Brand, Max - 1925

by Beyond the Outposts (v2. 1)

  I felt faint with excitement. They dipped out of sight in a hollow. Then they swept over a knoll just beneath us, and there I had my first view of White Smoke. He was running well in front of the rest, and how he ran! I have seen Thoroughbreds of the finest, but I have never seen an animal that moved so grandly. The desert blood of Arabia was in him; he was a throwback to some of those fine stallions the Spaniards had brought over at the time of the Mexican conquest. It needed no horse lover or expert to tell his points. He filled the eye. He fitted neatly into that place in the brain which holds the picture of a perfect horse.

  I write the word soberly, judiciously - perfect! There is no other word for him. Behind him came half a hundred chosen mares and their foals. There was not an animal in the lot unworthy to seat a duke. There could not be, for a horse capable of following White Smoke in his arrowy flights across country had to have limbs of steel and a heart of brass. Yes, they were fifty queens of their kind - take them one by one, and it would have been hard to pick flaws in them. And yet, when the king was with them, they were not visible. He was gloriously alone. The wind was rippling in his mane and his arched tail. He carried his head high, with his ears ever pricked alertly. He lived like a tiger, ever on the watch.

  I looked aside, dizzy and amazed, and I saw the Indians around me, quaking like sick children, their mouths gaping, their eyes burning with a fever like the fever of thirst. Straight down the pass he galloped, flicking the earth with winged feet, and yet for all his lightness he was big. I could understand how a large man like Bald Eagle might pine for such a charger, for I put him down as sixteen hands at least. As a matter of fact, he proved to be even taller than that. Then he reached the tracks of one of our scouts and stopped the rest of the band. The wind whipped the dust cloud away from them. Like fifty statues they stood, except for the life in their manes and in their eyes. And in White Smoke one could see the fear, hate, suspicion working.

  I tucked the butt of my rifle into the hollow of my shoulder and prayed. Prayed a wordless, formless prayer that God would give this eagle of the earth into my hands. I drew down on him carefully. I took the edge of the neck just above the top arch of his crest. Then I fired.

  He was off like thought. The mares burst into full speed behind him, but they seemed to be laboring with all their might and standing still - so tremendously fast did he leave them behind. Never was such running. Never since the world began such running as White Smoke, hurling himself through the air to reach freedom. I had missed.

  The Indians looked at one another as though that were almost as great a miracle as the beauty of White Smoke. Then Two Feather breathed: "The old men have spoken the truth. This is no horse, but a thing dear to the Great Spirit."

  How shall I say what I felt? Like one who stands in the harbor and sees the ship go out to sea and vanish with all the human lives that are dear to him on board. So I felt as I watched White Smoke flash across the horizon. From that instant I knew that I could never be truly happy until I sat on his back. I jumped up and screamed at the Pawnees: "Follow! Follow! Every second is floating him away from us!"

  They merely looked at one another and smiled until Two Feather, who was more or less in command, said: "Let us follow, then. He must learn."

  We flew to our horses and galloped like mad. Twice we changed mounts and still raced on until the dusk, but we reached not even the sight of their dust. Then I understood what Two Feather had meant. Truly I had learned what White Smoke was. As well try to follow the flash of lightning as to follow that great stallion and his mares with anything that moved on feet.

  But we were not done. The fever had us. We became twelve silent men, filled with a single thought of which we never spoke. No one dreamed of giving up the hunt. For a fortnight we trailed the herd, looping back and forth among the hills, the trail growing always fainter and fainter. Then we lost it.

  A month later we picked up the sign once more as we cut for it in huge circles - this time it led us far, far out onto the prairie. It circled back toward the mountains, but not before we had been scarred by the first danger of the hunt, for a flying war party of Cheyennes chased us and emptied three of our saddles before we drew clear of them.

