Читать книгу Trouble's Messenger - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 12

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The enclosure within the palisade was now swarming with mounted men, women, and children, and the dust began to rise like smoke around the fort, while Lessing still remained outside the wall, gazing at his companion.

“You want that scalp, son?” he said to Messenger. “You want to get at Summer Day, do you?”

Messenger continued to stare wildly in the direction in which the enemy had disappeared. “I have to have him,” he said. “I need him more than I need air to breathe. I have to have him! That would make me a free man!” His voice trembled. To see emotion in that youth was like seeing fire spout from hard rock, and the trapper shook his head in astonishment.

“You might as well,” he said, “try to take the scalp of the thunderbird. You might better try to take the scalp of War Lance himself.”

The boy looked at him with the same burning glance. He looked like one in a frenzy. “Tell me why?” he said.

“Because,” declared the trapper, “War Lance is a great fighter, and he has sixteen chosen men behind him, but Summer Day is really the most powerful man in the tribe. He’s the one who makes up the victory medicine for ’em. He’s the one that they carry presents to. You could hit at War Lance through sixteen braves. You’d have to hit at Summer Day through the whole Blackfeet nation. I tell you what, even if you got at him, he’s a terror. I’d hate to be locked up in a room with him, even if I had four fightin’ men with me. He’d be wearin’ our hair before the finish of the fight, I tell you! Try anything that you want, Messenger ... try War Lance, even, but don’t go throwin’ yourself away on a job like the medicine man!”

Messenger made an abrupt gesture. “Let’s see what’s up,” he said, and he led the way through the gate into the big enclosure.

They got, eventually, to fairly good places for observation of what followed, for the crowd of people were stirring so restlessly that it was not hard to drift a way through them. Louis Desparr had come down from the roof as soon as he made out the nature of his visitors, and now he stood in the entrance to the store with a pipe in his hand and a broad smile on his face. This visit from so great a man as War Lance, to say nothing of the head medicine man among the Blackfeet, assured his future prosperity, he felt. He could not help exhibiting some of his joy.

War Lance and Summer Day, in the meantime, pressing up to the lead of the warriors, with a few motions drove them back until a circle was cleared. Then, dismounting, the two chiefs approached the trader. Their greetings were dignified, although rather cold. Now that the two famous Blackfeet were side-by-side, the contrast between them was more startling than in the line of march. The high head and the magnificent carriage of War Lance were opposed to the cunning and downward look of the medicine man, who appeared to be swallowing a smile and brooding upon mischief beyond the fathoming of ordinary men. He looked at those about him by sudden flashes. His real attention seemed to be focused upon his own thoughts. Yet he appeared in his own way as formidable an enemy as the great war chief himself. All that trickery and fox-like cunning could do were implied in the presence of Summer Day.

War Lance made a speech at once. He spoke briefly and simply. There are two qualities of voice that an Indian uses at will. One is the harsh tone of ordinary public conversation; the other is amazingly gentle and caressing, and one hears it in a teepee and rarely elsewhere. But the voice of War Lance was, on such an occasion as this, like a deep and mellow thunder, reassuring, but filling the hearers with awe.

He said in the Blackfoot tongue: “My friend, several months ago, the great medicine man of the Blackfeet came to this place and killed a man. Then he went away quickly. He did not run away because he was afraid, but because he felt that he might have been wrong, and he did not want to start a fight between all his people and the white men. When I heard of this, I went to him and asked him if it would not be a good thing if he would come back and make that killing right. The man he killed had a value and a price. Summer Day has come back to find out what the price may be, and then he will pay it, and the Blackfeet will be friends forever with the white men.”

He paused, and Summer Day with a single gesture signified his assent to what had been spoken.

Louis Desparr nodded at them in the friendliest way.

“This is the way honest people ought to act,” he declared. “I cannot say what the value of Henry Adams was. He was a half-breed, neither white nor black. But his widow is still here. There she stands now.”

Mrs. Adams was a full-blooded Cree, and not the most beautiful of her race. She could have vied with Mrs. Desparr, in fact. She was a burly creature, with shoulders like a man and long, hanging arms.

“Here is Summer Day come back like a good man to pay you for your dead husband,” said Desparr. “What price do you want to put? You name a price, and let Summer Day name one. I’ll see which comes nearest to being honest.”

Mrs. Adams raised her long arms to the sky and let out a wail, as the beginning of her price setting.

“Listen!” said Lessing at the ear of Messenger. “She’ll want a whole herd of hossflesh for that worthless half-breed of hers.”

