Читать книгу In the Old West - George Frederick Augustus Ruxton - Страница 8

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THE next morning Killbuck's leg was greatly inflamed, and he was unable to leave the lodge; but he made his companion bring the old mule to the door, that he might give her a couple of ears of Indian corn, the last remains of the slender store brought by the Indians from the Navajo country. The day passed, and sundown brought no tidings of the war-party. This caused no little wailing on the part of the squaws, but was interpreted by the whites as a favorable augury. A little after sunrise on the second morning, the long line of the returning warriors was discerned winding over the prairie, and a scout having galloped in to bring the news of a great victory, the whole village was soon in a ferment of paint and drumming. A short distance from the lodges, the warriors halted to await the approach of the people. Old men, children, and squaws sitting astride their horses, sallied out to escort the victorious party in triumph to the village. With loud shouts and songs, and drums beating the monotonous Indian time, they advanced and encircled the returning braves, one of whom, his face covered with black paint, carried a pole on which dangled thirteen scalps, the trophies of the expedition. As he lifted these on high they were saluted with deafening whoops, and cries of exultation and savage joy. In this manner they entered the village, almost before the friends of those fallen in the fight had ascertained their losses. Then the shouts of delight were converted into yells of grief; the mothers and wives of those braves who had been killed (and seven had "gone under") presently returned with their faces, necks, and hands blackened, and danced and howled round the scalp-pole, which had been deposited in the center of the village, in front of the lodge of the great chief.

Killbuck now learned that a scout having brought intelligence that the two band's of Rapa-hos were hastening to form a junction, as soon as they learned that their approach was discovered, the Yutas had successfully prevented it; and attacking one party, had entirely defeated it, killing thirteen of the Rapaho braves. The other party had fled on seeing the issue of the fight, and a few of the Yuta warriors were now pursuing them.

To celebrate so signal a victory, great preparations sounded their notes through the village. Paints—vermilion and ochres, red and yellow—were in great request; whilst the scrapings of charred wood, mixed with gunpowder, were used as substitute for black, the medicine color.

The lodges of the village, numbering some two hundred or more, were erected in parallel lines, and covered a large space of the level prairie in shape of a parallelogram. In the center, however, the space which half-a-dozen lodges in length would have taken up was left unoccupied, save by one large one, of red-painted buffalo-skins, tattooed with the mystic totems of the medicine peculiar to the nation. In front of this stood the grim scalp-pole, like a decayed tree-trunk, its bloody fruit tossing in the wind; and on another pole, at a few feet distance, was hung the bag with its mysterious contents. Before each lodge a tripod of spears supported the arms and shields of the Yuta chivalry, and on many of them smoke-dried scalps rattled in the wind, former trophies of the dusky knights who were arming themselves within. Heraldic devices were not wanting—not, however, graved upon the shield, but hanging from the spear-head, the actual totem of the warrior it distinguished. The rattlesnake, the otter, the carcajou, the mountain badger, the war-eagle, the konqua-kish, the porcupine, the fox, &c., dangled their well-stuffed skins, displaying the guardian medicine of the warriors they pertained to, and representing the mental and corporeal qualities which were supposed to characterize the braves to whom they belonged.

From the center lodge, two or three medicinemen, fantastically attired in the skins of wolves and bears, and bearing long peeled wands of cherry in their hands, occasionally emerged to tend a very small fire which they had kindled in the center of the open space; and when a thin column of smoke arose, one of them planted the scalp-pole obliquely across the fire. Squaws in robes of white dressed buckskin, garnished with beads and porcupines' quills, and their faces painted bright red and black, then appeared. These ranged themselves round the outside of the square, the boys and children of all ages, mounted on barebacked horses, galloping round and round, and screaming with eagerness, excitement, and curiosity.

