by Max Brand
“If your girl Maisry has left you, why do you wring your heart like a wet shirt? You can squeeze plenty of misery out of it, but too much wringing is sure to tear the garment. Let her be, then. One good woman’s as like another as two peas in one pod. In color, Blue Bird’s more olive than white; but she’s a pretty thing if you look at her twice. Look at her now, and tell me, Red Hawk.”
Rusty Sabin got up and went to the girl. He took her hand and led her across the lodge, so that she sat down beside him.
“What is your father saying about you, Blue Bird?” he asked. “Sweet Medicine gave me eyes clear enough to see the truth—that there is only one maiden among the Cheyennes. Hai! But now you are unhappy. You look down, and there is sweat on your forehead. Tell me why you are sad? Shall I make Lazy Wolf stop talking like this?”
With the clean white of his deerskin sleeve he wiped her forehead, and the girl looked up with sudden resolution.
“I am not sad,” she said. “But I am seeing so much happiness that I am afraid. Like a hunter who is thirsty in summer and is afraid that the blue water he sees may not be true.”
“Good girl! Brave girl!” said Lazy Wolf. “By the Lord, Blue Bird, I’m proud of you. There’s no lying or sneakery about you. You see what she is, Red Hawk. The bravest and the rightest and the truest woman that a man could find—and loving you these many years, if you’ll look back and have a thought about it. And if—”
“Hush!” said Rusty Sabin. “Is it true, Blue Bird? Hai! What a fool and a blind fool I have been. I seem to remember certain things. That time when I went out to die in the Sacred Valley and you stopped me and talked to me; I remember that.—I remember many things now.”
He took her hand and patted it. His eye looked on her with a grave concern.
“Now, then,” said Lazy Wolf, “since Maisry is gone from you, Red Hawk, be a wise man and listen to me. Take Blue Bird for your wife; and before many years, you’ll have children squalling in your lodge and you’ll be as happy as any fool of a man in the world. What more do you want? Houses and carpets and glasses on the table don’t make happiness. You may never be much more than a blacksmith among the whites, but you’re a great chief among the Cheyennes. And here’s a Cheyenne girl for you. Why don’t you take her?”
The same thoughtful seriousness remained in the face of Red Hawk as he asked:
“Do you want me to take you, Blue Bird?”
Tenney, with the blood roaring in his ears and aching in his temples, waited for the assent. Then he saw that she was sitting straighter than ever, staring at Rusty.
She said, “If I don’t want you, why have I sacrificed every year the best beaded dress that I could make? Why have I prayed to Sweet Medicine to put me in your thoughts?—But I know this about you. You had one father; and when you found him there was no other. You had many horses; but when you found the White Horse there was no other horse. You left your people to follow your father. You will leave the Cheyennes soon, to follow the way of the White Horse. Of each kind, there is only room in your heart for one. So if you make me your wife, one day, you may see this Maisry again; and then all thought of me may run out of your heart like water out of a basket made only to hold corn.”
“Hai!” said Red Hawk, softly. “She speaks like a wise old man at the council. She speaks better than a medicine man. Blue Bird, you are beautiful and you are also wise. You are half white, and the Indian blood only makes you more beautiful. It is true that I keep seeing another face that comes between us. I try to think of it frowning and scorning me, but all I can remember is the smiling. However, your father is older and wiser than I am. If you can be happy with me, we shall be married.”
She stared at him again through a long moment.
“I don’t want to paint the surface of water,” she said. “I don’t want my happiness to be drawn on the wind that will change. I am going out to walk and think.”
With that, she got up and left the lodge.
“See how wise she is—and how good!” said Rusty to Tenney.
But Bill Tenney could not speak; a fist seemed to be stuffed down his throat.
“She’ll be back,” said Lazy Wolf, “as soon as enough sun has shone on her to make her believe that this miracle is true!”
