Brand, Max - 1925

by Beyond the Outposts (v2. 1)

  I hurried, of course. I did not even say good bye but simply waved to him, because I was hot with anger. A man who disowns his past is to me a man who disowns himself. Yet, I knew that Chuck was not master of himself. Behind all of this emotion there were the blue eyes, there was the smiling mouth of Mary Kearney.

  At any rate, I rode straight for my camp, leaped out of the saddle, then strode into the teepee and found, seated upon the floor with the bright-haired little boy between them, Mary Kearney herself and her father at her side.

  CHUCK'S ULTIMATUM

  It was as pat as any scene in a melodrama. It took me back like a loaded gun, pointed at my head. Here they were, standing up, she with the boy in her arms and the tumbled golden head on her shoulder.

  "We came to call on you, sir," said Mr. Kearney. "I owe you an apology, Mister Dorset. My daughter owes you another. By the Lord, I'll make mine first with all my heart. Dorset, I treated you like a dog. I want your pardon and your hand."

  "Sir," I said, "I have no unkind memory, but I thank you." And we shook hands.

  "Now, Mary," commanded her father.

  She was a little flushed. Her eyes were a little wide, but she cried back at him: "You don't have to command me, Dad. I'm here because I want to be here, Mister Dorset, because of the atrocious things I've said before you. Of course, William has told us a great deal about you.. .and the beautiful things you've meant to one another-and I trust that you'll forgive me, Mister Dorset."

  It was only by an effort of the mind that I made out that William referred to Chuck Morris.

  I said: "I'm the happiest man in the world that Chuck has made my peace with you."

  "Chuck? Not a bit of it," broke out Kearney. "Tush, man, we know everything. We have heard of what Black Bear has done. Well, well!" He seemed as happy as a child because he had identified me. "We know it all...we know it all," he went on. "A trapper came in last week and told us that the Pawnees swear you are not a man but a devil, and that they will never fight with you again because it has been proved that bullets will not pierce you and that steel will not harm you. But is this your boy, Dorset?"

  "No," I said. "It is the son of a friend of mine." I stammered a little. "The son of a trader... killed by Indians."

  "How terrible," murmured the girl, but her keen eyes rested upon me for a cold instant, and I knew that she had detected the presence of a lie. She began to stiffen a little as she put down the youngster hastily. "We will have to go, Father," she said.

  "Not at all. Not at all," said John Kearney. "Not until you have promised to come to my house...."

  "I am leaving within an hour," was my reply.

  "What? What? Why, man, I have been promising myself that I should hear the wildest story of Indian fighting that ever...."

  Here he was interrupted by a startled cry from Mary as she stepped out of the teepee. I sprang after her and found that the cause of her fright was two stalwart Dakotas with Sitting Wolf standing before them. Their impassive faces lighted when they saw me.

  "They are Sioux... they are my friends," I hastened to explain to Mary Kearney. "Is there trouble, Sitting Wolf?"

  He had learned to speak excellent English, though he simply translated his Siouan dialect into the nearest English words.

  He said: "Oh, my brother, Black Bear, there is no trouble except sadness among my people since you have left us. You departed in haste and left behind you...this. We followed to bring it."

  With that he held out to me the first Colt I had ever owned - the old gift of Chris Hudson that I had prized so much. In my haste I had left the gun behind me. I was as glad to see it as I would have been to see a friend's face.

  "Brother," I said, speaking the Indian tongue, because I shrewdly feared what the Kearneys might overhear if the conversation were in English, "this is more to me than the hand of a dear friend beside me in a fight. This has taken the lives of my enemies. I thank you with all my heart."

  Sitting Wolf was as quick as a lightning flash to take a hint. He knew that I wanted the talk to be in Siouan, but the temptation to show off his English before strangers was too great for him. He took a little suit made of the softest deerskin and handed it to me next.

  "And this," he said, "belongs to the child of Rising Sun. We have brought it also that...."

  Here he was stopped by a startled cry from Mary Kearney. My own heart had leaped into my throat.

  "Dad," she said. "Did you hear?"

