Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Western Story Magazine, 17 September 1927,
with "Thunder Moon—Paleface"
HOW far we travel in one moment, throwing our eyes up to a star a billion billion miles away or casting a wild thought farther still across the vast ecliptic of the soul so that in the space of a second man may be made anew! All old trails are left behind and new goals rise like faintly descried mountains.
So it was with Thunder Moon at the entrance to his lodge, gathering the reins of his horse and hesitating before he launched himself in pursuit of the woman who had left his wigwam. As White Crow had said, he was passing from youth to manhood, and the transition was an agony.
All the while his eye wandered. He saw little foolish details around him, such as a woman forcing a bolus of medicinal herbs down the throat of a dog. Into his ear would float the far off wailing of the squaws, already renewing their laments at such a distance that they seemed cataphonic waves from the horizon. He saw the sky, too, covered with a diaper design of clouds. All the while the problems of his tormented soul possessed his mind.
He looked wildly around him, striving to find some object which would win his mind away from his own torment. He found none. All that he looked on seemed detestable to him. The lodge behind him—there was none larger or finer in the tribe—was his castle and this village was his castelry. It had seemed a place spacious enough for a man's ambitions to expand to the full and fit for the affluence of any mind that loved power. Now it had contracted to a miserable tent set in a huddle of wretched teepees, peopled with fools and savages.
He heard Big Hard Face arguing with White Crow inside the teepee. It was true, admitted Big Hard Face, that the woman would make more trouble if Thunder Moon brought her back to the lodge but still, whether she would or not, his foster son was pledged to the father of the girl to keep her in his teepee. Find her he must—if he could.
That seemed to solve the riddle. Act he must, or else his whole soul would be dissolved in pain. He flung himself into the saddle. In the scabbard running beneath his right leg was his rifle. In saddle holsters were two heavy Colts. At his belt was his knife, but he called for his shield and his lance. White Crow brought them, mumbling protests still. When she saw him grasp them and sling the shield upon his back and brandish his spear, her eyes lighted with admiration. He was far from beautiful of face, but his sun-browned body was so alive with power and his seat upon the stallion was so sure and easy, she felt him to be the very beau ideal of the Indian warrior. The others who watched him ride forth felt the same.
Instantly the legion of boys swept around him, every one of them mounted on the fastest pony he could bag from his father's herd.
"Take pity on me, Thunder Moon!" they would beg in shrill voices. "Take pity on me and let me ride with you. I shall fight like a man for you. You will have all the glory. Only let me go with you. I shall make the fires and cook and hunt for you. I shall find the trail for you. Take pity on me, Thunder Moon."
They rushed and swerved before him, each intent to show the skill he possessed as a horseman, and each brandishing a weapon of some sort. While all the rest swept back and forth, striving to catch his eye, the son of Three Bears drifted just behind him, saying nothing, as one who resolved that if favors were to be granted he would be close at hand, but feeling that a boon so great should not be clamored for.
Not only did the boys beset Thunder Moon, but the finest young warriors among the Suhtai galloped up to him, having snatched their accoutrements and hurried toward this chance for fame. Fame there must be, for Thunder Moon never had taken the war trail in vain. Like a lion, he counted no coups, took no scalps, but left these glories for those who accompanied him. The young warriors were not alone. Here and there he could see some grim-faced, tried man of battle raising an arm in dignified salutation: "How!" Not begging to be included in the expedition, but manifestly hungry to be invited along.
They came in this fashion to the edge of the village. Thunder Moon looked back with a solemn and sad face, very much like one who turns to take a last look at his home which he never may see again. Turning and gazing, he encountered the bright eyes of the son of Three Bears, waiting, speaking not at all, but quivering under the glance of Thunder Moon as a swift horse quivers at the touch of the whip.
The heart of the warrior was touched. He pointed to the pony which the boy mounted. "Do you wish to go with me and on such a horse?" he asked.
The question and the almost implied invitation in it made the youngster mute for an instant, then he cried out: "Let me come, Thunder Moon! You will see that this horse is not beautiful, but he will not fail me, and I shall not fail you."
There was a chorus of derision from the envious. The sons of rich men in the tribe swept in short circles, displaying the matchless feet of their ponies. "Take me, Thunder Moon! Take me! The son of Three Bears is mounted on a dog, not a horse! Take me!"
"Have you asked your father's permission?" said Thunder Moon, noticing that the boy made no reply to these taunts, but kept his wild, bright eyes fixed upon the face of the man he worshipped, as though confident that, regardless of the taunts of the others, this brave could make no fault of judgment.
"I have not asked, but his permission is given," cried the youth.
"There stands his teepee. Come with me."
He rode before the lodge. Out of it, as though a premonition of the question had come to him, stepped Three Bears and his single squaw. There was no more celebrated chief among the Suhtai than this man and, when all the ten tribes of the Cheyenne were gathered and their chief men in council, few were listened to more eagerly than this distinguished brave. In spite of wealth and fame, he had taken one squaw only and by her he had one son—this child who now sought to take the war path with Thunder Moon. The instant that they saw their son with the pale-faced brave, they understood the meaning. The squaw ran to her boy with a cry and tried to pull him down from his pony, chattering furiously in protest. The father, however, smiled and pretended to be happy.
"This is a great honor," said the chief. "I could not hope that my boy, who is yet without a name, may be taken on the war path by such a chief as Thunder Moon."
The latter was too deeply buried in gloom to pay any heed to the compliment. He merely said: "You are not like the tumbleweed which scatters a thousand weeds. You have only one son. Will you let him go out with me on the trail? There will be danger, Three Bears."
"Look," cried the squaw in a broken voice, "you have all the boys and the young men of the Suhtai to choose from. Leave me my son!"
"I want no other than this one," said Thunder Moon. "I am not riding out to hunt coyotes or buffalo wolves or to get eagle feathers. This is a blood trail. I shall ride on it alone or else this boy may come with me. Of all the Suhtai he has the sharpest eye and the quickest ear. He is the swiftest on the land and the swiftest in the water. He reads the sign of the trail as though it were picture writing on the wall of his father's teepee. Tell me, Three Bears, are you content that he should go with me?"
Three Bears cast a single glance at the face of his boy and in that face he saw such a radiant fire of hope, such an eager appeal in the silence of the youth that he could only answer: "I give him to you. Do what you will with him. If he can shoot straight when he comes home, I shall be a happy man."
There was a sharp wail from the squaw, but Three Bears, with a single rough word, sent her with bowed head into the teepee, there to bury her fear and her sorrow.
Thunder Moon said to the boy: "Do you know the horses of my father?"
"I have herded them and watched them. I know every name and every trick they have."
"Which is the smallest of them all?"
"The dark-red mare which you call Sunpath."
"Which is the most beautiful of all of our horses?"
"Sunpath also is the most beautiful."
"Go to the lodge of Big Hard Face," said the warrior, "and tell him then that you will have Sunpath. Take her. Take also a good saddle and a bridle. Take ammunition and also a rifle and one of these small guns which has six voices. Take all of these things, and a good knife. My father will give you all that you require. If you see a shield that is small enough, take the shield also. When you have what you want, ride rapidly out of the village and meet me by the waterfall . . . that one with the big linn beneath it."
Having finished these instructions, he turned and rode instantly from the village, leaving the boy almost too stunned by his good fortune to execute the commands he had received.
"Hail!" cried Three Bears, filled with exultation. "My son rides out from our village like a great chief and not like a boy. Woman, make some pemmican ready. He will come back with a name. You shall see."
In the meantime, Thunder Moon galloped the stallion from the village and toward that portion of the course of the river where it fell down through a group of hills and made a succession of waterfalls. While he was still at a distance, he could hear the varying voices of the cataracts, some singing high and others ominously deep and low. He listened and from far behind him he still heard the mourning cries of the Cheyenne women. How clearly it seemed proven to Thunder Moon that there was little joy and much sadness in this bitter world.
Now he reached the fall which beat into the face of a large pool and, close to the verge of the water, he sat down and the big stallion came and stood close to him. Of all the horses of Big Hard Face, there were none like Sailing Hawk for strength or for endurance. As he fled along the horizon line and over the hilltops, he had seemed often like a bird on the wing and won for himself his name.
The horse was unregarded, for Thunder Moon stared down into the pool and felt that all the future was as gloomy and dim as the surface of that broken water. He did not move until Sailing Hawk started and snorted softly. Then Thunder Moon turned his head and, across the plain, he saw coming toward him the most perfect symbol and picture of wild, free grace that ever his eyes had beheld.
Yonder flew the son of Three Bears, riding the red mare by knee-pressure alone, letting her reins fall loose, and with both his slender arms extended exultantly above his head. Upon his left arm there was a small white-faced shield. In his right hand he held a lance, not of the massive proportions of that which Thunder Moon carried, but a slender-shafted weapon as fit for throwing as for thrusting in the charge.
His long hair flying back over his shoulders, the boy raced up to Thunder Moon, whipped from the back of the mare, and dropped lightly onto his feet, standing in the attitude of one ready to receive orders.
Thunder Moon regarded him with a faint smile. One thing was certain. Unless a Pawnee bullet tagged this lad, he would never be overtaken in any battles that might lie before them. Like a god of speed incarnate was this youth. Thunder Moon, feeling old and gray before his time, pointed to a rock.
"Sit there," he commanded. "Before we take the trail, we must have council." He went on with such frankness as no Indian in the world would have used, above all to a boy. "I have lost a woman, as you know. My heart is very heavy because of her and there is a mist on my mind. I do not think lightly and easily. Now, you must think for me. Consider that somewhere on the plains all around us are a Pawnee and an Omissis girl mounted on two of the Comanche horses from my herd. In what direction they may have fled, I cannot tell. They started many, many hours ago. I have wasted much time. These horses are faster and stronger than theirs, but how can we ride them down unless we know where the trail may lie? I have considered. My mind is all empty of wisdom. Now you consider also, and let me know what to do."
With that he dropped his head on his hand and fell again into a brown study, watching the face of the water. As for the boy, his eyes glittered with joy at being thus appealed to. His own contemplation was not done with a bowed head and a knotted brow. Instead, he turned slowly to all the quarters of the horizon, looking fixedly in each direction. Then he dropped upon one knee and, on the ground, he sketched what seemed a little map. He rose again, looked for a long moment to the southwest, leaped onto the back of Sunpath, and pointed the nose of the mare west and north.
"I am ready, master," he said.
"I knew that you would guess at something," said Thunder Moon. "Do we cast in that direction? Do you think it may be there that they have fled?"
"I do more than think," said the boy calmly. "I know that if we ride hard, when we reach the western edge of those hills in the middle of the afternoon, the two will not yet have come out into the plain."
"You know that much? How do you know it? Keep your knowledge until we have met them. Ride first to show the way. I am too blind for anything but fighting."
CAN you imagine a little sparrow hawk, its wings hardly fledged with hard feathers, being asked by a lordly eagle to lead it to its battle and its prey? Thus it was with the son of Three Bears, conducting this mighty man of war across the prairie. All the way was not ridden in single file. Thunder Moon eventually drew up beside his youthful companion and began to talk, not so much for the sake of the boy as to banish his own troubles by the use of words. Speech can be an anodyne for many a pain, and the mind of Thunder Moon was like a house haunted by the lares and larvae of the dead. Conversation with this keen-eyed lad made a perfect lenitive and there were a score of topics at hand.
To begin with there was the equipment of the youngster. Had he handled guns before? Yes, he was proud to say that he had fired guns as much as a dozen times perhaps. What boy in the village was more familiar with their use? Thunder Moon, recalling the thousands of rounds which he had used in practice alone, could not help smiling a little. For that matter the great trouble with all Indian marksmanship was that the majority could not afford ammunition even if they possessed the weapons. Besides rifles were not like bows and arrows, things to be perfected by use in peace to prepare for times of war, they were articles of "medicine" and rather to be prayed about than handled in ordinary times.
As they rode along, Thunder Moon gave some vigorous lessons concerning first the mere holding of a rifle, and then its balance in the hands, how to mark with the eye before glancing through the sights, how to find the bull's-eye by letting the uncertain farther sight wobble around the target until it found dead center, how to aim a little low, and then how to squeeze the trigger with a gradual pressure so that the explosion always would come with a bit of surprise even to the firer. He showed the boy all of these things and how it is quite possible to do a very great deal of practicing without so much as discharging a gun. "For," he said, "you know whether your man is dead before the bullet reaches him. You know it by the way you held the gun on the mark."
The child listened with an almost tremulous eagerness, as a mortal would listen to a god and man in one person. When Thunder Moon allowed him to practice—not with one bullet but with a whole score of rounds—the results which the boy achieved were totally amazing. His nerves were as steady as rock and, having been taught by such a great master, he felt that to miss his target would be almost a mystery. It was not merely a lesson which he had received, it was a strong medicine which had been imparted to him and a divine power that had been entrusted to his hands.
Not rifle work only, but the more complicated practice of revolver play was also imparted, and all the details explained for the management of that true artist's weapon which should be fired rather by sense of touch than by sense of sight. As for the knife and the spear, the boy already could handle them with a sinister skill, and he could wield the shield and the lance together like a tried warrior.
They prepared for war as they crossed the plains, but all the talk was not on the side of Thunder Moon. If he could teach in some respects, he could learn in others.
"Tell me," he said, "what sign are you following?"
His own eyes could detect no print on sand or in grass as they rode.
"No sign," replied the boy.
"How then," asked Thunder Moon a little sharply, "did you learn where to look for these two? By medicine?"
"No," said the boy. "Where would they go when they left the camp? That was what I asked myself. I stood and stared around at the edge of the sky. Shall I tell you what I thought of?"
"Yes, tell me everything."
"They would not leave until very late, after the last sounds had died in the village."
"That is true."
"The squaws were crying until very late."
"Yes."
"Then, when these two slipped out from the camp, they had to steal two horses, and they took ones from your Comanche band."
"That is true."
"Which took a great deal of time."
"Perhaps."
"When at last they were on their horses, they were not like ordinary prisoners escaping. If they had been, they would have ridden straight back to the Pawnee village."
"Why would they not ride in that direction?"
"Because it was already late and they knew that before long in the dawn light Thunder Moon would come running after them on his great tall horse, eating up the ground like a fire or like an eagle swooping out of the sky. They were afraid and they looked around then, I think, and said to themselves that quickly they must get off the face of the plains so open . . . like the palm of a hand . . . and, if they were seen, they would be destroyed. How could they escape from Thunder Moon, once his eyes found them?"
Thunder Moon looked at the boy seriously, but he found no mockery in the eyes of the youngster.
"They saw," went on the youth, "the low line of the shadows to the north and the east and they told themselves that first they would gallop straight for those hills and pray to get to them before the morning light began. After that, they would turn and ride around behind the hills, or through them toward the village of the Pawnee. This, I think, is the truth, and we should come to them not long after they leave the valleys of the hills and ride out into the open. May it be true! May Tarawa keep me from speaking a lie to you."
He said it most fervently and Thunder Moon, amazed by this exhibition of logic, was silent for a time.
"What is it that sees most quickly of all the things that run on the plains?"
"The antelope," answered the boy.
"What is it that hears most quickly?"
"The antelope also, when it pricks up its long ears and stands to listen."
"No ears are quicker than yours and no eyes are sharper on the whole prairie," said Thunder Moon gravely, "for you see and hear partly with eyes and ears and partly with your own hidden mind. Therefore I shall call you Standing Antelope, but never until you have counted coup of a Pawnee."
It threw the boy into a strong ecstasy, though as usual he controlled his emotion and said not a word. For a long time afterward his eyes were glistening with pleasure and he could not keep a shadow of a smile from the corners of his mouth.