But she was not back. And at the close of the day there was no sight of her. When inquiries were made, one of the young braves who circled the camp continually at a distance from the lodges, as a guard, said that he had seen her riding a pinto toward the south.
“She has gone to a little distance to think and to be alone. There’s a brain behind that pretty face,” said Lazy Wolf.
CHAPTER 21
Blue Bird rode far, because she was riding to find the truth. She rode south, which should be the way to warmth and easiness; but because she rode to find truth, she rode also to find sorrow. That is the fate of human lives.
She was bound for the town of Fort Marston to find the girl called Maisry Lester. Once she heard Maisry renounce Red Hawk by word of mouth, then she would believe that the miracle was true.
Trouble came early on her march. It seemed as though God, out of His heaven, had marked Blue Bird down, because before the night was over He sent down a sweeping storm of rain, and then one of hail so huge and heavy that horse or man could hardly live in it.
The wild mustang on which the Blue Bird rode tried to buck her weight off its back, but it might as well have tried to pitch off its skin. The bronco grew tired of bucking, and the half-breed girl was still on its back.
The hailstones struck like small pebbles, thrown from an unsure hand. Some of them were roaring on the face of the prairie. Others were beating against her body. One of them, almost as big as an egg, landed squarely between the eyes on the smooth of her forehead, and split the skin so that the blood ran down. That was a blow from heaven; but she rode on.
In a great, raw-edged gulley in the badlands, she found a huge boulder, and on the leeside of that she remained with the horse. The pony huddled against the rock, and she huddled against the horse. The fear and the terrible roar of the heavy storm made horse and girl alike silent and cringing.
The water began to rise in the bottom of the gulley. It rose and flowed. It swept over her feet, over her ankles. It grew higher and noisier, and sucked and gurgled and pulled at her legs, half-way to the knee. Still she remained there, because the fury that rushed out of the sky was more dreadful than the torrent that was flooding over the earth. She looked up, and the glare of the lightnings dazzled her eyes.
She began to say, softly, loudly enough for her ears to hear her sweet voice:
“Oh, god of Red Hawk, greatest of the Sky People, lord of all the spirits—Sweet Medicine—be good to me! Do not strike me down with the pelting ice. Do not burn me with the great sky-fires. Let me go on to the end of my way.”
Afterward, the uproar from the sky was less than the rushing noises of the water about her. Then she left the shelter of the rock and made the unwilling mustang cross the bed of the gulley.
They dropped into deep, whirling water, which swept her around and around. She could feel the pony fighting for life beneath her. But after that they gained shoal water, and found before them a sloping bank up which the mustang could climb. So they came out on the level prairie again.
Compared with the terrible beating of the hail, and the coldness of it, that pouring of the rain was like the shining of warm summer skies. There was no wetness to the water, because it was so warm. She parted her lips, and the rain stung them softly, and she laughed.
“Sweet Medicine has heard my prayer,” she said to herself. “It may be that he will let me take back in my heart all of the happiness that it wishes to hold.”
Afterward, the rain fell to a drizzle. Still there was darkness for a long time, and the sucking sound of the hoofs of her mustang as they pulled out of the sticky earth. They came to the sight of the dawn, which was moving in grayness out of the earth, all around the circle of the sky.
The rain stopped. She almost felt in her flesh the movement of the wind that carried the clouds away from the surface of the sky. The bright sun came up and struck at her from the due east, so that she was sure that she had held her course steadily to the south through the night.
The sun climbed higher. She felt the warmth and the sleepy comfort. As the sleepiness increased, she knew that it would not be well for her to go into the town and speak to the white girl while she was in that weary state. Therefore, when she came to a gulley, with its bank pitching out like a roof, she lay down there after side-lining her horse so that it would not wander far.
The moment that the softness of her body was stretched on the hard pebbles she was sound asleep, and smiling in her sleep. God sends this peculiar grace to those that labor hard. The lax strings of her strength grew gradually taut again, and when they were pulling hard enough, suddenly she was awake.
