Frontier Feud

by Max Brand

  “With how many braves?” asked the major.

  “I disremember how many,” said Tenney, easily. “The Injuns don’t count like we do. Spotted Antelope, and I think there was about ten twenties of braves with him, the way they reckoned it in the camp.”

  “Two hundred men!” exclaimed the major.

  “Something like that,” said Tenney, carelessly.

  “And you were to send them word?”

  “That was the idea. The gang, here, under Standing Bull, was to keep to the lodges and wait till dust started up on the edge of the sky. Then they was to come out and begin peppering you with rifles, while Spotted Antelope and his boys come up unnoticed and took you from behind. They reckoned on fetching in a lot of scalps, that way.”

  “You infernal, damned ruffian!” said the major.

  He had a quirt lying across his desk, and he snatched this up and raised it to strike Tenney across the face. Then a thought came to him, and arrested his hand. He looked over the body of the big, wolfish man for a time, and then ordered his men to tie Tenney, guard him securely, and wait for further orders.

  After that, he took himself to his thoughts.

  It had been very strange to find a band of Cheyennes as large as Standing Bull’s outfit as far south as this. But they had a definite purpose in their errand; they had come to find Rusty Sabin in the rôle of a healer for the sick among them. But what could have drawn down another band of an almost equal size? The thing was strange, and it might be a lie. Tenney had looked like a man capable of cool-witted deception, no matter what his own danger might have been.

  The major was still pondering his problem when the second part of the patrol arrived, and the sergeant, a man with a weary and a troubled face, made his report. He talked slowly, for his tongue was still thick with awe. It had been he whose horse had frightened the wild herd. And he had had a close view of the fugitive calling the stallion out of the herd.

  “He sort of waved his hand,” said the sergeant, huskily, “and the hoss come out to him. He slid onto the stallion, and away he went. The wind never blowed as fast as they travelled, sir!”

  “Damn the wind—and damn you, too!” shouted the major. “Damn the pack of you for a lot of half-witted dummies! My God, if I could only have a few men in my command! Didn’t you have the wits to try a few shots at him?”

  “Yes, sir. I dropped to the ground and lay flat, like regulations, and I put in three shots at the big horse. But it was kind of like shootin’ at a wave in the sea. I sort of knew that the bullets couldn’t do no good.”

  “You did, did you? Are you one of these fools who believe that Rusty Sabin can do witchcraft?”

  “I don’t know, sir. All I know is what I seen. And I don’t want to see nothin’ more just like it—not while I’m alive, sir. It looked kind of ghostly. There was that run of wild horses, like a river; and the white of the big horse in the middle; and Rusty Sabin lifts his hand; and the White Horse comes runnin’ out to him; and away they go. It didn’t look nacheral! It looked spooky!”

  “Get out of my sight!” cried the major, and the sergeant slunk away.

  But Major Marston, left alone, no longer could bring his wits to bear on the smooth report which he was planning to send back to Washington. If it were true that another band of Cheyennes lurked somewhere on the prairie, then Rusty Sabin on the White Horse would soon be among them, and the whole gang of red-skinned fighters would be charging across the plains to find the white men.

  In such a cause as this, even children would grow strong and would strike as hard as men. For Marston had tried to betray the Indians, and he knew that treachery, once it is discovered, multiplies and reënforces the strength of an enemy.

  He began to plan on throwing out a detachment of ten men, to be posted in pairs toward the west, in order to give early word of danger approaching from that direction. But at this moment, new trouble descended on the head of the unlucky major.

  Outside of his tent he heard shouting voices. Then an uproar broke out all through his camp.

  “Indians!—A thousand of ’em!—Indians!”

  He heard shouting and he heard cursing, in the high-pitched notes of fear. Then he ran out into the light of the dawn.