They were passing now through a sea of grass, not very long, but growing thick and soft, an ideal fodder, and the buffalo were sure to know of such an ideal pasture. In fact, little groups of them were seen here and there, the outlying members of some herd that wandered farther to the west.
The boy would have passed them by. His heart was bent on the great things to be done. When they came upon a little swale, with a great bull standing in the center of it, Thunder Moon said: "Have you ever killed a bull?"
"I have killed one calf," said the boy regretfully, "and no more."
"The rifle is loaded. Ride down into the hollow and kill that bull."
One excited and grateful glance was flashed toward him and, instantly, Sunpath was flying into the swale toward the monster buffalo, like a red arrow from the string. The bull, wheeling, made off at full gallop. For all his clumsiness, the buffalo can gallop at an amazing speed, but the red mare was alongside very quickly, the rifle was leveled and fired, and at the single shot the bull dropped its head, turned a complete somersault, and lay still.
Here was a thing worth narrating at the fire. What other boy of all the Cheyennes had slain a bull at a single stroke? The son of Three Bears was beside himself with joy, yet even then he remembered his manners and stood aside to let his elder dispose of the carcass. Thunder Moon, however, reined his stallion nearby and said simply: "It is your bull. Take what parts you wish. We shall have fresh meat tonight. You have done well. Remember that the bullet which kills a buffalo will kill a Pawnee also."
The boy took the tongue and then, with an expert knife, he removed a few portions of the choice part of the haunch. They had not time to take the hide, of course. In another moment they were swinging across the prairie again.
There was a difference, however. They had been man and boy before. Now they were like man and man, for the youngster had proved his weapons and confidence was in his heart.
It was late afternoon when they reached the edge of the hills on the western end of their range. Here Thunder Moon made a halt in the shadow of a rock ledge and loosed the cinches of the saddles so that the horses could breathe. He and the boy lay among the upper rocks to watch. The sun was hot, but hotter than the sun was the heart of Thunder Moon as he stared over the waves of grassland and waited. Even so, for all his eagerness, it was not he who had the first view of the quarry, but the soft voice of the boy murmured: "Ha! They have come."
He saw them then, a gray horse and a brown issuing from the shadows of the hills and striking at a trot into the open country. The girl was mounted on the brown; on the gray rode Rising Cloud, the Pawnee.
"They are mine," said Thunder Moon in his savage heart of hearts, and instantly they returned to the horses, drew up the cinches, and rode out into the open lands.
Their horses had not made a dozen strides when they were sighted by the fugitives and, as pigeons scatter when the hawk flies toward them, so the girl turned and sped back toward the hills while the Pawnee darted straight ahead.
First Thunder Moon let his heart lead him and swerved toward the girl, but then rage mastered him and he pointed the head of the stallion toward the gray horse of Rising Cloud.
A STERN chase is a proverbially long one at sea. By land it is not much shorter if the course is laid upon the open prairie and the horses are in any degree fairly matched. In this case they were not matched. Tough and true were all those Comanche ponies which Thunder Moon had stolen in the hot southland, but never for a moment could the striding of those shorter legs match the long gallop of the chestnuts. Like an eagle, with a strong wing-stroke, ran the stallion. Like a rapid hawk beside him flew the mare with the boy erect and joyous in the saddle. With every moment the distance that separated the hunter and the hunted grew less and less.
Rising Cloud twice wheeled in the saddle and discharged his rifle at his pursuers—well-aimed bullets they were and, as they were fired, Thunder Moon turned his head a little and regarded the boy. The son of Three Bears merely shouted with joy as he raced battle-fire for the first time—laughed and shouted and urged the swift mare to greater efforts until even Sailing Hawk, weighted as he was by the vastly greater bulk of his rider, hardly could keep pace with the smaller horse.
The stolen pony on which the Pawnee rode, however, was beaten by superior speed, not mastered in endurance and, to the last stride, he continued to fly across the prairie with head and tail straight as a string in the greatness of his effort.
Once more Rising Cloud slewed himself around in the middle to take aim, and now they were at hardly more than half a pistol shot away. It would be madness to endure that point-blank discharge. So Thunder Moon snatched a revolver from its holster and fired quickly. The gun exploded in the hand of Rising Cloud, but the bullet sped at random and he swayed heavily to one side, reeled, and almost fell.
"He is gone!" screamed the son of Three Bears. "He is dying!" Giving wings to the mare, he closed in on the enemy with a burst of speed that threw him ahead of Thunder Moon. Rising Cloud had snatched up the lance with which, as well as with the fallen rifle, he had been equipped. Through his right shoulder the bullet of Thunder Moon had passed, and blood was spurting over that side of his body; but in his left hand he balanced the spear and thrust sharply with it at the Suhtai lad, at the same time swerving his pony to the side and shouting his war cry.
There was no trace of the craven in this Pawnee. He intended to die fighting gloriously. His first stroke was toward the boy. The son of Three Bears dipped on the back of the mare and, striking up the weapon of the Pawnee, he pressed in and smote the half naked body of Rising Cloud with his clenched fists.
"So I count coup! I count first coup. I count it!" screamed the boy, as the charge of the mare swept him past and out of the reaches of danger.
For that matter, Rising Cloud had a greater task on his hands than the defense needed against a child. The most terrible warrior in all the hosts of the Cheyennes, those ferocious horsemen, now swept down upon him. When he saw that the Pawnee possessed no gun with which to fight but had to defend himself with the spear alone, Thunder Moon had thrust his revolver into the holster—the rifle he never had touched—and taking his lance he closed on the Pawnee. His own spear gripped in his unskillful left hand, the Pawnee could not withstand this attack for an instant. His weapon was beaten aside by a cunning of lance-craft as great as a rapier parry and then, dropping the spear, Thunder Moon grappled his foe in his bare hands.
The boy had swerved on the mare as rapidly as a bird on the wing and, rushing back with spear ready to thrust the Pawnee through and through, he withheld his hand with a shout when he saw Rising Cloud torn from his saddle and instantly mastered in the Herculean grip of Thunder Moon.
Vainly the Pawnee brave writhed and struggled. His right arm hung helpless. Even had he possessed his full might of hand, it seemed that he could not have fought against this giant for a moment. For like a giant the other seemed, at least in the eyes of the son of Three Bears.
Now, bleeding and disarmed, Rising Cloud lay on the ground and the Suhtai warrior had dropped on one knee beside him, knife poised. He grasped the fallen brave by the scalp lock and holding him thus securely, he looked up to the broad, bright sky above him where the sunset color was just beginning.
"Sky People," he said, "if I give you this man as a sacrifice, be kind to me and teach me what to do with the woman." He looked down at the Pawnee.
"Why should you kill me, Thunder Moon?" asked the victim.
"You have murdered the Suhtai. You have been sheltered in my lodge from the women who wanted to torment you. Then you have stolen a woman from me and ridden away with her. Are those reasons, Pawnee wolf?"
"The Suhtai I fought with were killed in the open field," answered the Pawnee. "You kept me from the hands of the squaws in your camp and for that I thank you. As for the woman, it is more true that she stole me away than that I stole her."
"That is a lie and the gray father of lies," said Thunder Moon.
"It is the truth," said the captive. "How could I have escaped if she had not cut the rope that held me fast? But she cut the rope and whispered to me to follow her. When we were outside, she gave me a gun and a lance and a knife. I told her that she had better go back into the lodge. . . ."
"Even the snake that twists through the grass at least speaks truth when it speaks," said Thunder Moon, "but you are not honest. I think that all your heart is full of wrong talk. You loved this girl of the Omissis and you made her love you and stole away with her. . . ."
"If I were the head chief of the Pawnees," said the captive, "then I should take her into my lodge because there is no other woman in the prairies who is like her. Since I am not the head chief, I shall have nothing to do with her."
"That is a likely story," said Thunder Moon with a sneer. "When you were outside my lodge with her, you told her to go back?"
"I told her that one of us might escape from you, but that no woman could flee across the prairies as fast as you would pursue."
"She would not listen to you? She loved you so much that she would have to go with you?"
"She didn't love me, but she would rather have fled away with an owl or a buzzard than stay in your teepee and become your squaw."
At this the knife quivered in the grip of Thunder Moon, but he held himself from striking with an effort that made his neck muscles bulge.
THE Pawnee, in the meantime, regarded his captor gravely and steadily. Thunder Moon stood up and began to walk back and forth, full of his thoughts. Sometimes he paused, determined to slay the Pawnee at once in sacrifice to the Sky People. Then again he felt an overwhelming need to know the truth about Red Wind and whatever she had said to her Pawnee companion.
He said to the boy: "Help to stop the bleeding of his shoulder. Wash that wound and tie it so that it will bleed no more."
The wound was dressed with the rough and quick skill which all Indians possessed in such matters. Then Thunder Moon came back to the captive, saying: "Tell me, what is Red Wind that she detests me? Where has she found a richer Indian? Who has killed more enemies? Who rides on swifter horses or has a bigger herd? Who keeps more guns in his lodge and who has many pounds of ammunition and who has such stacks of the softest buffalo robes?"
"Can a woman marry a horse, a gun, or a buffalo robe?" replied the Pawnee.
"Pawnee coward! Creeping, sneaking, skunk-bear!" cried Thunder Moon in a wild fury, "do you dare to tell me that she answered you that way?"
"Why should I tell you any more?" asked Rising Cloud. "You call me by many evil names and you will not believe me. Besides, you are about to sacrifice me and send my spirit up to attend the Sky People. Why should I talk before I die? No, you may go to Red Wind and ask her all of these same questions."
"There are ways, however, of making men talk," said Thunder Moon, with a devilish smile.
"There are ways," said the Pawnee, meeting the eye of his captor firmly, "but you will not use them."
"I shall not?" cried the Suhtai chief.
"Because you jump when you hear the cry of a child and you will not so much as lift a scalp. You have no heart for torture, Thunder Moon!"
The big man glowered at his prisoner, but he said nothing for a moment. The Pawnee sat composed, cross-legged on the prairie, his face already becoming grave and dignified like one about to receive his death and meet it in the best manner possible.
The son of Three Bears ventured to speak. His nostrils had flared wide and then contracted again.
"Why should Thunder Moon trouble himself with such work? Let Thunder Moon go away and ride on the prairie. When he comes back, he will find that this man will be ready to talk of anything that is asked."
Thunder Moon waved him away. "This is a man and not a sick coyote," he said. "You could tear him to pieces by little bits. You could send birds to tear him and devour him, but still he would not speak after he has once locked his teeth."
There was a glitter of pleasure in the eyes of the Pawnee as he heard this compliment, spoken unwillingly.
"But your speech may be bought," suggested Thunder Moon.
"What price do you pay to a dead man?" asked the Pawnee. "How many robes and guns and horses will you pay to a man before you sacrifice him?"
"I could kill you," said Thunder Moon, "by the hand of that boy and let him scalp you and take your medicine bag. Your spirit would be doomed to dwindle and die like a whistle on the wind."
"It is true," said the Pawnee, his face unmoved no matter what desolation was in his heart.
"But suppose that I promise you an honorable burial with your weapons beside you and I kill that horse so that your spirit may ride it in the other world? Is that a price that would make you talk?"
"What would make me sure that you would do these things?" asked the Pawnee anxiously.
"My honor and my promise," said Thunder Moon.
"We have made many treaties and had many promises from the Cheyennes," said the Pawnee darkly, "and what has become of them? They went away in the wind like dust."
Thunder Moon drew himself up to his height. "I am not a boy," he said. "I have not spent my life in my lodge, like a woman. I have spoken in the council. Also I have ridden on the war path. When has Thunder Moon failed to make his word good?"
The Pawnee reflected. "That is true," he admitted at last.
Silence fell between them.
"It is a great price," said Thunder Moon suddenly, "to pay in order to know what words a woman spoke. But I shall pay one still higher. I remember that you have sat in my lodge and eaten meat from the meat pot and slept there. Your voice has been heard in my teepee. Therefore I cannot hate you, Rising Cloud. You are a Pawnee, but I think that you are a good man. Some day I may meet you in battle at the side of your brother. Then perhaps the Sky People will give me strength to kill you both. But now I shall give you your life and that rifle to carry back to your people, and that horse so that you may go back not as a beggar but as a warrior who has escaped with honor from a great danger. If that price seems enough to you, tell me everything that passed between you and the woman, and leave out nothing."
The Pawnee was schooled, like all Indians, to control his emotions stiffly when in the presence of strangers. Above all, he knew how to guard himself when he was with an enemy. But now he could not help a quick exclamation of wonder. He looked at Thunder Moon. He looked past that hero to the boy and saw the son of Three Bears writhing with rage and disappointment.
"You have spoken," said the Pawnee.
"The Sky People may hear me!" said Thunder Moon.
"That is not necessary," replied the Pawnee. "For it is true that all men know the honor of Thunder Moon is not the honor of a wolf or a snake. Now I shall tell you everything. When I sat in your tent and the woman was brought in by her father, I looked at her and saw that she was beautiful. I have seen many young women in many tribes, but none like her. I thought that her father was anxious to get rid of her because she was wicked. Why else should he send her away and pay such a great price to the man who would take her into his teepee even without making her his wife? So I thought that perhaps I might be able to talk to her and make her my friend and then escape through her. I looked at her when I could. I smiled at her. It was like smiling at the painted bear on your father's lodge. She would not see me. So I was a great deal surprised when in the darkness of last night she came to me and cut the rope that tied me.
"We went softly outside the lodge and she gave me the weapons, as I told you. Then, as I have said, I urged her to stay at the lodge because she could not escape with me. But she would not stay. She gave me a reason for it."
"What reason, then?" asked Thunder Moon.
"She said that you are a paleface and that therefore some day you will go back to your tribe. Tarawa would pour sorrow on the heart of any Indian maiden who married you."
"Pawnee," said Thunder Moon sternly, "it is true that my skin is not as dark as yours, but still it is not white. Some men are dark and some are light. Snake-That-Talks is almost black, but who says that he is not a Cheyenne. As for me, no one but a fool and the son of a fool would think that I am not a Suhtai. I am the son of Big Hard Face. Is not he a Suhtai? Have I not been known these many years as a Cheyenne? Or is my life a dream?"
"I hear you and I understand you," said the Pawnee in rather a gentle voice, "but I know that I have seen white men at the trading forts. Some of them are very white. Some are brown from living in the sun. You are like those brown ones. You are not like a Suhtai in your looks or in your ways. You are not like any Pawnee, or like any Sioux or Comanche that I have seen. So I believed the woman when she told me these things. She did not want to stay in your lodge and become your squaw."
Thunder Moon bowed his head. He felt more crushed with sorrow than if he had been told of the death of a good friend.
"I could not persuade her to stay there," went on the Pawnee. "I asked her what she wanted to do, and if she would be a squaw to me when she came to the Pawnees. But she said that she did not want that. She only wanted me to help her get away. Afterwards she would think what she would do. When I heard this, I talked no more. It was dangerous to crouch there in the dark, talking. So I went with her to the place where your Comanche horses were. We stole two of them. We led them a little way off. Then we put on them the saddles that we had taken from our teepee. We rode away. I cannot tell how you found our trail, unless the Sky People sent a spirit to sit on your shoulder and tell you how to ride."
Thunder Moon looked at the boy. There was triumph in the eye of the latter, but no boast upon his lips.
"It is the son of Three Bears who read your mind," said the warrior. "All that passes on the prairies, he sees. All the sounds that come down the wind, he hears. He is like the standing antelope. That is his name. When you go back to your people, tell them that the Suhtai have a new warrior, who is young but very wise. His name is Standing Antelope."
"I shall remember him," said the Pawnee, his eyes narrowing a little with menace and malice. "Now, Thunder Moon, am I free?"
