by Max Brand
The major laughed this modesty aside, and next wrung the hand of Rusty Sabin.
“We’ve heard of you, Sabin,” he said. “You and White Horse have ridden pretty far into our minds. If you’d passed out of the picture in the Tulmac, just now, it would have been a black day for the fort. Come on, my friends. You’re going to sit at my table, and we’ll celebrate. We don’t have enough wine to drink it every day, but this is a special occasion.”
Here Marshall Sabin came up, his borrowed horse panting and straining under the crushing weight of the huge man. Dismounting as actively as any youth, the man known as Wind Walker laid a hand on the shoulder of his son. Major Marston, watching closely, saw them look at one another with a wordless smile. And again savage jealousy entered the heart of the major. For this red-headed fellow—this younger Sabin—seemed to be surrounded by nothing except faith and affection. What a welcome would be awaiting him, for instance, when he eventually returned from the shadow of death to the Lester girl?
But the major knew how to keep his emotions out of his face. He seemed the most cheerful man in the world, as he headed the procession back toward the fort. And he insisted that Rusty, after his terrible ordeal in the water, should ride his black horse, since there was no saddle on the back of the white stallion. He insisted with such force that out of courtesy Rusty had to mount the good gelding.
White Horse followed beside him, showing a great deal of impatient and jealous anger, throwing his glorious head about, with flattened ears and open mouth, and sometimes threatening to attack the horse that dared to carry his master. Even White Horse loved this man.
The major took heed, and his cold hatred multiplied, even while his smile widened.
Richard Lester and his daughter met them first. They were riding borrowed horses, with troopers on either side of them. And the major kept his head high and his smile steady, although the hate and envy poisoned him. For the girl, as she came closer, dawned on his mind like a sun on a dark land. And when she threw out one hand in greeting to Rusty, she looked to Marston like a shining statue of victory.
Yet they all had the true frontier restraint. There was no embracing. She and Rusty barely touched hands. Their eyes did the rest. But that was enough to suggest to Marston that he was in the presence of a passion as great and enduring as it was quiet.
Yet, in this human world, all things are humanly possible. And so the major did not feel defeated. Rather, it was a challenge to his generalship. The battle would be hard, but victory would be all the sweeter if he could separate this pair. In the meantime, he was meeting the Lesters, father and daughter, and pressing his invitation upon them.
That was how it came about that for lunch, that day, in the major’s own rooms at the fort, were gathered a thief, a white man who was Indian by rearing, the half-wild giant who was the white Indian’s father, a man named Lester, who was looking forward with a consumptive’s hope to the blessings of a mild climate, his wife Martha, full of fear of the new land, and his daughter, Maisry Lester, looking half Indian herself in her dress of supple doeskin, her eyes never straying far from the man who had been brought back to her from death.
The major presided as the genial host, pouring his interest into the affairs of the strangers. Within his jurisdiction, under the very shadow of the fort, there was a big vacant cabin that he hoped the Lesters would occupy. And not far down the street, in the town, there was another place that would exactly suit the two Sabins. They could have it for a song. It was the very place for Rusty to set up his forge, since it appeared that he was a well-qualified blacksmith.
“A most interesting occupation,” said the major. “I respect craftsmen with skilled hands. And as a matter of fact, there is not a single real blacksmith in Fort Marston. Every hour of your time will be filled, from the start.”
Everyone was charmed by the major’s cordiality. His generosity amazed and delighted them. Soldiers were not always popular figures on the plains, but the major seemed a delightful exception. And amongst them who could know that the only face at which he never glanced, that day, was the only one of which he was really thinking each moment?
His smile was turned mostly toward the stern, reserved face of the older Sabin, or toward Rusty, who, when the great platter of venison was placed on the table, absently helped himself to a large joint, holding it with his left hand and in his right using a knife to slice off large bites. Manners of this sort the major had seen among the Indians—even among some of the wildest of the trappers and hunters—but never before at his own table. He pretended to make himself oblivious to it, but he took keen heed of the embarrassment that almost stifled Mrs. Lester, and of Maisry’s crimson face when Rusty licked the meat juices from his fingers as he ended this part of his repast. But the white Indian seemed totally unaware of the critical looks directed at him.
