Brother of the Cheyennes

by Max Brand

  “Well?” he demanded briefly.

  “My brother has had the whip until his back was red,” said Rusty. “There will be no whip for you, if you do as I say . . . if you send at once for Bill Tenney.”

  “I am to send for the guard, and let him see you all in here?” demanded Marston.

  “Open the door just a little, speak through the gap, and no one will be seen,” said Rusty. “I shall stand behind you with this.”

  As he spoke, he drew out the blue, glistening length of the knife. The major’s glance dwelt on the curve of the blade. He could almost feel the cold of the metal in his warm flesh.

  So he walked to the door, with Rusty stepping like a shadow behind him, and, opening the door a bit, he called out. The half sleeping orderly at the end of the little outer chamber jumped to his feet and saluted.

  “Send for Bill Tenney . . . the fellow who was put in the cellar this evening,” commanded the major. “Have him brought here at once.” He closed the door and turned slowly. The white in his face was the white of the shame that would be his next morning, when the town would awaken to the discovery that Tenney was gone. They would have many things to guess about that disappearance, and none of their guesses would be favorable to the major, because he knew that he had won the respect but had never gained the love of the frontiersmen.

  “Sabin,” he said, “are you being wise? Are you thinking of things to come? Are you remembering that you never can show your face in the fort again? Are you realizing that one day I may have you at the whipping post?”

  Rusty, for answer, merely shrugged his shoulders and sighed audibly. “A man must go where his friends require him,” he said.

  It was a remark that the major made nothing of, however, and a moment later they heard the trampling of feet and the jangling of chains in the outer room.

  The two big Indians had stepped back into a shadowed corner. The major now pulled the door wide, with the point of Rusty’s knife gently pricking the skin of his back between the shoulder blades.

  “Send him in alone,” commanded Marston. “I want to examine him.”

  Bill Tenney strode across the threshold. The major closed the door behind him and locked it.

  As for Tenney, one glance at the Indians, and the sight of the long knife in Rusty’s hand, told him what was happening. He lifted his manacled hands to smash Marston’s skull with the weight of the irons, but Rusty raised a finger, and Little Porcupine caught Tenney’s arms. The thief stood still, breathing hard and muttering: “Let me have him, Sabin. By heaven, I’ve earned a chance at him, and I gotta have it. Leave him and me alone. Irons or no irons, I’ll handle him.”

  “We’ve made a bargain,” answered Rusty. “He sets you free, and then he’s safe from us . . . for tonight at least.”

  Tenney began to nod. “Aye, it’s better,” he said. “Choking him ain’t the way. I gotta have time to think out the best way of murdering him . . . and when I’ve thought it out, I’m gonna do the trick.”

  “You have the key of the manacles?” asked Rusty of the major.

  Marston silently pulled out a bunch of keys, selected one, and turned the oiled lock. Tenney’s hands were instantly free, and he extended his arms above his head in a great gesture, opening and closing his fingers. As he straightened, the blood-stiffened shirt on his back gave out a crackling noise. Rusty motioned to the Cheyennes.

  “Tie him,” he commanded, indicating the major.

  A blanket, quickly slashed into strips, offered the means of binding the major. He was wrapped like a mummy, with his hands against his sides. A gag insured his silence, and he was bound to the foot of the bed. Only when the work was done did Broken Arrow say in the Cheyenne tongue: “You know, father, that dead enemies make long nights of sleep?”

  He held poised above Marston’s throat the glittering blade of a small knife. The major, feeling himself trussed and ready for the slaughter, and unable to voice a plea for mercy, turned his desperate eyes toward Rusty and thanked his gods when Sabin shook his head.

  We keep faith,” said Rusty simply. “Even with liars.”

  Chapter Ten

  The major lay perfectly still for a time. He felt that he was lying there endless hours, but each slow second had for him all the timelessness of the moments when a man faces death. The major was facing worse than death. He was being shamed, and mingled with his agony there was a vast incredulity, for he felt that this thing he was suffering could not be.