There was a flaring brightness of sun in the sky. She was hot, her body fevered, and there was a sound of running water in her ears. And so she pulled off her fitted clothes, and gave one half-shy, half-laughing look about her at the emptiness of the gulley and the sky. Then she dived into the blue of a pool, and swam at her will.
Afterward, she dried herself like an Indian, with the whipping edge of her hand. She was in no haste. The force and the brightness of the sun polished her legs and her swinging arms. She was as hard as any active boy, and yet nature clad her in such a grace of curving lines that she looked softly feminine.
She knew that she was beautiful, because all women have objective knowledge of themselves. She understood perfectly how her beauty showed through the clinging doeskins in which she was always dressed; and she wondered, like a child and also like a woman, how Red Hawk could look at her calmly, and how he could take her hand and talk to her like a brother.
At last she mounted and continued on her way. And after a time, out of the wide flat of the prairie, she saw the flat head of Fort Marston rising from the ground. These white men, wolf-like or fox-like, were creatures to be dreaded. When she saw the pointed roofs of the houses in the town, she was shuddering.
CHAPTER 22
When she came into the town, the first person she passed was a man carrying a heavy sack over his shoulders. White men work like women. In all ways, all white men were wrong. The very smell of the cookery, the very odor of the town, made her nostrils quiver with disgust.
She said in English that had only a small touch of accent in it, “Will you tell me where I can find Maisry?”
“In me,” said the man who carried the sack. “You can find plenty of misery in me.”
He walked on, slowly, his knees giving a trifle to the weight upon his back.
Puzzled, she rode on, and presently she was in the main street of the town. The houses looked out at her with many eyes. The street was worn by a thousand interwoven ruts, all black from the rainfall, with welters of sun-brightened waters here and there. Why should men live in one place, beside one trail, when there is the glorious wide earth to wander over? Why should they fix their houses in one place, like old bulls bogged down, instead of making for themselves the light, warm, beautiful lodges which can be taken down and packed on horses, and made to travel swiftly over the plains?
Around a corner came a prancing horse, with a man in uniform on its back. Blue Bird wanted to pull a robe over her face and go on, shamefaced. But she had no robe with her; and, besides, she had to ask questions. So she lifted her right hand in the Indian salute, and her open eyes looked straight into the leering eyes of the sergeant.
“How!” she said.
“Hello, sweetheart!” said the sergeant.
The word struck her like a whiplash. But her face did not change.
“Will you tell me where I can find Maisry?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you where you can find me,” he said. “Damned if I wouldn’t let you find me any day.—You ask for Sergeant Tim O’Connor, and you’ll be finding me. I’ll be right at your hand. I’ll always be there, damn my heart, if you want to ask for me!”
Disgust stiffened her lips.
She kept on looking the sergeant straight in the eyes, and repeated, “Can you tell me where to find Maisry?”
He was abashed. He answered, “Try the house at the corner of the fort. The cabin with the two chimneys. That’s the place where Maisry Lester lives, if she’s what you want to see.”
He went on, the feet of his horse making sucking sounds in the wet of the mud, and the water spurting out like flames from the hollow of the hoofs.
Blue Bird went on to the house with the two chimneys. In the doorway, on the step, she saw a girl knitting, making the needles flash in the sun. Her head was bent, and Blue Bird knew that she was not very happy, this girl on the doorstep.
It was Maisry. Blue Bird knew it was Maisry before the head was lifted. She knew by the delicate round of the neck, by the glow of color like that which strikes through the skin of an Indian baby. Her brow was smooth, when she lifted her head, and on her lips was that faint smile which beauty places there. As for her eyes—well, the eyes of Blue Bird were blue, also, but the color of these was like a stain in the face.
Blue Bird swung down from her horse, and the other girl stood up. She was just the height of Blue Bird, but she was dressed in an ugly dress of printed calico. But the Blue Bird knew where to look. She looked at the ankles and the hands, and the wrists, and the throat. To an Indian, beauty does not lie in the face alone, and certainly not in the dress.