  There was no other time between day or moonlit night when Rusty Sabin could have worked his throng of horses so close to the Indian camp, undetected by the white guards. But he had cannily held the crowd at a little distance until the moment came when the dawnlight and the moonlight weave together into a mist, obscure and difficult for weary eyes which have been on watch half the night. It is the time, also, when men are expecting nothing but the coming of day. At just that moment, he was sweeping the great herd in toward the Cheyenne camp, not at the frantic gallop of a stampede, but simply at an ordinary canter that the Indians would be able to stop.

  And that was what the major saw from the edge of his camp. He peered for a single instant, and then he shook both fists above his head.

  “They’re not Indians!—They’re simply the horses that the stallion picked up.—Look, you fools! There are no riders on those backs.—‘Boots and Saddles’!—Bugler, sound ‘Boots and Saddles’!—To horse, you yammering, yapping, yelling rats! Head off that herd!—Where’s the damned patrol? Is every one asleep?”

  As he shouted, he saw the White Horse at the rear of the flowing mass, working to this side and to that, hurrying up the laggards and giving momentum to the entire herd. And on his back there was a rider, and that rider was the man whom the major hated most in this world, for the simple reason that we cannot help hating those whom we have injured.

  The major himself was already flinging himself on the back of his horse as he saw his two extra patrols rush in front of the sweeping horse herd. But the flow of those hundreds of half-wild animals was too much for the nerves of the soldiers. They started shooting; but instantly they became the targets of riflemen who ran out from the camp and dropped to the ground to take steady aim. So they retired to this side and to that, scurrying, leaning low over their saddles, and the huge herd flowed easily in toward the camp of the Indians.

  CHAPTER 32

  Every Cheyenne in the camp had been wearing his scalp lightly, through that night. But now, with the dawn, horses were being poured in upon them—and hope—and a chance to fight, not for their lives only but also for the sake of the sweetest of revenges. They had been pegged to the ground by the lack of their swift-footed ponies. Now there were horses and to spare, for every man! Each man could be mounted three times over—and more—and more! A ceaseless tide of horsewealth was flooding in upon them.

  The tribesmen came out with rawhide ropes. The men were the first, and the young, deft-handed boys. But the old, the invalids, the women, even the little children, helped with the work, fishing in that flood of horseflesh until every hand was rewarded.

  “No Cheyennes on their backs—only horses,” the major was saying as he watched the spectacle. “Yet they broke through my patrols!—My God, I haven’t any men under me; I have nothing but fools and cowards!—Strike the tents! No, damn the tents!—And damn the whole camp!—Boots and saddles, and away! We’ll have two or three hundred devils after us in no time at all! Rusty Sabin—he’s done the trick! The devil burn him!—And I’m a ruined man!”

  “Dead” was what he meant to say, instead of “ruined,” as he saw horse after horse rapidly saddled and mounted.

  Out of the Cheyenne camp there rose up now, in place of the long, wolf-like howling of the mourners, a new sound—a sort of double shout, repeated over and over again, with the voices of women in it and the outcrying of jubilant children and the deep-throated cries of the men.

  “What are they yelling, damn them?” the major demanded of the interpreter, who was agape like a stunned man.

  “Red Hawk!—Red Hawk!—Red Hawk!” said the interpreter. “That’s all they’re saying. That’s Rusty Sabin’s name among ’em. He’s a god to ’em. Maybe he’s more’n that!”

  He was
more than that. For as the braves snatched at and caught horses and commenced mounting, not one forgot to turn toward the figure on the great White Horse and, brandishing a rifle high over his head, shout, “Red Hawk!”

  The name itself had become a song of praise. They could be cruelly jealous of the fame of other men, but Red Hawk was not merely a man; he was a holy vessel which the Sky People poured full of light and power. That was why he shone out among all the tribes. He healed the sick who were dying. He rode through the ranks of the enemy and drew back from the prairies the far-scattered herds of horses in the time of need. Sweet Medicine himself was hardly greater—he was no more, say, than an elder brother to this giant soul.

  So those fanatic Cheyennes screeched.

  As Rusty Sabin dismounted, a squaw, huge with fat, came waddling up to him and touched him gingerly with her forefinger; then she began to leap and flop about in a mad ecstasy, waving her arms, screeching his Indian name.

