by Max Brand
“Are you Maisry?” she asked.
The answer came: “Yes. I am she.”
More than the name and the beauty, the voice struck cold through Blue Bird’s heart, for it was a voice so gentle and so soft that it made a music that was hateful to the ears of Blue Bird. So many thoughts rushed through Blue Bird’s mind, and she stood there gazing bitterly so long, that at last what she said was simply: “Do you want him?”
“Want him?” echoed Maisry. She tried to smile, but the fierce, great eyes of the stranger daunted her.
“Yes. Do you want him, or have you thrown him away?”
Maisry stared for only an instant longer, and then she exclaimed: “Are you talking of Rusty Sabin?”
“I am talking about Red Hawk, the great chief and medicine man!” cried Blue Bird. “Is it true that he ever looked at you and wanted you?”
She saw Maisry catch her breath. The change in the face and the change in the eyes worked a swift poisoning of Blue Bird’s soul. She had a good knife at her belt. She wanted to drive it now between the breasts of the white girl. She wanted so much to strike her that she made a step closer and added: “Is it true that you are a fool? Is it true that you have thrown him away?”
“No!” gasped Maisry.
She was so shocked that she looked positively stupid. Blue Bird wished that Maisry would always look like this.
Said the half-breed girl: “Now you lie. For I know everything about it. He gave you the green beetle, and that is his medicine. That is half of his strength. It came from his mother. With it, he gave you his soul, but you returned the green beetle to him. You laughed and you returned the green beetle to him. Hai! Is there no shame in you?”
Maisry was silent, thinking about Major Marston’s words. And she was beginning to grasp at another explanation that started to make her beautiful, for the dead hope revived and burned up in her.
The Indian girl was saying: “If you have given him up, I shall have him. I shall be his squaw, and his children shall grow in my body as the corn grows in the earth.”
“I gave him the green beetle because he begged me to give it back to him,” said Maisry. “He sent for it.”
Blue Bird opened her mouth to make a harsh denial. She closed her lips again without having spoken, and it seemed to her that she had breathed not air, but fire.
“The messenger, he spoke the word that was not so,” said Blue Bird.
“He? He could not lie! He is Major Marston!” cried Maisry. “He. . . .”
She hushed herself, for Blue Bird had lifted her hand.
“Listen to me,” said the half-breed girl. “I sat in the lodge. I heard Red Hawk speak. I heard the weight of his heart in his words. I heard a heart heavier than the heart of a tired man. He said that you had sent him away, and that you had given him back the green beetle and his soul along with it. Do you hear?”
“I hear,” whispered Maisry.
“And he told me, afterward,” said Blue Bird, “that he would take me for his squaw. He took my hand in his hand. He looked into my eyes, but it was only as a brother would look. I can go back to the Cheyennes and take him for my husband. I can give him my hand and my body. I can be the mother of his children. But will you promise never to call him back, with a word or with your eyes?”
Maisry let the tears run down her face. “What can I do?” said Maisry. “How can I take him away from you?”
Blue Bird came to her with a terrible anguish and a terrible envy breaking her heart. She took Maisry’s hand, close to the round, narrow wrist. Blue Bird’s hand was not very soft; it had been toughened by using the fleshing horn and the hoe. The weights she had carried made her back straight, and the sense of Cheyenne glory in this world had made her heart proud. Out of these strengths she spoke, holding Maisry by the wrist.
“If I take him,” she said, “how long will he belong to me? The white blood calls to the white. If I take him, how long may I keep him? The thought of you will come over him as the cry of the wolf pack comes over the tame wolf. He will lift his head, and presently he will be away through the night, and I shall never see him again. He is not a man to have two wives. He is a man with only one friend, one horse, one knife . . . and he will be a man with only one woman, also. Oh, little soft, blue-eyed fool . . . are you woman enough to be his woman?”
