Brand, Max - 1925

by Beyond the Outposts (v2. 1)

  Now the great point was that Standing Bear was already a little ashamed, as well as I can understand it, because, after taking our best horse, he had contemplated turning us out on the prairie for the benefit of the Cheyennes. Just when his remorse was beginning to work on him, the Pawnees jumped the town, and Chuck and I saved the horses and the women and children from a massacre, whereas the logical thing was for us to join the Pawnees and help them gut the town. In addition, Sitting Wolf had been saved from bleeding to death, and the total result was such a number of benefactions heaped upon that tribe by the pair of us that Standing Bear was in an agony of humiliation. He wanted to give us all his earthly possessions, and, in conclusion, he offered to adopt us into the tribe.

  "Of course, you'll join," said Chuck in the most matter-offact way, "and I think I'll join, too."

  I was astonished and also a little irritated, because I felt that Chuck was talking down to me.

  "Why should I join?" I asked him.

  "Well, you want to find your father, don't you? That's your whole reason for coming out here on the prairies, isn't it?"

  I admitted that it was.

  "What better chance could you have than with these Sioux? If your father is the sort of man you tell me he is, he's probably out here, trading or trapping, or some such thing. He's in the out-of-the-way corners where the law doesn't bother a man too much and where questions aren't asked. That's just where the Sioux will take you, or, if you want to cut away from them, you're free to do that whenever you please and make a search by yourself."

  "But why should you join?" I asked him.

  "Because I like the life," he said frankly. "I'm not quite nineteen. It doesn't much matter what I do with the next few years. They're pretty sure to be wasted. If I go back among our own people, I'll still be treated like a boy for three or four years. Out here among the Sioux I'll be treated like a man, and a chief at that."

  The first naming of the idea had shocked me, I admit. After I had listened to Chuck's reasons, it seemed rather a natural thing to do. I liked the life, too, as well as any white man who was ever born. The prairies were made for just such men as I, and the unchecked freedom was the purest heaven to me after a life with Uncle Abner and Uncle Abner's whip.

  We told Standing Bear the next day that we had made up our minds to become Sioux, and he seemed to be delighted. He let the news go around the village, and we had to hold a reception that lasted all this day and the next. Everyone down to the children came to us and gave us some sort of present, saying the name of each article over and over until it was fixed in our minds. That was the way we began to learn the Sioux language. We were given a teepee, and it was completely fitted up with the best that the tribe could offer. Everything from dried meat to buffalo robes of the finest quality were in it, and we were told to select what horses we wanted from the herds of Standing Bear and Three Buck Elk. It was quite a temptation, but we limited ourselves to three horses apiece. Morris always advised moderation.

  After this, there had to be a ceremony. The mere saying of a word could not make us members of the tribe. First, they sent away for several famous chiefs of the Sioux nations. I think that there were five, altogether, who responded. They came, bringing some of their principal braves, and, when they had all arrived, there was a great feast of roasted venison - and dogs. It was a real celebration. Some of the chiefs had been trading with whites lately, and they carted in a supply of firewater. Five Indians were dead and a number of others wounded before that firewater had been used up. For five days the racket continued, and, when it ended, the visiting chiefs came to me, and each made a little speech, welcoming me into the tribe and telling me that his teepee was my teepee and his horses were mine, and vice versa. Standing Bear and Three Buck Elk did the same thing, and so the ceremony ended. We were Sioux Indians.

  It was very odd, and not at all unpleasant. I looked on the whole thing as a mere experiment and felt that in a year or two I would turn my back on them and never see any more of my red brothers. But two whole years passed like a drawn breath. That is to say, I was nearly seventeen when we joined the Sioux, and I was nineteen before the next great event happened in my life.

  I say that the two years passed like a drawn breath, and I mean just that. There was never a simpler nor, in a way, a more beautiful life than that of those prairie Indians. The summer was a long frolic. The fall was the season of laying in heavy buffalo robes and trapping beaver - also watching those wise little animals, for if they stored a great deal of food against the cold season, we knew that the snow would be deep and the winds outrageous. And the beavers never fail as weather prophets.

