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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Western Story Magazine, 3 November 1928,
with "Thunder Moon Goes White"
OUT of the hills came a red rider. He rode like the wind, his long, heavy hair streaming across his shoulders. He was a big man. All the Cheyennes were big. The pony beneath him seemed absurdly inadequate to carry such a bulk, and yet it continued to run.
It was polished with sweat that ran down to the middle of its belly, and its ears were flattened with labor and with agony, for the Cheyenne in the saddle sent it forward with the most determined cruelty, appearing to pay little attention to the direction in which it ran, but exerting all his ingenuity to torment additional speed out of it.
Yet, torment or not, it was going only at a hand gallop when the Indian topped the rise and saw before him another warrior in the hollow beneath a man who had heard that violent approach, the hoofs of the tired pony beating and scattering the rocks. So he of the hollow had halted his horse—a lofty and noble-appearing chestnut—and had swung into the crook of his left arm a long-barreled rifle. So, at wait, he regarded the newcomer.
But, from a distance seeing the rider of the chestnut, the speeding warrior began to make frantic signs, and drove straight down on him. As he came up, still he kept his animal at a gallop. The big chestnut was turned then and galloped easily at the pony's side.
"You are one of Thunder Moon's men," exclaimed the rider of the pony. "I tell you by your horse and by your rifle! Tarawa has put you here to relay the warning to our people. The Pawnees are out! Spotted Bull is leading them. I myself have lain for two hours and watched them, and counted them. They are a host. They travel slowly like men wishing to keep their horses and themselves fresh for a battle. Even now perhaps they have picked up my trail and are rushing behind me like wolves, but now you carry on the warning!"
The second warrior said not a word in reply. But he took his rifle and handed it to the speaker, who carried a war bow alone. He gave him, also, a pouch of ammunition; so that if the brave were indeed overtaken by the flying Pawnees, he might give a good account of himself until help arrived from the Cheyenne camp.
After that, he sent the chestnut flying. No Indian pony could have matched the speed of that thoroughbred. The big horse smoked on over the ground like a red mist caught on a storm wind.
Presently he broke out of the hills into a stretch of gently rolling ground. A river angled sharply out of the highlands, and then rolled smoothly away among the undulations of this fatherland of the prairies. Where the river swung in a wide bend through this pleasant country—treeless, but spotted with drifting lines of shrubs, here and there, and rich with tall grass that swished about the legs of the running chestnut—there was an Indian village placed at a suitable distance from the water's edge. One could tell that the tribe prospered by the whiteness of the tepees, and by the numbers of horses that moved in herds nearby, under the care of many keen-eyed boys. A thin stream of people went from the village to the water and back—women to wash, or girls to carry in water or wood, or boys to frolic and play and make themselves strong.
The warrior on the red mare, taking note of all this, smiled a little in pride, and rode on, however, at a greater pace than ever, for the mare was keen at the sight of her home. Like a flung lance, horse and man darted into the circles of the tepees, and in the innermost circle the rider flung himself to the ground.
There were three tepees close together, in this innermost circle, and into the nearest of these—a noble, gaudily painted lodge—the warrior turned. He first struck against the board posted near the entrance; a voice spoke within; then he lifted the flap and entered.
Inside, squatted at the back of the lodge upon a folded buffalo robe, was a chief who wore a hideous mask of a face. In close fight with the enemy he had lost one eye, his right cheek had been slashed across several times, and the flesh had gathered above the ghastly, livid furrows of the wounds. Nevertheless, to his people he was a handsome object; his wounds were proof of his dauntless valor. And he was, in fact, the war chief of this detachment of the great Cheyenne nation. He was now smoking a long pipe, whose bowl was of the true pipe rock, and he rose and greeted his visitor with a resounding "How!"
"You have brought news, Young Snake," said he. "Will you eat first and then smoke, or first will you speak?"
"The Pawnee wolves will not let me smoke or speak," said Young Snake. "Word was brought to me out of the hills. The Pawnees are on the warpath. Spotted Bull moves at their head. They are very many. Their horses are good, and they count many rifles. They come straight toward our camp!"
The chief smiled, and the expression was a dreadful grimace.
"When they come to me with guns and scalp knives," said he, "they are not coming against a squaw. And our men are not children, and our boys are not girls. But these Pawnees are fools. I have heard that Spotted Bull is a wise chief. But does he think that the medicine of Thunder Moon has grown weak?"
"A hungry wolf," said Young Snake, "will try to pull down a bull moose. The Pawnees are hungry and they forget the medicine of Thunder Moon."
"Go to Thunder Moon, my friend," said the war chief. "Ask him if we shall draw out our fighting men. Or perhaps he will take down fire from the Sky People and fling it in the faces of these fools, and then send them wandering and blind!"
This pleasant thought made the eyes of Young Snake flash, as though in foretaste he already were taking the scalps of helpless men.
He left the tepee at once and crossed to an even larger one, whose skins were as white as snow, and which had recently been painted with all the skill that an Indian can show. Close beside it was another, much smaller lodge. At the entrance to the larger one he struck the board, a woman's shrill voice, quavering with age, bade him enter.
"Thunder Moon is not here, White Crow?" he asked with a good deal of respect in his voice and in his manner. Indeed, he was like one standing upon sacred ground.
"You come here with haste on your face," said White Crow. "There is trouble for the Cheyennes again, and so they remember that I have a son in my lodge! Hungry dogs always have soft eyes when they smell food!"
This bitter speech did not abash the warrior. He merely asked her if she could tell him where he could find her foster son.
"How shall I tell you?" asked White Crow. "He sits by the river in a dream. Perhaps Red Wind will know."
Young Snake left the lodge and stood at the entrance of the smaller tepee, after casting one rather anxious glance through a gap among the tents and toward the open prairie in the direction from which the Pawnees might be expected. However, he dared not question the wisdom of the war leader, no matter how indifferent that hero might seem to be.
In answer to the blow of his hand on the entrance board, the flap of the tepee was pushed aside and Red Wind stood before the brave. Over one shoulder a great braid of copper-colored hair, looking as smooth and heavy as that metal in fact, dropped down even below her waist.
"Red Wind," said the warrior, "I have come to ask where I may find Thunder Moon. Do you know where he has gone?"
Her face clouded at once.
"How should I know?" she asked with some bitterness. "Does he live in my tepee? Is he my husband? I am only a stranger who lives on his kindness. Why should he open his mind to me and tell me where he moves?"
She stepped back as though about to drop the flap of the tepee, then added coldly, "Go to Standing Antelope. He is more to Thunder Moon than all the other men among the Cheyennes. Go to him and ask him. He cannot fail to know the mind of the great warrior, by night or by day."
The flap of the tepee straightway fell, and the brave remained for a moment, scowling, as though he was minded to call the girl back and teach her better manners. But he altered his mind, and turning, he strode rapidly through the village until he came to a much smaller lodge, in front of which sat a handsome young brave with such feathers in his hair as denoted feats done in battle, in spite of his youth.
"Thunder Moon! Where is he?"
Standing Antelope frowned.
"I do not carry him in my hand," said he. "How shall I tell? I only know where his mind is. In the land of his white fathers!"
To the blunt answer of the youth, Young Snake, a hardened and seasoned brave, returned a baleful stare in which he surveyed the youngster from head to foot. But Standing Antelope did not shrink from the survey, repaying it with a calmly insolent glance. Correction hesitated in the mind of the older man; it was true that Standing Antelope was young, but he had ridden on long forays at the side of Thunder Moon, and from that strange and terrible man he had learned gun play with such skill that few among the Cheyennes would have been willing to stand against him.
So Young Snake contented himself with saying, "A true friend should be as one's shadow."
With that he walked haughtily away, and plied his query again of a boy at the outskirts of the town; having remounted the chestnut mare in the first place. The boy had no hesitation at all. He pointed at a clump of trees on the bank of the river, and toward this Young Snake galloped at full speed. He was growing nervous. For what if the Pawnees should suddenly appear in a rushing charge?
So he made the mare travel at high speed toward the designated clump of trees and, dismounting, he pressed through them and found Thunder Moon reclining at ease. Young Snake gazed upon that mighty form with awe. Now, as he lay at ease, his strength appeared more formidable than in action. In his hand lay a book, partly shaded by the down-showering of his hair, cut short when he had lived among the whites, but now grown long again. He brushed back this hair so that it fell more in order across his shoulders and nodded to Young Snake. Only at that hint did the messenger dare to speak.
"Thunder Moon," said he, "the Pawnees have been seen in force among the hills. They are coming fast, and straight toward this camp, it seems. Spotted Bull leads them."
"I am not the leader of the Cheyennes," said Thunder Moon. "This is a message for Bald Eagle."
"I have spoken to Bald Eagle. He told me to ask you if he should lead out the braves, or if you, instead, will go out and throw the fires of the Sky People in the faces of the Pawnees?"
Thunder Moon closed his book with a reluctant sigh. He stood, gathering into his hand a heavy cartridge belt that also supported at either side a long holster, out of which the handles of two revolvers appeared.
This he buckled about his waist. From the tree beside him he took the long rifle, which he carried in his left hand. In his right he took a staff and so left the wood. Young Snake pointed to the mare.
"Will you ride?" he asked.
"While you walk?" asked Thunder Moon kindly. "No, brother. I have not loaned the mare to you in order to take her back the first time there is weariness in my feet!"
They crossed the level stretch between the river and the village, Young Snake leading the mare behind him.
"Ride through the camp and gather my men," said Thunder Moon. "We are going out to find these Pawnee wolves who dare to come so close to our village. That is to say, we shall ride out, if Bald Eagle gives me his permission."
Young Snake whirled without a word, bounded upon the back of his horse, and hastily rode off through the camp. His face was illuminated with confident joy, for the Cheyennes never took the dread of defeat with them when they rode out behind Thunder Moon.
The latter went on into the tepee of Bald Eagle and briefly stated his purpose.
"Brother," said the war chief, "whatever your mind tells you to do is good. Shall I ride with you?"
"Only those who ride my horses are going," said Thunder Moon. "But you shall ride if you will."
"I stay here, then," said the chief. "Let the young men go out and gather the scalps of the dead men whom Thunder Moon leaves on the ground!"
And he looked down as he spoke, for fear that the other would see the poisonous envy and hatred that at that moment was overflooding his soul.
ALL musters were quickly made in the Indian village, and the followers of Thunder Moon were rapidly assembled, he himself cantering a horse among the tepees and encouraging his braves to hurry, until he came to the lodge of Standing Antelope. Here he called, and after a moment the youth appeared at the entrance. A buffalo robe was gathered close about him; he appeared bowed, as if in pain or in weariness.
"The Pawnees!" called Thunder Moon. "Are you riding? Have they failed to bring you word?"
"O my father," said the young warrior, "there is hot pain in my heart. I do not think I could sit on the back of a horse! Besides, you do not need me. The finest braves follow you. Even without them, you could not fail. The Sky People ride at your side!"
"When I come back," said Thunder Moon, "I shall see you again, and then we shall talk about your sickness. Rest quietly and keep your mind cheerful. A sad mind makes a weak body, Standing Antelope!"
He rode on, and Standing Antelope stared gloomily after him. Then he retired to the quiet of his tepee and sat with the robe gathered around his head, trying to shut out the shouts of farewell and encouragement, as the braves departed on the war trail. His whole soul was on fire to join those riders. Yet he controlled himself, and for a long hour after the riders were gone, he waited. Then he got up and put on a suit of beaded deerskin.