  His four tormentors had slipped out the window of his room and had climbed soundlessly down in the outer night. He had heard only one soft thump as their feet struck the ground. Now they were gone. In his imagination, it was as though the wind were blowing them, sweeping them toward the horizon from which they would never reappear. He thought of himself as a pillar of fire—reaching for them—failing hopelessly to catch them.

  To make his madness complete, he could not rid himself of that profound sense of a certain nobility in Rusty Sabin. The man had said that he would keep faith, even with liars. Well, if Rusty and his damned nobility ever came into the hands of the major, there would be an end of both.

  All this while, he was making vague, struggling efforts to loosen his bonds. The material of the blanketing had been wrapped very tightly around him, almost tightly enough to stop the circulation of the blood in his arms and his legs. But there was a slight give in the woolen fabric, and, as he strained from the shoulders and the hips, he could feel the bonds that fastened him to the bed yielding a trifle. But it was a slow business.

  He tried to work his tongue back behind the gag and so spit it out, and his tongue began to ache. It gathered in a great bunch at the top of his mouth and closed the air passages. For a frenzied moment he was sure that he was stifling himself. Then the tip of the tongue got a purchase and thrust the gag a little forward until it wadded hard and firm behind his teeth.

  Not a particle of air was entering his lungs now. He could feel his face swelling, his eyes thrusting out. But still he persisted. And in a silent outburst of savagery he told himself that it was better to stifle with rage and a gag than to be discovered tied like a helpless dog in this fashion. The thing would never be forgotten, not while he lived. Men on the frontier did not forget. They would laugh forever at what had happened to the dignity of the military.

  Straining his jaws so wide that they threatened to crack, a final convulsive effort of the tongue thrust the gag out. Still he could not breathe, however. For an instant he felt that his lungs were bursting, that the imprisoned air would never leave them so that new oxygen could enter. But finally he could gasp, and then he could breathe, and suddenly the gasping shout came, tearing his throat.

  “Help! Help! Orderly! Damn you, where are you? Help!”

  There was a hasty trampling of feet, a wrenching at the outer knob of the door.

  “Break it down, you fools!” yelled the major, regaining his full voice.

  A metal crash of musket butts smote the door to the ground. The sound was like the boom of a big gun. And in a moment the excited faces of his men were above the major.

  They cut him free; they helped him to his feet. Even before he was erect he was snarling orders.

  “Call the trumpeter. Sound ‘Boots and Saddles’. Turn out the command. Some of you head straight for the blacksmith shop. Get your hands on Rusty Sabin. Get him dead or get him alive! The damned white Indian! Take hold on him. I’ll make the man who gets him!”

  They fled with these orders, but they did not run so fast that they were unable to exchange glances on the way. There are jokes in every military command, but few to equal the sight of a commander, stretched on the floor of his own room, tied fast in strips of his own blankets. And the major was not especially loved by those under him.

  By the time he had buckled on his saber and revolver and clamped his hat on his head, he could hear in the central yard of the fort the bugles sounding the thrilling call to horse. He could hear the entire stretch of the barracks
resounding with suddenly roused life. Then he rushed down from his room to lead the manhunt.

  * * * * *

  As Rusty and his three companions had reached the ground, big Bill Tenney grasped Sabin’s arm and muttered at his ear: “Partner, now we’re quits, and on the level.” He was amazed by Rusty’s reply.

  “Brother, so long as I breathe, I shall always owe my life to you.”

  The thing stunned Tenney. In his world, there is nothing that cannot be bought and paid for, and often at bargain prices. But a gift to Rusty Sabin seemed to be a thing that could not be repaid, even if its own weight and value were returned over and over again. That was a fine point for puzzling over, and there was no time now for pondering. Instead, they were forced to race across the town, across the main street, and then, taking the way behind the houses, they came to the rear of the blacksmith shop. No one had seen the escaped prisoner, up to this moment, and there at hand were the four horses, waiting, bridled and saddled. They mounted, but, even as they were putting their feet into stirrups, the note of a bugle rode thin and sharp across the air.