  Others came, even more shining with worship, but a great deal more useful. They carried Standing Bull’s finest saddle and cinched it on the back of the great white stallion. They drew a beaded headstall over the animal’s head.

  The Blue Bird, tossed in the throng, seeming to run over the others, brought her father’s best and newest Sharp’s rifle and placed it in Rusty’s hand. Through the dust that rose from the trampled ground, and through the dimness of the dawnlight, he peered into her face.

  “They are given into your hands, Red Hawk—great brother!” she was crying to him. “Now wash yourself in their blood.—The traitors! Make yourself red! Make yourself Cheyenne forever! After to-day, you are one of us in your heart and your hand!”

  He smiled vaguely at her, and mounted the stallion. Of all the many scores of warriors, he was the very last to find his place on a horse! And the rest had not yet moved from the immediate vicinity of the campgrounds. They were swirling this way and that. Racing their horses on the outskirts of the crowd, braves were hacking at airy images with their hatchets, and flourishing imaginary scalps in their raised hands.

  But all the wild mass was awaiting the leadership of Red Hawk. When the Sky People have given a leader to the men on earth; when they had endorsed him so many times; is it not true that he should be followed and no other?

  Standing Bull, war chief though he was, felt no jealousy. Hideous in his war paint, which he had hastily daubed on his face and his powerful, half-naked body, he waited on his dancing horse, close to Rusty Sabin. He merely cried out:

  “When your word is given!—When you speak, Red Hawk, we charge them!—They are ours!”

  And then, maddened by the battle enthusiasm like the others, he began to shout, “Red Hawk!—Red Hawk!—Red Hawk!” with all the great chorus which was yelling the same name.

  Red Hawk, at that moment, looked across the brightening plains and saw the column of the cavalry in retreat from a camp where the tents were still standing! It was a retreat in good order. The column, as he watched, was forming gradually into a moving hollow square. They would fight well. But courageous as they might be—well-disciplined, enduring—they simply had not the numbers to withstand the first charge of these hordes of inspired madmen! There would be little time for the exchange of volleys.

  Indians rarely wish to charge home. But these Cheyennes on this day, wanted nothing else. They would close—they would break those ranks with the weight of numbers. For every cavalryman there would be two or three huge Cheyennes, savage with eagerness to count the first coup, to take the scalp, to die or to be gloriously revenged for Major Marston’s cruel treacheries.

  All of this was clear to Rusty Sabin. But was it just? With the cream of Fort Marston’s fighting men gone, the fort itself would quickly be a prey to the attack of the massed bands of the Indians. That outpost of the white civilization would be rapidly rubbed out. Perhaps the check would be sufficient to stop the westward march of the white man forever—and then the plains would be freed from the pollution of whiskey and the white man’s diseases.

  There was little knowledge in Rusty of the great cities and the closely peopled farmlands of the white men, stretched for twelve hundred miles to the east. Perhaps, on this day, he could change the way of history, he thought. Perhaps he could make himself glorious forever in the annals of all the western tribes.

  And were these Cheyennes not his people, thundering his name into the heavens?

  He looked aside. He saw Lazy Wolf waving his hand with a book in it, shouting unheard through the din, and vainly striving to press closer to the hero of the moment. Lazy Wolf would try to dissuade him from sending home the crushing attack. But Lazy Wolf was merely a white man who was too inert to join the redmen. He, Red Hawk, was indeed all red!

  He made his decision in that moment. Maisry and her family—he would manage to save them, somehow, when he delivered the terrible attack on Fort Marston, later on. As for the rest, where had he ever found kindness and decency among them?

  The fat saloon keeper—he would be spared, also. But the rest deserved to die! Scheming, lying, cruel, cunning; they were foxes, born to steal. They deserved to die! Anger had waxed big in Rusty’s heart—and determination, by the time he came to the edge of the great, swirling mass of warriors.

  He raised his hand. Instant silence fell on those around him. To the rear there was a brief repetition of the shout:

  “Red Hawk speaks!”