He picked up a revolver, but remembering that this was a gift from Thunder Moon, he promptly laid it aside again. With only a knife at his belt and a staff in his hand, he walked out and went with dignity through the village until he came to the tepee of Red Wind. He spoke, and she came to the entrance and smiled cheerfully on him.
He went close to her and said in a quiet voice, "He is gone, Red Wind. Let us go, also. I have horses ready. Once we are away he never will be able to find our trail!"
She looked narrowly at him.
"Are you asking me to run away with you?" she demanded bluntly.
He drew himself up.
"I am," said he.
"And why should I go?" asked Red Wind.
"My tepee is filled with wealth," he said. "I have fine back rests and many painted robes, and good pipes, and also pots and everything that a woman could wish, such as beads."
"Who gave you your wealth?" she asked.
"I fought for it," said he.
"You fought under the shield of Thunder Moon," said the girl.
Standing Antelope struck the ground with his staff.
"I have counted seven coups in battle!" he declared.
She answered, "You have counted your coups with Thunder Moon riding beside you, striking down every danger that came at you!"
"You talk like a woman blind with love," replied Standing Antelope.
"Who is greater, then, than Thunder Moon?"
"Bah!" said the youth. "He never is brave, except when he knows that the Sky People are with him. Thunder Moon never has taken a scalp."
"But he has counted more than thirty coups—and in battle."
Standing Antelope bit his lip. Then he countered, "Of what use is a fine horse to the man who cannot sit on his back?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"You love Thunder Moon. But what are you to him?"
"Do you think," she answered angrily, "that I shall like you better because he likes me less?"
He said with emotion, "You do not know me, Red Wind. I am not old, but I am a man. Already I may speak in the council. The old men listen. Why will you not listen to me, Red Wind? You are nothing to Thunder Moon. He keeps you here out of his kindness. His heart is full of the memory of the white girl whom he left behind him."
It was the girl's turn to grow excited. She gripped her hands hard and her breast heaved.
"Thunder Moon takes what he wants, even out of the camp of the enemy," said she. "If he wanted the white girl he would have taken her. You should know this!"
"Among Indians he is an Indian," answered Standing Antelope. "But among white men he is a white. And among the whites, the word of a girl unstrings the arms of the strongest warriors. This I have seen, and you have seen it and know it, also. You talk to make your own heart strong, but there is no truth in your words!"
She stared at him, as though what he said had entered her heart deeply, and he went on, "Now you are sad and angry, because I have told you the truth. See what I offer to you in exchange. I am not a magician. I cannot call down the Sky People. I am not so rich as he. I have not a whole herd of such matchless horses as he inherited from Big Hard Face, who stole them from the whites—from Thunder Moon's own father! But I am a Cheyenne, and I am a man. I have ridden out on the war trail and fought hard, and gone hungry and welcomed every pain, because I hoped that in that way I could drive away the thought of you."
"Standing Antelope," said she sternly, "how do you think that I may trust you? If you could betray a friend like Thunder Moon, would you be true to a woman?"
"I give up a friend whom I love for a woman whom I love still more," said he. "Besides, I have shown you that he will never make you his squaw. He has learned among the whites their ways of marriage. His wife would have to be a real wife, and one only, and for the one woman, he already has made his choice!"
Suddenly she drew her robe about her head.
"Ah," said she, "you can break my heart, but you cannot take me away from him!"
Standing Antelope went away with a pausing step. Bald Eagle, from before his own lodge, watched him going, and motioned to him. The youth, half reluctantly, went to his chief.
"You have a sore heart?" said Bald Eagle.
"I am not happy," answered the brave.
"Patience, patience," said the war leader. "Patience will win the longest battle. And brave men know that the last blow is what decides the fighting!"
The two looked fixedly upon one another, with understanding, and then Standing Antelope resumed his way to his own lodge. It was a bitter day to him. Besides, it placed him in a quandary. He hardly could trust that Red Wind would not tell Thunder Moon of that conversation; and if this were done, how could he remain in camp without fighting against Thunder Moon? And no matter how boldly he had spoken in the presence of the girl, he well knew in his heart that he could not stand for an instant before the strength and the skill of the white man.
So he sat in his tepee and thought long thoughts; and twice he was on the verge of mounting his best horse and deserting the tribe. But always he resisted that temptation. For he was so sick with love that he hardly cared how soon death came to him!
Armed to the teeth, Thunder Moon's band of chosen braves voyaged across the prairie. In two hours they put the camp well behind them, and they had broken into the region of higher hills when the advance guard whirled and raced back. He had seen the Pawnees. They were coming straight up the valley—nearly five-score warriors, well armed and mounted, as the first report had accurately stated.
Thunder Moon ordered his men to dismount. He concealed them in the long grass of a hilltop, leaving three men in the rear to handle the horses and keep them in readiness for a retreat; and when this was done, he rode boldly out into the valley in full view of the advancing Pawnees. It was his hope to draw them straight past his concealed force, which then could pour in a searching fire and make away to their horses and escape before the pursuit became effective.
Upon a little swell of ground in the midst of the valley he took his post and watched the irregular body of the Pawnees jogging toward him. Nearly every warrior appeared to carry a rifle; in the rear, a large herd of horses was being brought on by several Pawnee boys.
Coming still closer, the Pawnees suddenly seemed to recognize an enemy. They flogged their horses into a gallop and bore down upon the lone horsemen at a terrific speed. Still he did not move from his position, though some of the enemy already had unlimbered their rifles and were firing. But the distance was still too great for any sort of accuracy.
Thunder Moon watched that charge with grim satisfaction. He was just about to twitch his stallion around and send him flying to the rear, when he saw a chief break forward through the mass of the Pawnees and begin to make many violent gestures, shouting as he did so.
A great war chief of the Pawnees, perhaps, encouraging his men to the charge.
But then he saw that the warriors were restrained on either hand. Their pace became slower. Suddenly the whole body halted at the front, those in the rear bringing up their ponies and then stopping so as to form a fairly dense line.
The leader, in the meantime, advanced by himself and signaled from a distance that he wished to converse with the solitary rider. So that Thunder Moon, nothing loath, advanced in turn. They met in the midst of the valley, and Thunder Moon saw before him a stocky, powerful man of middle age or a little less, with a particularly gross and brutal face.
It was Spotted Bull, a famous and lucky hero among the Pawnees; particularly distinguished for raids in which he had driven off horses from the Cheyennes, the Blackfeet, and even from the Sioux themselves—a tribe that on account of its great numbers, most of the other plains warriors were glad to leave alone.
This chief came straight up to Thunder Moon, his rifle in its case, his shield slung over his shoulder, and only his long, light lance in his hand. Even this he did not carry on clear to the point of meeting, but jabbed the butt of it into the ground and rode on empty-handed. He raised a hand in greeting.
He said to Thunder Moon with such complacency, "Now that two such famous chiefs have met, Thunder Moon, let me know why we should not part as friends?"
"What friendship has there ever been between the Cheyennes and the Pawnees?" asked Thunder Moon sternly.
The other was undisturbed.
"No doubt," said he, "we are generally at war with one another, but that is no reason why there should not be peace, now and again. What are you to gain today from us? No doubt you have some of your men hidden nearby, watching with their rifles. But if you kill any of our tribe, then we must try to have vengeance, and that would mean that for many days your village would be very uncomfortable. Men are not happy when they are surrounded with stinging bees, and the Cheyennes do not sleep soundly when they hear the wolves howling in the night!"
At the aptness of this remark, Thunder Moon could not help smiling to himself a little.
"On the other hand," went on Spotted Bull, "it is very hard to win any honor from Thunder Moon. All the nations of the plains know that very well! Now, I wish to say to you that we have not ridden out to do any harm to the Cheyennes. We do not wish to strike at your young men. We have another goal," concluded Spotted Bull. "That is why I offer that we should all be friends for a few days."
Thunder Moon nodded.
"Spotted Bull, you speak very kindly. Kindness from a stranger makes the brain sleep. However, I shall try to do what you want. But if you are not riding into our country in order to make war on us, what is that you wish to do, and where are you going?"
"A good rifle is best kept in one holster," said the cunning Pawnee, "and a secret is safest when it is lying in one mind; however, to a famous man I must give an answer. Is it not true, Thunder Moon, that not very long ago you went to live among the whites for a time?"
"That is true."
"And that you left them? That, in fact, they hunted you out?"
The frown of Thunder Moon was a sufficient answer.
"These things are talked of among all the tribes on the plains," said Spotted Bull. "The Pawnees," he added with additional flattery, "were not very glad when they learned that Thunder Moon had come back again to the Cheyennes! But I know that after such a thing has happened, you have no great love in your heart for the whites."
"If a dog is kicked," said Thunder Moon in oblique answer, "he licks the hand of his master who beat him; but if a wolf is struck, he leaps at the throat."
"So!" said the Pawnee chief. "And Thunder Moon will teach the white men that they were fools to throw him out! This I can understand. It could not be any other way that a man would act. Then I freely tell you that I am riding against the whites."
"That will be a great war," answered Thunder Moon. "I have been in their country, brother. I know the numbers of their warriors. Since we are speaking as friends, I tell you the truth!"
"I am not riding against their towns," continued the Pawnee. "But they have sent out a party into the plains. That party has killed a Pawnee. It is right that they all should die like dogs and that we should take their scalps and their horses and their weapons!"
He added, "It is said that they have very fleet horses, but I think that they cannot run as fast as the Pawnee bullets!"
"You have told me the truth," said Thunder Moon. "I have nothing to say except to give you peace!"
"Peace to you," answered Spotted Bull, "and to all of the Cheyennes. Afterward we may meet in a different manner."
So they parted, and each rode back to his own men.
OUT of the grass arose the twenty Cheyennes, took their twenty horses, and sat in the wind, their feathers blown sheer back upon their heads, watching the Pawnees—those ancient, traditional enemies—ride slowly past them into the heart of the valley. They looked down to the unharmed Pawnees, they looked without regarding the greater numbers. For they were invincible, they felt; they were the men of Thunder Moon, who could not know defeat. So they looked to the foe, and then they looked to their leader, and their faces grew darker.
All the Pawnees went past. They went in silence, departing through the hills, rising and dipping like a ship through green seas, streaming soon out of sight.
"Suppose they turn and ride for the village?" asked one gloomy warrior. "Suppose they are riding now with all their might, now that we cannot see them any longer."
Thunder Moon said, "If we had fought, we would have killed some of them. They would have killed some of us. And I would not kill twenty Pawnees at the cost of five Cheyennes!"
So he spoke, but one of the younger braves muttered, no louder than a whisper, "Thunder Moon, perhaps, has lost the support of the Sky People! Perhaps they no longer hear him speak!"
So he said. And their eyes widened with fear at the mere thought; there was malice, too, in their faces. Thunder Moon, though he did not hear that malicious voice, plainly understood the meaning of those expressions, but he did not heed them. For he had known for years, if the slightest thing turned out well, it was not because of his own brain and the strength of his own hand, it was because of the Sky People.
He hardly knew what he felt about them, now—those dim beings of the upper world. There had been a day when he would have shuddered at the mere thought of doubting their existence, but now he had altered somewhat, having lived for long, long months among the white men of his own kin. He had not actually prayed to the Sky People for these many, many months. For this, even, he felt more and more guilty. Perhaps they had turned their backs upon him!
So he understood, perfectly, the shadow that ran over the faces of his men, like a cloud shadow running over a group of hills.
His thought turned back to the last thing that had disturbed him. The Pawnees rode to attack the whites. Somewhere they would strike the wanderers and wipe them out, perhaps. He was amazed and troubled by the thought. Amazed to know that it could pain him so deeply, when he remembered how those of his own color, his own blood, had driven him out with bullets!