  We regained the mountains with the cold of the winter drawing near us. The first cold brought with it a fever that carried away two more of our men. Seven remained beside Black Bear. Of the three dozen horses with which we had started, a scant score were left, but these were the hardened best of the lot, inured to speed and bitter work. It was midDecember before we found the next sign of White Smoke, and on a white morning I had my second glimpse of him - but he was far, far away from rifle range, a glistening crystal form, standing on the shoulder of a mountain with a cluster of down-headed mares behind him. Then he disappeared once more, and the faint clarion note of his challenge floated dimly back to us.

  The mares, at least, had been worn down one by one by the tenacity of the pursuit. Hardly a dozen remained to him, and time and again we passed the outworn creatures, beautiful even in their starved exhaustion, each of them worth fifty common nags, each of them an Indian's fortune. We passed them by like dirt. Who cares for a common jewel when he has before his eyes a diamond that fills the whole hand with electric fires?

  So, through the winter, we dragged a blind and wretched existence among the mountains. Now lone hunters gave us word of the great horse. He traveled by himself. His herd was gone. He was thinner. A vague hope of wearing him down made our hearts leap. But never once during that lone, bleak season, while we starved and groaned in our miseries, did we lay eyes on him again. We had lost one man in a fall on an iced trail. We were seven when the spring brought us back among the hills and once again on the hot trail of the stallion. Then Two Feather said: "We can never follow him...our horses are too weak. But by the gate through which he went out, he may return, and he may return with mares behind him."

  We took him at his word. After all, though we were keener than ever for the trail, we were worn to shadows. So we rested by the side of that pass and hunted through the hills behind us, while the horses grew fatter and began to lift their heads. We waited for weeks. But what are weeks to those who have labored on the actual trail for months? And each day, like men on a ship eager for sight of land, we kept our look-out posted on the ridge of a hill, scanning the lower hills and the prairies beyond in the hope of seeing the flash of a bright form. When the hail came, it was like a voice in a dream.

  "White Smoke!"

  We were already in our covert. We only needed to lie quietly, all saving myself, for I was desperately massaging the numbness of the morning chill out of the fingers of my right hand which must grasp the stock and manage the trigger. This time I meant to capture or kill. I had shot a fraction of an inch too high before. Now I meant to cut deep, deep - and God preserve his life, for I should not miss.

  The Indians were like trembling children, eager to help, not knowing how. They smoothed the place for me. They parted the brush before me. Then they retreated, and I felt six pairs of eyes burning steadily at me.

  THE MIGHTY STALLION FALLS

  I have heard men - and wise ones, too - affirm with much certainty that the Indian never lived who really loved his horse. There is no doubt that usually they do not love them enough to fondle them and give them careful handling. But if to love a thing is to prize it highly, then I say that no miser ever loved gold as a Plains Indian loved a fast horse. And with excellent reason. In those prairie lands one's life often depended on nothing but the speed of the four strong legs beneath. The difference between a good horse and a great one was the difference between life and death. It meant, too, that the proud owner could range at will, like an eagle through the air, striking where he pleased, and then defying pursuit. Still, their love was something more than this even. Six prayers went soundlessly up to the Great Spirit as I leveled my rifle at the stallion.

  And here he was, all in a trice. Even after the first view of him, I had wondered how it was that
he could have kept away from us during those many months of hard search. Now I could understand. He blew up out of the prairie like a storm cloud over the sea, and all as effortless as the very wind. So he galloped into our sight with a band of some twenty-five mares behind him. In the rush from the inhabited lands, from the pursuit of the Indians or the white traders he had robbed, the weaker spirits were already weeded out, and these twentyfive were as beautiful and as chosen as the hardy band that we had first seen at his flying heels.

  I caught him in my sights instantly and held my bead on him with a steady hand as he poured along over the ground. I repeat solemnly, with all the gravity of a very old man with little of the long trail left before him, that never did the world behold another such horse. They tell me of their modern flyers, and their miles in a minute and thirty-five seconds. But I tell them that they never saw White Smoke, sliding across the hills or turning himself into a white streak, lost on the horizon.

