Brand, Max - 1925 Read online

  The rest of the Sioux were not slaughtered, however, and that was one of the odd things about the affair. As a rule, the whole lot would have been blotted out, but the chief in command of the Pawnees simply gathered in the women and the children and carted them away as prisoners. The moment I heard of this little exploit, I guessed that a new hero had appeared in Indian warfare, though, of course, I never dreamed that he would come to such fame as he afterwards did. The chief was Bald Eagle, and before long his name was enough to send a chill through every Dakota in the land. The Brules, when they heard that part of their tribe had been blotted out, gathered a big war party and went whooping it up across the prairie.

  Ten days later they overtook the Pawnees, who were traveling slowly because they had so many prisoners. When the Brules showed up from the east, the Pawnees wanted to murder all their prisoners, even the babies, so that their hands would be free for the fun that was coming - especially since the Sioux outnumbered them almost three to one. But Bald Eagle swore that he would throttle with his own hands the first man who touched a captive. Then he made his preparations for the fight.

  The Sioux scouts reported the enemy getting in line of battle on the far side of a low hill. So the Brules got together and started a charge. An Indian charge has no order to it and only one idea - that is for each man to get at the enemy first. They whirled across the top of the hill and went crash into a solid wall of fire. Old Bald Eagle had used the few minutes left to him to make his men form in a line and scoop out a shallow ditch. The captives were forced to fall to help in the work. In a minute or two they had sunk themselves into a neat little trench. Then they lay on their bellies in the cool of the sod and blew that Sioux charge into atoms. As I've said before, Indians are not very accurate, but Bald Eagle had brought up the average in his tribe amazingly. At any rate, they rolled about two score and ten Brule braves in the grass on the strength of that first charge.

  The Sioux went scattering and staggering back to the far side of the hill to gather their forces and think over what should be done next with this difficult Pawnee lot. While they were sitting and thinking, they heard a brief rumble of hoofs, and the whole Pawnee lot, with big Bald Eagle in front, came swarming over the hilltop and dropped right in among them like a bomb. That Pawnee chief had decided to follow up the first repulse, and he had clapped his men on horseback instantly. But the charge had other queer features.

  Usually an Indian uses his lungs as his chief weapon, shooting bullets and arrows more or less at random, and hoping to frighten the other fellow into bolting for the rear. But Bald Eagle had taught his fellows new tactics. They came over the top of that hill in a solid mass, without uttering a single cry. They had neither guns nor bows; but each man had a broadbladed hatchet in his hand. They went into the Brules in a deadly silence and made the sun dance on their working hatchets. In about thirty seconds the Sioux had enough of it. They decided that the devil had taken possession of those unlucky Pawnees. Each Brule turned and combed away for the farthest horizon. Altogether, it was a catastrophe. But still that was not all.

  Whereas the ordinary Indian makes one raid and then goes home with all of his plunder to have a dance and a big smoke and talk about what he has done, Bald Eagle followed up every success like a regular Napoleon. He left his party of captives under a small guard, working their way steadily along toward the heart of the Pawnee nation. He himself kept right on with his warriors after their charge. They rode for three days, straight east and south until they came to the main village of the Brules. I should say that there were not more than one hundred and fifty men with Bald Eagle. And there were five hundred Brule warriors, at the very least, in that village. However, they had not the slightest suspicion that anything was wrong. They supposed their youngest and best braves were away chasing this Bald Eagle.

  The first thing Bald Eagle did was to bunch his horses together. Whereas most Indians like to fight from horseback - because, if they miss, they have faster legs to run away on - Bald Eagle had an odd habit of getting his braves on foot. A man on foot shoots ten times straighter than a man on horseback and fights ten times harder - simply because he can't run away. Then, without waiting for the darkness to come, he marched down on that village in two lines, seventy-five men in a line. The Brules came foaming out like so many hornets. Bald Eagle blew the foam off the cup with a volley from his first line. Then as the Brules staggered, riding around in circles, the first line lay down on their bellies, and the second line sent a smashing volley home.