When the wine was passed, Rusty took his glass in both hands, smelled it cautiously, tasted it, and put it down in haste. His face, at the same time, retained its Indian gravity. There was only a slight twitching at the corners of his mouth to indicate how repellent he found the sourness of that good claret.
And the major rejoiced. By little things are great results achieved. Bad table manners and barbarous ignorance of civilized foods may seem a small handicap. But with these and similar advantages, he felt that he could go a great distance on his chosen way.
He drank, in the meantime, to all of his guests. He made a cheerful little speech to give them an even warmer welcome, so much so that Bill Tenney, the thief, began to lose all suspicion of this man. Bill Tenney began to feel that he could spread his elbows at the board, and he began to believe that he could not possibly overstay his welcome in Fort Marston. He began to tell himself that no matter how much time he needed to make his preparations for the stealing of White Horse, that time would be at his disposal.
Chapter Five
To Rusty Sabin, the first days in Fort Marston were a whirl of confused excitement. He tried not to think of that time when, as Red Hawk, he had walked like a chief among the great Cheyenne tribe. It was in the world of the whites that he lived, now. That world was one of labor, and every moment of his day was taken up with his work in the blacksmith shop. He had opened it where the major had suggested. Behind the shop there were two rooms, one for himself and one for his father. His father, Marshall Sabin—Wind Walker, to all the Indians of the plains—spent his time as one lost in thought, rarely speaking except when one of the visiting Pawnees came to see him, and sat cross-legged on the floor of his room. It was Rusty who did the cooking during the day, washing the soot and grime of iron dust from his hands before he attended to the food.
Up the street, huddled close to the thick wall of the fort, was the big cabin that the major had turned over to the Lesters. But Rusty had little time even for the girl he loved, the pain of work so starved and burned and exhausted him. It was the gold he had brought from the Sacred Valley of Sweet Medicine that paid the way of the Lesters. It was that gold that furnished the cabin and bought the food they ate, but he did not begrudge that.
His father said to him, in one of his rare moments of speech: “Rusty, you have enough gold to make you quite a well-to-do man. Why do you leave it all in the hands of the Lesters? Richard Lester is a good man. I know that. And I know that someday you’ll marry the daughter of the family. But oughtn’t you to keep your money in your own hands?”
Rusty looked up, considering. “There is blood on it, Father,” he said at last. “Two men died because of it. White men can use it . . . but not Cheyennes, because it was taken out of the Sacred Valley.”
“White men? You are a white man, Rusty,” said Wind Walker.
“Yes . . . yes,” answered Rusty. “I am your blood and my mother’s blood, and that makes me white. But all the Cheyenne days and nights are in me. You white men have a god who died on a cross. He never comes back to you. But I have Sweet Medicine. He is the god of my tribe. He gave me the sacred arrow. I have seen him twice . .
. in the shape of an owl. That is why I am a Cheyenne, Father.”
To this speech the father was about to make an answer, but suddenly he closed his lips and said nothing. For he knew that the long years his son had spent among the Indians could not be undone in a moment. Besides, Rusty now pulled up, by the thin horse hair string that supported it about his neck, the little green scarab that his dead mother had once worn in her hair. And the sight of it so moved Marshall Sabin that speech would not have been easy. He could not even think of that scarab without remembering that day when Rusty, as the champion of the Cheyennes, had rushed against him, and how the father had been saved from murdering his own flesh and blood only because he recognized the green scarab that hung from the youth’s throat. So Marshall Sabin was silent.
Only after a moment, when the terrible vision had died out of his eyes, was he able to say: “Money makes trouble, Rusty. Money is a poison finer than thin air. Be careful.”