"You are free. Take the horse and all that you carried away from my tent. Go back to your people, Rising Cloud."
The latter, in silence, secured the Comanche pony, sprang onto its back, and then darted off at full gallop. He did not pass straight away, however, but swung around in a short circle and came back before Thunder Moon.
"Listen to me," said the Pawnee. "Spotted Bull is no friend of yours. But he has spoken the truth. There is bad medicine in Red Wind. Leave her trail. Let her go and disappear on the prairie like a small cloud when it rises in the sky on a very bright and hot day. She will bring no happiness into your teepee."
"Tell me," said Thunder Moon, "what have you learned that makes you sure of all of these things?"
"How does one learn about the eagle?" asked the Pawnee brave. "By watching it fly! How does one learn the squirrel? By seeing its ways in the trees. How does one learn the mountain lion? By following its tracks. That is how I have learned about her. No man ever can be happy with her."
"I am not blind," said Thunder Moon. "Already I have sat in the same teepee with her. But I see nothing wrong about her. My mind is filled with mist when I hear you say these things. I cannot tell why her father wanted to send her away from his lodge. Why should he hate her?"
The Pawnee listened, frowning with thought. At length he said: "I shall tell you only one thing. Her father does not hate her. No, no! But he is terribly afraid of her. That is why he sent her away, because he saw that if she remained in his lodge much longer, he could not remain the head chief of the Omissis."
"You answer one riddle by telling me another," said Thunder Moon. "What do you mean by this? Why cannot he remain the head chief of the Omissis if she remains in his lodge?"
"I have given you my last answer," said the Pawnee. "My arm swells and the fever will begin soon, and I have a long distance to ride. Farewell, brother. Bad fortune may come to you and yet you never will lose two friends among the Pawnees."
With this he wheeled his horse again and, this time, he did not return but headed across the vast prairie where he soon diminished almost to a point that seemed to waver up and down with the heat lines that rose from the surface of the plains.
THUNDER MOON, after watching the retreating brave for a moment, turned to the newly-named warrior at his side, and the boy cried eagerly to him: "You have given life to that lying Pawnee. You have kept your promise. Now let me ride after him. He has only one arm, but he is older and stronger than I am. Let me try to catch him. It will be my first scalp and I may count coup on him again."
"I cannot give a thing and take back my gift again," said Thunder Moon, smiling a little. "He could not escape from you. His pony is fast and tough, but Sunpath is tougher and stronger. She would be up with him in a very short time, of course, and then you would have no trouble in killing a man who has not a bit of strength in his wise right hand. Tell me, Standing Antelope, is there any glory in killing a helpless man?"
"Why is there not?" asked the boy.
"Begin on the back trail that will lead us to the Omissis girl," said Thunder Moon. "As we go, tell me what glory comes from destroying a man who cannot fight back against you?"
They rode side by side through the grass, swinging at a swift gallop toward that rift in the hills into which the girl had disappeared when she had turned away from the Pawnee who had accompanied her.
"Are the Pawnees our friends or our enemies?" asked the youth in counter-question.
"They are our enemies," admitted Thunder Moon, smiling at the idea that they might be any other thing.
"Well," went on Standing Antelope, thinking hard as he rode, "if they are enemies, then every boy may grow into a warrior who will hunt us. Every little girl will become a squaw and raise children and teach them to hunt for our scalps. And every wounded brave someday will be healthy and strong again, and then he will ride out to kill us. For all of these reasons, my Father, we must kill the Pawnees, young or old or sick, and take their scalps, and count coups upon them."
"So you say," said Thunder Moon, "but how is it that even the old men are to be killed, and the old women? They have passed the time when they could do us any harm."
"On this earth, yes," said the boy instantly, "but not in the sky where the spirits of the warriors chase the ghosts of the buffalo. There we want to go and live with the good Cheyennes and be happy together, but certainly we could not be happy there if the spirits of the Pawnees went up there in great numbers. So we must kill them all, if we can, so that our ghosts will not be bothered in the life with Tarawa, where the sun always is shining."
Thunder Moon smiled a little at this enthusiastic and bloody argument, but he did not reply to it. For his part, he had no desire to mix in any purposeless slaughter. War was to him a glorious game and, like a game, he played it with all the strength of his hands and with all the cunning of his mind, but always obeying certain instincts of fair play that checked him short of the thoroughgoing methods of the Suhtai. A well-laid ambuscade was to them the height of good policy and clever fighting. To kill from behind was much better than to kill from the front, for he who killed in perfect safety showed not only the superiority of his strength and medicine, but also the superiority of his wit. Accordingly, to be merciful was to be a fool. As for the crowning joy of meeting a strong enemy face to face and battling for the supremacy, it was to the Suhtai a sort of barbarous and mad pleasure. Upon Thunder Moon they looked as upon a barbarous and half insane warrior, useful certainly in the battle, deadly beyond belief with his weapons, but totally wild in his methods.
These were the thoughts which, as Thunder Moon could guess, were now passing behind the brow of his young companion. For his own part, he said nothing. He had learned from bitter experience even in the lodge of Big Hard Face that his thoughts were not the thoughts of his tribe, just as his strength was not theirs, and their strength was not his.
He was silent for another and far graver reason. It was because he wanted to turn in his mind the words which the Omissis girl had spoken to the Pawnee. She had called Thunder Moon himself a white man! For that reason she did not want to remain in his lodge. The blood of Thunder Moon grew hot with anger.
As for a trifling matter of lightness in color, what was that? Very gladly would he have had his skin a copper red. But since that could not be, he was certain that in his heart he was a good Suhtai, devoted to the interests of the tribe. As for being a white man—a white man indeed! From hot his blood ran cold.
He had had glimpses of those people. Strangely, stiffly dressed unless they attempted an awkward imitation of Indian freedom of costume, they moved out onto the prairie, trading for furs, quarreling with one another, making cunning bargains, loving money with a detestable greed, cheating their customers, avoiding the war path as long as they could, blind upon the trail, deceitful in their councils, aimlessly chattering with one another or sullenly silent. They were only worth attention because, so the wisest chiefs said, behind those white people there was a mysterious power, and in their hands there was medicine of strange strength, so that sometimes ten of them, standing shoulder to shoulder, might beat off a hundred Indian enemies. But place one white man on the plains, and even an Indian boy like Standing Antelope could account for him and bring in his scalp before many days of trailing had ended.
Such was the white man—such was his meaning to Thunder Moon. No wonder that his lip curled with scorn and disgust when he heard that the Omissis girl had placed him in the category of these disgusting people, these strange, unpleasant creatures. No wonder also that the girl, thinking such thoughts of him, should wish to leave his teepee, even with a man she found a captive there. She had fled away as from a curse. Now he wanted with a ten-fold desire to find her, let her know the error of her thoughts, and so, bring her happily back to his lodge.
Afterward, he would see to it that his skin should be darkened with certain stains of which he knew. Yes, he would make himself a figure of flaming red if necessary, so that foolish thoughts might not come into the mind of the spectator—into the mind of Red Wind, above all!
He pushed forward vigorously and Sailing Hawk answered with a mighty stride that devoured the ground before them. They entered the shadowed mouth of the valley into which the girl had gone. Instead of going straight up the hollow, young Standing Antelope—transfigured even in the eyes of Thunder Moon by the name which he now wore and by the coup which he had so lately counted—rode up to the top of the left-hand ridge. He then swung down from it and crossed hastily to the opposite height and, then with a wild war cry, raced straight down the ridge and toward the open plains beyond.
Thunder Moon followed, thinking that the boy must be mad but, as he gained the mouth of the valley, he saw the brown pony racing sturdily over the plain, and the girl jockeying her mount along with a skill which no brave could have surpassed.
He shook his head as he loosed the reins of Sailing Hawk. How like a fox she was! For his own part, he would have pushed deep into the hills on her trail. When he finally solved the trail problem, it would have led him back to the prairies onto which she had doubled.
He could thank Standing Antelope for this day's work and, in his heart, he vowed that instant that he would make the lad a present of all the weapons which he carried on that day. He sent Sailing Hawk after the fugitive.
She rode well, but she rode not well enough. Young Standing Antelope rode well also, but he could not rival the wild speed with which the stallion now plunged ahead, inspired by his rider. Past Standing Antelope went Thunder Moon, as though the boy were indeed standing. The girl drew back toward him. It seemed that the short-legged pony was laboring upon a treadmill, so swiftly did the stallion overtake it, and Thunder Moon, as he drew near, saw the girl turn her frightened head and glance back.
Exultation filled him. His war cry burst from his lips. His shadow fell upon her. The next instant his mighty arm had swept her from the saddle.
SO slender and graceful had she seemed on the horse, so delicately light, that as he reached for her, he half felt that the power of his grip would crush her. But, behold, it was like grappling with a muscular man. Tense and swift she whirled upon him and a knife flashed in her hand and hovered at his throat. With desperate speed he clutched the knife-hand, and the weapon fell from her numbed fingers. Sailing Hawk came to a halt, and Thunder Moon let his captive drop lightly to her feet.
Standing Antelope galloped the mare behind the girl and remained stiffly alert in the saddle, spear in hand.
"Do not trust her, my Father," he said. "I saw her try her teeth on you. Tarawa made her hand slow or else she would have murdered you and then I should have had to kill her. It is an evil thing when a Cheyenne kills a Cheyenne. She-wolf! Little mountain lion! Remember that I am standing here behind you."
Thunder Moon dismounted slowly and then waved the boy aside.
"Go catch the pony," he said to his ally. "Then keep away for a little. I wish to talk."
"That is how she makes medicine . . . with her talk," said the boy. "Do not trust yourself near her, my Father."
He received no answer from his leader, who stood looking down at the girl in fascinated silence. So Standing Antelope withdrew and, as he rode away toward the Comanche pony, which still struggled on with a tired gallop, he kept his head turned and watched this odd pair—the man so massive in his power, the girl so slenderly made but with her dauntless head flung up.
It could not be said that she was merely hostile. She was more or less than that. She rather looked at Thunder Moon with fear mixed with some other emotion which he could not understand. He touched his throat, where the flesh still tingled as though the knife had pricked him there.
"Red Wind," he said gravely, "do you know what is done among the Suhtai when a woman takes a weapon and turns it against her man?"
She was silent.
"She is tied to a post of the lodge and then she is whipped until her back bleeds."
The girl did not wince.
"And afterwards?" she said.
"Afterwards she is turned loose and thrust from the village with her feet bare and no food and no weapon to save herself and made to wander across the prairie until she dies, or until she finds some wandering group of warriors which will take her off with them if they see fit."
"Turn me free then without a horse or weapon or moccasins," said the girl, "and whip me first until the blood runs down my back."
Thunder Moon winced. "That would be easier for you," he suggested bitterly, "than to return to my lodge with me?"
Words may be bullets at times, but silence is a pointed gun, full of awful suggestion. She was silent again.
"I understand you," said Thunder Moon, the blood passing into his face. "You would rather be left to starve than to come back with me. I am like a sick dog to you, hateful when I am near you."
She kept her large, grave eyes upon him and still said nothing. He wondered at her, for her expression was perfectly masked and not the slightest shadow of feeling appeared there.
In the other days, when she first came to his teepee, he had felt that her features were too immobile. But when she had swerved upon him as he seized her today, he had changed his mind. Never had fear or despair been more eloquently shown than it was then in her face.
"All is well," said Thunder Moon sadly and angrily. "You would knife me like a Pawnee. Yes, you would kill me far sooner than you would kill a Pawnee." A new thought came into his mind and startled him. "Why was it," he said, "that when you had snatched your knife, and when my hands were busied with the reins and with holding your body . . . why was it then that you did not drive home the knife in my throat?"
There was a change in her then. A sudden start, and a sort of shadow that fled across her eyes. It was gone at once but he knew that, in some manner, he had disturbed her composure.
"I understand, however," he went on, as the explanation came to him, "and the truth is that you would have plunged the knife into my body, except that you knew that afterward there would be a terrible accounting with Standing Antelope. Tell the truth. Be brave and tell me that that is the truth."
She merely watched him, calmly, without expression. Almost like a polite person listening to the babble of a child, eager to have the noise cease, but not wishing to hurt the feelings of the youngster. Thunder Moon felt reproved and abashed when not a single sharp word had been spoken to him.
"Mount your horse," he said, pointing to the pony which Standing Antelope, in the meantime, had captured and brought back to them. "Mount your horse and be sure that for my part I should not bother to bring you back to the lodge of my father. I should not wish to keep you, but would let you wander over the prairies wheresoever you might choose. Only my promise to your father holds me. Do you believe that?"
"No," said the girl.
The monosyllable threw him back on his heels and totally unbalanced his strength of self-content. He looked at her more narrowly. Yet she did not speak with the edged tongue of an insolent woman, seeking for an opportunity to inflict pain. Rather, she was watching him with thought, and filled with a quiet contemplation.
Thunder Moon felt his strength slip from him. He was about to slip back into the common resource of all men who feel themselves weakening and fly into a fit of temper, when a soft puff of wind came over the prairie, making the grass flash under its feet, and bringing to the warrior a delicate fragrance, as though some rare pomatum had been used to dress the hair of the girl. That wind blew through his soul and carried his anger away with it.
He let the girl mount without any reproof from him and he, in turn, leaped into the saddle on Sailing Hawk. Then he waved the girl ahead and he followed with Standing Antelope. His anger began to return again, for why should the girl have been so sure that he had another reason for bringing her back to his lodge? What other reason, really, did he have? To take as his squaw an unwilling girl was a depth of cruelty and folly quite beneath him, and yet he felt that she was right. There was some other motive that impelled him. To face the loss of Red Wind would have been harder than to see all his other goods in the world destroyed before his eyes.
"She does not sing sorrow," observed Standing Antelope, gravely approving of the erect carriage of the girl as she rode before them.
Thunder Moon made no answer. He was growing more and more irritable and poor Sailing Hawk had to pay tollage for the troubled spirit of his master. The stallion made a side leap in passing a small hole in the ground and Thunder Moon cut him shrewdly with his whip and then reined in the charger with a wicked violence.
The boy observed and contained his disgust for a moment, but finally could stand it no longer. "When a dog is beaten, there is a woman in the lodge," he quoted from folk lore tales.
"Why do you say that?" asked Thunder Moon, turning his frown on his young companion.
"Because I see that you are angry," said the boy, "and I know that you cannot be angry with Sailing Hawk."
The warrior said sternly: "You have done well today, Standing Antelope. You have hunted down a hard trail. You have brought me to the enemy. You attacked him bravely. You have a reward. You have counted a coup and won a name. Beyond that, I give you the rifle and the revolver you carry, and the knife and the lance, and the saddle. Now you may ride out as a warrior. But more than all this, I give you strong advice. Do not speak before your elders until your opinion is asked."
Under this rebuke the boy winced, but he maintained his new dignity with a rare determination, saying: "Oh, Thunder Moon, the word of a friend is better to me than the counting of twenty coups or a herd of a hundred horses. I cannot take these gifts from you."
"Do I have to beg a child to take what I offer him?" exclaimed Thunder Moon, flying into a greater rage.
The boy looked at him with great wonder. This passion seemed to him utterly childish. And being a boy in his own person, he was amazed at this lack of dignity in the hero beside him. For nothing is more quickly seen by a child than a touch of folly in his elders.
"You have offered me rich gifts," said the boy gently, "but you have taken away your kindness to me at the same time. I do not want to make the exchange."
"It is true! It is true!" said Thunder Moon, recovering instantly from his fury. "I am like a sinew-shrunk old horse and I stumble as I go. If I took my heart away from you, Standing Antelope, I give it to you again, and all the arms and the other gifts with it. I have lost my temper like an old squaw!"