  That was quite enough. The Sioux went reeling back into the village, and the Pawnees went after them, not in a rush, but marching slowly. When the Sioux turned and charged, there was always that implacable line to receive them and two volleys in deliberate succession. They filled that village with blood and gore. They scattered the Brule warriors to the four winds, and they marched off with five thousand head of horses, loaded down with all the belongings of the teepees. Included in their plunder was the whole bulk of the women and the children.

  Here were three blows delivered in swift succession, each harder than the last, each more unexpected, each more decisive. The Sioux had not received such a check in the memory of man. Bald Eagle became the hero of the Pawnee tribe. As for the Brules, they were too badly hurt to do anything for the moment. The rest of the Sioux made a great noise about wiping the Pawnees off the face of the earth, but nothing was done. As a matter of fact, they were all a little bit frightened, as the Allies in Europe must have been frightened when they heard of the thin-faced young general who had stolen through the Alps, won Montenotte, and slid suddenly into the heart of Italy. Here were brains; here was real generalship. No wonder the Sioux rubbed their chins and became thoughtful.

  Morris made up his mind on the spot. "No Indian that ever lived could have done it," he declared. "It may be a half-breed ...more likely it's a white man turned Indian... because there are white man's brains in that work. See how he worked like a good fighter. When he hit a really hard blow, he followed it up at once. Look at his new tactics, too. He turned cavalry into infantry at the right time, and then turned the infantry back into cavalry again. Think of that hatchet charge. Confound me, I'm glad that I didn't have to stand up against it."

  I agreed with him, except that it seemed odd that any white man should ever be accepted among them as a chief. However, there was no more of Bald Eagle for the time being. Bald Eagle and the rest of the Pawnees were having new trouble to the west of their lands, and we got only scattered reports now and then of the havoc that the new war chief of the Pawnees was making. These were very prosperous times with Standing Bear and his tribe. We passed that winter and came into the next spring, and then a real war party was made up to punish the Pawnees. It was not large. But it was choice. I was away at the time, or I should have ridden with them, and Rising Sun was too happy in his teepee with his squaw to pay any attention to a little thing like a war. Zintcallasappa turned out a true homemaker, poor girl, and, since Morris was now "rich," they had everything that an Indian could dream of to make them happy, from pounds and pounds of beads to a whole herd of horses.

  I was away because I had heard of a big white trapper, a sour-faced hermit of a fellow, and decided that it might be my father. I had made a two-hundred-mile trip until I found him. It was a false clue again, and I went back to the village only in time to hear about the calamity.

  I found that the whole village was in mourning, and the teepee of Three Buck Elk was under a deep cloud. This was what had happened. A war party of about three hundred and fifty braves had been picked up here and there under the leadership of Little Buffalo, a Brule chief, and had ridden off to find the Pawnees. After they were gone, taking some of Standing Bear's men along with them, Sitting Wolf sneaked away and joined them two days out. He was only a shade over fourteen at the time, but he was tall and strong, and he not only had a rifle, but he knew how to use it better than anyone in the tribe except Morris and myself. I had seen to his teaching. He was
accepted into the war party as a token of good luck, and they rambled on until they reached a Pawnee town, just a small place. It was big enough, however, to make a satisfactory massacre. They drenched that place in blood, without taking a single captive. Young and old were put to the knife, and they started back with a harvest of scalps when they stumbled across Bald Eagle. He had swooped at them out of a clear sky - like his namesake. He beat them in a fair fight and then rounded them up on top of a hill. There he sat down and waited for thirst to beat them. They had no water, though there was a stream in full sight. They went through the agony for a day, then they began to make rushes for water, and every rush cluttered the hillside with dead bodies until all were gone except Sitting Wolf and one other brave. They both were then captured, being too weak to help themselves. The brave was sent back to tell the story of what the Pawnees had done to his people. Sitting Wolf was taken prisoner by Bald Eagle's party.