  The wind, what there was of it, had been, wavering and faltering all the day. Now, it seemed to me, it had died away utterly, but just as White Smoke came into the hollow mouth of the pass, he stopped with such a sudden violence that his mane fluffed forward over his head and his tail went high. He stopped not like the giant that he was, but like a small dog playing tag, or like a cat ready to spring one way or another.

  He was too far away, much too far away. God knows I never should have risked it. For such nice work as mine I should have had him at the most point-blank range. I had no such luck. Worst of all, I had to take him at a slant - not at dead right angles. However, I could not risk letting him go by. There were the many months of that bitter trail behind me. In the instant of his pause, before he could whirl away, I steadied my rifle and fired.

  I saw him fall, and I saw no more. I lay on my own face in the grass like a dead man. Indeed, I could barely see - my head was swimming as the Indians beside me caught up their lariats and raced for him. I dared not think; I dared not breathe. I only lay there, saying to myself over and over again: He is dead! He is dead! And then a blinding light struck a glory across my mind. It was the exultant shout of the Indians. I caught up my own rope and staggered out toward the place, shouting, laughing, reeling like a drunkard - drunk with the purest joy.

  I came in time to see a white giant bound up from the ground - no, there was not a chance for him. Four lariats were already around his feet. He strove to whirl and struggle toward the flying cloud of mares, but he floundered and went down at once, again. I stood by. I was not needed in the brutal struggle that followed. He was sleek as a white seal as he lay there writhing, twisting, snorting, with hatred and terror in his eyes and with a crimson streak across the top of his neck. At least he was netted in a mesh of ropes so that struggle was useless.

  The battle was over. The victory was ours. They began a wild celebration, those stoic Pawnees. While their yells were echoing over the hollow pass, I sat down at the sweating head of the stallion. From the Indians he had had the first taste of man's might, man's weapons of torment. But I, who had been the thunderbolt that struck him down unseen, was the first man to lay a hand of kindness on him, and out of my throat he heard the first gentle human speech. What did it mean to him? Well, my sincere conviction is that all the dumb beasts, high and low, feel a magic in the voice of man. They may tremble in terror at it; they may strike because they are afraid; but behind the fear there is a foundation of love also. At least, it seemed to me that some of the wildness left the eyes of White Smoke in the few minutes during which I sat at his head.

  For the first two weeks we did nothing but work him slowly along on hobbles - hobbles against which he fought until his legs were cut and bleeding. Sometimes we did not make more than three or four miles, for I insisted that we should not force the horse too far or too fast. He must have plenty of time to rest and to feed. At every halt I was beside him. On the fifth day, for the first time, I sat on his back. He did not attempt to pitch. He merely crouched like an immense panther beneath me, trembling. Then, when he saw that I did not do him any peculiar harm, he stood up and hobbled on once more, but with his ears flattened to his neck and his eyes rolled back with twin devils in them.

  After that I spent each day's march on his back. First with a saddle cinched on, and then with a bridle with which I began gradually to control him. All that time I performed every act of service for him. I brought him to water. I unhoused his head that he might drink. I groomed him twice a day until, as my hand with the wisp of dried grass went down his neck, he lifted his ears a little at each stroke, half automatically, I suppose, at first. But it was pleasant to him.

  I have no doubt that during those first days he was constantly, constantly biding his time. Two Feather took me aside to remonstrate.

  "Friend," he said, "the squaws of the Pawnees would be glad if Black Bear went to the happy hunting grounds. But the Pawnee men, brother, would not see so great a warrior killed by a horse. He is a tiger."

  We had been journeying on for a full three weeks or more by this time, and the struggle to win White Smoke had gained me such small returns that I was beginning to despair. Out of an impulse of a foolish moment I said: "Two Feather, you are wise in the ways of horses, but not of White Smoke. I could go this moment and stand at his head."

  The gambler's glint shone in his eyes. Next to the old rifle that I had given him, his greatest treasure was the brown horse he was riding at that moment. He leaped to the ground and gestured at it.

  "This horse is yours, my brother," he said, "if you stand at the head of White Smoke."