Tears of joy stood in the eyes of Standing Antelope as the warrior made this confession, and his young breast heaved suddenly. He had to look quickly away for a moment before he could trust himself and, when he spoke again to his older friend, it was with such a smile as comes from the very heart of a man.
"You have taught me how to be a man," said the boy. "You have let me count my first coup on a man you had made helpless. Now you have filled my hands with weapons. No brave among the Suhtai will be so envied as Standing Antelope. But ah, my Father, the rest is as nothing to me, now that all is well between us."
ALL through the day, the interest of Thunder Moon in this child had been growing, and now it increased with a sudden bound. Looking at the boy he knew that this was the high and pure strain of Indian blood which furnished the tribes with their great chiefs—great in war and great in council, not mere seekers for blood and scalps, but leaders of their nations. He was seeing at its fountainhead the pure stream which would one day be a mighty current.
He said to the boy, with a smile: "You are wise, Standing Antelope."
"Father," said Standing Antelope, "if I had been blind, still I could have told that the woman had angered you by your voice as you spoke to Sailing Hawk."
"How could you tell that?"
"I have heard you talk to him as if he were a man. All the Suhtai know how you go out into the pastures to visit him, and how he comes running when he sees you, and how he guards you through the herds of the horses. We have seen how he trembles for joy when you spring on his back. The warriors say that even battle he loves less than he loves his master."
Thunder Moon, soothed by this speech, passed his hand along the shining neck of the stallion, and the big horse tipped his head a little to look back at his rider, and his step which had been smooth before became as light as the wind.
"Why should the woman anger me?" said Thunder Moon. "I have found her and brought her back. I have beaten the man with whom she ran away. Since I do not want her for my squaw, but only to keep her in my lodge as I promised her father, therefore why should I be angered?"
At this the other squinted at the form of the girl, and shook his head. "I do not know," he said at last. "I only know that my father has said that women and mules require strong hands. Perhaps you are too kind to the Omissis maiden? She gives you no answer for your kindness except a blank eye like the eye of a dying buffalo. That may be what angers you."
Thunder Moon talked no more of this subject. They had skirted the hills to the south and now, voyaging over the plains, they came in sight of the distant lights of the village. The evening had thickened about them as they journeyed. At the same time, they reached a little run of water and a group of low trees.
There Thunder Moon halted. He could have pressed on into the village at once but, for a reason which he himself did not understand in the least, he wished to delay that return. They soon had a fire blazing—a fire of a reckless height, for it might attract the attention of any prowling bands of horse thieves such as were forever wandering near the limit of the Cheyenne encampment. In the fire the girl roasted the meat which Standing Antelope gave her.
She accepted it without a word. Without a word she cooked it. When it was roasted to a turn, she gave all to the two men and retired a little.
The boy, starved by his day's work, instantly was devouring the roasted bits with avidity. Thunder Moon ate more slowly. Suddenly he said: "Maiden, you also are hungry. Come nearer to the fire. Take the meat and eat."
Standing Antelope exclaimed: "Is it fit for a woman to eat in the presence of warriors, Father?"
"Then go sit by yourself in the dark," said Thunder Moon impatiently.
"He has spoken the truth," said the girl as Standing Antelope, his dignity much outraged, picked up a portion of the meat and retired with it.
"Whatever he has spoken," said Thunder Moon, "it is my pleasure to have you come to the fire and eat."
She came closer to the fire and sat down, cross-legged. Yet still she was half in the darkness, and the massive, metal-red braids of her hair glistened in the firelight and seemed to reflect their own color upon the face of the girl.
"I am not hungry," she said.
He saw that her eyes were downward, upon the fire, and an unreasonable anger came upon Thunder Moon. He seized the whip which lay beside him and with it struck the ground.
"Eat!" he commanded.
Without a word, she reached for a morsel of the meat and obeyed him. He forgot his own food and leaned forward to watch, for this simple action of hers filled him with a strange satisfaction. Only one thing was needed to make his pleasure perfect, and that was that he should have slain the game with his own hands.
Twice she stopped, and twice with a gesture he forced her to continue.
"Is that meat poison, Red Wind?" he asked her at length.
Instead of answering, she merely lifted her head and looked steadfastly at him, and he stared in return, looking deeply into her eyes. Even by firelight, the intense, rich blue of them was apparent to him, like water under a deep sky.
"Tell me, Red Wind," he asked again, "why is it that you speak to other men and tell them lies about me?"
He was tremendously irritated when she refused to answer him, merely continuing her grave observance of his face.
"Why is it," he went on, "that you stole out with the Pawnee wolf, Rising Cloud, and told him such a lie as this, that I am not an Indian at all, but a white man? How could you find such a lie in your heart?"
"Is it a lie?" she asked him in her quiet voice.
The simple question shocked all the blood from his heart to his head and made his face burn. "Am I like one of those cringing, sneaking people?" he asked. "Am I like a mangy coyote which dares not eat until after the wolf has left the prey?"
"Are the white men like that?" she returned.
"Are they not? What do they have except what the red people leave for them on the plains? How do they live except by the wealth of the Cheyennes and the others who ride on the plains?"
She waited a moment and then, as though she forced herself to speak, she said slowly: "I have been to two trading forts. I have talked with trappers and with soldiers. Some of them are bad men, but all of them are wise. They told me of great cities beyond the Father of Waters. They told me of cities so great that into one of them could be poured all of the tribes of the red men who ride on the plains."
"Do you believe such lies?" he asked her scornfully.
She went on, after another little pause. "They are so rich that in one of their cities are more wonderful things than all the prairies and all the thousands of thousands of buffalo. They build canoes in which five hundred men sit, and those canoes are driven by fire, fast as a horse can run on the firm land, and also over the land, they send wagons of fire that. . . ."
"Red Wind," said the warrior, "I listen to you and I wish not to smile. I see that they have told you such lies as even children, among the Suhtai, would laugh at."
"I also laughed," said the girl, "but then I went to the edge of the great river with my father and up the stream. Through the night we saw lights coming, and there was a great roaring like many winds although the winds were still, and up the waters against the current where no Indian could drive a canoe a monstrous boat came. It had many bright eyes that threw rays of light across the prairie. Above its head rushed and roared a great hand of flame that drew down and leaped up again. All over the boat we saw people walking."
Thunder Moon moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. He lighted his pipe and first blew a breath toward the sky and then a breath toward the ground. After that he crouched on his heels and smoked slowly, contemplatively. Wild thoughts were passing through his mind.
"I have heard you," he said at last. "I do not wish to believe that you say a thing that is not. But if they have such magic as this, why do not the white men drive the Indians from the prairie?"
"It is not magic. Medicine men do not make the fire-boats. Medicine men do nothing among the white men. Only they talk a great deal. They do nothing else. With their hands, the white men make these things. When they wish to take the prairies from us, then they will take them. An old man among the Omissis has told me so. I have seen the boat of fire. And I believe."
"This is very well," said Thunder Moon. "No matter what the old man may have told you, we are still plainly the chosen people of Tarawa and never may be destroyed by the white men. Perhaps you did not altogether despise me when you said that I was a white man?"
She would not answer again, leaving that very open opportunity for giving him a handsome compliment.
"At least," said Thunder Moon, "tell me for what reason you called me a white man?"
"Can we tell a dog from a wolf?" she asked him in return.
"Surely we can do that."
"By what tokens?" asked the girl.
"The wolf has a looser skin. He has stronger jaws. He is more wise on the trail. He is more quick to flee and he is more terrible to fight."
"If you see a dog with a loose skin, with powerful jaws, wise on the trail, quick to flee, but terrible in fight?"
"That would be no dog, but a wolf."
"True," said the girl. "So I see you, Thunder Moon, and I call you a white man because you and all of your ways are white."
He listened like a man bereft of his wits. "Is this the truth that you speak and not a thing to merely anger me?" he asked her.
"You too are a great warrior," she said, "and so are the white men, though you do not believe it. They count no coups and take no scalps. Neither does Thunder Moon. You make no medicine. Neither do the white men. The white men make their squaws into men and their men into squaws. And so do you."
She did not alter her voice as she delivered the last stinging sentence. Therefore it was a moment before Thunder Moon understood her meaning and he turned a deep crimson, a furious, deep crimson.
"It is time to mount," he said hoarsely, and he started to his feet.
HE knew, even as he climbed into the saddle, that he had not even then taken the true Cheyenne course with her. For most of the stalwart braves would have rewarded this final speech of Red Wind's by throwing a handful of dust into her face and then flogging her soundly. However, all he could do as Standing Antelope put out the fire was to ride up to her and say grimly: "You speak evil of the whites. Are your own eyes and your own hair black?"
The last ray from the fire illumined her face. It was utterly blank and the expression indecipherable. Yes, no matter what the color of skin, hair, and eyes, her heart was the heart of a true Cheyenne. He knew it, and her silence laid a load upon his heart. He wanted an answer, but she gave him no opportunity with her muteness.
So they journeyed on through the darkness. It was a double night to Thunder Moon. They entered the village and instantly their coming was known. Boys and women flocked out from the teepees and rushed around Red Wind, screaming at her and calling her vile names. For she had committed the last crime for a Cheyenne girl—she had fled with one of their most detested enemies. One woman leaped up and caught Red Wind by the sleeve to drag her from the back of her pony. Once pulled down into the midst of those reaching hands, she would be scratched, beaten, torn, and disfigured for all her life. Thunder Moon waited for her scream for help.
No scream came. She struck away the hands that gripped her. Three or four more vengeful squaws grappled with her, and Thunder Moon had to ride in among them and brush them away. They fell back before him, calling him a fool, begging him to let them work their revenge upon this traitor to her nation. He promised them his whip across their faces if they rushed at the girl again.
So they rode through the camp and, when they were close to the lodge of Big Hard Face, they passed the teepee of Three Bears. That hero stood before the open flap of his home, illumined faintly by the firelight which flickered within. No doubt his heart was bursting with curiosity to learn all that had happened on this trail, but he remained with folded arms, immobile.
Thunder Moon drew rein and he grimly noted that the girl, even if she were unwilling to appeal to him in the midst of danger, at least dared not to ride on without his protection. She turned her horse beside him.
"Three Bears," said the warrior, "I took your boy away with me. He had no name and the braves did not know him. I bring him back a man."
There was a stifled cry from the squaw of Three Bears and a deep shout from the excited listeners who had pressed around, but Three Bears did not stir.
"The quickest eye and the truest ear belongs to him," went on Thunder Moon. "Therefore his name is Standing Antelope. The Pawnee was wily and cunning, but Standing Antelope was wiser by far. The Pawnee rode fast and well, but Standing Antelope rode faster. The Pawnee turned to fight for his life. His spear was in his hand. Standing Antelope rushed in and counted his coup."
A wild uproar of applause followed this statement. Then silence followed to hear the result of the fight.
"Why should we kill a wounded wolf? We sent Rising Cloud on to his people to let them know that before long we should come again and strike them, and leave the plains covered with their dead men and send their ghosts to die in the wind.
"We come back to you. If any man doubts that Standing Antelope is a warrior, let him look and see that he carries a spear and a rifle and a revolver that speaks six words. With every one, a man may die."
The boy could endure the strain no longer but, flinging himself from his horse, he fell into the arms of his father. His mother clutched him then. Hubbub broke loose around them. Thunder Moon turned away with the girl toward his own tent. As he went, he could hear behind him a shrill, boyish voice chanting over the tumult, chanting the first of his war songs, telling how he, Standing Antelope, won the name of a warrior and counted his first coup upon the body of a Pawnee chief.
It gave Thunder Moon a certain solace in the midst of the darkness which was settling over his mind. He dismounted and waved the girl before him into the lodge where White Crow and Big Hard Face waited for them. The noise had apprised them of what to expect, and the tongue of the hag was well loosened for her work. She sprang up and hurled a torrent of insults at the head of the girl. Red Wind, her hands clasped loosely before her, endured the storm without a rejoinder.
"Stop her tongue," said Thunder Moon to his foster father.
"Be still," commanded Big Hard Face.
"It is only the beginning of her evil!" exclaimed the squaw. "Walking Horse gave us the price of fifty horses for keeping her. But she will do us harm to the value of a thousand horses before the wicked spirits come for her, like brothers for a sister."
Big Hard Face raised his hand and White Crow relapsed into an angry mumbling.
Thunder Moon beckoned and Big Hard Face came out with him into the open night. They walked together without a word through the village, taking care to avoid all who were abroad. That was not difficult. Behind them the first war song of Standing Antelope was gathering a crowd and there the boys, mad with envy, went to hear him. There the warriors gathered to encourage such deeds of valor in the youth of the tribe.
Out upon the prairie went the two and reached the bank of the river and sat on a fallen log. Beneath them, the stream ran black and smooth, with the faces of the stars fallen in it like flecks of cold fire.
"What about Rising Cloud?" asked Big Hard Face at last, as though they had discussed all other things except the fate of the Pawnee warrior.
"He was sent to his own people freely," said Thunder Moon. "I could not kill a helpless man."
Big Hard Face stifled an exclamation. "That mercy will cost many a Cheyenne scalp," he said. "Do you think that there is gratitude or kindness among the Pawnee wolves?"
"I think nothing," said Thunder Moon. "I am very sick." Stretching his arms around his foster father, he bowed his head on the shoulder of that venerable chief. Who else of all the brave among the Suhtai would have been guilty of such weakness? But the heart of Big Hard Face swelled in him with pain and sorrow.
"All that is evil comes from woman," said Big Hard Face. "But all the harm that an old wise woman can do is nothing compared with the danger that lies in a beautiful girl. I shall tell you why Walking Horse sent her away instead of marrying her to a man among the Omissis. He is the foremost of all of their chiefs. His war raids have taken him from the Sioux to the Comanches. When he was in the southland, he took from the Comanches a woman they had captured in Mexico. He made her his squaw and, before she died, she gave him this daughter. When she grew older, every young man among the Omissis coveted her. They tied their horses at the lodge door of Walking Horse. They tied ten, twenty, thirty horses at the lodge post. But still the girl would not have any of them for a husband.
"Walking Horse feared to give her away because, if he married her to one warrior, she might smile on another and that would mean war in the camp. The braves began to hate Walking Horse because they thought that he would not give the girl to them. Once a bullet sang past his head as he walked through his own camp. Twice knives were drawn against him. Then he saw what he must do. He came to the Suhtai and settled amongst us until he discovered the lodge where the strongest man dwelt. To that lodge he gave the girl. Being an honest man, he gave a great prize with her. Now I shall gather together the prize which he paid down with her and take her and the treasure back to him."
"No," said Thunder Moon.
His foster father was silent, grimly filled with thought.
"She has found the way into your heart," he said. "But do not take her for your squaw. She has soft hands. She will not make your lodge happy or fill it with robes which she has dressed. There is no labor in her. Not words but work makes a good wife. I shall tell you about women. They have long hair but little wisdom. They are a trouble when they are with us, but we miss them when they are away. Only to make mischief they are wiser than men. If they obey, it is because they wish to rule. It is easy for them to laugh and easier for them to weep.
"Men paint their faces to be terrible to their enemies; women paint their faces to betray their friends. It is dangerous to be loved by them. It is worse to be hated by them. She speaks best when she thinks least, for in all things she is the opposite of men and she wants too much of all things. She is beautiful, but she is soon old. She always has words but she seldom has meaning. Where she is, there is sure to be noise. She is more filled with cunning than a coyote and, though you watch her, you cannot keep her from stealing from you. A man may lie gravely, but a woman lies with a smile. Moreover, a man repents, but a woman never sees her own faults. Her only knowledge is that she is right. When she smiles, soon you will have to spend treasure. If she loves finery, only the entrance to the lodge will be kept in order. If she loves talk, her husband never shall sleep. Whether she laughs, or cries, or sings, no man can understand her true meaning. We think that we possess her; it is she who possesses us. Though she is mysterious, she is a great fool, for she loves words more than deeds, and a boaster more than a modest man.