After she had asked this, the strength went out of Blue Bird. It drained out through her eyes, for she was staring at Maisry and seeing her beauty, and it seemed to Blue Bird that the tears that rolled down her face were from her heart, leaving it empty.
Chapter Twenty-Three
True sympathy between two women is as rare as true blue in the sky. Between this pair it seemed impossible, because, when Blue Bird looked at Maisry, she knew with an almighty knowledge that Rusty Sabin belonged to the white girl. In knowledge like this, men have no part. They are beneath such understanding.
It would have been a miracle if a man could have lost bitterness as quickly as did Blue Bird. But it was as though the tears melted the envy out of her heart and left only sorrow, which is a pure thing. Maisry put her arm, cautiously, around the slender body of the Cheyenne. She felt the strength and the big beat of the heart and the deep, quick breathing. She was awed, and she was also merciful. She felt that she was looking up, not down.
“You don’t hate me?” she said.
“I am trying to. I have hated you. I shall hate you very soon again,” said Blue Bird. After that, with exquisite lack of logic, she dropped her head on Maisry’s shoulder and clasped her in her strong young arms and sobbed, silently. Indian women make no noise in their grief, unless it is for the dead.
Mrs. Lester found her daughter in that attitude on the step of the house. She cried out: “Maisry! An Indian! A frightful, red-skinned . . . Maisry, step away from her this instant! Richard, come here and see. . . .”
Maisry lifted her head. There was so much goodness in her that she was not so much rejoicing over the lover who had been given back to her as she was sorrowing for the Cheyenne.
She merely said: “I want to see Major Marston. I want you to ask Father to go find him at the fort.”
“Major Marston? Of course I’ll send for him,” said Mrs. Lester. She was overjoyed. When she thought of Major Marston, which was several times a day, she always thanked God for placing such a splendid man where her daughter could see him. So she ran back into the house as Maisry led the Indian girl inside. To her husband, Mrs. Lester exclaimed: “Get Arthur Marston quickly! Bring him here at once. Maisry is asking for him. It’s the first time. And . . . maybe . . . maybe this is the beginning of something. . . .”
Richard Lester looked up from his book. His lean face was filling out with health now. He said to his wife: “I’ll get Arthur Marston, but never think that Maisry will see him with your eyes.”
However he went quickly up to the fort and came back with the major.
When Marston heard that Maisry was taking compassion on a stranger, he was not at all surprised. She was the sort to take compassion. When the major thought of all Maisry’s virtues, he knew that God had specially designed her to make him a wife and so compose a difference and fill a vacuum, which Nature abhors.
A good deal of the jump went out of the major’s sprightly step when he came into the house and found Maisry in her own little room, sitting beside her bed, on which the Indian girl was stretched. But when he looked into Maisry’s eyes, all his smiles went out.
She had been grave from the day when Rusty Sabin left the town. But now she was stern, also, and the upward tilt of her face, which made her more lovely, gave her also an imperious command. She said with the directness that was part of her nature: “Why did you say that Rusty had begged for the green beetle, Arthur?”
There was a thunderclap in the heart of the major. Even the hardiest liar in the world will feel that stroke when he is confronted with his lie. Perhaps that is a token that we are honest by nature, no matter how we overlay the fact with our guiles and s
avage distortions of instinct. However, he had the natural fertility of the born liar, also, and he merely remarked: “Why, of course he sent for it.”
Here Blue Bird suddenly lifted her head; she rested her weight on her hands and arms, and looked up at the major. She had been weeping with a silent violence. Her eyes were a little swollen, her lips were thick, and her face was reddened. But the major had been long enough on the plains to think her darker skin just as lovely as that of Maisry. She said to him: “Why do you say the thing that is not so?”
There is no word in all the Indian tongues for liar. There is only the roundabout phrase that means the same thing, and Blue Bird had to translate her thoughts out of Cheyenne into English.
“Come, come,” said the major. “What tricks and antics has Rusty Sabin been playing with this pretty young thing? What sort of nonsense has she been talking to you?”