  The brave who lived to tell the story to the tribe was the one who told it to me. I went mad for a time. I caught him by the throat and nearly throttled him. Then I went raging into Three Buck Elk's teepee, where the chief sat with his head in his hands.

  "Is the father of Sitting Wolf a dog?" I yelled at him. "Does he sit and whine while his son is carried away to be tortured by Pawnee devils?"

  Then I rushed out and mounted my best horse. I remember that Zintcallasappa ran to me while I was saddling. My fingers were fumbling with the straps, and I was half blind, for every moment I was seeing Sitting Wolf lashed to a tree while cruel fiends stood around him, thrusting burning splinters into his flesh. She took hold of my hands.

  "Oh, my brother, Black Bear," she said, "they will not harm Sitting Wolf. He is only a boy, and Bald Eagle does not strike children. But, if you leave me, there will be sadness in my teepee."

  I was so much surprised that I forgot my own sorrow for a moment. I asked her what she meant, and she said in that simple way of hers that was always so touching: "Half the heart of Rising Sun is still with his own people. A little is with me ... and the rest is with you, my brother. If you leave us, I cannot keep him."

  "I shall come again," I told her.

  She shook her head. "You are going to do some terrible and great thing," she said. "When a white man turns pale, it is because he is very frightened or very angry. And you are never afraid, Black Bear. If you go, you will not help Sitting Wolf, but it will make my teepee empty, my brother."

  I took her under the chin and tipped up her face. "Look at me. Now tell me the truth with one tongue. Does Rising Sun seem unhappy?"

  Those dark, soft eyes of hers were swimming with tears. "I cannot tell," she said, "but I am always afraid.. .1 am always afraid."

  Her trouble seemed such a tiny thing compared with mine at that moment I smiled at her and patted her cheek. "You are only a child, Zintcallasappa," I said, and then I was in the saddle and away. What a fool - and what a young fool - I was, and how deep and clear she had looked into her future.

  IN THE CAMP OF THE PAWNEES

  After I had started on the way, I wished that I had taken Chuck Morris along with me. But, when I thought of Zintcallasappa, I knew that I had no right to take him into such danger as that toward which I was now going. I had two horses with me, riding one and leading the other, and each day I changed horses. In this way I made excellent time, but, even with that change of mounts, my eagerness was such that I wore both horses to rags before I got to the enemy's land. I myself had only the vaguest idea where that boundary might be, but one afternoon I was told by a bullet that whistled past my ear.

  I used one of the oldest ruses in the world, which Standing Bear himself had taught me and which he said had given him four scalps - the old rascal. The instant I heard the sing of that bullet - and before even the report of the gun, like a great handclap, came to me - I tumbled off my horse and lay like one dead, except that for a dead man I had my rifle astonishingly handy. Another bullet cut the grass at my head. Then I saw the scoundrel coming toward me, and I knew at once that he was a Pawnee hunter. He came at the full speed of his horse, leaning forward, with his rifle slung once more. When that second bullet didn't make me stir, he was confident that his first shot had gone through my head. Now he was bent on the scalp. I waited until he was thirty yards away. Then I rolled onto my knee and tucked the butt of my rifle into the hollow of my shoulder. He made a futile grab at his own gun, then he seemed to realize all at once that it was too late. He threw out his hands with a howl of despair and brought his horse to a stop almost on top of me.

  I said: "Brother, you shoot well, but your rifle is not good. It carries to the left."

  He grunted and then folded his arms. I could not make this fellow out. He had the look and the manner of a real warrior. He sat on his horse and looked down at me with a perfect calm. The manner of a man surrounded by the most hopeless odds.

  "The Great Spirit," he said, "has charmed the rifle of Black Bear so that he cannot help but kill. But you shall not wear the scalp of Two Feather long. Bald Eagle shall stoop and strike you down."