  Those winters were sometimes a bit monotonous, but there was usually something to amuse us in the village, and all winter long there was always buffalo hunting to keep us active. What a waste of valuable food were those buffalo hunts. I have seen fifteen hundred animals cut off from the outer edge of one of the vast black herds and then shot down to the last bull in the lot. Of the whole carcass nothing would be taken except the tongue and that tenderloin on the inside over the kidney. Even this we considered too much trouble to carve out half the time, and only the tongues were taken. If the skins were prime, they were ripped away. The rest of the animal remained for the buzzards and the eagles.

  I suppose that in those two years I should have been forming my mind with hard work. But I have always looked back to that period as the golden season of my life. All the bitterness of my boyhood was melting out of my soul. Also I was busy on the trail of my father. Whenever I heard of a solitary trapper, I made a point of looking him up, although he never turned out to be the man. For some reason I was sure that my father would live alone like an outcast buffalo bull. Whenever we met traders, I described Will Dorset and asked if they had heard of such a man, but I never received a satisfactory answer.

  Those were prosperous days for Standing Bear and his tribe. Chuck and I were a great windfall for him. He already had the backing of his brother, who was talented enough to have led a tribe on his own account. Now, in addition, he had two white Indians who were famous enough to have drawn a select band of warriors to follow them. This does not have a modest sound, but it is very true. As a rule, one important action is enough to make the fame of an Indian. The Cheyenne, Black Feather, was always celebrated because in his youth he had killed two Pawnees in one battle. If other braves were inclined to forget a warrior's achievements, he freshened their minds by whooping it up on his own account at a feast. Such tales were not considered boasting but were necessary statements of fact, proving that a warrior had self-respect and reflecting credit on the whole tribe, and these narratives were supposed to fill the brains of the young braves with a noble emulation.

  All of which has a certain degree of truth in it. If Chuck and I never had the art of chanting about ourselves, the others filled in the gaps. We had two exploits to our credit. One was the harrying of Black Feather and his crew; the other was the turning of that Pawnee charge. Chuck was much more famous than I was, partly because he deserved to be, partly because he was a picture that filled the eye of every Indian, and partly because he was by nature dignified and reserved. However, we were both constant attractions, and our tribe never visited another section of the Sioux nations without detaching a few of the most select young braves to follow our standard.

  As for my education, I had learned to ride and to swim, though I am afraid that I was never as expert at either art as nine-tenths of the Indian youths. They were inclined to smile at me on most occasions, except when I had a gun in my hand or when I doubled my fist. But in order to be respected by Indians, one needs to excel in only one thing. As I have said, I was never a genius on horseback or in the water. I was never more than an A-B-C scholar when it came to reading sign on the prairies. And, though big Chuck Morris learned to handle a bow and arrow as well as the best of the braves, I could not manage those tough war bows at all. I had no natural talent for the thing. Indeed, except what I learned in the
hard school of Abner Dorset, nothing was ever thoroughly mastered by me.

  Since I had only the ability to fight, I recognized that fact and clung to it. I studied wrestling and boxing and mixed in with the traders to practice my craft whenever I could. I had filled out to my full bulk, which was never more than one hundred and sixty-five pounds. But every one of those pounds was composed of the most necessary sort of muscle and bone. I looked like a mere morsel beside Chuck Morris, but I could lift pound for pound with him, and the Indians knew it. As for Chuck, he was a dreadful fighter as well as a wise man much prized in their councils, whereas I never opened my mouth in their debates. They had only one thing to say about me, and therefore they gave me a more concentrated celebrity. It was a belief among the Sioux that I could not miss a target. This belief, acting naturally on my pride, made me as anxious with my guns as when Uncle Abner had threatened a hiding to me every time I failed to convert a bullet into dead meat.