Once every day Rusty used to give himself a sight of Maisry Lester. She would stand close to him, sometimes, holding up her face, her eyes melting with happy nearness, and sometimes she would touch him with her hand. But he could not understand this gesture, for, as he had told his father, the greatest part of his spirit was that of an Indian, and Indians rarely give caresses. Yet when he saw her, he wanted to lay down at her feet bleeding carcasses of venison and thick-rooted buffalo tongues, and raw, heavy pelts from newly killed game.
Most of his time was spent in the blacksmith shop, because there was much work to do. His long apprenticeship in the shop of a brutal but skilful mechanic had made him a master workman, and all of his strength and ingenuity were repeatedly taxed by the jobs that were given him. For caravans were constantly outfitting at Fort Marston, for the long trip across the plains, and although those inland voyagers were handy men with all sorts of tools, there were certain things that could only be done by an expert. Long iron couplings had to be welded together; tires had to be shrunk on wheels; and a thousand other metal details had to be passed through the hands of a competent workman like Rusty Sabin.
The result was that Rusty made good money, but the sad part of it was that he could not keep the cash. He was as free-handed as an Indian, and Indians are generous because they attach no value to possessions. Those two big Cheyennes, Broken Arrow and Little Porcupine, who had been the first to lift him from the edge of the water on that day when he first came to Fort Marston, were still waiting around, and their very patent hope was that sometime their great medicine man, Red Hawk, would return to their tribe. Morning or afternoon, therefore, they would come into the blacksmith shop or stand about for a time in the acrid, swirling clouds of smoke, with their heads deeply muffled in their long buffalo robes. For they did not wish their faces to be seen in this shameful scene where all men could behold a famous brave and worker of magic, like Rusty, laboring more diligently than the commonest squaw. Every day, they came and stood by, watching somberly. Every day, one or the other of them would say: “Father, have we come to the time of our return?”
And when Rusty would shake his head and bid them go on without him, they would silently stretch out their hands, and he would give them money. Then they would go down the street, with the money gripped in hands that were extended before them, as though they were holding live coals. They had no idea of values, and of course they were plundered right and left. Sometimes they would come back again, during the day, for more money, and Rusty never refused them.
They felt no gratitude for these gifts. Their reasoning was simple and effective; Rusty, who they thought of only as Red Hawk, was the favored son of the Great Spirit, Sweet Medicine. Upon Rusty, therefore, Sweet Medicine would continue to shower favors. It was only right that Rusty should divide his spoils with the members of his foster tribe. Broken Arrow and Little Porcupine belonged to the tribe. Therefore, why should they not take Rusty’s gifts?
They thanked him no more than a child thanks its parents for their care. Instead of feeling gratitude, they felt merely a blind love, such as children know for a parent. In the meantime, they and the other beggars in the town kept Rusty’s pockets empty. Sometimes he did not even have cash enough on hand to buy food for himself and his father, who still spent his time in that stone-like, meditative trance.
The blind giving of money to Indians as huge and as powerful as that pair, Broken Arrow and Little Porcupine, was not at all safe, in a town where whiskey could be bought.
A terrific furor broke out one afternoon, down the street, and the word was passed through the open door of Rusty’s shop that Broken Arrow and Little Porcupine had gone on the warpath. They had cleared the other patrons out of a saloon, and were now holding high revel inside, defying the entire town.
Rusty Sabin went there in haste, empty-handed, angry. He was hardly noticed by the crowd that filled the street. The people of Fort Marston had been intensely curious about Rusty when he first arrived, but, when he fitted himself quietly into the part of the town blacksmith, their curiosity died out. No longer was there about him that wild splendor of bearing of old. He had neither the size nor the clothes of the usual frontier hero, and he was quickly being forgotten.
Attention at this moment was too thoroughly fixed on the commotion inside the saloon, from which rang the yelling and whooping of the happy Cheyennes, with the crashing of glassware thrown in, now and then. In addition, a squad of cavalry had come clattering down from the fort, with sabers and carbines. They were forming up as though prepared to charge the saloon, but they were in no haste. The Indians, they knew, had plenty of guns, and, when it came to hand-to-hand fighting inside a room, a gigantic Cheyenne was apt to be on a par with the finest fighting men in the world. So there was a long-drawn moment of suspense, and in the midst of it Major Marston himself appeared on the scene.