  I looked at Kearney. He was very pale, very grave. That one word had damned Chuck Morris. For my part, I only wondered that the golden hair of the boy had not made them do some shrewd guessing long before. But, oh, what a consummate dolt I had been to bring the boy near the fort in the first place.

  "I heard," snapped out Kearney. "I am not deaf, my dear. Dorset, I think this needs a little explaining."

  Where was the tongue, then, that had learned to tell fluent lies even in the presence of so keen a judge as my Uncle Abner? Where was the stony presence of mind I had learned among my Sioux brothers? All was gone. I could only stare like a fool, while the wind came cold against the perspiration on my forehead.

  "Damn it, man!" exclaimed Kearney. "It's too horrible! Can you say nothing? Are you dumb? By the eternal, you have been hand in hand with the villain while he was at tempting to take my daughter...."

  Rage and shame stifled him. He forgot his dignity enough to shake his fist in my face, and that gesture was almost his last on earth. The hand of Sitting Wolf moved just a trifle faster than the paw of a panther when it strikes. I managed to knock up his hand and the knife it gripped, with the scream of the girl, tingling in my ears. The two braves behind Sitting Wolf had been slower, and my shout made them stand back.

  John Kearney and his daughter made for their horses and swept away toward the town. I remained behind, a very sick man, indeed.

  "What is wrong, brother?" asked Sitting Wolf. "The dog deserved to feel this tooth between his ribs. What is wrong?"

  I could only say: "This is a sad day, Sitting Wolf. You have done me a great harm. You have done a great harm to Rising Sun. Oh, lad, remember what I say to you. Words spoken among white men are dried powder with sparks always near it. Now forget what has happened. Come into the teepee. We must smoke the pipe. We must eat. And you must tell me of the people."

  They went gloomily into the tent, and there the squaw hurried about to feed them. They had barely begun to eat, it seemed to me, with Sitting Wolf watching me in a nervous anxiety, when I heard the rush of a horse's hoofs outside and then the voice of Chuck Morris.

  By the mere tone of it I knew that Kearney had gone straight to my friend to hear an explanation, gone straight to him while Morris was unprepared with any manner of lie whatever to explain away the child. I hurried out to meet him and found him like a man in a frenzy. He leaped off his horse and came raging at me. He caught me by the shoulders with such a grip that the tips of his ringers bit against the bone, and he groaned: "I warned you, Lew! I warned you! Now you've ruined my life!"

  "I couldn't help it," I said. "listen to me, Chuck. They were in the teepee when I arrived. They...."

  "Why did you ever bring the boy to the fort?" he snarled. "What right had you? Did I ask you to do it? Did you have my permission?"

  When a man asks such questions as these, he doesn't want an answer. He has established the answer long before in his own mind. I said nothing and waited in the hope that he would grow calmer. But he went about striking his heavy fist against his forehead, saying: "He looked at me as if I had been a leper. He called me a sneaking hypocrite. I tried to make some explanation. He wouldn't listen. He told me that he never wanted me in his door again. But I'll go there in spite of him. I'll hear the last word from the girl, not from that stodgy old fool. If he stands between me and her, I'll wring his neck... I'll break him to bits! I've lived this sleepy town life long enough, and now I want action.. .1 want action! I'll find something to do."

  He was utterly beside himself, and I tri
ed to stop his talk, but he went on savagely, clutching me by the shoulder again: "What is she that they should hide her behind a hedge? Does she know anything worth knowing? Has she done anything in her life that's worth boasting of? Bah! She's only a pretty piece of flesh, and yet they act as though she were carved out of one entire diamond. By heavens, it maddens me, and mad I'll go, in fact, if I don't have her. Lew, will you help me to her? Will you help me, Lew?"

  "Do you want any man's help?" I asked him.

  "No," said Morris with a huge oath. "I'm enough by myself. I'll have her... or no other man shall have her. So be it."