Then he called forth Young Snake. There was hardly a better or a more seasoned warrior in his entire band.
He said, "Go back with the other men to the city of the Cheyennes. I am riding alone!"
Young Snake looked upon his master with a burning and a hungry eye.
"O Thunder Moon," he said at last, in a voice that actually quivered, "I hear you and I understand. There is no longer glory for Thunder Moon in striking the enemy with so many followers. He wants to go alone, his guns speaking, and the Pawnees falling. He wants to count twenty coups in a single battle. But think of us! We follow you for the sake of glory!"
Thunder Moon could not help smiling a little as he answered. "Do you think that I would attack them single-handed, one man against eighty? Is that a wise man's thought, Young Snake?"
Young Snake answered with perfect devotion. "When the Sky People ride with you, do they count the number of the faces of the Pawnees before them?"
Thunder Moon spoke briefly. "The Sky People bid me to ride alone, and not for the sake of a battle. I have told you what to do. Ride back to the village. I will not change my mind."
At this direct command, Young Snake obediently drew off. The other warriors sulkily heard his voice, and suddenly they fled across the hills on the homeward trail, like so many shadows mounted upon red streaks, so rapidly did the big chestnuts run and smoothly! But Thunder Moon rode on alone, and with the greatest caution, upon the trail of the Pawnees.
But carefully though he went, he knew that he was overtaking the Indian column. The walk of the big stallion was equal to the jog of the Indian ponies, its trot was the equivalent of a mustang's canter; whereas the long-stroking gallop had no counterpart among the hobbling, broken gaits of the prairie horses.
There was no dust cloud ahead to show him the nearness of the Pawnees; but he moved onward with the keenest caution, knowing that such a wise chief as Spotted Bull was not apt to trust to an informal treaty of peace such as had just been completed, but would surely throw out rear guards to spy against any possible surprise attack.
He came to a narrow little gorge where a stream wound back and forth through the flat, pebbly bottom; and down this he went with a crash. The stallion struggled up the farther side, where the grass grew so tall that it brushed against the feet of Thunder Moon. And the sun glittered like the flashing of steel blades on the polished surface of the grass; like the flashing of steel blades, but not quite like the dull sheen of a rifle barrel!
Thunder Moon whirled in the saddle as the rifle jumped to the shoulder of the Pawnee. He saw a hideous face, streaked with war paint, and he flung the heavy bull-hide shield from his left arm straight at the Indian.
The rifle spoke; the shield staggered in its course and fell to the ground as the bullet ripped sidewise through it. It would have been easy, then, to finish off the man with a bullet from his revolver, but Thunder Moon was full of the white man's fighting madness. The Indian fights as coolly as a wild beast—that is to say, he always avoids risks if he can. But the white man rejoices in a sort of drunken, berserker lust of battle for battle's sake. So Thunder Moon followed his flung shield with a leap like a catamount that drove him from the back of his horse and straight upon the Pawnee.
This was a practiced and wide-shouldered warrior, bull-necked, cunning of hand, with an arm of iron. But he could not stand against the charge of Thunder Moon. He had dropped his rifle and caught out his knife just as the weight of the white man smashed into him and bore him heavily to the ground.
Then, kneeling beside him, Thunder Moon watched the stunned victim gradually open his eyes.
He made no further attempt at resistance. Blankly he gazed up at the leader of the Cheyennes, and waited for death.
Thunder Moon gathered to his hand the knife, the hatchet, the rifle of the Pawnee.
"The Pawnees keep good treaties and their word is sacred," said Thunder Moon bitterly. "Yet here is a wolf in my path, jumping at my throat!"
The warrior did not attempt an answer.
"Rise!" said Thunder Moon.
The Pawnee rose to his feet.
"Is there any reason why I should not send a bullet through your brain?"
"Dog of a Cheyenne!" answered the Pawnee with a dauntless heart. "The Sky People turned my bullet aside from your heart. Or else you would lie dead here, and tonight I should be a great man among my people. Kill me as you please. I am not sorry that I tried to end your days!"
"What is your name?"
"It is known to my people."
"I can tell you," said Thunder Moon, "by the scars across your shoulder. You are Gray Bear, are you not?"
At this the discretion of the Pawnee could not prevent a flash of pleasure from appearing in his eyes.
"A man will be known even in the lodges of his enemies," he said. "And a great warrior is named in the camps of the foemen! I am Gray Bear!"
"Where is your horse?"
"He is near."
"Show him to me."
The Pawnee whistled. A pony sprang up from the grass and came forward.
"Your horse knows you," said Thunder Moon. "Get on his back. Ride on with me!"
The Pawnee obeyed without a word, but a settled sternness of gloom appeared on his face; as though he were seeing long beforehand the burning fire in the Cheyenne camp where the women would torment him to death.
They journeyed on to the brow of the rising land, and as their heads came up across the top of the grass, they could see, in the distance, the moving line of the Pawnees, with the sun winking upon the bright tips of their spears. The prisoner sighed, ever so slightly, and Thunder Moon said to him, "Keep close to my side. Ride slowly. All may be better for you than you imagine!"
The problem of Thunder Moon was now considerably complicated. He had to watch a strong and capable warrior at his side—even if that man were disarmed—quite likely to undertake any desperate and sudden attack upon him. And, in addition, he had to look out for other rear guards who might have been thrown out to watch.
However, for some time they journeyed on, having cautious sight, now and again, of the Pawnees who traveled before them over the top of some grass-grown hummock upon the prairie; and there were no further encounters with subtle watchers who lay in the grass.
And, while they rode on, the mind of Thunder Moon turned somewhat between the dangers that beset him and the glory he already had won upon this expedition. To carry into the city of the Cheyennes a prisoner, and of all prisoners, who so welcome as a grown and famous warrior? The women had a thousand wrongs and remembered deaths to avenge. They would expiate them upon the person of this brave. And the grim face of Gray Bear already acknowledged his approaching fate.
Another thought, too, interfered with the mind of Thunder Moon. He could not help remembering that the whites among whom his kin lived would never have acted thus toward a prisoner. The life of a defenseless man was sacred!
And this new standard troubled Thunder Moon, and made him scowl askance at the Pawnee. And then, almost against his will, he looked up and was aware of a small white cloud sailing across the upper heavens, filled with radiance, as though the sun were seated in its center.
"The Sky People!" he thought inwardly, and no matter how little he consciously believed in that old superstition, yet in spite of himself he was comforted and reassured.
So they came up behind another hummock and Thunder Moon suddenly reined back his horse, for he had had a view of the line of the Pawnees crouched behind a low ridge just before him, their horses held farther down the slope. And beyond, across the prairie, came a stream of wagons.
There were fully twenty of the big canvas-covered schooners, drawn by teams of oxen, a little gap between the rear of one wagon and the horns of the following cattle. With their clumsy but powerful steps they pushed on through the prairie. And around the train rode horsemen, three or four in front, and others to either side, but it seemed that they rode for pleasure and comfort rather than to keep guard, for otherwise they should have been pushed out to ten times such a distance, so as to act as spies in the treacherous Indian country.
The leading wagons had begun to mount a slight rise. The wind was dead. In the mortal stillness, Thunder Moon could hear the creaking of the great wheels upon their axles, and, dimly, the shouts of the ox drivers as they used their goads freely. For this train was long out from the settlements, and the cattle were weary—soft with such lush green fodder, and weak with the long days of labor.
Those dim voices, like thoughts rather than physical facts, haunted Thunder Moon with a strange sadness, and he suddenly saw the house of his father, and the big white walls flooded with sunshine, and his mother in the stately library, her needlework in her lap.
And then a rifle shot cracked from the hollow before him; he saw the long line of the Pawnees break over the crest of the low ridge and pour with the most fearful yells across the level, brandishing their spears, shaking their rifles above their heads.
"Ha!" grunted Gray Bear. "They will swallow those white men! They will take the cattle, and the horses, and the guns, and the whisky, too! There will be much fire water among so many wagons! All is ours!"
For the moment he had forgotten that he was himself a wretched captive, and that the most unlucky white man in that train was hardly to be pitied more than himself.
The wagon train, threatened so suddenly in the plains, instantly began to act. The leading wagons turned sharply around and began to move toward the rear, while the frantic, yelling drivers goaded the oxen to a trot, then to an inconceivably heavy, lumbering gallop.
And while the head of the train turned back in this fashion, the rear likewise curled about to join the front. The purpose, of course, was to form the wagons into some sort of a rough circle, from which, as from the walls of a fort, the riflemen could keep up a steady fire and drive the enemy away.
But slowly, slowly moved the wagons; the Pawnees rode on wings to strike. Gray Bear groaned with eagerness and with joy as he saw the probable success of the charge.
There were brave and ready men in that caravan, however, and the rifles worked steadily. Three of the red riders were knocked out of their saddles, but the rest rode on, lying flat along the backs of their ponies, and yelling like so many madmen.
The head and tail of the caravan, gradually nearing, now seemed to have an equal chance of actually locking, when a bullet fired by one of the Pawnees struck a bullock that was struggling forward in the lead team from the rear. The animal dropped, dragged in the yoke, and then the wagon slewed around to the side.
It was only possible to close the gap, at this point, by having the wagon next following veer outside the one that had been checked. But the driver of the second wagon, utterly confused, merely halted when the one before him was checked. It was the old habit of following the leader, which all the drivers soon learned upon the prairie.
In this case it proved fatal. The progress from the rear being stopped, the whole caravan looked a helpless thing, like a hedgehog that fails to quite curl up before the reaching paw of the lynx rips up its belly. But he who drove the lead wagon was a man of sense. Seeing that he could not join the rearmost ox team, he turned in almost at right angles, to the left, and the other wagons streamed after him, thus striving to close up a smaller circle that would protect at least a portion of the entire line.
Now, into the open gap, the Pawnees streamed, screaming like mountain lions over a kill. They rode erect, firing to either side. But they had divided attention; some turned on the nearly defenseless wagons to the rear. Some raced on to try to prevent the front half of the train from closing up. But the latter were foiled, and Thunder Moon saw them recoil as the circle was completed.
WELL sheltered behind the wagons, the men of the circle maintained a steady fire against the Pawnees, but the latter now had a similar shelter.
They swept in a single rapid wave over the remainder of the wagons; wild cries of agony and wilder cries of triumph went up to heaven, and then the Indians threw themselves into position behind the captured wagons to open fire upon those who remained. However, after the first few moments, seeing that they were making only a small impression upon the remainder of the white fighters, they gave the greater part of their attention to the looting of the train in their hands. The wind was dead. A thin smoke cloud from the firing of many rifles began to sway out and envelop the battle. Then Thunder Moon turned to his captive.
He had come with a bland satisfaction to see the wiping out of the whites; now he found in his heart an increasing rage. Under his glare, the Pawnee chief winced, but Thunder Moon merely said to him, "You are free. Go back to Spotted Bull. Tell him that our truce is ended. He has counted many coups and taken many scalps. His hands are heavy with plunder. Now tell him to guard himself; the Cheyennes are on his trail!"
The Pawnee did not wait to be reassured. He gave merely one incredulous glance to his captor; then he sent his pony off at a jog trot. When he was a hundred yards away, as though suddenly mastered by fear, he put the whip to his horse and shot off in rapid zigzags across the grass, like a snipe flying upwind. Thunder Moon grimly watched him go. Bitterly he wished for those chosen warriors whom he had sent back under Young Snake!
