Frontier Feud

by Max Brand

  After she had asked this, the strength went out of Blue Bird. It drained out through her eyes, for she was staring at Maisry and seeing her beauty, and it seemed to the Blue Bird that the tears that rolled down her face were from her heart, leaving it empty.

  CHAPTER 23

  True sympathy between two women is as rare as true blue in the sky. Between this pair it seemed impossible, because when Blue Bird looked at Maisry she knew, with an almighty knowledge, that Rusty Sabin belonged to the white girl. In knowledge like this, men have no part. They are beneath such understanding.

  It would have been a miracle if a man could have lost bitterness as quickly as the Blue Bird. But it was as though the tears melted the envy out of her heart and left only sorrow, which is a pure thing. Maisry put her arm, cautiously, around the slender body of the Cheyenne. She felt the strength and the big beat of the heart and the deep, quick breathing. She was awed, and she was also merciful. She felt that she was looking up, not down.

  “You don’t hate me?” she said.

  “I am trying to. I have hated you. I shall hate you very soon again,” said the Blue Bird.

  After that, with exquisite lack of logic, she dropped her head on Maisry’s shoulder and clasped her in her strong young arms and sobbed, silently. Indian women make no noise in their grief, unless it is for the dead.

  Mrs. Lester found her daughter in that attitude on the step of the house. She cried out:

  “Maisry! An Indian! A frightful, red-skinned—Maisry, step away from her this instant! Richard, come here and see—”

  Maisry lifted her head. There was so much goodness in her that she was not so much rejoicing over the lover who had been given back to her as she was sorrowing for the Cheyenne.

  She merely said, “I want to see Major Marston. I want you to ask father to go find him at the fort.”

  “Major Marston? Of course I’ll send for him,” said Mrs. Lester.

  She was overjoyed. When she thought of Major Marston, which was several times a day, she always thanked God for placing such a splendid man where her daughter could see him. So she ran back into the house as Maisry led the Indian girl inside. To her husband, Mrs. Lester exclaimed:

  “Get Arthur Marston quickly. Bring him here at once. Maisry is asking for him. It’s the first time. And maybe—maybe this is the beginning of something—”

  Richard Lester looked up from his book. His lean face was filling out with health now. He said to his wife:

  “I’ll get Arthur Marston, but never think that Maisry will see him with your eyes.”

  However he went quickly up to the fort and came back with the major.

  When Marston heard that Maisry was taking compassion on a stranger, he was not at all surprised. She was the sort to take compassion. When the major thought of all Maisry’s virtues, he knew that God had specially designed her to make him a wife and so compose a difference and fill a vacuum, which nature abhors.

  A good deal of the jump went out of the major’s sprightly step when he came into the house and found Maisry in her own little room, sitting beside her bed, on which the Indian girl was stretched. But when he looked into Maisry’s eyes, all his smiles went out.

  She had been grave from the day when Rusty Sabin left the town. But now she was stern also, and the upward tilt of her face, which made her more lovely, gave her also an imperious command. She said with the directness which was part of her nature:

  “Why did you say that Rusty had begged for the green beetle, Arthur?”

  There was a thunderclap in the heart of the major. Even the hardiest liar in the world will feel that stroke when he is confronted with his lie. Perhaps that is a token that we are honest by nature, no matter how we overlay the fact with our guiles and savage distortions of instinct. However, he had the natural fertility of the born liar, also, and he merely remarked:

  “Why, of course he sent for it.”

  Here the Blue Bird suddenly lifted her head; she rested her weight on her hands and arms, and looked up at the major. She had been weeping with a silent violence. Her eyes were a little swollen, her lips were thick, and her face was reddened. But the major had been long enough on the plains to think her darker skin just as lovely as that of Maisry. She said to him:

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

  There is no word in all the Indian tongues for “liar.” There is only the roundabout phrase which means the same thing, and the Blue Bird had to translate her thoughts out of Cheyenne into English.

