porcupine quills, his moccasins and leggings flaming with the same colors. Maturity was scarring and seaming his face more than battle; but when he spoke to his dearest friend, Red Hawk, his expression made his features seem beautiful. He said a few words which made Red Hawk jump up in protest. Standing Bull merely smiled and left the tent.

  The Blue Bird let her shining eyes rest on Tenney for a moment.

  “Standing Bull,” she translated, “says that the Cheyennes are coming, bringing gifts to Red Hawk because of the thing he has done. Red Hawk wants no gifts. Hai! If he were as naked as winter, he would not want gifts—because there is no pride in him.”

  For all that, Red Hawk had to go out and stand in front of the tent, for the people began coming in throngs, some bearing gifts and others to watch the presentations. Every one of the sick who were being cured was able to give some token of regard. One man brought up a whole herd of a dozen horses. Others led horses loaded with guns, axes, knives, beads, flour, sugar (that priceless treasure of the Indian!), robes that were furred or tanned or painted, doeskin softer than flannel, moccasins, beaded shirts, and all the wealth that an Indian can cherish. Presently a vast heap was gathered beside the entrance to the tepee.

  Afterward, Red Hawk went back into the big lodge and sat down with a gloomy face. Blue Bird carried in the heavy gifts and stacked them here and there. She was panting and laughing from the work. Tenney helped her with the weightier things.

  “Thank you, brother,” murmured the girl.

  He had picked up a good many Cheyenne words by this time, and he had learned that all of the tribe greeted him by the same term. For, if Red Hawk called him “brother,” he was “brother” to all the Cheyennes. That was why they invited him into their lodges. That was why the children came up to him fearlessly and took his hand, just as they took the hand of Red Hawk. That was why, only the day before, a brave had
stripped from Tenney’s back the buffalo robe he wore and given him, in exchange, a priceless painted robe that would have made a museum piece. Other warriors had presented him with moccasins, with knives and guns, until he was already able to set up his own lodgings the moment he cared to do so. Thus he was “brother,” also, to the Blue Bird, although “brother” was not the term he would have liked to hear from her.

  When the work of storing away was ended, Tenney heard Lazy Wolf saying, “Why are you unhappy, Rusty?”

  And Rusty answered, “They love me, and I love them. But all their gifts and all their kindness cannot fill an empty heart.”

  “Why is it empty?” asked Lazy Wolf.

  “There was the white girl,” answered Rusty, with perfect frankness. “She sent me away. I gave her the green beetle as a sign that we loved one another, and she sent it back to me to show that she cared no longer!”

  Blue Bird, again at her beadwork, sat suddenly straight.

  “Why do you say the thing that is not so?” she demanded.

  “I say the thing that is so,” answered Rusty, gloomily.

  “She won’t believe you,” said Lazy Wolf. “She would have you soon enough. She’d be your second squaw, or your third—and still be happy.”

  The girl, her face flaming, jumped to her feet and started to leave the lodge, but Lazy Wolf stopped her by saying, “That is what I want to talk about. Stay where you are, Blue Bird, and tell me when I say the wrong thing.”

  She paused by the entrance. Her hands were gripped hard at her sides. Tenney’s keen eyes could see the small, wild pulsation of the heart under the closely fitted doeskin shirt. Fires of shame and of love were in her, and an exquisitely cold anguish ran through the body of Bill Tenney, the thief.

  “Now look at her, Red Hawk,” said Lazy Wolf. “Or you don’t have to look at the poor girl. You ought to see her in the eye of your mind well enough, and be able to answer me. Your father’s gone, my lad. Well, it will be a long time before the Wind Walker comes back to you. He’s as near to the Pawnees as you are to the Cheyennes or flesh to bone. However, I’ve always been damned fond of you. And if you could put up with a fat, lazy old man, I’d be happy to have you somewhere near.