He turned the tall stallion and drove at full speed back toward the Cheyenne village. In less than an hour, he sighted the smoke above the tepees; then the village itself. He sent his shout before him and the whole village roused itself in answer. As he came up, Young Snake was the first to gallop out to meet him, armed at all points; behind him streamed the rest of Thunder Moon's own private bank of adherents. With that advance guard of proved and well-equipped warriors, he headed across the prairie. He did not follow the straight line toward the scene of the recent battle and slaughter of the whites. Instead, he cut off at right angles to that line of march. For he reasoned that it would be very strange if Spotted Bull should remain to exult on the field of battle after the warning that he had received through the liberated captive. He was more apt to take the first and quickest trail toward his homeland.
If he moved to the left, it was very likely that Thunder Moon would cross that line of march; if he moved to the right, he would be free. So, with one chance in two to gamble for, Thunder Moon drove his men remorselessly.
Ten miles of prairie rolled behind them, and then a youth scouting ahead whirled back to announce that there was visible, in the distance, a column of riders coming straight toward them at a round pace. Thunder Moon himself pushed forward and swung to his eyes the glass he always carried. Instantly he recognized the Pawnees by their cropped heads. Behind the file of warriors came the herd of horses, mixed with the cattle recently taken from the wagons of the whites. A foolish thing for Spotted Bull to have taken such slow-moving animals if he wished to move with celerity!
And there was no doubt about his haste. He had pushed out to either side two or three scouts to ride in advance, and the line came on with gaps in it, showing that some of the horses were being distanced by the rest.
Not Indians alone rode in that procession. The very first thing that Thunder Moon saw—more moving to him than the flashing of a sword—was the long waving of a woman's hair, and then he made out the bundle of an infant in her arms; and two children riding one behind another on another horse, and upon a third a man—evidently wounded or brokenhearted, for his head was sunk upon his breast.
Thunder Moon smiled, and the smile was not good to see.
His own dispositions were easily made. The horses were swept back into a sunlit hollow; the riders were thrown forward into the high grass along the ridge of a knoll which was rather a small wave of green than a hill. In a moment, the Cheyennes were out of view, peering out through the grass blades at the procession of the Pawnees.
In a murmur, Thunder Moon passed his word among his warriors—to every one who recaptured alive one of the white captives of the Pawnees, there would go in full and free possession one of the chestnut horses. It was a gift worth the risking of life!
But, in the meantime, it appeared as though this stratagem would be entirely wasted.
Far distanced by the ride of Thunder Moon's band across the prairie, a score of Cheyennes on their war ponies had clung to the trail and now these were in plain sight, coming rapidly on.
Spotted Bull must have sighted them at the same time.
Some thirty of his own warriors were dispatched to the side to confront this menace, but though they deployed across the line of the Cheyenne approach, still the outnumbered Cheyennes came on. For they well knew that somewhere in the sea of the tall grass, Thunder Moon and his chosen warriors were strategically placed.
The Pawnees, on the other hand, as though amazed by this resolute advance, wavered a little, uncertain; and Spotted Bull himself, with half a dozen of his best warriors, rode out to reenforce his advance guard, while his main body, now reduced by half, came slowly on with the captives.
All was working out for the best interests of the Cheyennes. The late-comers from the village bore straight on against Spotted Bull. Just behind that chief lay Thunder Moon and his chosen fighters in the grass; and straight toward the concealed line came on the rest of the Pawnees. One Pawnee division was already tacitly taken from the rear; the others would be swept with surprise.
To the left, from Spotted Bull's immediate adherents, a rifle cracked, and then another, but Thunder Moon, half rising to his knees, saw with joy that the Cheyennes kept on their rapid advance, merely fanning out their line so as to offer poorer targets. And now the head of the Pawnee main body was jogging close and closer. A dozen yards from Thunder Moon's concealed warriors—and then, silently—the Cheyennes rose to their knees in the grass and, with a deliberate aim, they blew the head of the column to bits!
The sudden blast of more than twenty well-aimed rifles took the Pawnees so completely by surprise that it was as though the ground before them had opened and spat forth fire and destruction in their faces. They rolled back in utter confusion, and the Cheyennes leaped in among them with clubbed rifles, with knives, and with thrusting, narrow-headed lances.
Thunder Moon, his rifle cast aside, a revolver in either hand, made at the woman, and saw her Pawnee guard whirl on her with lifted hatchet; two quick shots dropped the redskin, and Thunder Moon stood at the head of the horse and looked up into a white, drawn, bewildered face, and saw trembling hands that clutched the infant closer.
"Have courage," he said rapidly to her. "You are safe. No one will harm you!"
He turned back to the battle; but it was ended already. The men with Spotted Bull, amazed and unnerved, did not even pause to discharge their rifles, but turned and fled, and as they turned, the riders of the Cheyenne ponies whipped vigorously in pursuit.
Woe to the Pawnee whose horse stumbled or proved a laggard!
And the tall chestnuts, rushed up from their hiding place in the hollow, were hastily mounted and darted away to join the pursuit, their long strides rapidly overtaking the fugitives. In another instant the sounds of battle were scattered far across the prairie and in all directions. Here was a Cheyenne group busy taking scalps; others rounded up the herd of cattle and horses; and others took the fallen plunder; and still the greater part were mercilessly hunting down the tribal enemy.
It was as great a stroke as Thunder Moon himself ever had delivered, and yet he felt no keen pleasure as he looked on the work that was still under way. For it seemed to him then, with a stabbing suddenness of truth, that the death of one white, even woman or child, was more than enough to counterbalance all the vengeance he could execute upon the entire Pawnee nation.
Bitterly he realized this. He had been cast out from among his people; but now he knew in full what they meant to him and that an Indian name and an Indian life never could give him an Indian heart!
The white fugitives were gathered in a close cluster, surrounded by half a dozen braves, who were disputing as to which actually had rescued them—a problem Thunder Moon himself had to solve.
The two children and the woman who carried the infant were half hysterical with joy and with relief. He had them placed on the ground to rest and steady their nerves. Then he turned to the white man and found, as he had expected, that the latter had been wounded, a rifle ball having passed through his left thigh, so that it had been a constant agony for him to remain in the saddle.
Then, with all the skill he had learned from whites and Indians, Thunder Moon cut open the trousers leg and cleansed and dressed the wound. A swallow of whisky out of a flask restored the color of the face of the sufferer, and he said quietly, "Heaven knows what luck sent you here at the right moment. But if you had come a few hours before, you would have saved a horrible massacre!"
"I saw the attack," said Thunder Moon. "Tell me, did the last circle of the wagons hold? Or did the Pawnees break through and slaughter them, too?"
"No, they beat the Pawnees off. And you—"
He paused, looking earnestly at Thunder Moon.
"Will you tell me who you are?"
"I am a Cheyenne. They call me Thunder Moon."
"By heaven," said the other, "I thought so! Your hair was shorter when I last saw you, and you were not so sun-browned. But you are William Sutton!"
TO this recognition, Thunder Moon replied in the uttermost astonishment, "And who are you? Where have you seen me?"
"I'm Charles Siegler," said the other, "and I used to see you near your father's place. I had the small farm down the road, with the row of poplars in front of it, and the pool beside the trees. Do you remember me, sir?"
Thunder Moon closed his eyes. He remembered very well the tall, slender, graceful trees, and their images ever floated on the surface of the little lake.
"I remember you, Siegler. I remember you very well," said he. "And no doubt you were one of the men who hounded me out of the country with guns and dogs? Were you one of those?"
"No, sir, I thank heaven!" said the other with violence. "I had nothing to do with that bad day's work."
"Bad day?" said Thunder Moon, darkly. "There were dead men in the jail behind me!"
"Ah, and was that it?" asked Siegler. "But, as a matter of fact, there were no dead men at all, and he who hounded on the others after you knew it very well! No, sir; since your leaving, there was never a time when a great many people did not make a stir about bringing you back! Your father and mother have gone to the expense of fitting up all these wagons and the cattle to go across the prairie and find you."
"To find me!" cried Thunder Moon. "And how many died when the Pawnees rushed the train?"
"I saw five men down, and three women, and three children," said Charles Siegler.
"Eleven dead," muttered Thunder Moon. "But why did my father send out women and children to help hunt for me?"
"Those were not all of his men," answered Siegler. "We fell in with another small train; we made one party, to travel together as far as we could into the country of the Cheyennes. After that, they were to go on alone. They were mostly in the trail of the wagon train. They went down with a crash when the Pawnees charged. Heaven help them!"
"Who went out commanding my father's men?"
"Your brother, sir."
"Jack is commanding them!" muttered Thunder Moon, with a total bewilderment.
"No man is keener to find gold than he is to find you, sir."
"Is that likely?" broke out Thunder Moon suddenly.
Then he added, "But Jack's come with the rest—to find me! It's got to be believed!" He added, "Is there any one else in the party that I know?"
"I think there are, and particularly there is—"
Siegler checked himself.
"Go on, man!"
"There's one you'd better see with your own eyes before you're told about, Mr. Sutton!"
Thunder Moon rubbed his chin with his hard knuckles. He looked away across the prairie, and he saw the men of his war party coming gradually back, some from such a great distance that they were mere specks; others disappearing in the hollows, in part, and growing big against the sky, again, as they climbed the slight knolls.
It had been a great victory. The scattering drew back. In that sudden assault, not a single Cheyenne had been killed or seriously injured. Not a horse had been lost. Altogether, seventeen Pawnees were dead, and seventeen scalps were hanging from the bridles of the Cheyennes, and there was not a man of the entire party who had not counted at least a single coup. It was a glorious victory. There was loot, besides, in abundance, not only from the Pawnees but from the whites who had first been plundered by the Pawnees.
Young Snake, splashed with red from head to foot—part of it running from a shallow, unregarded wound in his own broad right shoulder, came up to his leader with a face convulsed with joy.
"Take all the men, and go back to the village," said Thunder Moon. "My band is tired, and they have fought hard and ridden as only Cheyennes can ride. Go to Bald Eagle and ask him to send out some new men. The Pawnees are men. Spotted Bull is not among the dead, and he may attempt to come back and fight once more."
"Spotted Bull," answered Young Snake, "is a brave man, for a Pawnee. But he has this day seen the fire of the Sky People flung in his face. I, Young Snake, saw him ride from the battle and never look back! But I shall do everything as you wish!"
"Listen to me sharply," said Thunder Moon. "In the wagon train there are many white people who are my friends. They are to be treated as friends. They have come a great distance to find me. Let the young warriors come out and be a guard between the white men and the roaming Pawnees. Do you hear?"
"I hear and I shall tell Bald Eagle."
"Go to the tepee of White Crow, my foster mother. Give her the rifle and the clothes and all the weapons of this dead Pawnee. Load them upon his pony. Tell her that I killed him and two more with my own hand. She is an old woman, and she needs to hear pleasant news to make her heart light and young again."
"O my father," said Young Snake—though Thunder Moon was much his junior—"this I shall do! White Crow shall sing louder than all the women of the Cheyennes. Shall I go?"
"Go at once!"
The other was off instantly, gathering his men about him with shouts; and off went the warriors across the plain. There remained behind, the dead, stripped bodies of the Pawnees, the whites, and Thunder Moon.
The others gathered close around him, looking fearfully across the plain, as though they expected terrible danger to flow in upon them from its vastness at any moment. He reassured them gravely.
"The Pawnees have lost heart. The Indians are not like the white men. When they are beaten, they go off to make new medicine."