  “‘Boots and Saddles’ ‘Boots and Saddles’!” said Bill Tenney. He turned in the darkness and shook his fist at the sound. “I’ll boot and saddle you, damn you! Rusty, the major’s loose, and the fort’s been warned. They’ll be piling after us like devils, and we gotta ride. Are the nags good?”

  “They’re as tough,” said Rusty, “as Indians know how to pick out. And Indians know.”

  They jogged a short distance from the shop, into the starlight. Then, with loosened reins, they fled. All saving Rusty. He, with a word now and then, had to teach White Horse that this was not a race but a ride, in company. And Bill Tenney, looking aside to the dim shimmering of the stallion, marked the mighty sweep of that stride, so light and reaching that it seemed to be buoyed up by the beat of invisible wings.

  A terrible yearning came over Bill Tenney’s spirit, and a great pain stabbed into his vitals. He could not understand that pain. It had never tormented him before in all his days. It was a thing of the spirit, and yet it was almost physical agony. He wanted that horse, but the stallion belonged to Rusty, and Rusty Sabin was his friend.

  It came suddenly to Tenney that never had he had a friend before. He had known many men; he had roughed and played and gamed and fought and companioned with them, but they had not been friends. They had been picked up and thrown away like gloves, soon worn out in heavy weather. But between him and Rusty something else had happened. He had risked his life for Rusty, and Rusty had risked his life for the thief. The double payment did not cancel out. No, for Tenney now felt that there was an overplus on both sides. Between them was a strange tie.

  He wanted White Horse. He would have it at any cost. But he could not help wishing that the theft would be made at the expense of any man in the world other than Rusty Sabin.

  They were well out on the easily rolling waves of the prairie, by this time, and Tenney called: “Ain’t any use burning ourselves out, Rusty! They can’t find us now!”

  “Dogs!” called Rusty in answer. “They have dogs for the trailing.” And the steady, swift gallop continued.

  Then, confused like the blended voices of many church bells, and beating all on different notes, Tenney heard the chorus of the dogs awaken from the direction of the town. The two Cheyennes instantly increased the gait of their horses. Rusty pulled the stallion over to Tenney, saying: “We still need luck. I thought that it would be at least an hour or so before the major was found. It might even have been till morning. But the luck was against us then, and it seems to be against us now.”

  “Why?” answered Tenney. “This nag of mine is jumping right along. And God knows that they ain’t gonna tag you on that White Horse.”

  “I’m with you,” answered Rusty. “If they take you, they’ll take me.”

  Tenney blinked at that. The stars actually whirled into streaks of thin radiance before his eyes. He couldn’t understand it. What was the use of having the swiftest horse on the plains, if the rider anchored himself by fanatic loyalty like this?

  Aye, but the talk was well enough. It would be time enough to prove such statements if ever the men of the fort came close on their heels, and if the Indian ponies faltered while White Horse was still full of running. Yet a cold uneasiness remained in ­Tenney’s breast and the sense that heretofore he might, perhaps, have been living only on the surface of this human world, divorced from all insight into the depths of great emotions.

  Chapter Eleven

  They rode all night. They struck a vast intertangling of ­gullies that the rains had ripped out of the heart of the plains. No better hiding places could have been wished than these labyrinths, but they were useless to men who were being trailed by dogs, and always, sometimes dying down to a dreadful whisper, sometimes blown loudly along the wind, they could hear the music of the hounds.

  Rusty could remember them well. Bloodhounds, and a few common mongrels and fox hounds, were at the nose of the pack. Greyhounds were the far-striking missiles, as it were. And in addition, there were a number of powerful brutes, cross-bred between greyhound and mastiffs, and strong enough to fight bears, savage enough to kill men. They were regularly exercised and trained by capable handlers at the fort, and the dog pack was, in fact, Major Marston’s contribution to Indian fighting. No trails were blind on which the dogs could run, and more than once he had been able to follow a party of raiders to a great distance, striking them when they were blinded by their sense of security.

  The two Cheyennes, as the dawn came gray over the plains, were plainly worried. They said: “The white war chief has many men, father. He has two horses for each man. His heart is angry, and he will drive his men like eagles across the sky. We are not going fast enough. Is Sweet Medicine to give us strength, or turn us into clouds?”