Presently the braves and warriors made their appearance, and squatted round the fire in two circles, those who had been engaged on the expedition being in the first or smaller one. One medicine-man sat under the scalp-pole, having a drum between his knees, which he tapped at intervals with his hand, eliciting from the instrument a hollow monotonous sound. A bevy of women, shoulder to shoulder, then advanced from the four sides of the square, and some, shaking a rattle-drum in time with their steps, commenced a jumping, jerking dance, now lifting one foot from the ground, and now rising with both, accompanying the dance with a chant, which swelled from a low whisper to the utmost extent of their voices—now dying away, and again bursting into vociferous measure. Thus they advanced to the center and retreated to their former positions; when six squaws, with their faces painted a dead black, made their appearance from the crowd, chanting, in soft and sweet measure, a lament for the braves the nation had lost in the late battle: but soon as they drew near the scalp-pole, their melancholy note changed to the music (to them) of gratified revenge. In a succession of jumps, raising the feet alternately but a little distance from the ground, they made their way, through an interval left in the circle of warriors, to the grim pole, and encircling it, danced in perfect silence round it for a few moments. Then they burst forth with an extempore song, laudatory of the achievements of their victorious braves. They addressed the scalps as "sisters" (to be called a squaw is the greatest insult that can be offered to an Indian), and, spitting at them, upbraided them with their rashness in leaving their lodges to seek for Yuta husbands; "that the Yuta warriors and young men despised them, and chastised them for their forwardness and presumption, bringing back their scalps to their own women."

After sufficiently proving that they had anything but lost the use of their tongues, but possessed, on the contrary, as fair a length of that formidable weapon as any of their sex, they withdrew, and left the field in undisputed possession of the men; who, accompanied by tap of drum, and by the noise of many rattles, broke out into a war-song, in which their own valor was by no means hidden in a bushel, or modestly refused the light of day. After this came the more interesting ceremony of a warrior "counting his coups." A young brave, with his face painted black, mounted on a white horse mysteriously marked with red clay, and naked to the breech-clout, holding in his hand a long taper lance, rode into the circle, and paced slowly round it; then, flourishing his spear on high, he darted to the scalp-pole, round which the warriors were now seated in a semicircle; and in a loud voice, and with furious gesticulations, related his exploits, the drums tapping at the conclusion of each. On his spear hung seven scalps, and holding it vertically above his head, and commencing with the top one, he told the feats in which he had raised the trophy hair. When he had run through these the drums tapped loudly, and several of the old chiefs shook their rattles, in corroboration of the truth of his achievements. The brave, swelling with pride, then pointed to the fresh and bloody scalps hanging on the pole. Two of these had been torn from the heads of Rapahos struck by his own hand, and this feat, the exploit of the day, had entitled him to the honor of counting his coups. Then, sticking his spear into the ground by the side of the pole, he struck his hand twice on his brawny and naked chest, turned short round, and, swift as the antelope, galloped into the plain, as if overcome by the shock his modesty had received in being obliged to recount his own high-sounding deeds.

"Wagh!" exclaimed old Killbuck, as he left the circle, pointing his pipe-stem towards the fast-fading figure of the brave, "that Injun's heart's about as big as ever it will be, I'm thinking."

With the Yutas, Killbuck and La Bonté remained during the winter; and when the spring sun had opened the icebound creeks, and melted the snow on the mountains, and its genial warmth had expanded the earth and permitted the roots of the grass to "live" once more, and throw out green and tender shoots, the two trappers bade adieu to the hospitable Indians, who broke up their village in order to start for the valleys of the Del Norte. As they followed the trail from the Bayou, at sundown, just as they thought of camping, they observed ahead of them a solitary horseman * riding along, followed by three mules. His hunting-frock of fringed buckskin, and the rifle resting across the horn of his saddle, at once proclaimed him white; but as he saw the mountaineers winding through the canon, driving before them half-a-dozen horses, he judged they might possibly be Indians and enemies, the more so as their dress was not the usual costume of the whites. The trappers, therefore, saw the stranger raise the rifle in the hollow of his arm, and gathering up his horse, ride steadily to meet them, as soon as he observed they were but two; two to one in mountain calculation being scarcely considered odds, if red skin to white.