Читать книгу The Black Lion Inn - Alfred Henry Lewis - Страница 6

As to the lady herself and her generous consent when once her father is won, Bill harbors no misgivings. He believes too well of his handsome person; moreover, has he not demonstrated in friendly bout, on foot and on horseback, his superiority to the young Osage bucks who would pit themselves against him? Has he not out-run, out-wrestled and out-ridden them? And at work with either rifle, six-shooter or knife, has he not opened their eyes? Also, he has conquered them at cards; and their money and their ponies and their gewgaws to a healthful value are his as spoils thereof.

Bill is all things that a lady of sensibility should love; and for that on those two or three occasions when he came unexpectedly upon her, the Saucy Paoli dodged within the ancestral lodge to daub her nose and cheeks with hurried yet graceful red, thereby to improve and give her beauties point, Bill knows he has touched her heart. Yes, forsooth! Bill feels sure of the Saucy Paoli; it is Gray Wolf, somber of his late defeat by the wily Dull Ox and the evanescent roan, toward whom his apprehensions turn their face. The more, perhaps, since Bill himself, not being a blinded Osage, and having besides some certain wit concerning horses, scrupled not to wager and win on the Ponca entry, and against the beloved Sundown of his father-in-law to come. It is the notion that Gray Wolf might resent this apostasy that breeds a half pause in Bill’s optimism as he loafs in Florer’s door.

As Bill stands thus musing, the Saucy Paoli goes by. The Saucy Paoli is light, pretty, round and wholesome, and she glances with shy, engaging softness on Bill from eyes as dark and big and deep as a deer’s. Is it not worth while to wed her? The Osages are owners in fee of one million, five hundred thousand acres of best land; they have eight even millions of dollars stored in the Great Father’s strong chests in Washington; they are paid each one hundred and forty dollars by their fostering Great Father as an annual present; and the head of the house draws all for himself and his own. Marriage will mean an instant yearly income of two hundred and eighty dollars; moreover, there may come the profitable papoose, and with each such a money augmentation of one hundred and forty dollars. And again, there are but sixteen hundred Osages told and counted; and so would Bill gain a strong per cent, in the tribal domain and the tribal treasure. Altogether, a union with the fair, brown Saucy Paoli is a prospect fraught of sunshine; and so Bill wisely deems it.

For an hour it has leaped in Bill’s thoughts as an impulse to go across to the spreading cottonwood, propose himself to the Gray Wolf for the Saucy Paoli, and elicit reply. It would not be the Osage way, but Bill is not yet an Osage, and some reasonable allowance should be made by Gray Wolf for the rudeness of a paleface education. Such step would earn an answer, certain and complete. Your savage beateth not about the bush. His diplomacy is Bismarckian; it is direct and proceeds by straight lines.

Thus chase Bill’s cogitations when the sudden sight of the Saucy Paoli and her glances, full of wist and warmth, fasten his gallant fancy and crystalize a resolution to act at once.

“How!” observes Bill, by way of salutation, as he stands before Gray Wolf.

That warrior grunts swinish, though polite, response. Then Bill goes directly to the core of his employ; he explains his passion, sets forth his hopes, and by dashing swoops arrives at the point which, according to Bill’s blunt theories, should quicken the interest of Gray Wolf, and says:

“Now, what price? How many ponies?”

“How many you give?” retorts the cautious Gray Wolf.

“Fifteen.” Bill stands ready to go to thirty.

“Ugh!” observes Gray Wolf, and then he looks out across the prairie grasses where the thick smoke shows the summer fires to be burning them far away.

“Thirty ponies,” says Bill after a pause.

These or their money equivalent—six hundred dollars—Bill knows to be a fat figure. He believes Gray Wolf will yield.

But Bill is in partial error. Gray Wolf is not in any sordid, money frame. Your savage is a sentimentalist solely on two matters: those to touch his pride and those to wake his patriotism. And because of the recent triumph of the Poncas, and the consequent censures upon him now flaming, though hidden, in the common Osage heart, Gray Wolf’s pride is raw and throbbing. He looks up at Bill where he waits.

“One pony!” says Gray Wolf.

“One?”

“But it must beat the Ponca’s roan.”