Mrs. Adams at last reduced her keening to a voice that could be understood and announced that her teepee was desolate, and her children were hungry, and the hunter was gone from her side, and alone and sadly she faced life, which promised to be always winter. She wound up by saying that fifty horses would be almost right, but she added that a couple of good axes and a few pounds of beads ought to be thrown in to restore good will perfectly on all sides.

“You’ve heard the woman,” said Desparr to Summer Day. “Now, what price do you put on the head of the man you killed?”

Summer Day hardly lifted his head to answer, and, when he spoke, he looked neither at Desparr nor at the squaw, but across the palisade toward the distant hills and the blue mist of mountains beyond him. It was as though he saw through everything and found these foolish conferences with ordinary men almost too dull to be worth his speech. Finally he said: “That man was neither white nor red. He was neither weak enough to lie down, nor strong enough to stand up. He had a red face and a white forehead. He was nothing. Besides, he stole from me, or tried to steal. But to make this woman happy, and not because I did wrong, I will give her two horses. That is enough to give for such a half-breed.”

“That Summer Day,” observed Lessing, “would get fat on thistles, I tell you. Listen to him, will you?”

“Aye,” said Messenger grimly, his eyes fastened constantly on the face of the great chief. “I’m listening to him.”

The squaw broke into a fresh clamor, but Desparr silenced her with a few words. “You know,” he said, “that your husband was a lazy man. He never killed a buffalo in his life, and the only elk meat you ever ate was given to you here, in the fort, or by your friends in your tribe. He would not hunt like an Indian, and he would not work like a white man. Now, then, fifty horses are a great deal too much to ask for him. You know that you have a good, warm home here, as long as you choose to work and behave. Your children are being taken care of twice as well as they were when your husband was alive. Eight horses are enough to pay, if Summer Day will give that many.”

At this judgment, or attempt at one, the woman screamed out as though she had been stabbed to the heart. Her babble of noise lasted until she saw the hand of the medicine man raised. No matter what her excitement, the awe with which he filled all the red men and women around him was easily to be observed. Her voice gradually died into a dog-like whining, while Summer Day spoke.

“You can have five horses,” he said. “That is enough. Two horses are too much. But I am generous. I give you three more, because you are a foolish woman, and fools need to have plenty of wealth.”

She screeched again. She began to roll her eyes and her head from side to side, and a great piercing lament for the dead Henry Adams went up to the sky.

Suddenly the medicine man struck his hands together, and, as the palms joined, there was a loud exclamation and a general shrinking back by all who stood around while the widow was turned to stone. For a brilliant play of blue fire had spurted out as the hands struck home, like the splashing of heavily struck water.

Then Summer Day exclaimed in a harsh and loud voice: “You are wicked and of no worth. Five horses you will take, at once, or get none at all. Do you think that I do not see you and your whole life? I see you clearly. You are not sorry that you have lost a husband. You are glad, and already you have found another man!”

This revelation, for the truth of it she did not contest, made poor Mrs. Adams utterly dumb. She no longer resisted, but nodded her head mutely when the trader asked her if this settlement was satisfactory.

In the meantime, two or three boys had left the enclosure and came back driving before them five little typical Indian ponies with rather lumpish heads and shaggy coats.

The awe that had been inspired in the breast of Mrs. Adams by the bit of parlor magic, and the apparent prophetic insight of the chief, were now diminished a little by her disappointment. She asked some of the bystanders if these really were horses or simply big dogs that would eat her out of house and home. However, she took the five very gladly by the rawhide lariats that were fastened to their necks, and so led them away, and the affair of the murdered Henry Adams was concluded.

This Louis Desparr announced with much satisfaction to red and white, speaking in the Indian tongue, for he said: “Now here this trouble is ended. The woman has been paid. She has taken the price. She will forget that she had a husband. So will everyone else. If there is any more hard talk or threatening about the death of Adams, then I will be the enemy of the men who quarrel. So will all good men.”

Here Summer Day put in a word for himself. With his unpleasantly secret smile and eye turned off toward the horizon again, he said: “I have shown you that I am a good man. I have done this not because I felt guilty, but because I wish to have many friends. To women I give gifts to stop their tongues and fill their minds with sleepy good nature. To men, I give bad magic that is very strong, and also blows. I have paid the woman. If there is any man who has a claim against me, let me hear him speak.” He turned his head slowly around the circle until his eyes rested upon the face of Messenger.

“I am here to make a claim,” said the boy.