Читать книгу Trouble's Messenger - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 9

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“War Lance?” said the boy curiously. “Who is he?”

“Come, come,” said the trapper. “You don’t know much about the West, and that’s a fact, and about the mountains a pile less, but you’ve sure heard about War Lance?”

“Not a word that I remember. Is he a big medicine man?”

“His medicine is big, but he’s not a medicine man,” said the other. “He’s a chief, and for once they saddled one of their heroes with a right name. They’ve a way of calling their best braves something like Speckled Antelope, or Deer-That-Jumps, or some such thing. But War Lance is what this fellow is. Straight as a lance, and as sharp and as strong! You’ve never heard of War Lance?”

“No. D’you think those Blackfeet in the woods are going to see him?”

“They’ll see him,” said Lessing, “if they have to swim a river full of floating ice. Of course, they’ll see him. He’s the main trump, the big card, the great snake in their whole nation. Of course, they’ll see him!”

“Good luck and a quick trip to them, then,” said the boy carelessly. “I’m glad to do without them just now. I didn’t relish the idea of a swim in that water yonder.”

“I could have talked you through them,” said Lessing. “They know me, and they’re not a bad lot.”

Here Messenger turned sharply on him. “Not a bad lot?” he repeated. “Not a bad lot? What do you call badness, when they were out there waiting to stick a knife into me?”

“You’d floored a pair of ’em, youngster!” cried Lessing.

“With my hands ... man to man!” said the boy fiercely.

“If you kicked one of a wolf pack,” said Lessing, “would it surprise you a lot if the whole band came for you?”

“Yes, wolves. That’s what they are,” declared Messenger.

“And if the wolf used teeth, and you had none half so good, would you blame him for that?” went on the trapper.

“I don’t understand what you’re driving at,” answered Messenger. “A couple of those scoundrels pick brawls with me. They’re roughly handled, and then twenty of them come and lurk for me among the trees. And you call them good fellows!”

“They are,” insisted Lessing. “I know ’em, and you don’t.”

“Tell me how I was wrong, and how they are right,” asked the boy.

“You were wrong to manhandle them.”

“What would you have had me do?”

“Something dignified, Messenger. An Injun has a pile of dignity, and he hates to have it roughed around. You remember that, if you’re going to be cut out there long.”

“Aye,” said Messenger with a quick, deep sigh. “I’ll be here the rest of my life, I suppose.”

“What? The rest of your life? Without going back to the East?” Lessing stared again. He never had seen, he felt, a spirit so little in tune with the great western land.

“I’ve got to try a thing,” said the boy, half to himself, “that I never can do ... and it’ll take me my life....” He made a gesture at the trees, and then at the river. “Among these eternal, gloomy woods,” he said, “and ruffians eating dried buffalo meat, living like cattle, drinking poisonous whiskey, fighting, brawling, stealing, trailing, freezing, soaking, sunburned, mildewed, ragged, miserable every day of the year, in one way or another. That’s the life that lies in front of me!” He stopped. He flashed hotly and drew himself up. “I’ve been complaining like a girl, and to a stranger,” he said. “I beg your pardon, Mister Lessing.”

Lessing nodded at him with an understanding eye. “It looks all rank and raw to you,” he said. “You’d rather be back there where you could have a good, comfortable chair and a flock of books around you, and polite folks in for tea, and dances like a state parade, and all that sort of thing, and so this part of the woods looks sort of miserable to you, don’t it?”

“It does. It does look miserable!” declared the boy. “But I’ve talked too much. I’ve made a woman of myself. I’m sorry.” He strode straight ahead, through the brush, and, as he went, Lessing struggled to keep up, calling out: “Keep an eye about you! You can’t tell about these red men. One of ’em might be hanging back around here to shoot an arrow or a slug into your ribs. It’d be like that Dust-In-The-Sky, for one.”

“Good fellows! Good fellows!” quoted the boy in disgust. “You say that I should have handled them with dignity. How would you have done it, then?” He paused, and looked haughtily back at Lessing.

“I’ll tell you,” said Lessing. “I would simply have handled him so that he wouldn’t have been made a fool. If I could do what you can with a knife ... which I can’t ... I would never have put a hand on either of them, but I would have fetched out my knife and driven it into the ground right between their toes. That’s what I should have done.”

“What would have happened then?”