“Are you Maisry?” she asked.
The answer came, “Yes. I am she.”
More than the name and the beauty, the voice struck cold through Blue Bird’s heart, for it was a voice so gentle and so soft that it made a music that was hateful to the ears of the Blue Bird.
So many thoughts rushed through Blue Bird’s mind, and she stood there gazing bitterly so long, that at last what she said was simply:
“Do you want him?”
“Want him?” echoed Maisry.
She tried to smile, but the fierce, great eyes of the stranger daunted her.
“Yes. Do you want him, or have you thrown him away?”
Maisry stared for only an instant longer, and then she exclaimed, “Are you talking of Rusty Sabin?”
“I am talking about Red Hawk, the great chief and medicine man,” cried Blue Bird. “Is it true that he ever looked at you and wanted you?”
She saw Maisry catch her breath. The change in the face and the change in the eyes worked a swift poisoning of Blue Bird’s soul. She had a good knife at her belt. She wanted to drive it now between the breasts of the white girl. She wanted so much to strike her that she made a step closer and added:
“Is it true that you are a fool?—Is it true that you have thrown him away?”
“No!” gasped Maisry.
She was so shocked that she looked positively stupid. The Blue Bird wished that Maisry would always look like this.
Said the half-breed girl, “Now you lie. For I know everything about it. He gave you the green beetle, and that is his medicine. That is half of his strength. It came from his mother. With it, he gave you his soul, but you returned the green beetle to him. You laughed and you returned the green beetle to him.—Hai! Is there no shame in you?”
Maisry was silent, thinking about Major Marston’s words. And she was beginning to grasp at another explanation that started to make her beautiful, for the dead hope revived and burned up in her.
The Indian girl was saying, “If you have given him up, I shall have him. I shall be his squaw, and his children shall grow in my body as the corn grows in the earth.”
“I gave him the green beetle because he begged me to give it back to him,” said Maisry. “He sent for it.”
The Blue Bird opened her mouth to make a harsh denial. She closed her lips again without having spoken, and it seemed to her that she had breathed not air, but fire.
“The messenger, he spoke the word that was not so!” said
the Blue Bird.
“He? He could not lie! He is Major Marston!” cried Maisry. “He—”
She hushed herself, for the Blue Bird had lifted her hand.
“Listen to me,” said the half-breed girl. “I sat in the lodge. I heard Red Hawk speak. I heard the weight of his heart in his words. I heard a heart heavier than the heart of a tired man. He said that you had sent him away, and that you had given him back the green beetle and his soul along with it. Do you hear?”
“I hear,” whispered Maisry.
“And he told me, afterward,” said the Blue Bird, “that he would take me for his squaw. He took my hand in his hand. He looked into my eyes, but it was only as a brother would look. I can go back to the Cheyennes and take him for my husband. I can give him my hand and my body. I can be the mother of his children. But will you promise never to call him back, with a word or with your eyes?”
Maisry let the tears run down her face.
“What can I do?” said Maisry. “How can I take him away from you?”
The Blue Bird came to her with a terrible anguish and a terrible envy breaking her heart. She took Maisry’s hand, close to the round, narrow wrist. Blue Bird’s hand was not very soft; it had been toughened by using the fleshing horn and the hoe. The weights she had carried made her back straight, and the sense of Cheyenne glory in this world had made her heart proud. Out of these strengths she spoke, holding Maisry by the wrist.
“If I take him,” she said, “how long will he belong to me? The thought of you will come over him as the cry of the wolf pack comes over the tame wolf. He will lift his head, and presently he will be away through the night, and I shall never see him again. He is not a man to have two wives. He is a man with only one friend, one horse, one knife—and he will be a man with only one woman, also. O little soft, blue-eyed fool—are you woman enough to be his woman?”