It was just the sort of stage that, ordinarily, he would have liked—a chance to show off his generalship and courage, with plenty of spectators ready to applaud him. But this looked like bad business. A direct charge on the saloon was going to cost lives, and plenty of them. The only safe dodge would be to burn the Cheyennes out, and that, of course, would mean the total destruction of the saloon.
The major began to pull at his mustache with his gloved fingers, totally baffled. Every moment he was cursing his luck, because the townsmen were beginning to laugh. And it was just here that Rusty Sabin stepped briskly through the crowd and headed for the door of the saloon. Many voices shouted out to him a warning, but Major Marston said, loudly enough to be heard by those nearest to him: “The fellow’s either drunk or a fool. This is on his own head!”
In fact, Rusty went to the door and knocked on it.
The answer was a rifle bullet that split the boards and whirred past his ear. Yet he did not even duck aside. He merely shouted several angry words in Cheyenne, and these were followed by a silence that amazed the crowd. The laughter died out. Men and women and children stood agape.
Presently the door was opened and the two mighty Cheyennes were vaguely to be seen, rifles in hand, inside the threshold. A few more harsh words from Rusty Sabin, and they stepped out. They gave into his hands their rifles.
A wild shout of astonishment broke from the watchers, and Major Marston swore softly under his breath, because he could see slender Maisry Lester, hurrying up to the verge of the crowd, where she could see this strange performance. Not only the rifles, but even their knives were surrendered by the two Cheyennes to Rusty. He took them without abating his severity. He spoke again, and the warriors hung their heads. Broken Arrow, that mighty man, dropped to one knee, and, lifting his muscular arms, he began to appeal in a broken voice. But Rusty turned grimly from this prayer.
“Where’s the owner of this place?”
A fat fellow with a mist of beard on his face came waddling forward. “I’m Tom Wayling, and I own that saloon,” he said.
“Go inside,” said Rusty. “Find out the cost of the damage, and I shall pay it.”
Tom Wayling
stood on the threshold, looked over the ruin inside, and then shrugged his fat shoulders. “I’m still wearin’ my hair on my head,” he said, “and I reckon that’s all the pay I want. Me putting red pepper into their drinks was kind of a fool joke, anyway, and I guess it had oughta cost me some money. You keep your coin, Sabin. If it wasn’t for you, they’d’ve cleaned out the whole place. It might have been burned down.”
This generous speech brought a good laugh from everyone except the two guilty Cheyennes. These, with their heads muffled in their robes and their shoulders stooped, went slowly up the street ahead of Rusty, who marched behind, beating them with stern words. In that instant the stature of the white Indian, in the eyes of the townsmen, increased by inches. He might be a blacksmith in Fort Marston forever, now, and never lose the reputation that he gained that moment.
Something else was happening as Rusty intervened to save Wayling’s place. For behind the blacksmith shop big Bill Tenney had slipped quickly into the shed that held White Horse.
The great stallion, danger in his eyes, lifted his head and turned toward the stranger. Bill Tenney, bent on haste, with set teeth, snatched the saddle from the peg on the wall and flung it on the back of the big horse.
The next instant the saddle hit the ceiling and a white tornado rushed at Bill Tenney. He dodged and fled, and, as he reached the door, a striking forehoof grazed his back and hurled him headlong into the little corral outside. That would have been the last instant of Tenney’s life had the force of the blow itself not saved him, sending him rolling over and over, right under the lowest bar of the fence.
As Tenney gained his feet again, staggering, White Horse was rushing up and down inside the fence, raging to get at the thief. But Tenney laughed, a gasp in his voice. As he saw the sun flashing on the satin coat of the famous horse, as he watched with awe the stallion’s angry front, he did not feel that he had been defeated. He had merely been taught a lesson that he would profit by the next time.