“That’s simple. Only one thing could have happened. They would have seen that you weren’t simply a tenderfoot, as they took you to be, but a heap big warrior and brave. Dust-In-The-Sky wouldn’t have touched that knife, but one of his friends would have pulled it out of the ground, and he would have brought it to you. That would have been the challenge, and you would name your time to meet Dust-In-The-Sky out there in the plains, in the pink of some morning when nobody was up, except a few friends.”

“A few friends to help take my scalp, eh?” asked the boy in his hard, suspicious way.

“You don’t understand. You would have been the guest of the Blackfoot nation while that fight was going on. No one would have dared to interfere, except some old war chief, some great man ... like this same fellow, War Lance. He might have ridden out and gone to see you. He might have made you a friendly speech and declared that young men should not come to blood for the sake of a joke and such stuff. He might have made you a present of some kind ... even a horse, perhaps ... and that would have been the end of it.”

“I wouldn’t take the chance of fighting,” answered Messenger most unexpectedly.

“You wouldn’t take the chance?” echoed the other, bewildered.

“No. I wouldn’t take the chance of fighting. I’ve no desire to turn into a murderer.”

“No question of murder,” replied Lessing. “It would be a fair fight and all that.”

“How would the fight go?”

“On horseback, with a full equipment. He’d probably come out as if for the warpath, with a rifle, and a lance, and a knife. Perhaps there would be a pistol tucked into his belt.”

“Well,” said the boy gravely, “if I fought him with a rifle, a pistol, a knife, or hand-to-hand, it would still be a murder.”

“What?” cried Lessing.

“I was raised for it, trained for it,” replied Messenger. “It would still be a murder. What right have I to fight with ordinary men? They know no more about weapons than babies do about books. It would be simply a murder. That’s why I used my bare hands on them. I was sorry I showed the knife at all, but just then I lost my temper. I wanted to go after the whole bullying crowd of them, and I controlled myself just in the nick of time, and shot the knife into the ground, instead.” He said this rapidly, his voice raised a little, and there was a ring of true misery and regret in it. That raising and training were not things on which he cared to linger, very obviously.

Lessing rapped his knuckles against his forehead. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe you’re right, my lad. But ... let’s get on out of here into the open. You’ll forget your troubles if you see War Lance.”

They went on rapidly through the woods until there was a light, crackling sound in front of them, and Messenger bounded far to the side, behind a tree. Lessing did not follow the example, but he brought his rifle to the ready and stared fixedly among the leaves before them.

“It’s nothing,” he said presently. “There’s no danger that they’ll jump you. Listen to the uproar outside. No Indian could prefer his little revenge to the chance of looking at such a party as they have going on out there.”

Messenger nodded, and they went on again, with Lessing biting his lip. He had a sudden feeling that this youngster who walked so lightly beside him was not a man at all, but a mass of gunpowder ready to blow up a forest, a village, in a single flare.

From the edge of the woods they could get a clear view across the rolling grounds at the base of the peninsula, and there they saw that the entire Indian population was pouring out from the distant woods and swirling into a mass that took a certain form and straightened and lengthened before their eyes into a line. This line was made of mounted warriors. To the rear formed a cloud of women and children on foot, and little boys galloped wildly back and forth on their mustangs, the clots of turf flinging high above their heads and hanging in the air like swallows.

Lessing began to chuckle softly, but there was excitement in his face, also. “You’re gonna see a real man, even if his skin isn’t white, my son,” he said. He led on, with great strides, and young Messenger easily kept beside him.

They headed, now, straight across toward the narrow of the peninsula base, where the palisade of the fort was strung, and where the gate opened. To that gate, all the occupants of the fort had come in order to see the procession arrive. Some thronged in the gateway itself. Others were grouped on either side, and on the roof of the fort it could be seen that the tarpaulin had been taken from the little ancient brass three-pounder that stood there. Its well-polished flanks were glimmering in the sunshine, and its mouth was trained straight toward the gate.

“That’s loaded with powder only,” Lessing said in explanation, “but, if there’s a need, it wouldn’t take long to slap three, four handfuls of shot into the innards of it and blow a whole lane of those Blackfeet out through that gate and into the happy hunting grounds.”

They came up the last slope, hurrying their steps, and, as they arrived at the verge of the fort, they could see that the procession that had been forming on the hillside had begun to move. At the same time, there was a wild babble of shouts, war whoops, thunderings upon drums, and screeching upon tuneless horns. This first blast of outcry ended as abruptly as it had begun, and the procession continued with dignity upon its march.