  Since those two years did little for me except to bring me to maturity, I am going to give a picture of myself at the age of nineteen. I was five feet and ten inches high. I weighed exactly one hundred and sixty-five pounds - which was a weight I kept for thirty years. I was rather light in the legs and gaunt bellied, but thick and heavy around the shoulders. I had very long arms, and my hands were actually larger than those of big Chuck Morris. I was never very particular in my dress. In fact, I was rather an eyesore to my tribe. My deerskins were usually out at the elbow. My moccasins were crude and unbeaded, and my hair was chopped off close to my head. I had a big, blunt jaw, a hooked nose, or at least a very high-arched one, and those bright black eyes which are born in every Dorset I have ever seen. I was not an imposing figure, and not at all close to the romantic hero type. I blush a little even now when I recall the name the Indians gave me - that is to say, my enemies, the Pawnees. The Sioux called me Black Bear, but the name by which I was known among the Pawnees and all the other Indians, together with the trappers and traders, was Stink Bear. Please let me add that there was no olfactory evidence against me. But my ragged, rough appearance was like that of the wolverine, and Stink Bear is the Indian name for that strange animal.

  Perhaps one will wonder what name they gave to Chuck Morris, yet you could almost guess it before I say what they selected. They could not have chosen better. When I think of him as he was in those days, with his glorious presence, his beautiful face forever smiling, his bright blue eyes, and the sweeping mass of his hair of purest gold, his Indian name rushes back upon me, and I call him, naturally, Rising Sun. I have said that nothing happened to me during those two years, and I have said the truth, but something did happen to Rising Sun. It was a great deal more important than either he or I, young fools that we were, thought at the time.

  I must begin at the beginning in due order and tell the whole thing out, from the moment when Standing Bear walked into my teepee and ordered me to send for Rising Sun. It seemed an immense joke to me, then - it seemed a joke to Chuck, also. The tragedy began later on.

  RISING SUN, A SQUAW MAN

  It began, as I said, in my teepee which was kept in order. My cooking was done by the squaws of Three Buck Elk, partly because Three Buck was fond of me, partly, because by taking care of me they were also taking care of young Sitting Wolf, and because he was always with me, refused to eat except at my side, and refused to sleep except in my teepee. I had taken the education of the young rascal in hand, and a woeful time I had of it. It was like trying to teach a young eagle to read and write the English language. He wanted to be riding or swimming or hunting - I made him sit quietly. His grave face would never betray a sign of impatience, but sometimes every muscle in his wild body would be twitching. I was reading to him out of ROBINSON CRUSOE and, at the end of every few pages, I used to put down the book - I had traded a fine beaver skin for it the winter before - and would ask him what I had read. I had to make sure that he had heard me.

  "What is the name of the man who Crusoe saved?" I asked him.

  "Friday," he responded.

  "Who did he save him from?"

  He answered in guttural, rattling Sioux: "Men who ate the flesh of other men. Foh."

  "When you are with me," I said, "talk English."

  "If I do, the father of Sitting Wolf will think that he has a white heart under a red skin."

  We had had that argument over and over again, and I was angry because I had to drudge through it once more. I said: "Boy, we'll not argue about this any more. You are to speak English to me, because it is better than Sioux."

  He shook his head.

  "What is there in Sioux that cannot be said more quickly in English?"

  He did not hesitate an instant, but brought out in his native tongue, as quick as a flash: "Stink Bear." Then he leaped for the open flap of the teepee. I was squatting on crossed legs at the moment, and I nearly missed him which would have meant that he would have got clean away. But I managed to lay my grip on his ankle, by lunging along the floor the length of my body. That sudden check threw him on his face, but he writhed about again like a snake and whirled on me with his knife already in his hand. With the edge of my palm I chopped him on the wrist, and the knife dropped from his numbed fingers.