Several horses had been left to them by the express command of Thunder Moon. The woman and the two children were mounted. The wounded Charles Siegler was slung in a rude litter between two ponies, and so they started back across the prairie, Thunder Moon riding his great red stallion, and leading the litter horses.
At last, far off, they saw the wagons, all exactly as Thunder Moon last had seen them, the small, cramped circle at the head of the line, and the rest of the wagons scattered in a broken line just as they had stood when the Pawnee charge broke into their midst.
And he said to Siegler, "Jack Sutton is in that train?"
"Him? Without him, we'd all be dead! He was driving the lead wagon—it was him that had the sense to turn in short and make the small circle—Heaven bless him! He done a day's work that would have lasted him for the rest of his life!"
He added, "And the girl, too! I seen her handling her rifle like a man!"
Thunder Moon asked no questions. An odd, stinging hope was awakening in his breast, and he looked with a scowl at the slow pace with which the litter bearers kept up the line.
Then, in profound wonder, he looked up to the broad surface of the sky, now gathering color, for the sunset time was upon them, and he saw one golden cloud high above the rest, with a bosom filled with rich fire.
The Sky People, thought Thunder Moon. They have brought my brother out to find me!
When they came still closer, they saw that all the people of the caravan, more than a score, were gathered around a mound of newly turned earth—a common grave in which the dead had been placed. Thunder Moon could see afar the man who was reading the service for the burial. And three women were in the listening group—one of them had fallen to her knees in grief.
A little nearer, and now they could see faces—and yonder he knew the tall form of his handsome brother, Jack Sutton. Hardly a brother he seemed in the old days. How different to find him here on the prairie!
A queer thrust of joy passed through the heart of Thunder Moon, and he hurried on ahead of the others, scanning the group, which had now turned away from the grave and toward him.
They began to shout. One of the women ran out with a wild cry that passed into the mind of Thunder Moon, never to leave him again.
She passed him, and reached the litter, and cried out again; but there was so much agony of joy now in her voice as there had been agony of sorrow and pain and hope before.
Yonder man who had been reading from the Bible, was now revealed as no less a person than Judge Keene, looking no less courtly on the wide floor of the prairie than he had been in his own house.
Thunder Moon brushed straight on. His brother was hurrying toward him, calling out with honest joy in his voice. Judge Keene, also, moved forward, waving his hand in wonder and delight. But these people were hardly in the eye of Thunder Moon. He looked beyond them to a woman—beautiful Charlotte Keene!
She did not advance with her father to greet Thunder Moon, rather, she shrank back into the crowd; and the more she shrank the more savagely and well he knew that she loved him as much as ever he had loved her during the long and lonely months since he left her and rode westward toward the prairies.
The instant that he felt that hot wave of confidence in her, he could turn his attention to his brother and the judge. They greeted him with the purest amazement, as well as joy. His hands were wrung. Big Jack Sutton grasped him by the arms and a thousand questions poured out.
How had he known that they were there? How had he chanced to come that way? There was less of a miracle in this coincidence than appeared, for had not the caravan been voyaging west these many weeks, striving to find the section of the Cheyenne tribe to which Thunder Moon, alias William Sutton, was attached?
"Where's Charlotte?" said the judge. "She wouldn't let us go off without her when we started on this expedition. She wanted a taste of frontier life. Heaven knows we've had too much of it today with the Pawnee tribe!"
Charlotte was with them, at last, shaking hands, and gravely telling William Sutton that she was glad they had found him. To Thunder Moon she looked almost childishly small, compared with the tall Cheyenne women; even compared with Red Wind. And then all the other people of the train had to be met, and there was a glad hubbub of voices, except from those who had lost friends or family in the battle.
To escape from that spot Thunder Moon urged them to march straight on, because they would find water within two miles. So the cattle recaptured from the Pawnees were put to the wagons, and the train forged ahead until the darkness came. Then camp was made at the edge of a small stream; men and animals drank, and three fires were lighted, for brush was plentiful. Dinner was cooked. And all this while, Thunder Moon had little opportunity for conversation, because his presence was required here and there, directing the way, helping to picket the horses and oxen, and taking command in general.
Later, he would have a chance to talk with Charlotte Keene. But when he came back to the fires after all his work, he found that Charlotte had gone to the wagon to sleep. The other women and children, equally exhausted, disappeared under the canvas.
And all the camp grew quiet; and with low voices Judge Keene, Jack Sutton, and Thunder Moon talked together. They watched the head of the fire rise and snap off in the blackness, under the glow of the stars.
"One of you has done most of this," said Thunder Moon. "Which one is it?"
"We pulled together," answered the judge gravely. "We did everything together. We each had our motives!"
"And what was yours?" asked Thunder Moon of his brother.
Jack Sutton grew red, but his glance would not waver from the face of the other.
"I had to find you," he said, "in order to let you know I understood, at last, what a greedy fool I'd been. I had to find you and tell you that I'd wanted to rob you of your rights—that I'd envied you the estate. Great Scott, Will, I never could have called myself a man if I hadn't made some effort to find you! I'd even plotted against you—that last night."
Thunder Moon glanced at the judge.
"He knows all about it," said Jack Sutton. "I told him and I told Charlotte. I'm clear with them, at least. And perhaps someday I can be square with my own conscience!"
"It was Harrison Traynor that put the killing into your mind," said Thunder Moon.
"It was," admitted the younger man.
Now, across the firelight, reached the great hand of Thunder Moon. It was laid upon the shoulder of Jack Sutton.
"Brother!" said he.
And they looked full at one another with a world of understanding and affection.
"Now that we've fairly met," said the judge, "we must put the question we've come to ask. Do you come back to your father's home with us?"
Thunder Moon frowned. He lighted his pipe, and blew a puff toward the ground, a puff into the air, and another cloud of smoke he struck with his hand.
In this Indian fashion he continued his smoking, unconsciously frowning in thought.
"I came back to my father's house," said he, "and I tried to live like a white man."
"And a good job you made of it, almost from the first," said his brother.
"The first whites whom I saw hunted me like a fox. And then I settled down in the house, and in the end, after a great deal of hard work with the reading of books, and toiling and grubbing, and wearing stiff clothes that grip the shoulder muscles—in the end of all of this, when I had learned to love my father and mother and the old white house, I was driven away, because I would not let my foster father lie in a jail!"
"It was Traynor who did that," said the judge. "Heaven rest the dead, and Traynor is among them! But I cannot help saying that I never heard of any more treacherous and malicious action than that of Traynor's against you, and the raising of the crowd to hunt you—when he knew very well indeed that there were not three dead men left behind you in the jail."
"There are other things," said Thunder Moon. "It is true that very often my heart is sick to go back among my own kind. But still, here on the plains, a man is a man. There is freedom. There is no one to say to me, Go! Come! Stand!"
"And who is there to say that to you in your own home, Will?" asked his brother.
"There are a good many things to stop me: pity for my mother, respect for my father, and always the hard fist of convention beating into a natural man's face—to say nothing of the law that keeps its rope around every neck!"
The judge, at this, smiled and nodded.
"Of course, it's true," said he. "But, with us, you would at once be a distinguished member of society. Your father is very old. Frankly, he is not very well. We don't expect him to live through the next winter. In case of his death, you would step up as the head of the family. The head of the whole estate!"
"If I were head of the whole estate," said Thunder Moon, "could I then do as much as this?"
He whistled—a long, birdlike, mournful note—and then he raised a hand as a warning to listen. Almost at once, out of the darkness, they heard the rapid beating of the hoofs of a horse. Then, into the firelight, came a young Cheyenne. He brought the mustang to a halt close to the fire and raised a long, slender lance and shield in salutation to Thunder Moon. That posture he maintained for a moment, unstirring, except as his lithe, muscular legs gave with the heaving ribs of the pony.
Thunder Moon spoke a few words in Cheyenne, and the warrior whirled the pony and was gone in a flash.
"Can I do that, when I am head of the estate?" asked Thunder Moon.
THAT wild vision out of the night was still in the minds of the listeners; they were still half dazzled by the wild light in the eyes of the mustang, in the eyes of the Cheyenne brave.
Then the judge said slowly, "Isn't it true, William, that you're held by something else?"
"By what?"
"You have a pretty young wife among the Cheyennes, haven't you?"
"I?" exclaimed Thunder Moon.
"Let's be frank, my boy. The girl who speaks English. She herself told my girl that she was your wife."
"Red Wind! She told Charlotte that I am married to her?"
"No doubt she simply meant that she had been taken as a squaw, Indian fashion."
Thunder Moon set his jaw hard.
"That explains a good many things," said he. "And your daughter believed her!"
"I want to talk frankly," said the judge. "You will imagine that I had to have a pretty strong reason for making such a journey as this. And a still stronger one for letting Charlotte come along with me. The fact is, William, that you were something more than a friend to her."
"I love her," said Thunder Moon quietly. "And I told her so!"
The judge seemed to inhale this speech like incense.
"If you care for her, that settles it," said he. "We'll arrange all the minor difficulties; and back you must come with us, my boy. Life has been a little drab and dark for poor Charlie since you left us!"
"Suppose," said Thunder Moon, "that I build a trading fort in the hills. The Cheyennes would still be around us. Would Charlotte be happy here in the open country?"
"She has a thousand friends," said the judge. "You know that, William. It would be hard to ask her to come out here. But I think she would do whatever you asked—except that you could not very well ask her to share your life with the Indian wife."
The judge had put this as gently as he could, but his old eyes glimmered with fire and contempt as he spoke.
Thunder Moon arose.
"I go back to the village," said he, "and there I shall see Red Wind, and bring her back with me to tell your daughter the truth. I have had no wife among the Cheyennes. Old White Crow, my foster mother, is the squaw in my tepee. I have placed a lodge for Red Wind near us. She was left alone in the world. I was a friend to her, and she has hurt me when my back was turned! But you will hear the truth from her own lips!"
The judge fairly groaned with pleasure.
"My dear boy!" said he. "My dear lad! Bring her as fast as you can. Start with the morning. We'll head on in this direction."
"There will be Indians in front of you and around you," said Thunder Moon. "They are my friends, the Cheyennes, and they will keep you from trouble. Go to sleep now. You are all tired. In the morning I start for the village."
They took his word for it and went to their blankets, but Thunder Moon sat by the fire, the blanket huddled closely around his shoulders.
He knew that he had come to a parting of the ways, where he must choose one of the roads that branched before him. Drawing him toward the house of his father was his affection for his family, and the love he felt for Charlotte Keene, and there was the pull, also, of his own blood and kind.
But on the other hand, among the Cheyennes he was a force. He was like a king of the body and the spirit. And though he half knew that his mysterious authority was based upon a sham, yet in a way he could not be sure. The Sky People were to him half a superstition and half a fact.
Here upon the prairie his was a name that rang through all the red nations—Thunder Moon! But far to the east, where his father's house stood, he was simply William Sutton, vaguely known as a man raised among the Indians—a nonentity—a thing without being, so far as the minds of other men were concerned.
He sighed as he thought of it.
And looking up from his thoughts, he saw that it was the first glimmering of the gray dawn.
Now he rose, and mounting the red stallion, he started back across the prairie. The Cheyennes swung in like gray ghosts to meet him, but he waved them back to their watch and bade them bring on the white men in the morning.
Then he went on swiftly.
The sun was half up over the horizon when the stallion waded through the creek and went up the slope beyond toward the village, which already was up, for the Indian begins his day with the sun. Young women were coming down to the river for water. Boys stood about, shivering with the early cold. Warriors began to appear, wrapped in their buffalo robes.
But when he was sighted on his familiar horse, what a shout went up in welcome! So they brought him, in a tangle of cheers and exulting shouts, to his lodge.