Four hundred miles to the westward lie the broad ranges of the Triangle-Dot. Throughout all cow-land the ponies of the Triangle-Dot have name for speed. As far eastward as the Panhandle and westward to the Needles, as far southward as Seven Rivers and northward to the Spanish Peaks, has their fame been flung. About camp fires and among the boys of cows are tales told of Triangle-Dot ponies that overtake coyotes and jack-rabbits. More, they are exalted as having on a time raced even with an antelope. These ponies are children of a blue-grass sire, as thoroughbred as ever came out of Kentucky. Little in size, yet a ghost to go; his name was Redemption. These speedy mustang babies of Redemption have yet to meet their master in the whole southwest. And Bill knows of them; he has seen them run.

“In two moons, my father,” says Bill.

There is much creaking of saddle leathers; there is finally a deep dig in the flanks by the long spurs, and Bill, mounted on his best, rides out of Pauhauska. His blankets are strapped behind, his war bags bulge with provand, he is fully armed; of a verity, Bill meditates a journey. Four hundred miles—and return—no less, to the ranges of the Triangle-Dot.

Gray Wolf watches from beneath the cottonwood that already begins to throw its shadows long; his eyes follow Bill until the latter’s broad brimmed, gray sombrero disappears on the hill-crests over beyond Bird River.

It skills not to follow Bill in this pilgrimage. He fords rivers; he sups and sleeps at casual camps; now and again he pauses for the night at some chance plaza of the Mexicans; but first and last he pushes ever on and on at a round road gait, and with the end he has success.

Within his time by full three weeks Bill is again at the agency of the Osages; and with him comes a pony, lean of muzzle, mild of eye, wide of forehead, deep of lung, silken of mane, slim of limb, a daughter of the great Redemption; and so true and beautiful is she in each line she seems rather for air than earth. And she is named the Spirit.

Gray Wolf goes over the Spirit with eye and palm. He feels her velvet coat; picks up one by one her small hoofs, polished and hard as agate.

The Spirit has private trial with Sundown and leaves that hopeless cayuse as if the latter were pegged to the prairie.

“Ugh!” says Gray Wolf, at the finish. “Heap good pony!”

Your savage is not a personage of stopwatches, weights and records. At the best, he may only guess concerning a pony’s performance. Also his vanity has wings, though his pony has none, and once he gets it into his savage head that his pony can race, it is never long ere he regards him as invincible. Thus is it with Dull Ox and his precious roan. That besotted Ponca promptly accepts the Gray Wolf challenge for a second contest.

The day arrives. The race is to be run on the Osage course—a quarter of a mile, straight-away—at the Pauhauska agency. Two thousand Osages and Poncas are gathered together. There is no laughter, no uproar, no loud talk; all is gravity, dignity and decorum. The stakes are one thousand dollars a side, for Gray Wolf and Dull Ox are opulent pagans.

The ponies are brought up and looked over. The fires of a thousand racing ancestors burn in the eyes of the Spirit; the Poncas should take warning. But they do not; wagers run higher. The Osages have by resolution of their fifteen legislators brought the public money to the field. Thus they are rich for speculation, where, otherwise, by virtue of former losses, they would be helpless with empty hands.

Bet after bet is made. The pool box is a red blanket spread on the grass. It is presided over by a buck, impecunious but of fine integrity.

Being moneyless, he will make no bet himself; being honest, he will faithfully guard the treasure put within his care. A sporting buck approaches the blanket; he grumbles a word or two in the ear of the pool master who sits at the blanket’s head; then he searches forth a hundred-dollar bill from the darker recesses of his blanket and lays it on the red betting-cloth. Another comes up; the pool master murmurs the name of the pony on which the hundred is offered; it is covered by the second speculator; that wager is complete. Others arrive at the betting blanket; its entire surface becomes dotted with bank notes—two and two they lie together, each wagered against the other. The blanket is covered and concealed with the money piled upon it. One begins to wonder how a winner is to know his wealth. There will be no clash, no dispute. Savages never cheat; and each will know his own. Besides, there is the poverty-eaten, honest buck, watching all, to be appealed to should an accidental confusion of wagers occur.

On a bright blanket, a trifle to one side—not to be under the moccasins of commerce, as it were—sits the Saucy Paoli. She is without motion; and a blanket, covering her from little head to little foot, leaves not so much as a stray lock or the tip of an ear for one’s gaze to rest upon. The Saucy Paoli is present dutifully to answer the outcome of the Gray Wolf’s pact with Bill. One wonders how does her heart beat, and how roam her hopes? Is she for the roan, or is she for the Glory of the Triangle-Dot?