  The other Indians had marked that conversation, and by this I knew I should have to go on with the experiment no matter how I disliked it. There they stood, waiting and watching, keeping their faces calm, but unable to control the savage gleam of their eyes and the feint quiver of their nostrils.

  I dismounted and went in front of White Smoke. I took a quiet and a careful view of him. He was not then what he had been before or what he was afterward to become; the weight of captivity had bowed him a little, but still he was glorious as he must have been from birth. He looked at me, I thought, as a caged tiger eyes an enemy. I stretched out my hand, palm up. If there is any gesture which both beasts and men understand, it is this. I began to speak gently, softly. And I walked straight up to him. He flinched from me a little in horror at first. Then his ears flicked back, and his head went out as a snake's goes in striking. My right forearm beneath the elbow was caught in his mouth. Would he wrench me under his hoofs and stamp me to death? Would he close those jaws and crush the bones of the arm? Or would he simply strip all the flesh away?

  While I stood there for a second with the arm imprisoned, by the tremor that passed through his head, I knew that all of these impulses were rushing through his savage brain. The Indians made not a move to succor me. Rather than destroy the stallion, they would have seen him tear a dozen men limb from limb. For what were a few lives to the followers of Bald Eagle who crushed humans like ants with the treading of his feet?

  But the teeth did not close, except hard enough to paralyze the hand and wrist of mat arm for a week. They loosed me, and White Smoke threw up his head and looked at me out of mischievous, coltish eyes. I let my injured arm hang in agony at my side. I went straight in and laid my left hand upon his neck, while a little murmur came from the Indians. White Smoke submitted to my caress - yes, and pricked his ears at it.

  I have never had an extraordinary power over animals as some men have. Dogs bark at me as readily as at any man, and more than one Indian pony has tried to dash my brains out with his heels. Perhaps I may be allowed to think that between White Smoke and me there was a special affinity. Or perhaps it was something less mysterious, for mine was the first kind touch he had ever felt, the first kind voice. The turn of a hair would have changed the thing. He might have torn me to pieces, but he let his mind waver, and after that he was mine!

  It was a simple thing. Every animal trainer has a dozen tales to overmatch i
t, but to the Indians there was something miraculous in the scene. They looked upon me with a greater awe from that moment. Moreover, I went straight on in the conquest of White Smoke. He never felt spur or whip. With a gentle hand and a gentle voice I worked over him for the simple reason that I felt the enormous danger of his superior might. By sheer strength I could not subdue him, and by sheer cunning I knew not how to work. It was all done by patience, by scores of hours of closest companionship, as we worked our way over the prairie.

  But this, at least, was the end. When we came in view of the teepees of Bald Eagle's camp, my six companions accorded me the place of honor, and I rode into the village at their head, without a controlling rope on the neck or the legs of the stallion, with only saddle and bridle to manage him. More than this, I let the reins hang loose on his neck, and by the pressure of my knees and the voice alone I worked him through the press of horses and men and women and children that had poured out around us.

  I have said that the ownership of my first Colt was one of the great days of my life, but it was nothing compared with this second great day. And there was still a third mighty moment to come.

  THE TEEPEE OF THE RISING SUN

  When I dismounted, it was among the crowds in front of Bald Eagle's tent. My companions stood near me. What lean and hungry-looking wolves we were from that year of arduous trailing, but that price and all our time, our suffering, seemed nothing for the reward. We stared at White Smoke with eyes newly appreciative, because we saw him with the wonder and the joy of that whole tribe of Pawnees. They were like men among whom a gift had dropped from heaven, visibly, through the clouds. They pointed out his features one by one: the satin black stockings that clad him almost to the knee, the hoofs like polished ebony, the thin silver of mane and tail, and perhaps most of all his coat. It was not white. Only at a distance did it seem so. Close at hand one noted a dark patterning like the faded spots of a panther worked thickly over the surface. But he shone in the sun like burnished metal - pure, flaming silver at a little distance.