He went in and found White Crow busily laying out the trophies he had sent her. She turned to her foster son with a toothless grin of joy that almost made nose and chin touch.
"Last night a woman sang in the scalp dance," she said. "I told of the coups you had counted, O my son! I told how you had laid your braves in the tall grass. I told how the Pawnees were like puffs of smoke. You struck them, and they disappeared forever! Spotted Bull is a great chief. He is a lucky warrior, also. But my son is Thunder Moon. Hai! My soul is hungry to see the spirit of Big Hard Face. He must have leaned low from the happy hunting grounds last night to hear. All the people shouted your name together! Thunder Moon!"
He listened, delighted.
If there was something childish about this, there also was something magnificent. Then he pushed the pleasant thought away.
"Where is Red Wind?" he asked.
The jealous old squaw exclaimed, "Asleep, perhaps—that lazy creature! Or whispering with Standing Antelope. She makes his eyes as bright as the eyes of a hungry wolf. Is that a good thing? Be wise, Thunder Moon! Send her away. Or else give her to Standing Antelope. Let him have her!"
"He is my friend," said Thunder Moon, cheerfully. "If he wants her, then he shall have her. But first I must talk to her."
"Give her away—and talk to her afterward!" insisted White Crow. "She will not want to leave you. Now she has a lodge to herself. She only has to work for herself. Why should a useless woman wish to keep a lodge and do all the work for a warrior?"
Thunder Moon stepped outside the lodge and saw Red Wind coming up from the river, carrying water, and a great braid of her copper hair shone like golden fire as it slipped down over her shoulder. She came to Thunder Moon with a smile and paused before him; but he waved her into her tepee and followed her in. She, putting down the skin of water, turned to him and offered him the place of honor on a folded robe, with a comfortable back rest behind it. He refused with a curt gesture.
"Red Wind," he told her with the dignity of anger, "you have made me not happy."
She clasped her hands loosely before her and looked at him with submission.
"I am not wise," she said meekly. "Tarawa has not given me a mind like the sun or the moon. But all of my days here seem to have gone by me like the wind over the prairie grass. Surely I have done nothing to make the great chief angry, but I have had a dark thought, perhaps, and he has made medicine, and he has read my mind!"
Thunder Moon scowled upon her.
"Are you talking to some other person?" he asked. "Are you talking to some foolish other person, Red Wind? Between you and me there is an understanding. You know that you have no real belief in the Sky People!"
"But do you deny them?" she asked him quickly. "Would you stand under the open sky and tell them that you deny them?"
He sighed and shook his head.
"There is no more strength in my mind than there is in a chain of grass," he admitted. "But that is not true of you. There is no foolishness in you, Red Wind. There is nothing in you except thought. You laugh at the Sky People and at all the Indian ways, and at all the Indian medicine. Tell me if that is true?"
"How should I say that?" asked the girl quietly. "Who am I not to believe what my master believes?"
"I am not your master."
"What are you, then?"
"I have only tried to be your friend."
"The lodge that I live in is yours," said she.
"I have given it to you," he answered. "Why do you act as though you were a slave?"
"What else am I?" she demanded. "I am not your daughter or your sister. If I were, you would sell me for a few horses to one of the men in the village. Perhaps you could find one who wants me. I am not your squaw. What am I, then, Thunder Moon?"
"Whenever you choose to play the child and be helpless," he grumbled, "there is no way that I can talk with you. I think that you know it!"
"Tell me how I must speak to you?" she asked. "The will of Thunder Moon is my will!"
He stamped upon the floor of the tepee.
"Do you want a husband?" he asked. "Twenty times I have begged you to tell me which one of the young men among the Cheyennes pleases you! Young Snake I have seen looking at you!"
"What pleases you is pleasing to me," she replied.
"Answer me!" he commanded. "Tell me what you think!"
"Do I dare?" she asked plaintively. "Young Snake is a great friend of yours. He is your bravest warrior, next to Standing Antelope. If I should speak a bad word against him, you would beat me and leave me weeping!"
Thunder Moon went closer to her; he towered above her darkly.
"I never raised a finger against any woman or against any child," said he. "And this you know. Why do you speak to me in this fashion?"
Her eyes closed.
"O Thunder Moon," she murmured, "whatever I say is wrong. Whatever I do, I cannot please you!"
"Speak truth, and be yourself," he begged. "Why do you act in this way? Is it because you are partly white and partly Indian?"
Her eyes remained closed. He saw the long dark lashes against her skin. He could not tell why she had closed those eyes, or what thought was in her mind, or weariness, or disgust. She was a problem beyond his solving.
"How can I tell what is the evil in me?" she asked. "But Thunder Moon sees me, and understands much better!"
He drew back from her, shaking his head.
"Is it true that you hate me?" he asked her suddenly.
At this she opened her eyes. They were dull and empty.
"Hate?" said she.
"You saw the white woman whom I loved. You told her that you were my wife among the Cheyennes! That was a lie, Red Wind. Why did you lie to her?"
For almost the first time in his knowledge of her, he saw that she was taken aback. Her color altered. She rested a hand against the nearest lodgepole.
"There were many rich men and wise men who loved her," said Red Wind at last. "Why should she have you, too?"
There was no acting now. Manifest fear was in her face.
So he said slowly, "In spite of that, she has found me again!"
"She!" cried Red Wind, starting almost violently.
"She is one of the women in the wagon train the Pawnees raided."
"And they could not find her body with a bullet!" cried the girl with a sudden outbreak of savagery and despair.
Something like fear stirred in the heart of Thunder Moon. He looked at her in amazement.
"She is alive and well," he answered sternly. "You would gladly have seen her dead in the attack. Is that true?"
She did not answer but watched him with a sort of sullen defiance, as one who realized that she had said too much to retract.
"After this," went on Thunder Moon, "there is only one thing you can do to help me. You must come with me to the white camp. You must go before her, and tell her that on that other day you lied to her, and that you never have been my squaw!"
Red Wind turned pale indeed.
"When must I go?" she asked.
"At once!"
"Thunder Moon," said the girl in a trembling voice, "do what you wish to me today. But let me stay here till tomorrow in quiet. The wagon train will come close. It will be easier, then, for me to speak to her. I need a little time to think of what I must say. It is not easy even for a woman to admit that she had lied!"
The man sighed with pity.
"That is true," said he. "Because of your pride, Red Wind, there are times when I admire you as I admire strong men. We shall wait until tomorrow before you speak to her. In the meantime, it is not right that you should remain any longer as a part of my family. I see that bad talk has started. Everyone must be made to know that you are not my squaw. And it will be better for you to pick out a husband from among the Cheyennes!"
She listened with great dark eyes that suddenly narrowed in thought.
"Then I must choose a husband?" she said.
"It is better. You see that. When you do not have me to take care of you, you must go into the tepee of some warrior of the tribe."
"Then let it be Standing Antelope, if he will have me!"
"Shall I send for him?"
"No. I shall ask a boy to go with a message to Standing Antelope. When he comes, then I shall talk with him and ask him if he would have me for a wife."
"There is little doubt of that!"
"And I shall ask him how many horses he will pay you for me. How many would you demand, Thunder Moon?"
He flushed at this.
"You think," said he, "that I have kept you in order to make myself richer by giving you to some chief for a wife? No, no! This lodge and everything in it is freely yours. Besides that, Standing Antelope will be as rich as any man in the tribe when he takes you for a squaw!"
She bowed her head.
"My master is like one of the Sky People," she said. "Where he gives his kindness, he gives greatness and wealth, also."
"You will be happy, then, Red Wind?"
"Happy?" she exclaimed.
She threw up her head and broke into such wild laughter that Thunder Moon backed out of the tepee with trouble in his heart, and went slowly into his own lodge, where he found White Crow waiting for him, a smile of cruel satisfaction on her withered lips.
LEFT now to herself, Red Wind pushed away the grief and the rage that invaded her mind. Since that old day when her father had brought her among these Cheyennes and palmed her off, as it were, upon Thunder Moon, she had worked cleverly, insistently, in her own way, to win the love of that hero of the ugly face and the wide shoulders. A dozen times she had told herself that she was victorious, but never with more certainty than when she had gone into the white man's land, to the very house of Thunder Moon, and there had managed to draw him away from the woman he loved. The triumph had seemed complete. She would have wagered her soul that before another moon passed she would be installed in the lodge of her hero. And still, while many a moon came and went, she seemed as far from him as ever!
Now was the end. She knew it beyond doubt and beyond hope. He had learned of the artifice and the lie with which she had kept the white girl from him and there would be no forgiveness.
Then, from the door of her lodge, she called a scampering boy and asked him to carry her message to Standing Antelope. Then the girl retired once more into the lodge and sat down with her thoughts. The extent of her failure was clearer and clearer, and a boundless malice rose in her. All that love she had felt for Thunder Moon turned swiftly to poisonous grief, and then anger, and then settled hatred. She had offered him her soul in the palm of her hand, and he had turned his back upon her!
A voice at her lodge entrance; she called; Standing Antelope was before her.
He was as different from Thunder Moon as were their names. The one was like a lordly bison bull, able to overawe the hearts of the strongest warriors. The other was like a soaring flame, as swift, as light, as dangerous.
A painted buffalo robe was now gathered about the youth, but in spite of the swathings she could see that, like flame again, his whole body was trembling. And his black, eager eyes gleamed at her.
Here was fire, and it would burn at her bidding!
She stood up to greet him, gravely, and gently, as she well knew how to speak to men, and she said in the metaphorical speech into which an Indian could always drop in time of need, "A woman should be like a child and never speak to warriors until she is first noticed. A shield that is cast down cannot leap up into the hands that own it, and a lance cannot strike if it has fallen to the ground and lies there unregarded. But I have been bold, and I have sent for you, Standing Antelope. White Crow will scold me for this; she will beat me afterward!"
The warrior's hand made a convulsive movement; the robe parted, and she saw that he instinctively had grasped the handle of a knife.
"The tongue of an old woman," said he, "is like the tail of a puppy; it cannot stop wagging. But there are ways to prevent the falling of blows, Red Wind!"
"What could I do?" asked the girl, making her eyes large with helpless grief and fear. "When Thunder Moon speaks, all the Cheyenne warriors tremble. When he lifts his hand, they all bow their heads. How should I dare to speak against White Crow, or stop her hand, if she raises an unstrung war bow to strike me."
"To strike you!" said Standing Antelope, half choked with emotion.
She had slipped on the bank of the river and bruised her arm against a rock only the day before. Now, with a swift movement, she exposed her arm to the elbow, and showed the discolored bruise.
"That was to keep the blow from my head!" said she.
The young brave folded his arms across his breast, as though by the strength of his own hands he were striving to compress and control his excitement.
"There is a chief in this tribe," said he. "Bald Eagle is a chief!"
"Shall I complain to him? He would laugh in my face and send me away, for fear lest Thunder Moon should give him bad luck on the warpath."
Standing Antelope drew softly a step nearer. "You speak as people speak who do not know the whole truth. It is true that many of the warriors fear Thunder Moon. Many of them ride behind him. So do coyotes follow the grizzly bear, for the sake of the leavings after the kill has been made and the killer has feasted. So the warriors are glad to ride behind Thunder Moon, because after he has struck, the least of the young boys are able to count coups and to take scalps! But it does not mean that they follow him because they love him!"
She looked down to the ground, to hide the burning exultation she knew was springing up into her eyes. Then she sighed and said slowly, "If you give a horse grass from your hand, he is grateful, and if you throw meat to a dog, he kisses your hand. Therefore, of course, the Cheyennes are grateful to Thunder Moon, and love him for the good he has done for them!"