  “Come, come!” said the major. “What tricks and antics has Rusty Sabin been playing with this pretty young thing? What sort of nonsense has she been talking to you?”

  The Blue Bird leaped to her feet.

  “I am the daughter of the white, Lazy Wolf,” she cried, “and he is almost a chief among the Cheyennes. I speak the thing that is true, and I have only one tongue!—You—” she exclaimed more loudly, pointing an indignant hand, “you are a man who says the thing that is not so!”

  The major merely laughed. He stopped laughing at once, because even he could see that his laughter had a hollow and an unreal sound. Then, making himself doubly serious, and striking himself grave in an instant, he said to Maisry:

  “Now, let’s get down to the bottom of this, Maisry. Something has troubled you. Is it something this girl has said to you? She’s cut up. Don’t be too hard on her. She’s trying to do her best about something, I suppose; but the right words come hard to people who don’t know a strange language.”

  And Maisry said, “She tells me that Rusty would marry her, except that he still cares about me. He thinks that I sent the green beetle back to him as a sign that I no longer love him.—Arthur, you brought me his message.”

  CHAPTER 24

  No one really knows how to pretend innocence, but the major offered a very good imitation. His color decreased but his smile was cheerful, his eye bright and steady.

  “Indian heads are likely to get white ideas twisted,” he said. “I know that this girl is trying to tell the truth. In fact, it looks as though she had come a long distance in order to tell it. But you can be sure that something is twisted.—My dear Maisry,” he added, with a perfectly good and sincere laugh, “what in the world would I have had to gain by misinterpreting messages between you and Rusty Sabin?”

  Maisry was about as clear and simple and straightforward a girl as one can find anywhere; but no woman was ever born so simple that she was unable to tell when she quickened the heartbeat of a man. And Maisry, looking earnestly into the face of the major, could not help doubting him just a trifle. She had seen the familiar hunger in his eyes more than once, and instinct had taught her how it was to be dreaded. But she could only say:

  “Of course you had nothing to gain.—But something is terribly wrong. He thinks that I sent back the scarab to him—he thinks it was because I was through with him. What did you say to him, Arthur?”

  “What did I say?” answered Marston, pretending to be puzzled. “Let me see. I tried to make the thing easy for him. He was sorry to take the green beetle away from you. I tried to smooth out the case for him and comfort the poor fellow, so I suppose I told him that you didn’t care at all, and that you’d get on perfectly well without a green beetle hanging around your neck.—Ah, perhaps that’s the catch! Perhaps what I told him on my own account may have seemed to him like a direct message from you—words from you! By the Lord, Maisry, I believe I’ve hit on it!”

  A moan of distress made her throat tremble. “How did he look and what did he do when he heard you say it?” she asked.

  “How did he look? Well, you know he’s two in one; and just then, he was all Indian. I couldn’t have read his mind in a thousand years, he kept his face so immobile. But I’ll tell you how to work this thing out. I want to show you that I’m a friend worth counting on. The thing to do, Maisry, is to send back your pretty little Indian friend with a letter to Rusty Sabin.—I’ll tell you what I’ll do. The plains are covered with Pawn
ees and Comanches, and they’d like nothing better than snapping up a young Cheyenne girl on the loose by herself. But I want to take my men out for some heavy marching soon. The scoundrels are getting fat and lazy, and their horses need work, too. So I’ll take ’em out and march them in the direction of the Cheyenne camp. I’d as soon as not, and I’ll give your little friend an escort through the larger part of her journey.”

  The major had done very well, in this speech; for after starting with a defensive explanation, he had passed into the stage of good advice; and then into an offer of assistance. He made his handsome face fairly shine as he concluded his offer. Maisry was not one to hug suspicion and doubt. There was no more deceit in her own soul than in a fine summer day; and now she banished from her mind every doubt about big Arthur Marston. She shone on him with her thanks, and the major turned at once to the Blue Bird.