"Tell her that she is lovely and she soon is a greater fool than ever. So from these things, my son, you will see that it is much better to live without a wife. Or if you have a woman in your lodge, let her be an old drudge and not really your squaw. If you let a woman bear a child to you, then she never will have done until she has made you her slave. She does not live to know herself, but to make others believe great things about her. She would rather be beautiful than good or wise. Therefore tell me, my son, that if this woman has stolen into your heart, you will put her out again straightway."
"Father," said Thunder Moon, "she hates me with all her heart, but I never shall be happy until she is my squaw."
IF Big Hard Face was half troglodyte, he also was half philosopher. He listened to the words of his foster son with interest but without speaking for some time. Finally he said gravely: "When a man desires a thing greatly, there is a time when it is best to study not whether the thing is good or bad, but how it can be gotten. Now you wish to know whether or not you can win the love of this woman?"
"No," said Thunder Moon, raising his head, "for first of all I wish to ask you about the things which she has said to me. You, Big Hard Face, are my father."
"It is true," answered the Cheyenne.
"Then how," said Thunder Moon, "can I be called a white man?"
Big Hard Face started violently. Then, turning to Thunder Moon, he asked sharply: "She has put that question in your mind?"
"What does it matter?" replied the warrior. "The question is asked."
"It is the Omissis girl," said the chief savagely. "Who knows a child so well as the parent? If I had guessed that such an evil spirit were in the girl, I never should have taken the price of the fifty horses from her father when he came to us and begged us to take his daughter into our lodge."
"This is a simple thing," replied Thunder Moon. "I have asked you a question and all that is needed is for you to answer: 'No! There is no drop of the false blood of a white man in your veins.'"
The chief considered for a moment. "I have taught you that the white men are partly villains and partly fools, have I not?" he asked.
"You have taught me that," replied Thunder Moon. "But between me and the other braves of the Suhtai I feel that there is a difference, and Red Wind says that it is the difference between the red man and the white. Where the moccasin covers my feet, the skin is white."
"It is better," said Big Hard Face, "to consider the chattering of prairie dogs at the entrance to their holes than to worry about the words of woman. We have talked enough, my son. Let us go home to the lodge and sleep."
The mightiest hand among all the Cheyennes was laid upon the shoulder of Big Hard Face. "Wait a little," said Thunder Moon.
The chief listened, leaning forward a little.
"You are sad," said Thunder Moon. "Why is that?"
"I am sad because when I was a young brave, the warriors did not listen to the lying voices of the women." He nodded his head as though considering again the faults of these unregenerate days, or reading again some postil in the margin of his vision.
"The color of my skin says that the woman is right," replied Thunder Moon.
"It is because you wish it," answered the chief. "You wish to be one of these strange people. You wish to call yourself white, and to leave your people and go among the strangers."
"Look," said Thunder Moon. He pointed. The moon was rising, and in the direction of its broad and golden horn he extended his arm.
"I see it," replied the chief.
"Would not a man be a fool to give his word in the presence of the Sky People when he wished to speak a lie?"
Big Hard Face was silent.
"Yet I promise you," said the warrior, "that it is not so much what the woman has said as it is something inside my heart that makes me ask you these questions. Open your heart to me. Admit it once that I am not like the rest of the Suhtai. Where they smile, I am sad. Where they are sad, I smile. Who is there among the Suhtai that does not shudder when Spotted Bull frowns? But I have no fear of his medicine. I have seen you tremble before him, even my father, even Big Hard Face. But I laugh at Spotted Bull and his foolish talk. He cannot make the sky either pale or blue for all of his medicine. Also the ways of the Cheyenne upon the war path are not my ways. The coups and the scalps which they prize are not my prizes. In everything we are different."
"Look at the horse herd," answered the chief with much warmth. "Though the dame and the sire are the same, what two colts are alike? One is a fool and a sluggard and the other is as swift as the wind."
"That is true. But men are not like horses. I run swifter but not so far as the Cheyennes. I am stronger in my hands. With a gun I am more sure. I cannot endure pain as they endure it. Every moment that I draw my breath I know that I am not like my brothers of the Suhtai."
"It is the woman who talks by your lips," answered Big Hard Face, grown sullen.
"It is not the woman. What other brave has killed as I have killed? When I ride out to the battle, the Pawnees divide before me. The Comanches scream to one another. Ten men ride against me, but even all the ten shrink before they come close. The Sioux know me and the Blackfoot run before my face. The Crows cry in their lodges for the dead men who have fallen before me. What other Suhtai has killed as I have killed or been such a power in battle? Or in the council, who makes the old men grow silent when he speaks? To whom do the old men listen? It is to me! Still, I am not a chief. The young warriors say: 'He never endured the trial of pain. When his father would have pierced his breasts and tied the thongs in the flesh, he screamed and refused the test. His shame is before our eyes.' Therefore, Big Hard Face, it is plain that I am not like the others. Red Wind says that it is because I am a white man. You must tell me the truth, for I see that you are not speaking with all your mind to me."
Big Hard Face started to his feet. "I shall go back to my lodge," he said, "and take the woman and give her the whip across her shoulders. I shall make her admit before your face that she says the thing which is not true!"
"Do not touch her," said Thunder Moon. "You are no longer young. There is little power in your hands. Do not touch her!"
"Because you would fight me for her sake?" exclaimed the chief.
"I have not said it."
"I hear it in your voice."
"Perhaps it is true."
Big Hard Face flung his robe over his head. "My own son raises his hand against me," he said. "It is time for me to go out in the winter and let the wolves gather around me. I no longer am valued in my own lodge, and my son lifts his hand against me."
He turned away toward the village, but the great form of Thunder Moon strode before him.
"I have asked you many questions," he said. "The man who does not wish to answer finds many chances to fall into anger. If you leave me now, I shall believe all that Red Wind has told me."
Big Hard Face recoiled from him. "Then what would you do?" he asked.
"Blood calls out to the heart of a man," said Thunder Moon. "I should go to my people and learn the ways of their speech."
"Go, go!" cried Big Hard Face. "Go, and let us remain behind you with an empty lodge! For this I have raised you! For this I have been a father to you! Would your own mother have labored for you as White Crow has worked? Would your own father have given you such horses and such weapons?" He checked himself as his tongue was about to run on, but already he had said far too much.
"Then it is true!" cried Thunder Moon in a broken voice. "All that Red Wind said is true and I am not a son of the Cheyennes. Far off in a lodge of the white men, my father and my true mother mourn for me. In the winter they are hungry because I am not there to hunt for them. In the summer, the white braves scorn them because they are poor and have to walk beside the dogs which drag their travois."
"No, no!" exclaimed Big Hard Face, waxing warm. "You speak like a fool. The home in which your father and mother live is greater than fifty lodges such as mine. Black-faced Negroes work for them. In their lands many fine horses are grazing. They are rich. All the wealth of the Suhtai is hardly equal to the wealth of your father and your mother."
Thunder Moon was silent. In the silence Big Hard Face came to realize that he had, indeed, spoken far too much. He gathered the robe closer about his head and started back toward the lights of the village, but his foster son did not follow him. Suddenly he returned to Thunder Moon and dropped his robe to the ground. The moon played upon his old body, heavy but still strong.
"Oh, Thunder Moon," he said, "what is it that you do? Do you renounce the Suhtai who have been your brothers? Do you give them up for a strange people? What is the color of the skin? It is the color of the heart that matters!"
"I am a Suhtai," said Thunder Moon gravely. "I am a Suhtai and nothing shall make me have another self. I am a Suhtai, but now I see that I am a Suhtai only in my love and my thoughts. In every other thing, I am a white man and among the white men I belong. Like them, I must learn to live as a coyote lives, eating the carrion which the wolves leave after their feasts on the buffalo which they have pulled down."
Big Hard Face reached out his hands and found those of his son. He gripped them hard. "Now I part from myself the thing which I have loved more than I have loved life!" he said. "I part myself from what is best and dearest to me in the world. But out of wrong no right can grow, and I have done wrong, and therefore I must be punished. The Sky People whom I thought loved me have treated me as a fool is treated. They have let me grow old before they showed that they hate me. Sit down, and I shall tell you everything as it came to pass."
"You are tired and sick at heart," said Thunder Moon, trembling with excitement. "Wait until tomorrow. Then we shall talk again about these matters."
"There is no tomorrow for me," answered Big Hard Face sadly. "What life has a childless man? Now I am childless! The women scream and cut their flesh for the sake of their dead sons. But I cannot scream and gash myself. For I have no son. All these days I have lived a lie. My teepee has been empty even when I let Thunder Moon fill it with honor and with fame. I have no son and the son I had was only a sham and a pretense."
"WHAT is an old man but an unhappy man?" said the chief to his foster son. "Age makes a man gray, but it does not make him happy. It is a sad guest in the lodge. Old age is like a smoking fire. Even though the greatest chief lives to the greatest age, still he must die at last. Is not this true?"
"Perhaps it is true," said Thunder Moon, taking pity on the manifest grief of his foster father.
"What is the cure, then, for age?" asked the chief.
"I cannot tell."
"Think, however."
"I cannot tell, for the same cure would be a cure for death also."
"There is a cure for death, oh, Thunder Moon!"
"Then I cannot guess it, for the stoutest of the buffalo will grow old and die at last."
"Then I shall tell you. A father lives after death in his son. For when death puts an end to the swiftest and the longest race, still something may be left after. The bow may be grasped by another hand. The horse may be bestrode by another warrior. The lodge may shelter another, and the Tarawa to whom the father prayed will send fortune to the heir. It is in our children that we live again. And the hope of our children makes death a shadow which otherwise could be a terrible force and steal every moment of happiness from our lips. So I tell you these things because, as I speak to you, so it was with me. I was a great warrior. I had many horses. No lodge was greater than mine. In no teepee was there more meat. All the wise men in the tribe listened when I spoke at the council. But as the time grew, I still had no squaw. Do you ask me why, Thunder Moon?"
The foster son held silence.
"Because my face is cursed with ugliness," said Big Hard Face. "The women would not look at me. They turned away their faces when I was near them and, when I had gone by, I could hear them laughing. So I could not take a squaw who would give me a child. As for women for their own sake, I never prized them. We cannot live except through another, but mothers are loved by their children only.
"So I grew older, and I looked around me and saw that a time would come when I should have great wealth, but there would be in my lodge no young man growing wise and strong to take in his hands the weapons which some day I should have to lay down. There would be no one to sit by me when I was ill, and there would be no one to catch my horse and saddle it when I grew weak. The more I thought of these things, the sicker and the feebler of heart I became.
"At last I saw that I could have no happiness unless I did something to cure this evil. So I thought long and hard on that matter and at last I determined on the thing to do. He who wants the fastest horse in the world cannot expect to find it in the next lodge and, if he does, another warrior says that it is his. So I decided that for the thing that I wanted I should ride to a great distance and try to find between the east and the west something which would be worth giving up my life, and some great action by which the Cheyenne nation might remember me even if I grew old without an heir.
"So I crossed the dark of that night and the whiteness of the day many times. I came to rivers and followed some along the banks, and others I swam across with my horse, but still I came to nothing which seemed worth dying for. At last, I came to the land of the white men."
Here Big Hard Face paused. Though Thunder Moon now could guess what was coming, he said not a word.
"I journeyed a great distance among the lodges of the white men. They had teepees built of stone and of wood and there were grass lands and fruit lands. There were many horses and cattle, and such richness that nothing in the world could have been worth it except the open freedom of the prairies. Never had I seen such things, and never have I dared to speak of them among the Suhtai for fear that men would laugh at me."
"What things, then, did you see?" asked Thunder Moon hoarsely.
"The trails that they traveled were made of rock broken and laid thick upon the ground. Ten thousand buffalo might run across them in the rainy season and never break their surface into mud."
There was a grunt of wonder from the warrior.
"The smallest lodge that I looked at was so large that two or three of the finest teepees among the Suhtai could be put in it. All around their houses in the fields grow all the fruits and the corn that men could want for eating. They do not ride on the war path. They may sit still at home and there they will have all that they wish. There is more wealth for one of those great lodges than for all the Suhtai nation."
"Then it is true!" said Thunder Moon in amazement, "for now two tongues have said it."
"At last," said the chief, "I came to a place of many great trees and I rode through fields, and there were no houses for a great distance. I came to the greatest house that I had ever seen. It was so great that I trembled when I saw it. Smoke came from several places at its top. I thought surely that Tarawa must live there. I lay in the woods, moving slowly from place to place that day, watching the great house and wondering. Everywhere I saw Negroes working in the fields, or coming back from the fields to little lodges built not far from the great one. Then I came to a pasture and in that pasture I saw the finest horses in the whole world. I took some of them. You know about them. They are the chestnuts whom you yourself have ridden against every one of our enemies, and they never have failed you in battle or flight or hunting. I saw them standing in the field together, and I trembled again. 'These are the horses on whose backs Tarawa dashes across the skies,' I said to myself.
"But they were very gentle. When I came to them, they let me take them. They were like colts, too young to know what fear is. I took some of them and especially I took the great stallion, the king of the band.
"Then I lay in the woods close to the house, waiting for the night to come before I started away. As I lay there, I saw a Negro woman come out from the house carrying with her a small white child and she put the child under a tree.
"I crept a little closer. I looked at that child. I thought that I would take a scalp and go back to the Cheyennes with a white scalp and the great horses. So when the woman went away, I went to the infant. It was not afraid, Thunder Moon. It lifted up its hands to me. I could not help picking it up and carrying it away with me. I said that the Sky People knew that I wanted fast horses and a son, and they had led me where I could find both. I carried the child away. I was hunted for many days by the white men. But at last I came to the open country, and then nothing could keep me from winning that race, for the chestnuts were working under me. That is the story, Thunder Moon. You know how you have grown up in my teepee. My blood is not your blood. My thoughts are not your thoughts. I am Suhtai and you are not. But a place is in my heart for you. Tell me if there is a place in yours for me?"
"Hear me, Sky People!" cried Thunder Moon enthusiastically. "I know that you brought me into the plains so that I could live with your chosen race. As for my real father and mother, they were nothing to me. I only know the lodge of Big Hard Face. Therefore I never. . . ."
"Speak slowly!" said the wise old brave. "There is nothing so easily broken as a promise which a man does not want to keep. If you have not seen your father and your mother, nevertheless they have seen you. If you have forgotten them, they have not forgotten you."
"What do you mean?" asked Thunder Moon, much disturbed.
"Tarawa has heed of the white man and the black, as well as of the red," declared the old chief. "So he has knowledge of you here and, of course, he has had knowledge of the sorrow of your father and your mother."
Thunder Moon fell into a great trouble, but at last he said hurriedly: "I shall tell you. If they have not forgotten me, then they are dead. I do not feel them calling to my heart."
"You will hear them afterward," said the chief. "Now you are too full of trouble because of the woman. Because of her, you will have more troubles still. Now let us go home, Thunder Moon. Still for a little time my lodge is your lodge, and my home is your home. Afterward, you will begin to turn to your own people. Ah, and I have been like a fool. If one clips the wing of an eagle, still the feathers will grow again."
To this Thunder Moon began an emotional protest that he never would leave the lodge of his foster father, and that to the end of his life he would be true to him and remain.
Big Hard Face cut him short, saying bluntly: "I am old, and old men love to talk much, but not to listen."