  With that, he flung away and left me in a deadly fear. Not a fear of him or for myself, but a terror lest he should actually lay hands on Mary Kearney and force her to marry him. He was capable of it. I could see that clearly enough, and, looking back through his life, I could see also that he had never been able to deny to himself anything that he really wanted. Only to me he had been the soul of honor and of generosity. For the rest of the world he had a use only insofar as it was a help to Chuck Morris.

  When I went back into the teepee, I found that the three Indians had stopped eating and sat with their blankets folded around them, stiff as statues. The face of Sitting Wolf was as stony as the faces of the others. I tried to urge them to eat and be merry, but Sitting Wolf, as the spokesman, told me that he saw now that he had done me a great harm, indeed, and that he and his friends would leave me. It was quite useless to attempt persuasion, and they stalked off, one behind the other. Their horses galloped away. I was left with the greatest problem of my life.

  To leave Kearney unwarned seemed to me the worst crime I could imagine. Still, to warn him was an act of treason to Chuck. I sat with that problem spinning through my mind for an hour. At last I saw the first honorable step before me. I went back to Chuck and found him, lying in his room at the back of the big store, face downward on his bed, with his great hands sunk in the pillow as though they were buried in a man's throat. He did not stir when he heard me come in. I stood over him in a yellow shaft of sunshine and said: "Chuck, have you changed your mind?"

  "About what?" he groaned.

  "About the girl. Have you changed your mind about forcing yourself on her?"

  He thrust himself erect and glared at me. "I have not," he said. "I intend to see her again."

  "You're wrong. You're mightily wrong, Chuck. It will make trouble if you start that sort of work. If you weren't half insane just now, you'd never think of such a thing. They'll be warned, and they'll be ready to defend her."

  "Who'll warn them?" he asked.

  "I shall."

  An old rifle hung on the wall beside him. His hand darted out to it instinctively, and then relaxed its grip again.

  "Why, Lew, I haven't heard you say that. I haven't heard you say that you'd turn against me."

  "Not against you, heaven knows. But not for you, if you try to do this thing."

  He ran his hand over his forehead, throwing his hair into the wildest confusion. "Lew," he groaned, "don't tell me that you're in love with her, too?"

  "You'll hate me if I confess it, but I have to confess it. I love her."

  "Don't say it!" cried Chuck Morris, and, as I remember his face now, I think there was more horror on it than there was anger. "Because if you're crooked, there's no honest men in this cursed world."

  "I'm coming to you to tell you the truth," I said sadly. "Chuck, you've missed her. Not that I'll ever have her. Heaven knows she's far beyond any wild hope of mine. But you've missed her. And if you try to steal her away...."

  "Wait," broke in Chuck. "If you talk like that, I shall go mad... murderous mad. I want to go over this thing with you, bit by bit, as if we were back in school, studying a lesson. If I'm wrong in anything, stop me and tell me so. Lew, when I met you, we fought. I beat you fairly and squarely."

  "Yes."

  "But, when I saw what a wild young tiger you were, my heart went out to you. I'll never forget how you came staggering in at me, when your face was just a blur of blood, not knowing where you hit, but still fighting. I swore, even while I was fighting you, I'd beat you that day and make you my friend afterward. While I lay on my back, getting over that fight, I turned the same idea in my mind a hundred times. A good friend is worth millions. I decided to make you my friend. After that, we lived together for years. We were never apart. I taught you what I knew of the prairies. I gave you a horse. I gave you eveiything that I had to give... freely. I would have laid down my life for you."

  "I know it," I said.

  "At this moment, ask whatever you can dream of, and I would do it for you. I would put my last dollar in your pocket. Do you doubt that?"

  "No."

  "If ten men came through that door to take your life, I'd stand before you. Do you doubt that?"

  "Heaven knows it's true."

  "But, if you turn against me in this thing, Lew, the love I have for you will turn to the blackest hate that any man ever felt. Mark that. I'm a hard man, Lew. I'm determined to get out of my life what I can. But I've made one exception. I've kept you apart. I've never had a thought about you that wouldn't have been worthy of your brother. I've never envied you, never scorned you, never used you. But, if you strike at me now, God help me to grind the life out of your heart. Now, when I need a friend and you turn on me, I call you a hypocrite, a sneaking traitor, worse than a dog. Do you hear me? Do you know that I mean it?"

