Читать книгу Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales - George Bird Grinnell - Страница 13

The next year he led a party again to the Osage country. He took some horses and brought them home. This same year (1868) a party started south. He was not the leader, but he went with them. They went to the Wichita, Comanche and Kiowa villages—they were all camped together—stole some horses and started back with them. Before they had gone very far Running Chief stopped and said he was going back. His friend was with the party, and when he found that Running Chief had resolved to go back he said, “I will stop here with you.”

The two went back toward the village that they had just left, and climbed a hill that stood near it, and hid themselves there. They waited, watching, for they had not decided what they would do. The next day in the afternoon they began to get hungry, and they began to talk together. Running Chief said to his friend, “My brother, are you poor in your mind?[1] Do you feel like doing some great thing—something that is very dangerous?”

[1] Poor in mind; i. e., despondent, unhappy, miserable.

His friend answered at once, “Yes, I am poor. I am ready. Why do you ask me?”

Running Chief thought a little while before he answered, and as he thought, all the pain and suffering of his life seemed to rise up before him, so that he could see it. He remembered how he had been a poor boy, supported by his mother, and all that they two had suffered together while he was yet a child. He remembered how his sister had been killed when he was a boy only ten years old, and how he had mourned for her, when her husband, who was jealous of her, had shot her through the body with an arrow and killed her. She was the only sister he had, and he had loved her. He felt that he was poor now, and that there was no hope of anything better for him, and he did not want to live any longer. After he had thought of all these things he said to his friend, “My life is not worth anything to me;” and then he told him of his bad feelings. Finally he said, “Now you go off and leave me here alone. I am tired of living, but you go home. You have relations who would mourn for you. I do not want you to lose your life on my account.”

His friend answered him, “I will not go away from you. We have grown up together, and I will stick to you. Wherever you go I will go, and whatever you do I will do.”

Then Running Chief meditated for a long time. He had not made up his mind what to do. He thought to himself, “This, my friend, will stay with me. I do not want to be the cause of his death.” So he considered. Finally he said to his friend, “If I shall make up my mind to go to some place where there is great danger, I shall go.”

His friend said, “I will go with you.”

Running Chief thought again, and at last he said, “On account of my feelings I have decided to go into the camp of my enemies, and be eaten by their dogs.”

The other man said, “Whatever you have determined on I also will do.”