  There was no irony in this. The Cheyennes had seen Rusty in so many strange scenes that they had in him a more than implicit confidence. Rusty answered with a vague gesture, because his heart was beginning to grow heavy. Turn them into clouds? Well, White Horse, at any moment, could go blowing over the round side of the earth, beyond pursuit. But with the other ponies it was a different matter.

  They had left the entanglements of the badlands, now, and the sweeping prairie was before them. And as the dawn grew, the condition of the horses could be studied. They were very far spent, indeed. Their heads were down, their backs were beginning to roach up, and their bellies to pinch—all sure signs of exhaustion. Moreover, their fierce eyes were beginning to dull.

  They came to a wandering rivulet, and there Rusty ordered a halt to let the horses drink a little. Not enough to weigh them down, only time enough to loosen the girths for a few moments, and so perhaps give the ponies new heart.

  But when they mounted again, the far tremble of the dog chorus was drawing nearer, across the green waves of the prairies, and the horses, as they trotted forward, had little more life than before.

  Rusty drew up again. “There is only one way,” he said. “Two of us must face the danger . . . two of us may escape. Broken Arrow and Little Porcupine, draw away to the right. I go with my white brother, to the left. If I am lost, give your hands to Standing Bull. He is my friend of friends. Farewell! Go quickly.”

  So they split into two parties, and gave up all hope of making a real battle. Four armed men may fight against numbers. Two men are soon lost.

  But as they parted, the four men looked at one another with eyes that went deep. In turn, the two Cheyennes took big Bill Tenney’s hand. Then Broken Arrow bowed his head before Rusty.

  “Father, pray for us,” he said in his own tongue.

  Rusty looked up, and raised both hands to the sky. “You behold us, Sweet Medicine,” he said. “Give us the thing that is in your heart.”

  After that, they divided. The two Cheyennes were soon lost over the wavering green. And from the rear, the noise of the dogs came gradually beating, nearer and nearer.

  “Ar
e they following the Injuns, or are they taking after us?” asked Bill Tenney anxiously.

  Rusty shook his head, and continued to listen. “They are following us,” he said finally.

  “Damn them,” groaned Bill Tenney. “And damn a short-legged worthless runt of a horse like this here.” He beat the mustang as he spoke, but the pony failed to rock into a responsive gallop. Instead, it stumbled heavily, fell to a walk, and then raised a mere dog-trot. Its sides were heaving bellows. Its nostrils could not widen enough to take in enough of the life-giving air.

  “We are ended, brother,” said Rusty, calmly, as he halted White Horse.

  Bill Tenney stared at him with wild eyes for a minute. Then he jerked the mustang to a halt, in turn, and flung himself out of the saddle. A jerk on the reins, and the heavy thrust of his shoulder forced the pony to lie down.

  “If they get me, they’re gonna pay for me . . . and pay damn’ big!” shouted Tenney. He shook his fist toward the increasing chorus of the dogs. “They’re gonna pay blood for blood, damn their rotten hearts!” he shouted.

  Rusty slipped from White Horse. He stood with his arm around the head of the great stallion, and absently stroked the face of the horse. Then he said: “This day is my day, brother. It was your day when the river was taking me. It was taking White Horse, also. As you drew him safely to the shore, so he will carry you away from danger now. Take him, friend.” He smiled as he spoke.

  Bill Tenney, staring, could see no bitterness in his companion’s face. “You’re talking, partner,” said Tenney. He began to breathe like a man who has been running with all his might for a great distance. “You don’t mean what you say. Besides, how would I be taking your horse and riding off? How would I . . . ?”

  Here the beauty and the glory of the stallion filled his eye and his soul, and silenced him to a gasp.

  “One day,” said Rusty, “Sweet Medicine will be kind to me again. He will bring me back to you and White Horse, and then I shall take him. Take him now. Take him quickly, because they are coming close. And I must tell White Horse that you are a friend, or else he will not carry you.”