Blue Bird leaped to her feet. “I am the daughter of the white, Lazy Wolf,” she cried, “and he is almost a chief among the Cheyennes! I speak the thing that is true, and I have only one tongue! You,” she exclaimed more loudly, pointing an indignant hand, “you are a man who says the thing that is not so!”
The major merely laughed. He stopped laughing at once, however, because even he could see that his laughter had a hollow and an unreal sound. Then, making himself doubly serious, and striking himself grave in an instant, he said to Maisry: “Now, let’s get down to the bottom of this, Maisry. Something has troubled you. Is it something this girl has said to you? She’s cut up. Don’t be too hard on her. She’s trying to do her best about something, I suppose, but the right words come hard to people who don’t know a strange language.”
And Maisry said: “She tells me that Rusty would marry her, except that he still cares about me. He thinks that I sent the green beetle back to him as a sign that I no longer love him. Arthur, you brought me his message.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
No one really knows how to pretend innocence, but the major offered a very good imitation. His color decreased but his smile was cheerful, his eye bright and steady.
“Indian heads are likely to get white ideas twisted,” he said. “I know that this girl is trying to tell the truth. In fact, it looks as though she had come a long distance in order to tell it. But you can be sure that something is twisted. My dear Maisry,” he added with a perfectly good and sincere laugh, “what in the world would I have had to gain by misinterpreting messages between you and Rusty Sabin?”
Maisry was about as clear and simple and straightforward a girl as one can find anywhere, but no woman was ever born so simple that she was unable to tell when she quickened the heartbeat of a man. And Maisry, looking earnestly into the face of the major, could not help doubting him just a trifle. She had seen the familiar hunger in his eyes more than once, and instinct had taught her how it was to be dreaded. But she could only say: “Of course you had nothing to gain. But something is terribly wrong. He thinks that I sent back the scarab to him . . . he thinks it was because I was through with him. What did you say to him, Arthur?”
“What did I say?” answered Marston, pretending to be puzzled. “Let me see. I tried to make the thing easy for him. He was sorry to take the green beetle away from you. I tried to smooth out the case for him and comfort the poor fellow, so I suppose I told him that you didn’t care at all, and that you’d get on perfectly well without a green beetle hanging around your neck. Ah, perhaps that’s the catch! Perhaps what I told him on my own account may have seemed to him like a direct message from you . . . words from you. By the Lord, Maisry, I believe I’ve hit on it.”
A moan of distress made her throat tremble. “How did he look and what did he do when he heard you say it?” she asked.
“How did he look? Well, you know he’s two in one . . . and, just then, he was all Indian. I couldn’t have read his mind in a thousand years, he kept his face so immobile. But I’ll tell you how to work this thing out. I want to show you that I’m a friend worth counting on. The thing to do, Maisry, is to send back your pretty little Indian friend with a letter to Rusty Sabin. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. The plains are covered with Pawnees and Comanches, and they’d like nothing better than snapping up a young Cheyenne girl on the loose by herself. But I want to take my men out for some heavy marching soon. The scoundrels are getting fat and lazy, and their horses need work, too. So I’ll take ’em out and march them in the direction of the Cheyenne camp. I’d as soon as not, and I’ll give your little friend an escort through the larger part of her journey.”
The major had done very well, in this speech, for, after starting with a defensive explanation, he had passed into the stage of good advice, and then into an offer of assistance. He made his handsome face fairly shine as he concluded his proffer. Maisry was not one to hug suspicion and doubt. There was no more deceit in her soul than in a fine summer day, and now she banished from her mind every doubt about big Arthur Marston. She shone on him with her thanks, and the major turned at once to Blue Bird.
“Now, I want to know just how far away your camp is,” said Marston, “and how you people happened to travel as far south as all this?”