So they walked on in silence, and Big Hard Face went slower and slower till it seemed as though he were changing his mind with every step that he made.
"Go slowly, go slowly," said the chief. "I am not a boy. I am not a young buck. I am very old."
When they came to the edge of the camp, Big Hard Face declared that he wished to walk to see a friend, and he added bitterly to his foster son: "Besides, you'll want to go off by yourself and think of this thing . . . and how you came from strange people... and how quickly you can go to see their faces. At least, you will want to run to see the woman."
Big Hard Face walked off alone and Thunder Moon went quietly back toward his teepee, his head raised so high that the lights of the stars twisted and swirled and dazzled in his eyes, and wild new thoughts and fears and hopes began to storm through his brain.
He might have walked in this fashion, straight into the hands of death. Only the glint of the danger he saw with the corner of his eyes and leaped aside and whirled in time to meet the lunging shadow and the knife which was its darting point. He grappled with the brave who held the weapon and, then with an exclamation of horror, he sprang back from the murderer. He recognized Snake-That-Talks, one of his oldest and closest friends in the tribe.
THE other did not attempt to skulk away. For a moment he poised the knife flat in the palm of his hand, as though ready to hurl it at Thunder Moon, but then—perhaps realizing that this was a weak defense against the "medicine" which hung in the holster beside the other's thigh—he dropped the weapon back into its sheath and folded his arms. There was no finer presence among all the tall ranks of the Suhtai than Snake-That-Talks, and even by starlight he made an imposing figure.
"Brother," said Thunder Moon sadly, "we have been friends for many years. With you I went on the war trail when we entered the land of the Comanches and took away their great medicine, The Yellow Man. Your lodge has been open to me and my lodge has been open to you. In the winter famines we have given meat to one another. Of the last pemmican in your lodge, I have taken half. But now you have come to kill me. How have I wronged you, brother? What do I own that should be yours?"
The Suhtai seemed unable to answer for a moment but then he said slowly: "The woman in your teepee smiled at me. That is all."
"It is Red Wind again," groaned Thunder Moon. "She is not a woman but an evil spirit! Oh, Snake-That-Talks, you already have a squaw and two children in your lodge."
To this the Indian made no answer, and Thunder Moon turned away and stumbled on toward his home. For Red Wind he kept a strange fury in his mind, for he knew that she had stolen away one of his nearest friends with a single glance. He had spared the life of the young brave. For that very reason, Snake-That-Talks never could forgive him.
When he came closer to his teepee, he was aware of a number of young men loitering here and there and he passed slowly among them, expecting that they had been driven there by a wish to speak with him—perhaps to propose some feat of war. However, not one of them paid any attention to him, but allowed him to go past them while they continued to stroll in an apparently aimless manner. What could have brought them here, Thunder Moon could not guess, unless indeed it were the singing of a girl within the teepee of his foster father. A rich, low-pitched, rather husky voice was chanting a song which went straight to the ears of Thunder Moon, and he understood instantly why the loiterers were gathered in front of his lodge. It was Red Wind's song which had brought them, as surely as summer skies bring the birds. It was Red Wind's song also which made these youthful warriors oblivious to his coming. All at once his passions mastered him and carried him away, like a boat sloping down a lee tide. He felt that this girl who sat in his teepee was bringing about him dangers which, sooner or later, must overwhelm him.
He strode into the entrance of the lodge. The moment he appeared the song stopped, as though he had struck the singer. Yonder sat Red Wing, staring down to the ground in all humility. Or was it humility, indeed? Suddenly he felt more hate than kindness for her—hatred and fear mixed together, for he wanted to catch her by the arm and drag her to a place where the firelight would shine upon her guilty face, but he dared not touch her.
"Red Wind!" he said.
She lifted her head obediently and looked toward him. But she might as well have continued to stare at the ground, so dense was the veil which she had dropped across her eyes.
"I have met Snake-That-Talks," he said, and waited to see the flickering shadow of guilt across her face.
No shadow touched it. She was like one who sleeps with open eyes.
White Crow slipped nearer, her eyes hungry with mischief, as though she guessed that trouble was about to descend upon the head of the young woman, and as though she reveled in the prospect.
"Go out from the teepee!" Thunder Moon commanded her.
"It is come to this," whined White Crow. "I am driven out from the lodge which I made with my own hands. Who else cleaned all those buffalo hides? Who prepared them? Who set up this teepee, so that it looked like a pyramid of snow in the spring? Now you are driving me away to shiver in the cold and...."
A wave of Thunder Moon's arm convinced her that she would have to obey. She shuffled through the entrance and disappeared.
"Now," said Thunder Moon to the girl, "let me know what it is that you want?"
She looked up at him, her eyes still vague, though a meaning was beginning to come into them.
"Snake-That-Talks is a great warrior," said Thunder Moon in continuation. "There is hardly a braver or a keener man among the Suhtai. You showed that you are clever and wise when you picked him out and sent him to murder me."
She closed her eyes. "Murder?" breathed the girl.
He strode fiercely to understand what was in her voice—horror, or disappointment, or perhaps merely fear of the punishment which now might hang over her head.
"You sent him," said the warrior. "You put the knife in his hand and you sent him out to find me and to kill me. Then you would go to his lodge and be his squaw."
With a curious detachment, she looked up to him as he stood in the firelight, a mastodontic form with his shadow floating on the white teepee wall behind him. Light-footed, massive of shoulder, proud of head, if ever a man walked who seemed typical of all that an Indian warrior should be, such seemed the foster son of Big Hard Face on this very night when he had learned that he was not an Indian at all.
"Confess it!" he said, grown more savage during her silence. For a strange fear was entering him. At one moment she seemed to him the only reality he ever had looked upon. Again she seemed a very Maya of beautiful illusion. "But you know that he had tried and failed. Some shadowy owl or bat flew into your lodge and sat on your shoulder, so that the old eyes of White Crow could not see it. It told you everything that had happened."
Such stories he had used for his mirth in another day, but now he looked upon her seriously as an occultist, for how else to define her he knew not.
She said quietly: "Do you believe in talking birds?"
"I believe in evil spirits, and I know that there is one in you," he cried. "No other woman could do as you have done. There is nothing but danger and harm in you. To your father you showed that. Now you show it to me. I cannot tell why I do not tie you hand and foot and set you out on the prairie where the wolves might eat you."
She said, rather in curiosity than in fear he thought: "The promise you gave to my father keeps you from doing that."
"When you put a knife in the hand of Snake-That-Talks," replied Thunder Moon, "you set me free from that oath."
"Here is the only knife that I own," she said. "Was it this knife that Snake-That-Talks used against you?"
"You looked at him," replied Thunder Moon, "and the evil spirit in you possessed him! How you have called other young men of the Suhtai together. They stand in front of my lodge and listen to your voice and every one of them has a knife ready against me. Why do you do these things, Red Wind? How have I harmed you? When have I laid a heavy hand upon you? Have I forced you to become my squaw against your will? Have I forced you to do more work? Have I forced you to carry heavy weights, or to flesh the hides, or to tire your eyes and your quick fingers putting beads upon moccasins? In what way have I wronged you or been cruel to you?"
The heart of the warrior swelled in him as he spoke. In all the seasons of his life, nothing had stirred him so much as this interview with the maiden of the Omissis.
"You have not wronged me," said the girl. "It is my father who has wronged me."
He breathed more freely. But he added: "Then what can I do to make you happy? What can I do to keep you from arming my best friends against me?"
"When I first came to you," said the girl, in her quiet voice, "you could have taken the price of the fifty horses and given it back to my father, and given me back to him along with it."
"Do you wish me to do that?" he asked her.
"I wished it then," she said. "I think that I wished it then. But now it is too late. Now I think that it is much too late."
"Why is it too late, Red Wind?"
"If you think about it a little quietly, then you would know why."
He grew wildly angry again. Once, as he had ridden the plains, he had seen a hawk strike a small bird in mid-air and lighting on a stunted tree hackle it with talons and beak. He was moved to throw himself on this strange creature now and destroy her because of the mystery which she opposed against him at all times.
"Am I a child without wits?" he asked the girl. "Have I not thought about this thing until my brain aches?"
"Yes," she agreed, unheedful of his passion, "I suppose that thinking may not help, after all. Either one knows or one does not know."
"I shall do it!" exclaimed Thunder Moon. "I shall gather together all the treasure that your father gave to us. If it were ten times as great, it would not be enough to make up for the pain I suffer in keeping you. I shall gather everything together and more, and take you with the price back to the Omissis."
"When will you do it?" she asked.
"I? Tomorrow!"
She smiled, faintly.
"Why do you smile, Red Wind? You make me very angry when you act as though you knew things which I cannot know."
She wove her fingers into one massive braid of her hair and watched him. "I think it is too late for me and for you," she said sadly. "I don't think that you will give back the price to my father or give me back with it. There is nothing but trouble before us."
He was about to speak again when Big Hard Face entered the teepee, and the conversation was broken off short.
WHITE CROW entered almost right behind her nephew. The ancient woman was trembling with malice. "This wicked witch," she cried to Big Hard Face, "has been sitting here singing love songs and gathering the young men around the lodge."
"Wait," broke in Thunder Moon. "They were not love songs. I heard her singing."
"Whatever she sings is a love song!" exclaimed White Crow. "The young men came and walked before this teepee. You drove me out as if I were a dog. And the young men came to me one by one. 'Is all well with Red Wind?' they asked. They could hear you talking loudly to her, and they frowned when they heard the loudness of your voice. Do you see what the curse is that she has brought to this lodge, Big Hard Face?"
That chief, however, had retired to the darkness which surrounded his couch and there he sat, almost lost to view. White Crow peered at him, opened her withered lips to say something more, and then peered more closely and discovered that even the dimness of that place was not sufficiently dark for Big Hard Face. He had covered his head with his robe, like one who mourns. At that her malice seemed to grow in her. She hurried closer. In her dangling arms, there seemed as much lean, sinewy strength as ever, but her back was bent with years.
"Son," she said to the old chief, "what is the sorrow that has fallen on you?"
He did not answer.
Then she screamed at him, shaking her bony fists: "I am not a woman! I am dirt! I am nothing! I only live to work till I die. No one will listen to me. No heart is open to me. In my own lodge, that I made with my own hands, I am nothing. But I shall not endure it. The river will take my body. Or I can go to the lodge of a friend. . . ."
"Be quiet," said Thunder Moon angrily. "All the ears in every teepee near us will hear you."
"Let them hear me!" shrieked the squaw. "I shall go now and sing my song in front of the lodge and let them know how I live here."
The deep, heavy, lifeless voice of the chief spoke to her: "Woman, woman, make no more noise. Or else sit in the ashes and weep, but not for yourself."
At this solemn speech, White Crow clung to the post from which the medicine bag and the weapons of Big Hard Face hung.
"What has happened?" she whispered.
"We are alone," said Big Hard Face.
"We are not alone," said the squaw, mistaking his meaning. "The evil woman from the Omissis is here with us, and Thunder Moon who thinks I am only a dog."
"We are alone," said the chief, more heavily than before. "Thunder Moon is gone. He is drawn away to his own people."
"What are his people?" gasped the squaw. "Are they not our people? Are you not his father? Does he not belong to the Suhtai, sing their songs, fight their battles? Big Hard Face, do not talk like a fool."
"He is gone to his own people," answered the chief again. "The Omissis girl opened his eyes. She showed him the truth. Soon we shall lose him. Now, let me be in peace." He drew the robe slowly over his head again.
White Crow, as though suddenly gone blind, reached about until she found Thunder Moon, and then she clung to him. All the days of his life, he had received little but hard words and sharp actions from her, but now she burst into a terrible complaint, not in a screaming voice such as she had used before, but in a shuddering whisper, still holding close to him, clutching at his hands, or reaching up to stroke his head with her fingers, hard as bone.
"Child, child," said White Crow. "Big Hard Face is dying of grief. Besides what he has told you is not true. He is your father. He prayed to the Sky People for you. They heard him. They called him a great distance. They placed you before him. He took you and came back to his people. You are their gift to us. He has no child. I have no boy and no girl. If you go, we are like burned grass. We are like grass that has been burned by the roots. The wind blows us away from the earth. The moment you leave us, we begin to wait for our death. When you leave us, you kill us. Thunder Moon, have pity on me. Have pity on that old man!"
She fell upon her knees, clasping his hands.
"It is because I have said bitter words to you, like the old, wicked fool that I am," moaned White Crow. "But I have been evil in speech because I was jealous to make you the greatest warrior in the nation. I wanted to see you fly above the heads of other men, like an eagle. I always have loved you, and now. . . ."
Thunder Moon leaned and raised the withered body in his mighty arms.
"Do you think that I shall go?" he said. "No, now I swear to you that. . . ."
"Thunder Moon!" said the clear, sudden voice of the girl. "Ask your heart if you should swear. You have a real mother."
The words were stopped on his lips, for into his heart was thrust a strange, new hunger which had been growing up there ever since the story of his foster father had been told to him earlier in the evening. He could tell himself that he was a Cheyenne and that he detested the whites and all of their ways. He even could tell himself that he loved his foster father and even that he was fond of the squaw, White Crow. But, at the same time, it was necessary for him to admit that he turned with all his soul toward the unknown man and the unknown woman who were his real parents. So the oath which he was about to take stopped in his throat.
White Crow, with a strangled cry of rage, rushed at the Omissis girl. Over her she stood, her fists clenched, and poured out denunciations in a screaming voice: "You have stolen him!" wailed White Crow. "Why do you want him? It is not for yourself. It is only to torment us. It is only to break the heart of Big Hard Face. There is no woman in the world so wicked as you are. You were a whip and wound to your father. You were like a winter wolf, eating your own kind. Now you come to eat us. But I shall stop you. You will do no more harm to us or to others."
As she spoke, she clutched the great war club which leaned against the post at the foot of the couch of the chief. Before Thunder Moon could stop her, she swayed the weapon over her head. The girl, like one recognizing doom, made no motion to avoid the stroke, but waited with calm, upward eyes. It was Big Hard Face himself who swept like a shadow from his place, and took White Crow, weapon and all, in his arms. Still she struggled. But she had begun to sob. Weeping overcame her and she lay in the darkness, moaning and beating her hands against her breasts, while Big Hard Face sat beside her, speaking like a mother to a child.
Thunder Moon stepped from the lodge as from a place of pestilence. The young men had vanished. All the camp was still. But in the neighboring teepees, he knew that many an ear was listening to the groans of the old squaw, and that the same ears had listened also to the altercations which preceded.
A soft step behind him, and he turned and looked down into the face of Red Wind. She bowed her head upon the tethering post that stood before the tent and leaned heavily against it.
"Are you not happy?" asked Thunder Moon, standing above her and towering in wrath. "You have left everyone in the lodge of my father sick at heart. It is your work. When have you had a better day? Since the sun set on this day, you have stepped between me and Snake-That-Talks. You have broken the heart of my father. You have crushed White Crow, and you have torn me from my people. You have made me a man without a nation. I have no people. I have no heart. I am no more than a dead leaf blowing over the prairie. I am more friendless than an old buffalo bull, cast out by the herd. Tell me, Red Wind, is not this a perfect day for you?"
She did not raise her head, and her voice was a little muffled as she answered: "Will you go then quickly? Will you go at once back to your own people?"
He was startled by this implied admission of all evil in her answer.
"After a little while," said Thunder Moon, "everything is understood even about the buzzard and the crow. They keep their lives because other things on the prairies die. So I know about you. You cannot be happy until you have driven me away from my people. But still you don't tell me why you hate me."
