Читать книгу The White Cheyenne - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 8

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Except for a loin strap, he was naked; his long hair was decorated with a single feather very much the worse for wear. With his hands tied behind his back, he was mounted upon his favorite war pony, a shaggy little beast with thick legs and a reached back that looked like nothing at all, as the saying is. In spite of this poor outfit, Running Deer looked exactly what he was—the most brilliant and the most famous of the young Cheyenne war chiefs.

Taking them from first to last, I suppose that the Cheyenne was the finest fighting man among the Indians of North America. They were big, strapping fellows; they felt that, man for man, they were the heroes of the world. They carried the impress of this self-confidence in their faces.

Running Deer was an exception among an exceptional lot. He was made like a Greek athlete of the youthful type. He looked like his name, composed specifically for grace and speed, and he had a handsome face. Change the color of his skin, and any white mother would have been glad to have him as one of her children.

This seemingly good-natured red man was taken down the street in the midst of the most triumphant cries and cheers. Those rough fellows, who had been standing about as though they despised everything in the world, now acted like a lot of boys. They capered in front of Running Deer, yelled, and waved their hands. The Cheyenne kept his head high and his eyes straight in front of him. You would have thought, if you looked at his face alone, that he was the conqueror, returning from war, followed by his men and their captives, so contemptuous of his conquered foes that he would not allow that contempt to appear in his features. You would have thought that these yelling whites were the applauding men of his own tribe who had come out of the village to greet him, and that he was mildly displeased with them because they had remained at home.

Then you looked down and saw that he carried no weapons, his hands were tied, and a rope on either side attached his pony to the saddles of two of his captors. Another pair followed behind him with their loaded rifles carried slung under their armpits, so afraid of the tricks of this savage that they were constantly ready and really waiting just to blow him into the next world at a stride.

You had to look at that picture in this way—very closely and seriously—before you could see all the meaning that there was in it.

The longer you looked the more you could see the horrible antipathy of race for race, for instance, with a million years of precedent and custom behind either side—a million years which would have to be unlived before the two could understand one another. The whites looked upon the Cheyenne as if he were a brute fashioned in the shape of a man more or less by accident. The Cheyenne, behind his mask of indifference, regarded the whites as snakes whose fangs it would be a virtuous act to draw.

I write these things with half a century between me and that day. I cannot pretend that I had all of those thoughts at that moment. There wasn’t much difference between me and most of the men of that crowd. If anything, that difference was morally in favor of them.

When I saw Running Deer I was chiefly impressed by the fact that he looked like a first-rate fighting man. I said to a fellow near me, as I drew to the side of the street to let the procession pass:

“Who is this Running Deer?”

He flashed one glance at me, irritated to have his eyes dragged away from that picture just then, wondering, too, how any one in the world could fail to understand how important this day was and what was the identity of the Indian.

Then he said: “Running Deer? He’s Lost Wolf’s best friend—if that means anything to you!”

It didn’t, of course, more than a mere name. I had heard of Lost Wolf here and there—but in what connection I could not recall. From the intonation of the frontiersman who furnished this information, and from the manner in which he looked on Running Deer—half exultation and half awe—I was prepared to guess at some really tremendous personage in Lost Wolf.

The chief distinction of Running Deer was merely that he was the best friend of another Indian. Then what an Indian that second one must be!

I decided that I must elicit more information before I died with curiosity. I could not see this Running Deer now. He was merely a floating shadow of a man. All that I was searching for with greedy eyes was Lost Wolf—the man behind the man.

There were about sixty frontiersmen going by. They were riding either singly or in pairs, a wild motley of men and weapons and horses of all kinds and nationalities. Since there was a good deal of distance between the riders, it took a time for the train to go by.

As it wound along, I shifted my position a little and murmured confidentially in the ear of a companion:

“There’ll be a rumpus when Lost Wolf is brought in!”

He looked at me with a cross between suspicion and astonishment.

“Do you think he’ll ever be brought in?”