  He was paralyzed not so much by my blow as by the fact that he had drawn a knife on me, though that was as instinctive an act with him as the baring of teeth is with a wolf. He would never have struck me with the weapon, and I knew it. However, the face of Sitting Wolf was gray. He did not alter a muscle, and he stared at me with his unwinking eyes. I wanted to laugh, but I knew that I must make this a lesson for him, so I stood up and pointed.

  "Go," I said in his own language. "The teepee of the Stink Bear is too small for the son of a great chief like Three Buck Elk."

  He shuddered under every word as though it had been the stroke of a blacksnake and, for a soul like Sitting Wolf's, that speech of mine was worse than any beating. But he turned on his heel and walked out of the tent with the dignity of a grown Indian brave.

  I had hardly time to fling ROBINSON CRUSOE the width of the tent and damn all books and what they did to men, when Three Buck Elk's youngest squaw came running to me. She caught me by the arm and pulled me after her.

  "What have you done to Sitting Wolf?" she asked. "He is dying."

  I hurried after her full of horror until she had brought me behind the teepee, and there she showed me Sitting Wolf, lying on his face, hidden in some shrubs. Not a sound came from him, but he twisted his whole body as if in agony. His face was buried in his arms; his fingers were clutched in his hair. That was his remorse, his shame because he had insulted me. It cut me to the heart. Yet, I have heard fools say that Indians have no emotion. However, I dared not interfere. I couldn't do it without losing my dignity and showing the tears in my eyes, and then even Sitting Wolf himself would have despised me a little as long as he lived. So I said to the girl: "Keep your eyes off him. Sitting Wolf is a little sick now. I shall make him well before the next sunrise."

  Then I went back to my teepee with a very dark heart. I had hardly gone inside when Standing Bear came to the entrance, wrapped in his robe, with a splendid set of feathers in his hair - true eagle quills, stained blue and crimson and yellow. His eyes fell on the spot where the book lay, and by that single glance I knew that he had been nearby and had heard the entire scene between me and the boy. I expected that he would deliver a lecture to me on the subject. He was greatly worried, and so was Three Buck Elk, I knew, because of those English lessons. But he said: "I have not seen Rising Sun."

  "Have you looked for him in his teepee?"

  "I have looked there. So I come to his brother."

  "He is probably gadding about with some of the young braves, practicing with his bow and arrows," I suggested.

  "The bow has a small voice," he said, "but it has many tongues." This was his way of saying that the rifle has a single shot, and that a bow in a strong hand can turn loose a steady stream of arrows. He went on: "I have found
a thought in my heart that I will give to Rising Sun."

  I went out and whistled through my fingers - you can make a shriek like a siren in that way, if you know how. Almost at once Chuck came in view, racing his pony toward me. He leaped off while the little brute was still in full gallop.

  "What's up?" he asked, for that whistle was our signal to call one another for important matters.

  "Old Standing Bear has something on his mind," I told him. "He looks more like a storm than ever. I think he wants to send us out on a war party."

  "I hope so," said Chuck. "This time I'm going after scalps."

  He strode into the teepee. I went to the entrance, and Standing Bear waved me in.

  "What a man thinks, his brother must think also," explained Standing Bear.

  He said not another word, but remained gravely seated on a buffalo robe. I saw what he wanted and so took out and loaded a pipe, which I lighted and puffed, then passed to Chuck, who took a whiff and handed it to Standing Bear. The old fellow kept it, nodding his satisfaction.

  "Rising Sun," he said at last, "how many horses have you?"

  "Five," said Chuck.

  "They are all chosen horses," said Standing Bear. "You have a teepee also."

  "Yes."

  "It is filled with robes, with food, with guns, with arrows and bows, with moccasins."

  "Yes."

  "And yet," said Standing Bear, "your teepee is empty."

  "I am contented," Chuck replied.

  "If the sun sets, when will the sun rise again?"

  Chuck looked at me. I had seen the drift of Standing Bear at once.

  "If you die, Chuck," I translated, "there will be no sun left ...not even a moon. You have no children."

  "The devil," said Chuck and then grinned in the foolish way that most men do when a certain subject is mentioned.