"Listen to me," said the girl, straightening and turning to face him. "Already you have many enemies among the Suhtai. You are not a chief. You never will be a chief. Yet all the young chiefs are afraid of you and therefore they hate you. Snake-That-Talks has tried to murder you. He is a great young chief. Others are like him. They have pretended to love you, but they hate you. You have taken the son of Three Bears away and brought him back a warrior with a name. Do you think that Three Bears loves you because of that? No, he would bury his bullet in your heart if he dared. So it is with the others. You are white! You are white! You are white! Go back to the white men. You are not wanted here."
Wounded vanity did not master Thunder Moon then. So many blows had fallen upon him recently that he was untouched except by the greatest things.
"There is only one thing that would keep me here, I think," he answered her at last. "That is to learn why you hate me, Red Wind."
"Ask a woman why she hates and ask the wind why it blows," said the girl savagely. "All that I know is that I hate you. I do not want to be near you. Stand far from me, Thunder Moon."
He hesitated over her, his breath coming in jerks.
"Do you wish to stab me when I touch you?" he asked.
"Once I have proved it to you," she said.
"Yes, yes," he nodded. He stretched out his hand and took in it the heavy, silken braid of her hair. It gave him strange pleasure and strange pain to see her wince from his touch.
"I have thought a little bit about women," he said, "but they have been good women that I thought I would take into my teepee one day. However, I cannot tell. It may be that this is the best. I have loved fighting and the war trail. But what is that danger compared to the danger of you, Red Wind? Ha! I know why your father gave you that name. It is because you are like a mist of blood blowing. You are like a cloud of fire sweeping through the sky. You are peril worse than poisoned air. Perhaps it would be a great pleasure to be hated by you. See, Red Wind, how much you are pleased to torture us. My life was a big life. When men looked at the Suhtai, they saw Thunder Moon first. The rest lived in his shadow. Now I am nothing. But perhaps I am pleased to torture you in turn. I touch you and your soul is sick. I think that I shall stay here and sleep among the Suhtai tonight and all the nights to come. Every night I shall not dare to close my eyes more than a wolf for fear of your knife and the knives of your lovers. By night and day I shall watch you to see that you take your poison into the life of another man. I have spoken. So let it be between us."
Listening to him, she seemed eager once or twice to speak but, before he ended, horror seemed to master her. She began to shrink backward toward the entrance to the lodge. As he ended, she stepped past his view and disappeared into the interior of the teepee.
Still from the inside came the weary, endless sobbing of White Crow. It was impossible for Thunder Moon to enter that lodge upon this night. He went from the village and sat on the top of a hummock under the open heavens where he could have clear view of the stars which are the faces of the Sky People. He felt that this day had divorced him from everything that was old and tried and proved of worth in his life, and so he was pressed up closer to those invisible patrons who had sheltered him. The night grew old, and the high wail of a coyote on the horizon told of the coming of day. All the stars on the field of night began to wither and turn pale and small, but still he did not move from his place.
MEN had failed Thunder Moon, and now the wide book of the sky, where always before he had been able to read some sign, offered him a blank. He rose from his watching with the feeling that he had come to the end of an old trail. In the cold, early dawn he came shivering back into the village. Even the dogs had not gained the courage that comes with the morning but only snarled at one another half-heartedly, their tails tucked between their legs. The warriors were astir. Nearly a hundred braves had been assembled and were preparing to leave the village.
Thunder Moon's heart swelled with anxiety and anger as he noted the war-paint on their faces and all the familiar preparations which were only for a war path excursion of the first importance. In all the recent years not one such expedition had left the camp except that which had ridden to disaster against Falling Stone and his victorious Pawnees. With his single hand he had demonstrated that the medicine of Spotted Bull, who had excluded him from that trail, had been false medicine. But now another and a most important work was at hand and of it he had not been even apprised.
He gathered himself in his robe and stalked slowly through the mustering ranks of the warriors. With the utmost diligence they avoided his eye, busying themselves with their accoutrements and speaking eagerly to one another.
He could feel the glances of those who were in his rear turn after him, and he could hear their soft whispers. He felt the vibration of stifled laughter. They were mocking him behind his back. How long would it be then before they mocked him to his face?
He remembered what the girl had said. They did not love him, these Suhtai, no matter how many victories he had given to them. He could understand that that was the case. He was not one of them. Never had he felt the differences so keenly as now.
He passed Snake-That-Talks. Time had been when this doughty warrior would not so much as try to catch a prairie dog without first appealing for the advice of Thunder Moon. Now the brave regarded him with a sullen face and gave him no greeting whatever.
He passed Standing Antelope. The boy flushed with shame, but turned his head hastily away so that he might not see the older warrior.
At that the heart of Thunder Moon leaped in him. He drew his robe closer about him, and so came to the lodge of Spotted Bull from which the last of the selected warriors were issuing. The medicine man turned upon Thunder Moon with a broad leer of malice and triumph and the latter understood.
Once again Spotted Bull had made medicine which proclaimed that no fortune would accompany any expedition in which Thunder Moon rode. Once again he had been believed. Once more the insult was cast upon the shoulders of the warrior.
He endured it as well as he could. He walked on slowly, dying with an agony of injured pride and sorrow and despair. Yet he could see the reason for it all. In his own mind the history of past events which he had heard or witnessed remained as importantly as the tall forms of hills, ever present. But to the Suhtai and to all other Indians, the past was a pleasant or a terrible legend, the future was a misty dream, and only the present was of importance. What did it matter that Spotted Bull had been proved a lying impostor one day if, on the next, he seemed to dispel a thunder storm? So on the present occasion, he was believed implicitly when he prophesied that no good fortune could come to the warriors if they allowed Thunder Moon to ride out in their midst.
He went gloomily on through the village until he came to the lodge of his foster father. Big Hard Face sat in the teepee with Red Wind nearby, working or pretending to work at the beading of a pair of moccasins. White Crow was not present, and the warrior was glad of her absence.
He said briefly: "It is time for me to go to see the face of my mother. Will you tell me how the trail runs?"
Red Wind did not look up, but her fingers froze at their work. However, the chief without alteration of countenance, leaned forward and began to trace his sketch for the journey on the ground.
For a quarter of a century he had not ridden over that ground, but now he was able to draw the plan accurately, presenting many details. He talked in terms of days' marches, and he drew in the main features that would be encountered, or else he sketched the chief landmarks by which the direction would be taken.
Another Suhtai would have carried all of these instructions written down in his mind. But Thunder Moon had no such gifts of visual memory. On a thin strip of antelope hide he reproduced the sketch as it was made to grow on the ground and then, rolling up the strip, he knew that he had his book of directions ready at hand in case of falling off the trail.
After that, he got his favorite dream shield, his war spear, his best rifle, and two revolvers. The weight of this equipment seemed out of proportion to the amount of food that he carried with him. But he must live by his weapons when he was on the road. Shooting is never so trained for straightness as when the day's pot depends upon it. So Thunder Moon was equipped for a great journey, and now he tried the edge of his hunting knife, and he adjusted his medicine bag, which was a little skin of a squirrel containing, sewed up on the inside, a few small pebbles. He had not belief in medicine bags. His wearing of this one was simply a concession, pure and simple, to the necessities of bowing to the social will of the tribe. A man without a medicine bag was as inconceivable as a man without a head.
This bag he donned last of all of his equipment and when it was secured about his back, hanging by a thin rope of braided horsehair, he said to his foster father: "This is a long trail. But I had better start on it at once. The young men of the Suhtai do not love me. I hope in Tarawa that they will not be crushed while I am away.
"If they ever should come to me to be helped, tell them that Thunder Moon is thinking about them, and that some of their faces and some of their words he cannot forget. They are marked down in his heart. Perhaps one day he will be written down in theirs. Now I start on a long trail where only one other Cheyenne has ridden before me. I know that I may leave my scalp on the way and my spirit go on before me.
"Therefore, my Father, let all things be clear between us. If you have given me a home and a name among the Suhtai, let it be said that I have given you love and obedience. If you have given me food and shelter for a long time, now I give to you everything that I have won by my hands, except Sailing Hawk and the weapons that I hold now, my saddle and the meat that I carry with me. But the beaded suits, and the rifles, and the painted robes, and the beads and the knives and the clubs and the captured medicine bags of our enemies, and everything else that I have, even to the eagle feathers which are used for the head-dresses of chiefs and to ornament our shields, I give to you."
Still Red Wind sat with her head bowed and her hands frozen at their work. The chief answered slowly: "This is such a gift as a man makes when he is about to die. Do you go out with no hope, Thunder Moon?"
"No," said the warrior, "but I go with the knowledge that I must leave my old life behind me. That is well. I am not sorry. Some day I shall come back to you, and then I shall be all Indian or all white man. Now I am only a mongrel, neither wolf nor dog. The dogs snarl at me and the wolves have their teeth bared against me."
"Farewell," said the old man, raising his hand. From his pipe he blew a puff to the ground and another he wafted toward the sky. He handed the pipe to Thunder Moon, who imitated the example.
"Farewell," said Thunder Moon.
He turned sharply on Red Wind. "You have done much harm in this teepee," he said. "There still may be much harm left in you. There may be good also. You have driven me away. Stay here and help White Crow. She is old, and your hands are young and strong. As for me, I forgive you."
She would not look up to him, nor answer a word, and he was rather surprised that her malice was so complete. He hurried from the lodge, a great lump in his throat. Just beyond the threshold he hesitated for a moment, for it seemed to him that he heard the stifled sobbing of a woman from the inside of the teepee. He told himself that it could be no more than the crying of a child in a neighboring lodge. He mounted the stallion and took his way through the camp.
HE lingered for no other farewells but, heading straight across the open prairies toward the east and south, he settled the tall stallion to a raking trot that shuffled the miles rapidly behind him. North and west, in just the opposite direction from that which he had taken, he could see the dwindling cloud of dust which told of the war party, advancing slowly toward the realm of the hardy Pawnees. Again his heart swelled with indignation. Twice, as though in answer to his returning thought, Sailing Hawk slackened to a walk, tossing his head, and twice with a renewed resolution the warrior sent the stallion on again.
He had squared his shoulders against the back trail for some time when a regular pulse of sound behind him made him glance over his shoulder. He saw a rider coming at full gallop. A dim, dark hope rose in his mind that some enemy of his within the village, feeling that the medicine of Thunder Moon must have become very weak, had started on his trail to avenge some old disgrace. As the rider came closer, he made out in amazement the slender form of young Standing Antelope.
The latter, approaching swiftly, raised his right hand in greeting. As he came closer, he asked by sign if he could open a parley with his big friend. So Thunder Moon waved him in and Standing Antelope came to a halt beside him.
"The braves listen to the voice of Spotted Bull," said the boy simply. "I have listened too, and for a moment I forgot that Thunder Moon had given me my name, let me count my first coup, and call myself a man. I have given up the war party. I came back to ask you to forgive me. I found that you were gone. I was afraid that I never should find you again."
"How did you pick up my trail?" asked Thunder Moon curiously.
"What other horse steps as far as Sailing Hawk?" asked the boy. "Besides, he is not a bird, he makes a mark when he steps." He pointed to the big, black, round hoofs of the tall horse, and Thunder Moon smiled a little. It eased his heart to see the keen eyes of this lad and to know that in this case, at the least, a lost friend had returned to him.
He said: "I was going on a trail that may fill twelve moons. I never may return."
"If I live to be a very old man," replied Standing Antelope, "I never can die better than by the side of Thunder Moon. If we are away for one snow, or for two, it is better. I may come back a man."
"Turn back when you will," said Thunder Moon. "The trail will be long and, if your heart becomes empty and many marches are between us and the Suhtai, go when you wish." The boy smiled at this suggestion that he might weary of the work and, drawing back two lengths and a little to the windward of his leader to escape from the dust, he followed obediently to the trail which his master had laid out.
Travel on the prairies is like travel over the ocean, with an unbroken horizon and no steady drift of landmarks past the eyes. By mid-afternoon the sun was sharp and hot. They had put many an hour of long, weary travel behind them. For all their labor they had no real sense of distance covered. All before them was as it had been when they left the Cheyenne village.
Now, however, a thin cloud of dust before them began to grow in size and distinctiveness. Standing Antelope volunteered to scout ahead, and he came back in an hour to report that he had made out a long caravan stretched across the prairie—a long host of wagons and riders, one behind the other, with outlying groups of guards or hunters riding over the plains.
"If I am a white man," said Thunder Moon to his heart, "why should I not join these people and journey along with them?" He added aloud: "Let us ride in and talk with them, Standing Antelope."
"Ah, my Father," said the youth, "do you smile when you say this? Do not the Suhtai say that it is safer to trust the Pawnees than the whites?"
However, Thunder Moon insisted, and the boy, sitting stiffly in his saddle, most uneasy, followed his leader, his hand constantly upon his rifle.
Three hunters, returning toward the caravan with their horses loaded with antelope meat, now swept in toward Thunder Moon and came up close to him. They were like Indians in every respect, from buckskin, beaded shirts, to ornamental moccasins. The sun had darkened their skin, but the long hair which fell over their shoulders was not confined by a headband, and it was blonde and weather-faded. With their fierce, keen eyes, they estimated the value of the horse and the accoutrements of Thunder Moon. Every appointment was worthy of a chief and a great one, and the oldest of the three said, in fairly good Cheyenne: "Suhtais, why are you here? Have you come to spy on us?"
That blunt question made the color fly into the face of Thunder Moon, but he said quietly: "There is much hunting to be done for such a tribe as yours. Let me travel with you and hunt. You shall pay me as you please for the meat that I bring in with my friend."
They looked at one another, murmured a few words, and then the oldest answered: "Come in with us. We'll take you to the chief of the caravan."
They rode on in the lead, while Standing Antelope followed at the side of his master.
He said with deft, swift fingers in the sign language: "These three men want our rifles, and probably they want our scalps, and most of all they want Sailing Hawk. Even when they spoke to you, they insulted you with their first words and asked if you were a spy. Do not trust them, my Father! Three shots and they are dead. We count three coups, and we carry their scalps and their horses and their rifles away with us."
"Their backs are turned," said Thunder Moon.
"They are taking you into a trap."
"Turn back if you wish," answered the fingers of the warrior. "I am going in with them."
This challenge silenced the boy, but he was terribly ill at ease as they drew closer to the caravan. Now they could look through the dusty mist which boiled up behind the first wagon and settled in white sheets, streaked with sweat, on the animals that plodded in the rear, and on the other wagons, and on the men who rode or walked near the procession. Returning from the distant plains where they had been trading with the Indians, this caravan was chiefly loaded with buffalo hides. For weeks they had been on the way. For more weeks they would continue traveling. Considering the vast distances covered, the time spent, a white man would have wondered what profit could be in such trade. No such thought came to Thunder Moon. These toiling wagons, these unkempt men, ragged as wild Indians without their grace, were to him symbols of the white race, of toil, of slavery. Presently they came beside the rear-most wagon. There, striding beside a team of mules, was a monster of a man who turned aside at the hail of the three returning hunters and listened to what they had to say. All the while he kept his bold, pale eyes fixed on the face of Thunder Moon and, at last, he stepped forward and extended his hand. Thunder Moon took it, and instantly his fingers were almost crushed in a terrible grip. Almost crushed, but not quite and, regaining a slight purchase, by a desperate effort he held his own, then made his hand break into the powerful pressure which the white man exerted. He felt a tremor in the arm of the other; he saw amazement in the face of the stranger. Then his hand was suddenly set free.
"We can use you with our hunters," said the white leader of the caravan, using a blundering Cheyenne dialect. "But why are you here, my friend? Did you put a bullet into one of your own chiefs?"