  “Now, I want to know just how far away your camp is,” said Marston, “and how you people happened to travel as far south as all this?”

  She hesitated a little before replying. Youth and beauty in a man made very little difference to her. She had a true Indian woman’s worship of battle scars and battle fame, and a sour-faced old brave with one eye gone and a broken nose would have filled her soul with content, if he wore some of the stained coup-feathers in his headdress. However, Major Marston was actually the war chief of the white men, and though his uniform looked silly, and his short mustache was absurd, in her eyes, she was willing to treat him with respect. A single strong reserve remained in the back of her mind; she felt that a lie had certainly been in the air somewhere, and that the major was its most probable author. She made her answer:

  “The camp is away a day’s march, as a woman rides, riding steadily. We came south with our sick people because we heard that Red Hawk was in this place.”

  “Hello! Is he a doctor?” demanded the major, sneering a little in his smile.

  “He is a great medicine man,” answered Blue Bird, watching the major’s eyes, and liking them not at all.

  “Well, what did the great medicine man do for the sick?” asked Marston, still half bantering.

  He looked at Maisry, who flushed. She was always made most miserable by any reference to the superstitions that so largely controlled Rusty’s life.

  “Red Hawk raised up the dying men,” said the Blue Bird; and a wild gleam came into her eyes and her head rolled a bit from side to side as she chanted out, “They were starving.—Meat would not feed them.—They dwindled.—They shrank away.—They turned gray!”

  “Anæmia,” commented the major, nodding. “That kills thousands of red men every year. More than bullets ever got rid of. What did Red Hawk manage to do about anæmia? It’s not curable, you ought to know.”

  “Hai!” cried the girl. “Not to white men. They cannot cure it. But Red Hawk went out and prayed to Sweet Medicine, and an eagle flew down out of the sky with the answer. There is nothing but laughter and happiness in the camp, now that Red Hawk has come home to his people!”

  In one respect, this stirring answer was not at all to the taste of the major. However, a new thought was coming into his mind.

  “How many of the sick are there?” he asked.

  “Five twenties of them,” said the girl.

  “A hundred sick?” exclaimed Marston.

  He half closed his eyes, fiercely staring at this beautiful chance. One hundred wild Indian warriors, now weak as children owing to disease, but daily growing stronger, soon powerful enough to join the fight with any soldiers in the world. Why should they not be wiped out, if it were possible? To be sure, at the moment there was peace with the Cheyennes. But the major did not care about that. He could work up an “Indian outrage” in his report, and if his massacre succeeded, there was not apt to be much investigating from Washington. So Marston added:

  “And how many other braves are along with the sick people?”

  The Blue Bird hesitated. She did not like these direct questions. Besides, all questions about numbers worried her a good bit. As she hesitated, the major suggested, gently:

  “Two scores?—Two twenties of warriors?”

  “Three scores,” said Blue Bird.

  * * * *

  There was no doubt that sixty was closer to the truth than forty; and as for the difference, she did not care to worry her head over the real figure, which was some two hundred and fifty braves in the full prime of their fighting strength.

  That was how the major got his first misleading information.

  He went straight back to the fort to prepare for the march. The more he thought of the thing, the more convinced he was that an inspiration had come to him. He would take a flying column of a hundred picked men, with plenty of reserves in the way of horses. With those men, he would escort the Cheyenne girl across the plains, and she would at the same time be a flawless guide to him. As for the letter which she carried to Red Hawk, it would be strange if the major could not interfere with that. His real hope, growing every moment from the bottom of his soul, was that he would be able to take that Indian camp by surprise, and that the saber of every man in his command would run red before the slaughter was over. He would become a colonel overnight, and full on his way to a general’s pride of place!

  Poor Maisry, in the meantime, was writing her letter, pausing over it, telling herself that it ought to be brief, but all the while tasting, as she drew the pen over the page, a strange happiness and homesick grief combined. She had thought that she would never see Rusty again. Now she blessed the words that would go before her and come under his eyes.