“Why not?” said I. “The best redskin in the world has to go down at last before white men’s wits and ways, I suppose. Don’t you think so?”

He continued to stare at me, but only with half an eye. The rest of his head was returning to the procession which still filed past, every man sitting particularly straight in the saddle, as if all sixty of them were extra proud because he had had a hand in the capture of a single savage. Which they were, too. Cheyennes were a brand of savage which could not be duplicated in any other part of the world.

Then my new companion said: “Since when did Lost Wolf have a red skin? Can you tell me that, stranger?”

It seemed peculiarly difficult to get any information about this chief out of the crowd. I stepped deeper among the men. I said to the first one whose eye I caught in passing:

“The Cheyennes are a great lot, with two chiefs like Running Deer and Lost Wolf!”

“Good heavens!” this man said in great dismay. “Have they made that fellow a chief, now? When did you get that news?”

He was immensely excited and sought to stop me and get more of the details of this bit of gossip, but I hurried away from him.

I decided that Lost Wolf was one of the queerest creatures in the world if he were an Indian so great that his mere friendship distinguished another brave and made him great. Yet if he were without a following as a chief and if he were even without a red skin—what was he, then?

If I had been curious before, of course, I was in a flame now. I decided that it was hopeless to try to draw out information from these people except by inference and innuendo—getting them to talk about something about which they thought I already knew. That is still the best way with your true Westerner, who still hates to explain the simplest matters to a stranger.

I mixed still deeper in the crowd, and as half a dozen riders went by on the tall, grand-moving horses which were being brought from the East to the plains, just as I had brought Sir Thomas, I said casually to a companion:

“It’s a queer thing that those little, ratty Indian ponies can keep away from real horseflesh like this! Still Running Deer and Lost Wolf and their kind must know how to make the most out of those runts!”

This time the man who had caught my words turned around and swore openly in amazement.

“Stranger,” said he, “who ever has seen Lost Wolf on anything but the finest hoss that ever stepped on grass?”

I slunk away.

From that moment I began to almost give up hope of ever learning anything about Lost Wolf. No matter what I suggested—and surely everything that I had said had been most probable—I seemed to be wrong—utterly and laughably wrong.

However, in a half-despairing fashion I determined to keep up my crossfire in the hope of raising a little news about the great and absent Lost Wolf.

I retired with Sir Thomas. As the last of the riders went past and most of the crowd followed, I began to pat the shoulder of my beauty, saying quietly to an old chap near by—one philosophical enough to let the others follow the procession without paying any heed to them:

“Well, partner, they’ll remember this day, I suppose, now that Running Deer has been brought in!”

“Aye, they’ll be apt to remember it!” said he.

It seemed to me that there was an evil light in his eyes. Therefore I added: “You act as though you were in doubt about it being a good thing to bring him in at all.”

His eyes glinted at me aside from under his shrubbery of brows.

“I doubt it, right enough,” said he.

I waited, sure that he was now excited enough to follow up his last remark without further urging on my part, and I was right.

“Oh, they’re pretty happy tonight,” said he, “but I say that they’re a lot of fools! Sixty brave men with the wits enough to get Running Deer, but without the wits to take his scalp and leave him dead out there on the plains!”

“Why,” I said, surprised by this calm brutality, “would that really be the best thing?”

He snapped out: “Suppose that you found a bear’s cub, would you take it home and then leave the door open after you got inside your cabin?”

He waited, glaring.

“Well,” he added, “how can the door of this town be shut? Will you tell me that? Shut fast enough to keep out Lost Wolf, when he comes raging and ramping into town?”

He was very much worked up and he went on: “There’s gunna be dead men around these parts before the morning ever takes a squint at Zander City. But I ain’t gunna be one of them. I’m gunna be off in the tall timber. I’m gunna jog right along!”

He started up and hurried off as though there were no time to lose.

I gaped after him in amazement. One would have thought that Lost Wolf was resistless wildfire!