  Then they were hushed. It seemed to Rusty’s excited mind that the very dogs of the village, at this moment, had ceased their clamoring.

  “Standing Bull!” he called.

  The chief instantly appeared beside him.

  “Range them in two halves,” said Rusty. “I will take the first half forward; you carry the rest to the rear of the white men. When they see us, they will have to halt. And then—”

  “Hai!” breathed Standing Bull.

  The chief was trembling like a terrier in a fever of anxiety for battle and blood.

  “—and then,” cried Red Hawk, “when I give the signal, and when you hear the men of my party shout all together, you charge with us. We will strike them from the two sides at once.

  “He that dies in this fighting rides on the ghost of his horse, straight to the Happy Hunting Grounds, there to eat buffalo tongues and hump-meat the rest of eternity!”

  CHAPTER 33

  Major Marston had one hope, and one hope only. This was that the Cheyennes, charging in their first mad enthusiasm, would come on so blindly and so headlong that their first ranks might be blotted out by the first steady volleys of the soldiers. Once thoroughly checked, if they were like other Indians the major knew about, they would not have the courage, or the rashness, to push their other charges home.

  They would merely begin to demonstrate in fake charges, skirmishing up and down the length of the hollow square.

  But now he saw one mass of the Indians sweep away across the prairie, and among them sped the man on the White Horse. The whole body of horsemen, yelling like fiends, described a half-circle, and then halted in front of the white soldiery. Here they formed not in a single line, but in three dense ranks.

  Indian brains were not apt to think of this device in pushing home a charge. This was the work of Red Hawk!

  Looking to the rear, the major saw the other half of the Cheyenne warriors ranging in the same manner.

  That instant the major felt that he had come to his last day on earth. Maisry—military glory—all that fame or money could give to a man—these were as nothing compared with the sweet breath of life. But life was to be taken; that he saw. Always savage, brave and determined fighters, the Cheyennes individually far outmatched the whites. Through lack of discipline, they could be beaten like other Indians, when they were opposed by an orderly resistance. But here there was no chance of digging in. If the cavalry tried to lie down behind their horses, they would be washed over by the first charge; if they kept their saddles, they would be hammered down just as quickly.

  He halted his
command. It had seemed a powerful unit to him, when he had left Fort Marston with the design of massacring two or three score Cheyennes. Now it seemed a mere handful.

  His men, moreover, knew what was coming. They looked steady enough, but their eyes were shifting from side to side, and they were pale.

  They were silent, too, and that was the worst sign of all. They should have been cursing silently, as they handled their guns and picked out their individual targets. But they were as still as death. Only a single voice roared out of the ranks close behind the major, as if in answer to the shouting of the Cheyennes. That voice cried in Cheyenne, also; and it was from the throat of big Bill Tenney.

  The major wheeled in the saddle and stared grimly at the prisoner, who sat on horseback, with his feet lashed together beneath the belly of the mustang. Marston had almost forgotten him, but he could remember now.

  “When you’re dead, we’ll have one less enemy, Tenney,” he said. “What did you yell just now?”

  “Red Hawk!” said Tenney, fearlessly. “Put a bullet through my head and be damned to you! The Cheyenne dogs will be gnawin’ your bones, ten minutes after I’m dead!”

  There was an uncomfortable truth in this that sent a slight shudder through the major’s body. And his shifty brain went to another side of the possibilities that were locked up in his prisoner.

  “You called out more than ‘Red Hawk,’ ” said he. “What was the rest of it?”

  “Nothin’ more. Just ‘Red Hawk—my brother.’ Him and me are brothers.”

  “Brothers?” said the major.

  “He says so, and that makes it so,” answered Tenney, joyfully and carelessly. “Go ask through the Cheyenne camp. Who are the brothers of Red Hawk? Why, me and Standing Bull, the war chief. They rate me kind of high in their camp, major.”

  “Wolf knows wolf!” sneered the major. “And after you’d ridden away on the White Horse? That didn’t make any difference?”