She hesitated a little before replying. Youth and beauty in a man made very little difference to her. She had a true Indian woman’s worship of battle scars and battle fame, and a sour-faced old brave with one eye gone and a broken nose would have filled her soul with content, if he wore some of the stained coup feathers in his headdress. However, Major Marston was actually the war chief of the white men, and, although his uniform looked silly, and his short mustache was absurd, in her eyes, she was willing to treat him with respect. A single strong reserve remained in the back of her mind; she felt that a lie had certainly been in the air somewhere, and that the major was its most probable author.
She made her answer: “The camp is a day’s march away, as a woman rides, riding steadily. We came south with our sick people because we heard that Red Hawk was in this place.”
“Hello! Is he a doctor?” demanded the major, sneering a little in his smile.
“He is a great medicine man,” answered Blue Bird, watching the major’s eyes, and liking them not at all.
“Well, what did the great medicine man do for the sick?” asked Marston, still half bantering. He looked at Maisry, who flushed.
She was always made most miserable by any reference to the superstitions that so largely controlled Rusty’s life.
“Red Hawk raised up the dying men,” said Blue Bird, and a wild gleam came into her eyes and her head rolled a bit from side to side as she chanted out. “They were starving. Meat would not feed them. They dwindled. They shrank away. They turned gray.”
“Anemia,” commented the major, nodding. “That kills thousands of red men every year. More than bullets ever got rid of. What did Red Hawk manage to do about anemia? It’s not curable, you ought to know.”
“Hai!” cried the girl. “Not to white men. They cannot cure it. But Red Hawk went out and prayed to Sweet Medicine, and an eagle flew down out of the sky with the answer. There is nothing but laughter and happiness in the camp, now that Red Hawk has come home to his people.”
In one respect, this stirring answer was not at all to the taste of the major. However, a new thought was coming into his mind. “How many of the sick are there?” he asked.
“Five twenties of them,” said the girl.
“A hundred sick?” exclaimed Marston. He half closed his eyes, fiercely staring at this beautiful chance. One hundred wild Indian warriors, now weak as children owing to disease, but daily growing stronger, soon powerful enough to join the fight with any soldiers in the world. Why should they not be wiped out, if it were possible? To be sure, at the moment there was peace with the Cheyennes. But the major did not care about that. He could work up an “Indian outrage” in his report, and, if his massacre succeeded, there was not apt to be much investigating from Washington. So Marston added: “And how many other braves are along with the sick people
?”
Blue Bird hesitated. She did not like these direct questions. Besides, all questions about numbers worried her a good bit.
As she hesitated, the major suggested, gently: “Two scores? Two twenties of warriors?”
“Three scores,” said Blue Bird.
There was no doubt that sixty was closer to the truth than forty, and, as for the difference, she did not care to worry her head over the real figure, which was some two hundred and fifty braves in the full prime of their fighting strength.
That was how the major got his first misleading information.
* * * * *
He went straight back to the fort to prepare for the march. The more he thought of the thing, the more convinced he was that an inspiration had come to him. He would take a flying column of a hundred picked men, with plenty of reserves in the way of horses. With those men, he would escort the Cheyenne girl across the plains, and she would at the same time be a flawless guide to him. As for the letter that she carried to Red Hawk, it would be strange if the major could not interfere with that. His real hope, growing every moment from the bottom of his soul, was that he would be able to take that Indian camp by surprise, and that the saber of every man in his command would run red before the slaughter was over. He would become a colonel overnight, and full on his way to a general’s pride of place.
Poor Maisry, in the meantime, was writing her letter, pausing over it, telling herself that it ought to be brief, but all the while tasting, as she drew the pen over the page, a strange happiness and homesick grief combined. She had thought that she would never see Rusty again. Now she blessed the words that would go before her and come under his eyes.
She worked with her head canted to one side, smiling. Now and then she looked blankly across the room toward Blue Bird, seeing not the Cheyenne girl, but only her own visions. But every time the Cheyenne smiled sadly in answer. She knew, well enough, what picture lay in the eyes of this beautiful white girl.