  She worked with her head canted to one side, smiling. Now and then she looked blankly across the room toward Blue Bird, seeing not the Cheyenne girl, but only her own visions. But every time the Cheyenne smiled sadly in answer. She knew, well enough, what picture lay in the eyes of this beautiful white girl!

  CHAPTER 25

  Major Marston liked round numbers, and that was why he had exactly one hundred officers and men behind him when he started out the next morning. He took the van, and beside him rode his voluntary and unpaid guide, the Blue Bird. She, feeling the eyes of the soldiers search her, was a little pleased and a little disgusted.

  The major talked to her a good deal. At first, like the others, he had in his eyes the look of a hunter; but the major was a man of intelligence, and he soon changed his manner toward her. He took on a serious air. He asked her questions which flattered her intelligence, and he listened with a keen attention and respect. It might be that now and again he said the thing that was not so, but that was characteristic of the whites, as all Indians knew. The whites had double tongues and they spoke with two meanings.

  But certainly he was most interested in whatever she had to tell him about Red Hawk. And that was the theme nearest and dearest to her. She could dwell on a thousand points. But above all, she loved to enlarge on the time when Red Hawk, alone, had gone into the Sacred Valley and dared to confront Sweet Medicine in the cave on the cliff. The vastness of that daring made her pale. Then she told how Red Hawk had returned to the tribe with the broken arrow, and how he had made his famous chant before all the Cheyennes.

  “Could that have been simply a common owl, and not Sweet Medicine at all, that Rusty Sabin found in the cave?” asked the major, controlling his desire to smile.

  She made a fine gesture. She merely laughed to dismiss the suggestion.

  “But what was that other thing?” asked the major. “Isn’t it true that Rusty Sabin was afraid to go through the initiation when his time came to be a brave?”

  Her face clouded, but only for a moment.

  “That was because Sweet Medicine wanted to lead him away from the tribe,” she explained. “Sweet Medicine himself was driven out of the tribe, as you know. And so Red Hawk wandered. But when he came back, he was riding the White Horse!—Hai! How the boys screamed with happiness, because he was such a great man and belonged to the Cheyennes! The breath went out of the women. They could only cov
er their mouths and stare at such a man!”

  In her delighted eyes he read, easily, the secret of her heart, and hatred for Rusty Sabin stabbed him again.

  The pace of the march was not very fast. A hundred men cannot travel like one or two. They were far from the Cheyenne camp when they had to halt for the night.

  The major picked out a good site for the camp. It was in the hollow, lowland near a creek, sheltered at the back by a high bank.

  The Blue Bird, as camp was being pitched, unsaddled her mustang, sidelined it as usual, and sat down on the bank to watch the proceedings. The little dog-tents amused her. So did the utensils for cooking. So also the heavy rations which the men produced from their saddle bags. Already there were ten fires, blazing unreasonably high; and there were squatting groups of men, cooking at each fire.

  Why, the smoke rolled away in sufficient volume to have told watchers ten miles away that here were men at camp. The major saw her laughing, as he brought to her a well-filled iron pan, heaped with hot food. He had filled her coffee half full of sugar, and when she drank it, she had to cry out with excited pleasure.

  She was then willing to tell him why she had laughed.

  “Look!” she said. “When a Cheyenne war-party starts out, the braves carry a little jerked meat, some parched corn in a pouch, and that is all. Sometimes they chew a little corn, and that is their food for the day. Sometimes they only pull up their belts, and that is their food for the day. Sometimes they kill game, and then they feast. But for two hundred warriors there would not be such a smoke as the white men make for ten soldiers!”

  The major nodded. It was true that the Indians could fade away from pursuit, because they travelled skeleton light. Their naked skins could be coat and overcoat, and in a pinch they could feed on field mice and roots.

  “You shall sleep in a tent near my tent,” he told her. “You can see my tent now—the big one down there. You shall have a little tent beside it, and then you will be safe.”