"They are not horses," said the youth, "and some of them are not dogs! Some of them know that Thunder Moon despises them. He treats them as men treat a dog—to carry a burden, to run on an errand. He treats them at best like children. The council is called and all the old men speak, and the chiefs, and all the experienced warriors who have taken scalps and counted many coups. After they have ended, Thunder Moon speaks like a voice from a cloud. He tells them that they have talked very wisely and very well, but he himself has wisdom from the Sky People, and therefore they must do only what he advises them!"
"But is it not true that the Sky People protect him and guide him?"
"Have you forgotten," said Standing Antelope, "how he had to run for his life from the white people? We have seen him hunted with horses and dogs and guns, like a wolf. We have seen him running! And therefore I say that all his talk about the Sky People is a great lie!"
Having said this, Standing Antelope's glance rolled anxiously upward, as though he half expected that, in reward for such a blasphemy, the thunders of the actual sky might at that moment descend upon his head.
The girl saw; and a faint smile of understanding and contempt flashed upon her lips, glimmered in her cold eyes, and was gone again. This boy was a tool, and no more than a tool; but with him she could strike a glorious blow of revenge, she felt.
She summoned an expression of terror and wonder and ran to the youth.
"Standing Antelope!" she whispered. "Beware! Pray quickly to Tarawa before you are stricken! Pray for protection!"
His lips were pale with fear, but presently he mastered himself again and said as stoutly as he could, "You see that nothing happens! I am safe. I am safe because I am not afraid of Thunder Moon!"
She affected an air of intensest admiration. "O Standing Antelope," said she, "is it true, then? Are you alone among the Cheyennes able to stand Thunder Moon? Are you alone able to save me from him?"
"Are you in danger from him?" asked the brave. "Does he also strike you?"
"The heaviest blows are not given with the hand!" said she.
He waited, keen as a knife for more.
"See how he keeps me here!" said she. "I am neither his slave nor his sister nor his squaw. I am nothing! I am like a dog on a chain. It can only be seen! So am I! Thunder Moon keeps me here. He keeps me here so that he can point me out to strangers and to the whole tribe. It is because I satisfy his pride. He shows them what I am. She is not worthy to be my squaw, is what he means to say to them.
"What life have I? If he will not have me, why will he not let others have me? What am I to him that he should want to keep me here? But if a warrior or a young brave so much as looks at me, Thunder Moon frowns terribly, and the warriors turn their heads away and pretend that they were not looking at me at all!"
She allowed her voice to rise softly to a little breaking point of vexation and grief.
Then Standing Antelope, his voice as shaken now as his body had been before, exclaimed, "This is wonderful, Red Wind! We all have thought—all the warriors and the young braves—that you cared for nothing except Thunder Moon. That you lived because he willed you to live, and breathed because he willed you to breathe! Have we all been wrong? Have you hated Thunder Moon?"
"Ah, Standing Antelope," said she, "you have drawn the truth out of my heart! I could conceal nothing from you! And now you will go to Thunder Moon! He will kill me for speaking as I have spoken!"
The warrior answered with a strange quietness, "What you have told me is as much a secret as though you had spoken it only to your own heart! Will you believe that?"
"If you have said it! There are no lies on your tongue, Standing Antelope. All the other Cheyennes might scorn a woman so much that they would not tell her the truth. But you are too proud to lie even to a woman!"
He said, "You want freedom, Red Wind?"
"Ah, yes! I die for the lack of it!"
"I have not," said the youth, "a herd of great horses like Thunder Moon. I have not many rifles. I am not followed by many braves. But if you will come with me, as I tried to say to you not many days ago—"
"Would you take me?"
"I? Tarawa, see my heart!"
"Thunder Moon would follow us."
"Perhaps he will not pursue. He might simply let us ride away. I do not think that he would beg a woman to return to him after she once wanted to go away!"
"Then why has he kept me here, like a wretched slave?"
He was silent, brooding, upon this point. And, remembering his old affection for Thunder Moon, his heart failed him a little, and he looked at the girl with a keen thrust of suspicion.
She met that glance with a steady boldness of eye. And he sighed. He could not face her and remain true to himself and the better heart that was in him.
"If we fled away together," said the girl, "he would remain behind us not long. He would soon pursue. And who can outride the red horses?"
He struck his hands together.
"It is true," he admitted in despair. "It is very true that no one can ride away from the men on his great horses!"
Then he added, "You are wise! Even Thunder Moon has asked for your advice and followed your counsel. Be wise now, Red Wind, and tell me what I can do. Look at me only as two hands that are willing to work for you!"
It was exactly the point to which she had wished to bring him, but now she affected sorrow and despair in her turn again.
"There is only one way," said she.
"Then let me know!"
She shook her head.
"You beg for your freedom; you will not open the door to it!" he exclaimed.
"It would be my freedom, and your death!" said she.
Sobered a little, he stared at her. And then, with the slender staff he carried in his hand, he struck upon the hard-packed earthen floor of the lodge.
"Who can tell when death will come?" said he. "I have done something in my life. I have counted coups. I have taken scalps. Now, why should I be afraid to die? I am not afraid! Tell me in what way we can go free then?"
"I am his captive," she said slowly, "as long as he lives! But a dead man has no hands to hold even a weak woman!"
At this sudden suggestion, no matter how she had tried to lead up to it, the warrior shrank a little and looked at her as though she had opened a pit that looked down to the bottom of the world.
He said at last, rather huskily, "To murder Thunder Moon!"
She did not answer. Passion, vengeance, envy, jealousy, dead love, were all in her face. But no matter what feeds the fire, it casts a light. So her beauty flared before the eyes of Standing Antelope and dazzled him.
"Do you know," said he, "what comes to the man who murders in his own tribe?"
"He is outcast forever!"
"It is true," said Standing Antelope. "I should be a man without a people."
"Let that be true," said she. "Ah, Standing Antelope, if you were with me, I think that I could make you happy, even as a man without a people!"
He did not touch her; merely a dazed look came in his eyes.
"It is done," said Standing Antelope simply. "When shall I kill him?"
"This night, this night!" said the girl with a wild eagerness. "Kill him this night, and then we shall ride under the cover of the darkness!"
Amazed, he stared at her.
"Will you love as you hate?" he asked her.
"You will see!" said the girl. "There is no flesh in me; there is nothing but fire, Standing Antelope. Kill this man, and then we may be happy together. If he lives, I shall burn up like a leaf in the autumn sun!"
He hesitated, his eyes wandering swiftly from side to side.
"And the best of all that is in the lodge I shall take!" she assured him.
But she had mistaken his meaning. He answered hotly, "This was the gift of Thunder Moon. There is nothing here that is really yours. Take nothing."
"At least, we shall ride off on two of the red horses."
"Not for a single stride!"
"But he has given two of them to you."
"They are his gift," said the youth sullenly and sadly. "I want nothing that is his! I shall not take the rifles he has given to me. Look! Nearly everything that I have is his gift. But I shall throw everything away except the little that is my own. And I wish that Tarawa would give to me the power to strip off from my mind the things Thunder Moon has taught me. That I cannot do. But if he has made my hand skillful, he has only given it the skill that will take his own life!"
At this, as though the saying of the word brought up the vision of the deed brightly before him, he straightened himself with a swelling breast before her, and with great, desperate eyes. Then he turned and went out of the lodge without speaking another word.
She, following to the flap of the tepee, looked after him and saw him going off with a rapid but uncertain step; and she gripped her right hand hard. Standing Antelope was a keen knife, to be sure, but the metal was apt to snap under the strain, she felt!
IN the heart of the afternoon, the wagon train came up.
It did not cross the river, but remained upon the farther side of it, at the express suggestion of Thunder Moon. He, too, often had seen that white men and red cannot agree very long together, and the first gladness of meeting rapidly turns to trouble. So he decided that it would be best to keep the current of the river between the two camps.
Almost immediately, however, there was a flood of the red men among the wagons, their eyes and then their hands prying everywhere. So Thunder Moon stood in the center of the camp and raised his great voice. Great as thunder it boomed and when he had finished his brief admonition in the Cheyenne tongue, the Indians slunk off toward the river.
Only their chiefs remained.
Bald Eagle had come bearing a present of beaded moccasins and three Indian ponies, the fattest and therefore the best of his herd.
Judge Keene received him, with Thunder Moon acting as interpreter, accepted the presents, made others in return, chiefly of good knives, of which the tribe at this moment was in great need. For, working on the hides of tough buffalo bulls and cows for tepees wears out knives faster than anything in the world.
The exchanges being made, the chiefs departed. Judge Keene then set about looking for William Sutton in person, but that unreclaimed white man was seated in a corner of the wagon circle lost in conversation with Charlotte Keene. And the judge, after one long look, turned otherwhere.
Thunder Moon had said to the girl, "The Cheyennes do not tell lies except to public enemies. I am going to call the biggest of the chiefs. You shall hear him say whether or not I have a wife among his people!"
But she answered frankly, "Do you think that I've come all these hundreds and hundreds of miles to argue with you, or to take testimony? I don't care! There's only one important thing—which is that you and I are sitting on the double trees of this particular wagon in this particular place. I know that; and I don't care about the rest!"
"If you've come here," said he suddenly, "would you stay here, Charlotte?"
She looked down to the ground. He could feel that she had been struck a blow, but she glanced up to him again almost immediately and said, "I can stay here."
"It would be a wilder and a harder life than you've been accustomed to," he assured her.
"Not so hard as my life since you left me, William."
He was silent for a moment, listening to an echo of her voice, as it were, pronouncing his Christian name—so long unfamiliar in his ears.
"I could build a house for us. Do you see where the hills begin to go up there?"
"It looks like blue, rolling smoke?"
"Yes."
"I see them more clearly, now."
He smiled at her.
"You will learn to use your eyes in this country! If you look still harder, you'll see the mountains beyond the hills."
"They're almost lost against the sky," said she.
"And the flecks of white—those are the snowcaps of the mountains. There the hills and the mountains divide."
"Yes, I see the gap, I think."
"A great river comes down from the highlands there. I've chosen the valley. We could build there."
"Yes," she said.
"Does the thought of it make you sad?"
"Nothing really makes me sad today," she answered obliquely.
And this humility in her disturbed him more than any prayers that he should go back with her to her home among the whites.
"You think of your friends," said he after a time.
"Yes, I think of them."
"If you think of them a little today, you will think of them a great deal, later on."
"Perhaps. But that will not keep me away, William. And I'm not a weak thing, to sit and mourn and complain. You must trust me in saying that!"
"I do trust you! And out of this we're going to find happiness, Charlotte."
She turned her head and smiled at him, and by that single glance he knew truly the depth of her love, which had brought her here to him.
He went to the judge and told him the conclusion briefly.
"Charlotte agrees that she'll try to live out here with me."
The judge sighed. "Charlotte would agree to anything," said he.
Then he added, "Now, my lad, I won't begin with giving you advice. Your lives are your own. Only permit me to say, no one gets something for nothing in this world of ours. We pay as we go; and a bad investment leaves you bankrupt in the end."
"I don't quite understand that."
"I mean that the sorrow you cause is the sorrow that you will eventually have to feel."
Thunder Moon, turning this thought in his head, went back toward the village. There was to be a feast at which all the chief men would appear, and the judge and Jack Sutton would be there.
Indeed, he found Jack already in the village, having broken through the express orders that no one was to leave the wagon circle.