He waited for no answer but strode away after his mule team. The three hunters, in the meantime, had found something in this interview which left them agape. Perhaps they were accustomed to seeing men crumple under the famous grip of the wagon boss. At any rate, they stared helplessly at Thunder Moon and at the faint smile which he had maintained throughout this brief and silent test of his manhood.
Then, suddenly, they began to smile at one another. He needed no knowledge of English to understand that he had been accepted in their society, and the first strain of apprehension was ended.
But what a society it was! During the day, he saw little enough of the teamsters and traders, for he was away across the prairies with the boy hunting. Only twice did they fail to find game. The instinct of Standing Antelope was marvelously sure and the gun of Thunder Moon was no less unerring when the game was in sight. But at night they sat at a camp fire and watched scenes so different from those in an Indian camp. The merry laughter and the childish free-heartedness of the Cheyennes was replaced here by sullen, growling voices in a constant tone of complaint. After the supper was eaten, cards or dice appeared and games were played in silence, broken only by a snarl. Infinite danger was in those threatening voices. On the evening of the third day after they joined, they saw a revolver leap from a holster, saw the flash of the gun, and saw another man pitch on his face, quite dead.
Standing Antelope went aside with his leader shuddering. "These people are like bad spirits," he said. "If they kill each other, soon they will kill us. See! There is no blood kin of the dead man to kill his murderer. No one cares. No one is excited."
"They are gathering together," said Thunder Moon. "They have taken the weapons away from the killer. I think that something is going to happen."
"Perhaps they are taking those weapons as a price for the dead man's life."
"Perhaps. Let us watch, Standing Antelope. These are strange people. Who can tell what they will do? Who can understand them?"
"There is the chief coming."
Loughran, the giant who had matched grips with Thunder Moon, came into the circle. Quickly he selected twelve men. He talked to them a moment. The twelve raised their hands with a solemn demeanor and made some answer. After that, half a dozen men came forward. They pointed to the slayer, but they were addressing the twelve. The whole period of the deliberations did not occupy more than half an hour. Then the hands of the prisoner were tied behind him and he was led out onto the plains a little distance, where a wagon tongue was fixed in the ground, with a rope passed through its upper end. The noose settled around the throat of the destroyer. In another moment he was suspended in mid-air, kicking violently.
"Let him down!" gasped Standing Antelope. "They have punished him enough."
"They are going to let him die," murmured Thunder Moon, sweat standing on his brow.
"But then his spirit cannot get out of his mouth. It will die in his body and rot with his body if he is choked."
"That is true," said Thunder Moon. "Look! He struggles no more. He is dead."
"But were all the others blood relations of the dead man?"
"I shall ask."
He stopped a passing waggoner and put the question. The latter said in answer: "That is law, Cheyenne. No murderer has a friend in our country. We're all blood relations of the murdered man."
"Law?" murmured Thunder Moon as they watched the body of the murderer cut down and buried with some care. "What is law, Standing Antelope?"
"Death of the body and the spirit; death by hanging!" said the boy. "I am very sick, Thunder Moon. Come away with me. I am afraid. These men are more brutal than beasts."
"They are," said Thunder Moon. "But I think that there will be no more murders in this camp."
Afterwards they went close to the spot where the dead man had been buried. They struck a light and found that a board had been put in the ground. Upon the board letters were carved with a knife.
"What does it mean?" asked the boy.
"It is medicine," said Thunder Moon. "This is a great medicine. What it means I cannot understand. But I shall never stop studying until I learn. Did you hear him? All are blood relations of a murdered man. That is law! Law, Standing Antelope, must be a great mystery. It is one of their gods."
"The black robes do not talk about it," observed the boy.
"We know nothing about these people," said Thunder Moon. "Let us watch closely. There is a great deal to learn."
AS the slow weeks of that journey went by, Thunder Moon began to learn the language of the whites by leaps and bounds. In the evening he picked up a new store of words. All the next day as he voyaged over the plains with Standing Antelope, he rehearsed what he had heard. When he returned in the evening, he attempted to use his stock. So his knowledge grew like a tropical plant, nursed by the heat of his great desire to know.
He was also learning far more than words, as a matter of course. Some ten days after he joined the train, he was wakened by a stealthy movement near him, and then he felt his rifle being withdrawn from beneath his pillow. He grappled with a shadowy form which crumpled under his grasp. When a lantern was brought, it was found to be a brute-faced teamster. Loughran, captain of the train, offered Thunder Moon his choice of two remedies. The first was that he, Loughran, would have the fellow stripped to the waist and flogged. The second choice would place the matter in the hands of Thunder Moon himself. Thunder Moon, seeing that the other was of a respectable bulk, accepted the second alternative. He was very angry. Moreover, he felt that these white men must be convinced, sooner or later, that he was a fighting man worthy of some respect. There was much amusement.
By lantern light the crowd made a circle. Into it stepped the combatants, and Thunder Moon glided close and smote the blow which was to begin and end the battle. He merely struck the air and received a hard fist in return, cunningly placed near the point of his chin, so that it felt as though a hammer had struck him in the back of the head.
For ten minutes Thunder Moon charged furiously at this elusive figure, while the spectators yelled with delight. But the brute-faced fellow seemed shot with wings. There was lead in either of his hands. He struck when and where it pleased him. One of Thunder Moon's eyes puffed and closed. His cheek was gashed. His jaw was lined with purple bruises. When he had his fury well cuffed out of him, he began to take time for thought. It was not through superior strength or courage that he was being beaten. It was by the medicine of the white man—it was by the mysterious use of mind. He took notice now that the first blow that the other threatened to strike never landed and the second one was what usually went home. So he re-made his own tactics. He let the feint of a left at the head go, then he stepped in, stopped, and smote for the body of his foe. Fair and square his fist landed. Bones crunched under the impact. A dreadful cry burst and broke in the air. The thief lay writhing on the ground.
Loughran tapped Thunder Moon on the shoulder.
"How did you learn that trick? He was a pug, Cheyenne!"
Thunder Moon did not understand, but what he did appreciate was that this battle gained him a new position in the camp. Thereafter all men treated him with a consummate respect. Certainly no more attempts were made to steal from him during the middle of the night. As for the pugilist, he was placed in a wagon, a very sick man, and transported groaning to the end of the journey.
There was no vital danger to the caravan except in one instance, and that was well-nigh both the first and the last. A sudden report came that Indians were sweeping toward them. Then out of a draw the charging warriors were seen to come, while the caravan hastily tried to double itself into a circle, the head drawing back toward the tail, and the tail rushing forward to join the head. Once formed into a circle of wagons, the caravan would take a lot of beating. If the Indians could insert the point of their wedge before the circle was joined, they could then open out the whole length of the caravans and slay as they pleased, as though a wildcat should sink its talons in the belly of a hedgehog before the little animal could roll into a ball. With wild shouting the wagons worked to make the circle, but they still lacked something of coming together when the first half dozen of the Indians on racing horses neared the gap.
There was no deference from within except from Thunder Moon. Chance had placed him at the vital spot and he did not think twice. Perhaps life seemed to him such a confused thing that he cared little whether he lived or died. At any rate, right through the closing gap in the wagons, with faithful young Standing Antelope scurrying behind him, he charged out at the enemy, shouting his war cry, a revolver in either hand.
They were Pawnees, chosen warriors. Yet to his amazement they did not wait for his charge. One among them shouted loud commands. The others split away to left and right and scurried back to join the charging mass of their companions. The next moment the circle joined—the wagon fort was complete. The Pawnees, not caring to try its strength, surged back to a safe distance and sat down like wolves to watch while a single chief came forward, calling in Cheyenne to Thunder Moon. The latter advanced, gun in hand, and he saw before him none other than that tried and famous enemy of the Suhtai, Falling Stone. The Pawnee leaped from his horse, threw down his weapons, and hurried forward on foot. His eye was gleaming not with hostility but with pleasure.
"Friend," he said, "my brother still lives and grows strong in his lodge, and every day he tells the Pawnees of the greatness of Thunder Moon. I have heard this story. If there is war between the Suhtai and the Pawnees, there is no war between Falling Stone and you. As for the white men, we should have split in between their wagons and eaten them as hawks eat mice. Now take a rich present from me. Take my rifle and my horse as a gift. Go off in peace with honor to the Suhtai. Leave me here to deal with these white men."
"Falling Stone is a great chief," answered Thunder Moon. "But now I ride with these white men. They are my friends. If you fight with them, you fight with me. Be wise, Falling Stone. There are many guns in that circle of wagons. The men shoot straighter than Pawnees or Cheyennes. You will lose many of your braves and gain nothing."
The Pawnee frowned and looked eagerly along the wagons, over which the dust cloud was beginning to blow away. Everywhere was the glint of rifles prepared for the battle. Then he nodded.
"I have lost a great prize for your sake," he said. "I would lose one still greater and yet be able to smile. But my gun and my horse are yours. Remember me for their sake."
"Here," said Thunder Moon, "is a belt of beads for which I gave five strong horses. Take it, and remember me when you strap it on. If on another day we meet in battle, let us not see one another. There are other enemies for each of us."
So they parted, Falling Stone walking off happily with the belt, and Thunder Moon taking his own prizes back to the wagon. He was received there like a hero. Whatever suspicion and dislike had surrounded him before now vanished and a crowd gathered to thank him for what he had done. There were more than thanks, however. When camp was made for that night, Loughran brought to him a good horse whose pack saddle was loaded down with all that an Indian could value. Guns, ammunition, knives, beadwork, sugar, coffee composed that load. Every wagon in the circle had made a contribution to the burden.
"Look!" said Thunder Moon to Standing Antelope. "They are good people after all. They are not what they seemed at first."
"You saved the price of a thousand horses," replied the boy. "They have given you the price of five. That is good business for them."
The young Suhtai remained irreconcilable to the end. That end came not many days later when, as they camped at night, they saw far before them the glimmering lights of a town which was the end of the wagon trip. Half of the teamsters and hunters had scoured away to get to the waiting saloons in the town, and Thunder Moon and Standing Antelope went with them. Cautiously they moved through the crowds. They were not noticed. Other Indians stalked through the mob, unheeded. Everywhere was a confused turmoil of many tongues accented by occasional salvos of pistol shots.
After they had walked up and down through the noisy streets, Thunder Moon and the boy withdrew to the edge of the plains and the silence of the night.
"Now tell me about these people with white skins," he said to Standing Antelope.
"No man can understand them," replied the boy, "because they have many minds in each head. One day they are great traders, the next they are foolish hunters. One day they are wise in council, the next day they chatter like foolish crows. One day they are rich with beads and robes, the next night they have given all that they possess for the sake of firewater which they put into their bellies, and it makes them sick. They are partly wise and they are partly not. Let us leave these people, Thunder Moon. We have each of us only one mind. Let us go back to the Suhtai where it is easier to know men."
"Let us sleep," said Thunder Moon sadly. "In the morning we shall talk again."
MORNING came, the first gray touch of light. Thunder Moon, rising, saw that Standing Antelope was already up and had his horse saddled.
"Which way?" said the boy.
"Here is a horse packed heavily with rich things," said the warrior. "Take it and go back to the Suhtai. Here is enough to make you a wealthy man. You may have your own lodge and take wives. But I must go on. It is not what I want to do. But it is where I must go. The trail is not ended for me."
"Go on, then," said the youth. "I cannot help following. I know that I never shall see my father's face again and Three Bears has only one son."
However he could not be persuaded to depart, and straightway Thunder Moon turned more sharply to the south and east. Day by day they journeyed, now across open country, now they skirted the edges of the settlements of the whites, far advanced from the places where Big Hard Face had found them twenty years before. The landmarks which that hero had noted down were gone, almost without exception. Forests had been leveled. New ones had been planted and were half grown. Even Standing Antelope, to whom the story of the trail had been disclosed, was at a loss.
The time came when they had to leave the plains distinctly behind them and plunge straight in through the lands of the whites. They traveled entirely by night, sleeping fitfully through the day in some copse or heavy forest that they found. Now they crossed a region given over to the grazing of cattle chiefly, with great distances between the houses. Leaving that region behind them, they came to a district where the vegetation was richer. There was still a good deal of forest and there was a good deal of marshland, but all else was closely cultivated soil, the fields smaller and smaller, and hedged with walls of stone, or with rail fences. They would have had most difficult going here, on account of the marshes and of the many small streams, had it not been for the miracles of which Big Hard Face had told long before, and hardly been believed when he described them.
These were the roads which pushed straight ahead, regardless of obstacles, cutting through high or built up over low, and advancing through the marshes by causeways and over the rivers by means of great bridges.
Now and then too, they saw the sparkling lights of a great town in the distance. Once they lodged all day in a wood with the many noises of a large village murmuring or crashing about their ears so that they could not sleep.
It was easy to find food. With every house went a poultry yard, and in every poultry yard they could help themselves. If a noisy dog disturbed them at their work of foraging, the active knife of Standing Antelope quickly silenced the disturber. In this manner they went on, day by day, striking deeper and deeper into a strange country.
"If all the Sioux, all the Blackfoot, all the Comanches, all the Pawnees, and all the Cheyennes were gathered together and brought here, could they fill so many villages as we have seen?" asked Thunder Moon.
The boy shook his head.
"Still we are not at the end of the white man's country. How, Standing Antelope, can we beat these people in any great war?"
"By the help of Tarawa who gave us the plains," said the boy confidently. "Just as easily as we wring the throats of the fowls, so we could steal in and cut the throats of the sleepers in those lodges."
Thunder Moon said nothing in reply, but he was beginning to have many doubts. All that Red Wind had said had come true and, though he had not as yet seen a "medicine" canoe breathing fire and smoke, he was prepared even to see that.
Now they drew closer to their goal. All else on the landscape had been greatly changed, but the streams which Big Hard Face had crossed still flowed in the same places, and by that network of water Standing Antelope recovered the old trail.
By the march of half a night, they came at length about the middle hour of darkness to a great stretch of land where all the houses were gathered, as Big Hard Face had said, in the lee of a mighty mansion filled with lights. When they came still closer, they could examine the prodigious size of the house.
From its open door and windows—for the night was warm—music floated, a girl singing and the tinkling of some instrument that kept both the time and the key of her song with marvelous precision and beauty.
Thunder Moon listened, amazed.
"Why do you smile, Standing Antelope?" he whispered.
"Because it is not like anything that I have dreamed," said the boy. "I am afraid because it is unknown. Is it not a spirit that makes the music, my Father?"
"We will go to see."
"Let me stay here. My heart is very weak."
"Stay here then. I shall come again before long."
He started away and Standing Antelope trembled alone in the darkness. Presently he heard a loud barking and a furious snarling from some dog apparently of the largest size. That clamor ended abruptly and the boy, with a faint smile, touched the handle of his knife. He also understood how to silence such a noisemaker.
After that he waited for a long, long time. The music ended, began again, ended and began again. A man was singing with the girl.
Finally Standing Antelope could stand it no longer but went forward to find his companion.
Across the open lawn he went, and through the hedges, and so he came closer to the house and the music and the singing throbbed in his very ears. He was vastly uneasy, for there was much light around the building. Through every window and doorway it poured out, and the young Suhtai made slow progress, creeping from shrub to shrub, hugging the shadows.
At last he saw a familiar silhouette—and it stood directly beneath a window. Very gladly Standing Antelope slipped up behind the tall warrior and, rising behind him, he looked at the scene whose fascination had turned Thunder Moon to stone.
He was peering into a large room. Seated at a music-making shape of wood was a girl with glimmering white shoulders and a tall youth stood beside her to turn big pages of paper. At the farther end of the room sat a gray-headed man and a white-haired woman.
All of this held little meaning to Standing Antelope, but he did understand in one breath why this long journey had been undertaken. The face of yonder gray-bearded man was the very face of Thunder Moon himself.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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