  I was twenty years old, and at that age flattery has a sharp tooth. I was tickled to the core to find that I was so well known to these fellows. So much nonsense had gone abroad about my marksmanship that, I suppose, Two Feather decided it was useless to try to fight once I had the drop on him. I grounded my rifle but kept my hand near the butt of my revolver. He saw the position of that hand and attempted nothing.

  "Friend," I said, "I have done you no harm. Why do you wish to kill me?"

  "The scalp of Black Bear would make the hearts of the Pawnees glad, and even Bald Eagle would smile."

  "Could you know me at that distance?" I asked him.

  "The eye of Two Feather is not the eye of an old woman."

  Another thought came to me. "What scalps," I asked, "dry in your lodge?"

  Even in the face of an enemy he could not help boasting.

  "Three scalps of the Dakotas hang in the teepee of Two Feather, so that his sons may see them and their hearts grow as strong as the heart of Two Feather."

  I began to gather that this fellow was a man of some mark among his people. He was an ugly villain. A knife scar crossed his face and gave one eye a continual squint and an odd, knowing look. I could believe that he had taken two scalps, or even twenty, for that matter.

  "How far is it," I said, "to your people?"

  Not a muscle of his face stirred. Plainly he did not intend to betray his tribe, and a little warmth of admiration came over me. Here was a man, whether his skin were red or white.

  "You have among your people," I said, "a great chief and a wise man, Bald Eagle."

  "Yes, his wisdom is as wide as the sky."

  "And he has in his teepee a prisoner taken from the Sioux?"

  A savage satisfaction gleamed in his eye again. "The brother of Black Bear is with him," he admitted.

  "Can you take me to the lodge of Bald Eagle?"

  He stared at me a moment, as though I had asked him if he could take me to the gates of death.

  "You shall ride freely with me," I assured him, "and you shall not die. There are no scalps at the belt of Black Bear, and no scalps dry in his lodge. He cannot stop to take the trophies. He touches his rifle, and the prairies are covered with the dead of the Pawnees."

  I blush a little as I write this down, but, after all, that was exactly what I said, and a man had to blow his horn a little among the Indians or he would be put down as a person of little note. Two Feather swallowed this brag without winking an eye.

  I went on: "Two Feather shall not die. He shall have the promise of Black Bear, whose word is never broken, that, if he leads Black Bear safely to the lodge of Bald Eagle, all will be well, and we shall part like brothers."

  There was a sudden softening of those hard features as hope came tardily back to him. But, instead of answering, he turned his back on me and trotted his horse slowly across the prairie - slowly, with just one quiver of the naked muscles between his
shoulders, as if just there he expected the bullet to plow its way to his heart. However, I jogged my horse after him. In this way we kept on for a long time, until the sun slipped under the edge of the prairie. A moment later, before the darkness dropped around us, still in the bright afterglow, we came in view of a village. Two Feather halted and pointed before him.

  "It is Bald Eagle," he said.

  I assure you that brought my heart up into my mouth. Here, there, and yonder, were three men on horseback, keeping guard. Certainly Bald Eagle, like a good captain, took no chances of being surprised. His sentinels were always on watch.

  "Ride by my side," I said, "into the city and to the entrance of his teepee."

  He gave me one look, again as though he wondered why a young man chose to throw away his life. Then he went on, and I trotted my horse beside him. We reached a sentinel.

  "Black Bear and Two Feather," said the Pawnee, "come to the teepee of Bald Eagle."

  It brought a shout of wonder from the young brave. He rode up close and stared at me as though he were seeing the devil in person, then he shot down into the village. After that, we rode through a jumbled mass of people. The braves stalked out, wrapped in their blankets, to watch me pass. The women and the children kept up a rattle of comment as I went through their ranks. We came in front of a sort of double teepee, taller and twice as broad as any I had ever seen before. Two young braves stood before the entrance. Two Feather spoke to them softly and rapidly. Presently one of them disappeared into the teepee and came out again after a moment, leading with him an old, bent Indian with the ugliest face that ever saw the sun.