  I started to speak, but he stopped me.

  "Don't answer me now," he commanded. "Go by yourself and think of what I've said. Oh, you may think that you love her. But what do you love? Her pretty face? That will change. She'll be wrinkled in another ten years or so. The blossom will leave her. Will she be worth giving up what you'll give up in me? Go away and think it over."

  And he turned his back on me and went to the window where he leaned out, breathing heavily.

  BLACK BEAR TALKS

  I knew that thinking and time for thought would not change me, but I wanted to be alone to weigh in my mind all the dangers in the thing that was before me. I knew that he was not shamming. All that he had said had been spoken very seriously. He would do what he threatened, and, if I turned against him, he would put a bullet in me with as little compunction as any Dakota ever showed when he held a Pawnee at his mercy.

  It was not the physical fear that moved me most. It was the fear of losing that friendship which now, it seemed to me, was all that I owned of any value in the world. I had closed the Indian chapter of my life. I had left my father dead or living, somewhere lost upon the prairies. And now, as I came to meet the conditions of a new life, I needed more help from big Chuck Morris than I had needed even when I first went onto the prairies.

  I went to the river's edge and sent White Smoke slowly through the woods. Most of the trees were naked. There was no touch of color, but here and there were a few patches of brown leaves, trembling miserably in the wind. All the ground was thick with crusted snow. I rode until the voices from the fort died away, only some occasional shouting coming, small and thin, out of the distance. Never in my life have more melancholy thoughts passed through my mind.

  I had gone some distance, following the winding of the river's bank, watching vaguely the flash of the water in the sun and the shining, metal black of the standing pools nearer to the bank. Then I heard the rapid thudding of hoofs to the rear. I had a tingling premonition, after all, that it might be Chuck Morris come after me to retract some of the stern things he had spoken. For he always rode like that - at a headlong pace. I turned about, and then I saw break into the clearing, where I was, none other than Mary Kearney herself.

  When she saw that I had stopped for her, she drew rein so suddenly that her horse slid up on stiffened legs and cast a shining cloud of snow dust into the air. It would have dismounted an ordinary girl, but she rode like a wild Indian - a part and parcel of her horse. She sat the saddle very flushed, with her eyes sparkling at me.

  "I was afraid tha
t I'd never overtake you!" she exclaimed. "I thought that White Smoke would be whisking you away like the wind upriver."

  Most men, I suppose, have on the tip of their tongue a thousand pleasant little things to say on such occasions. They make a girl perfectly at home and put small bridges from one bit of conversation to the next. But I have never had that talent, and, besides, I was too astonished to use my wits very effectively. She went on at once, as though she had hardly expected an answer from me.

  "Of course, I want to talk with you, Mister Dorset. Dad was too excited and too angry. He's still excited when he remembers how near that knife came to his heart. But he's forgotten a good deal of his anger. How have you managed to live happily among such wild wolves as those Dakotas?"

  So dexterously had she brought the conversation around to my viewpoint that she started me talking about myself. And I suppose, after all, that those famous conversationalists who held forth in the great French salons were not talkers at all, but simply cunning creatures able to make any man talk freely - about himself and his ideas. Why is it, then, that we are so hungry to speak of ourselves? Why is it that I have written all this tale of my past with such a warmth of happiness, unless we feel, when what is in us is exposed to the eye of the world, that the world will wonder and applaud? It is very foolish. But I was as happy to have Mary Kearney ask me that question, as though she had put a treasure in my hand.

  "They are kind people very often," I said.

  "To everyone?" she asked me.

  "No, of course not. But the son of a chief took a fancy to me. After that they adopted us into the tribe."

  "But why did he take a fancy?" she insisted.

  "Well," I said, "Indians are like us and form likings as quickly, and for reasons just as obscure."

  At this, all at once, she began shaking her head and smiling at me in a quiet way as though she saw straight through me and found within me nothing at least to hate. There was never such kind mockery.