Jack was surrounded by a large and curious throng. Men and women pressed about him. Children dived recklessly among the legs of their elders, and so strove to creep through the forest and come to the sight of the white man. And as Thunder Moon came up, he heard over and over again the simple phrase, "It is the brother of Thunder Moon! It is the blood brother! It is the brother of our medicine man!"
And he smiled a little, with a lifted heart. Standing Antelope at that moment went by, hastily, with his light, noiseless step, and Thunder Moon reached out to him and caught him by the shoulder.
"Have you seen my brother, Jack?"
"No."
"What? Not seen him yet? See how they crowd around him. But we'll break through, I think."
Thunder Moon strode on, dragging Standing Antelope with him, and exclaimed at last, "Here is my brother among the Cheyennes, Jack. You've not forgotten Standing Antelope?"
And Standing Antelope, who understood the words perfectly, closed his teeth hard, to keep back a groan.
It was Bald Eagle who noted the wild and unhappy look of Standing Antelope and took occasion to draw him a little apart from the crowd.
"Brother," said the war chief, "your friend has become greater than ever on this day. Therefore, you are greater also; and yet I see a shadow on your forehead. How can this be?"
The boy answered nothing for a moment, but considered the older man. At length he said grimly, "Your arms have been filled with presents. Another such a day and you will have to live in two lodges; one for yourself and one for your wealth. But still you do not seem happy, Bald Eagle."
That battered chieftain frowned at this readiness of tongue in so young a warrior, and he said sternly, "A youth listens; an older man speaks!"
"To what do you listen, then?" asked Standing Antelope. "To your own heart, do you not?"
"All men listen to the voice of the spirit," said the chieftain.
"Let me tell you, then," said the boy, "that your heart has been beating so loudly that even I have heard it."
Bald Eagle could not make a reply, but it was plain that he was startled.
"I have heard your heart say," went on Standing Antelope, "that the young men follow Thunder Moon on the warpath. How do they regard Bald Eagle? He is only a name, and no more, to them!"
The chief was thrown into such a frenzy of anger by this speech that, for a moment, he seemed about to leap at the throat of the youngster, but he controlled himself long enough to say in a voice like distant thunder: "Has he sent you to me to give me these taunts?"
Then Standing Antelope answered quickly: "Look at me, Bald Eagle! It is not as a stranger or a spy that I have understood what is within you!"
Bald Eagle's wrath was quite dissipated by astonishment as he listened to this speech, and he answered, "Are you telling me that Thunder Moon no longer is your friend?"
"How can he be my friend?" answered the boy. "He keeps in a lodge beside him a woman, like a dog on a chain. He would not give her to me for the price of a hundred good horses!"
"Red Wind, Red Wind!" exclaimed the chief softly. "I know that friendship is more powerful than rawhide ropes, well twisted. But a woman is stronger still. With a touch of her hands she snaps stronger ropes of kindness than these! The Sioux give us war outside the camp; our women give us battles inside our lodges. And that is what has happened to you, Standing Antelope?"
The boy, somewhat heated by the implied reproach or contempt in the words of the other, said hastily, "When a man is sick of a great fever, does he laugh at the medicine man who can cure him?"
Bald Eagle's eyes narrowed to slits.
"One says to the medicine man, how will the cure be made? With prayer and medicine—or how?"
Standing Antelope looked swiftly about him, and then stepped closer.
"With the knife!" he whispered.
The nostrils of Bald Eagle expanded.
"Come with me," he said. "It is plain that we have much to say to one another!"
Never in the history of the tribe had there been a greater feast. For an Indian feast is not made with food but with conversation, and here present among them were the kin of that man of mystery, Thunder Moon. They looked on the thoughtful face of the colonel, and upon the handsome, pale features of Jack Sutton; and then they said among themselves, "Truly Thunder Moon has something more than an Indian name and a Cheyenne tongue. He has also no little part of the blood of a Cheyenne, by sympathy. See his face! It is almost as dark as ours! His features are those of an Indian. His hair and his eyes are as dark as ours. His way is our way, and he is one of us!"
While Jack Sutton was saying to his brother, "You are a great man to these people, Will."
"Do you wonder," said Thunder Moon, "that I can't leave them forever?"
"You could come out to see them every year or so!" suggested Jack Sutton.
"Perhaps I could. But the tribe would be wandering. They might be scattered to the four winds before I came back again. For, as a matter of fact, I think that I have had some share in holding them together."
"They admire you; they know that you're useful," said Jack Sutton, "but how many friends have you really among them?"
"There is Standing Antelope," answered Thunder Moon. "He's young, but he's a man. I've seen him tested in fire."
"Where is he tonight?"
"Sick; in his lodge. I've been to see him. He has a fever. Hands dry and forehead hot. Tomorrow I begin a course of medicine for him."
"He has a dark look, that youngster," said Jack Sutton. "Who is that about to speak?"
"They are passing the coup stick," said Thunder Moon, smiling faintly.
Briefly, and in murmurs, he translated the sum of the tales that were narrated, and the two white men beside him listened, fascinated, to bloody and wild deeds done in the midst of fierce battles, or in the camp of the enemy in the dead silence of the night.
The night grew old. The feast ended, and Thunder Moon accompanied his brother and the judge out of the tent.
A crowd followed, but left them at the edge of the village.
"As odd and interesting an evening as I ever passed," said the judge. "But why are you downhearted, Thunder Moon?"
"Because," said the other, "I cannot understand this. They should have sent out twenty young men—with torches, perhaps—to show us the way to the wagons. I don't understand it. What's in the mind of Bald Eagle?"
"He's forgotten, of course."
"Indians never forget their manners until they are about to run amuck," replied Thunder Moon, and still gloomily thoughtful, he went with the others down the slope toward the bank of the river.
"I go first," said he. "Watch the rocks that I step on. At this height of the water, there's no need for you to so much as wet the soles of your boots. Watch me across, and then follow."
So he went lightly, jumping from rock to rock, across the river. And as he reached the farther shore and turned toward his two companions, who were about to follow, silent, shadowy forms arose from the brush behind him, with the gleam of steel in their hands.
THE quick eye of the old judge saw the danger first. His shout of horror was not a word—simply a vague, piercing cry—and it turned Thunder Moon about to find bright-edged steel gleaming in his very eyes, and in his ears the voice of Standing Antelope exclaiming, "No bullets! No bullets! Bullets never can kill him! Only the edge of the knife! Only the edge of the knife!"
But if bullets could not kill Thunder Moon, knives surely were at his throat. He leaped far back from the rush, his revolver coming into his hand as he sprang, and he made out, with horror and bewilderment, that one of those close assailants was no less a person than that trusted lieutenant, Young Snake. Two more came behind the first pair, with Standing Antelope rushing into the lead, swift as a panther.
A gun boomed heavily from across the river. It was Jack Sutton's rifle, for he had carried the gun with him, and now, with a shot that was partly skill and partly luck, he sent a bullet through the head of Thunder Moon's right-hand man. The fellow toppled without a sound, his shoulder striking literally across Thunder Moon's knees. A shot from the Colt doubled up the second of the leaders, and there was Standing Antelope, coming in with the scream of a wild cat. There was time for a bullet, but in the last instant, Thunder Moon could not draw the trigger. Instead, he swayed aside from the flash of the steel, and struck at the lithe body with his fist. Hard upon the ribs the blow struck home, and Standing Antelope, stunned, bruised, breathless, dropped writhing cruelly upon the river bank.
The fourth man had swerved like a football player as he saw the mischief into which his companions had fallen, and now was merely a crackle of faint sound as he shot off through the brush.
Thunder Moon did not follow.
Heartsick and bewildered, he leaned over the fallen. Young Snake was gasping out his last breath. And over him Thunder Moon leaned as his brother and the judge came floundering through the water to get to his side, quite missing the way across the dry rocks.
And as he leaned over Young Snake, Thunder Moon saw hatred in the face of the wounded brave.
"Young Snake," he said, "I have mounted you on one of my best horses. I have led you on to much honor. Why, therefore, have you tried to murder me like a wolf of a Pawnee?"
"Because I am not your dog, to come and go when you whistle. And because—I hated your pale face!"
So spoke Young Snake, and snapped at the air over his shoulder, with a last convulsion of savagery and fury, and died.
Thunder Moon leaned above Standing Antelope, who was raising himself to his hands and knees. And now he stood upright and folded his hands across his breast. He was naked to the waist. He was painted as for war. Two eagle features were thrust into the long black masses of his hair, which glimmered in the starlight. He waited in silence for the falling of the blow as the judge and Jack Sutton came breathlessly ashore.
"Standing Antelope!" cried Jack in horror.
Thunder Moon waved the two aside and drew the boy apart.
"I am sick with sorrow and trouble," said Thunder Moon bitterly. "You, too, like Young Snake, always have hated me?"
The boy tried to answer, and at length he forced from his lips a gasping, "The Sky People still watch over you! Strike me now to the heart. I shall not speak again!"
"Lad," answered the older man gently, "we have traveled too many trails together. You are as free as though you still were my best of friends among the Cheyennes. Tarawa forgive you, and purify your mind. Will you not tell me what made you come at me—in the night—with three fighters to help you? Murder, Standing Antelope! Thank the spirits who have saved you from it!"
Then Standing Antelope, trembling like a leaf, answered, "I have not hated you always, as the rest have done. It was because you would not take Red Wind for yourself, nor give her to anyone else!"
Thunder Moon exclaimed in bewilderment, "This very day I told her that she should take you for a husband. This very day, Standing Antelope! Are you mad?"
"You?" cried the boy. "You told her that?"
"Yes, yes. This morning. When I came in to speak to her, because she had said among the whites a thing about me that was not true!" Thunder Moon spoke vehemently.
"Ha!" breathed Standing Antelope, and reeled heavily.
The arm of Thunder Moon supported him.
"My young brother," said he, "she has lied to you, also. Is it truth?"
"Why?" groaned Standing Antelope. "What evil can be in her?"
"I shall find her for you, if you want her, and give her to you, for that is my right," said Thunder Moon.
"Shall I make a lie into my squaw who keeps my lodges and raises my children?" asked the boy fiercely. "But now I see more things, and more clearly! It is the white squaw, O Thunder Moon, that has driven Red Wind mad with jealousy! On account of her she has tried to bring about your murder; and she has simply used my knife! She said that she would wait for me up the river at the three trees. But now I know that she will not be there! She has betrayed you. She has betrayed me. Why was I ever born?"
And he turned from Thunder Moon and ran off through the brush, heading swiftly up the river.
Thunder Moon turned back to his two white companions. Down from the village, on the farther side of the river, came dancing lights, as men and boys ran to learn what had caused the wild shouts and the explosion of guns. And the light of the torches fell like tresses of gleaming red hair, spread over the surface of the water.
"See," said Thunder Moon slowly. "The river flows between me and my life as a Cheyenne. The river is between, and I never can cross it again. There is blood upon the water. This night my friends have gone from me. I was a Cheyenne. My name was Thunder Moon. All the prairies knew me. But Thunder Moon is dead. Do you hear? The knife of Standing Antelope found the heart of that chief. He is dead. He will return no more."
He started resolutely ahead, drawing the two with him.
"I was two people in one," said he with a sudden calmness, "but now one half of me is dead, and I am going home to my own people. I am William Sutton at last!"
But farther up the river the Cheyenne boy, Standing Antelope, leaped breathless out from the covert and ran beneath the three trees, where Red Wind should have been waiting for him.
She was not there. There was no sight of her. There was no sound. Only the wind rushed through the leaves of the trees with a hissing sound.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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