Читать книгу Softfoot of Silver Creek - Robert Leighton - Страница 6

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AT sundown, when Softfoot strode towards his smoke-grimed teepee on the north side of the village, Morning Bird, his mother, stood by the open door-flap cleaning her hands with a bunch of clover grass. She had been on her knees the whole day scraping buffalo robes, and she was very weary. But she smiled in approval at sight of the two eagle plumes in Softfoot’s ruffled hair.

“Softfoot’s medicine has been good to him,” she said, following him into the twilight of the lodge. “He has made a beginning. Morning Bird is happy in her son’s success.”

He hung up his bow and quiver against one of the poles and seated himself on a roll of blankets away from the smoke and warmth of the newly kindled fire. Morning Bird brought him a large steak of cooked buffalo meat sprinkled over with dried bull-berries.

“Eat,” she said, “and we will talk.”

“It would be better if you would sleep,” he advised her.

She stood facing him.

“Softfoot is no longer a child,” she began. “It is time he should do more than waste his days in the games of children. He must try to be a man. He has skill in the arrow game, in the stick-and-wheel game. He can ride, he can swim, and run. He knows the secrets of the woods. But all this is of no value to the Pawnees. It is like the beads we sew on our moccasins to please the eye. The beads do not keep our feet warm or give us food. The warriors and braves are saying that Softfoot will never be a man fit to go on the war-path, because he is afraid to kill.”

“It is true,” Softfoot admitted. “It is true that he does not want to take life. He is a coward, like his father.”

Morning Bird’s dark eyes flashed.

“Fast Buffalo Horse was not a coward,” she denied.

“But the Pawnees say that I am the son of a coward who was afraid to go on the war-trail,” Softfoot rejoined.

“Fast Buffalo Horse did not refuse to fight the Sioux or the Crees, who are our enemies,” Morning Bird declared. “He was a great war-chief who took many scalps in many battles. But he would not go on the war-path when there was no quarrel. He was wise; he was not afraid when he would not fight the Mandans, who were our friends. If the Pawnees had listened to him there would have been peace. Our tribe had plenty of buffalo meat. They were rich in robes and horses. They only wanted to take more and more scalps to hang on their crowded lodge poles.”

“A scalp war is not a true war,” Softfoot agreed. “Eagle Speaker has said that the Mandans were weak. They could not defend themselves. They were poor. The buffalo had deserted them.”

“They owned nothing that the Pawnees wanted,” pursued Morning Bird. “They were not our enemies. They had smoked tobacco with the Pawnees.”

“If Fast Buffalo Horse were a coward because he loved peace,” reflected Softfoot, “then I, too, am a coward. I do not want to take life when there is no quarrel. I would kill the rattlesnake, the koshinee wolf, the lynx, and the mountain lion, but I would not kill the sing-bird that fills the forest with music, or the butterfly that drinks honey from the flowers.”

“Yet there is need to kill,” argued his mother. “If you are to be a brave, a warrior, you must go on the war-path against the enemies of your people. You must not be afraid to do battle in a just cause, or to kill when there is need for food and clothing. If the Pawnee boys were all like you, we should have no beaver tails to eat, no buffalo meat; no warm soft fox skins to wear or buffalo robes to cover our wigwams.”

Softfoot stood up. He was nearly as tall as Morning Bird.

“To-morrow I go on the buffalo hunt with the men,” he told her proudly. “Mishe-mokwa has said so.”

Morning Bird clapped her hand to her mouth in astonishment. She walked to and fro in the wide space of the wigwam.

“Softfoot will be afraid,” she declared, after a long silence. “He will ride away from the buffalo bulls. The Pawnees will laugh at him. They will call him a coward.” Then she halted in front of him. “You cannot refuse to go on this hunt,” she said very seriously. “You must pray to the Great Spirit to give you strength and courage. You must burn sweet-grass and sweet-pine to purify yourself, comb your hair, and paint your face with vermilion. Morning Bird will now go out to the corral and rope the best petzekee pony. She will talk to the pony and tell him to be swift and not fall.”

“It will be Snow-white,” he told her. “Snow-white is the best buffalo pony of all that ever were foaled.”

The sounds of dancing and beating drums on the plain outside died down into a profound silence as the shadows deepened into darkness. Softfoot slept heavily on his couch of bear skins near the closed entrance of the teepee. But even in his sleep his mind dwelt upon the coming buffalo hunt and its hidden dangers. In the middle of the night he awoke to find a thin beam of moonlight streaming in upon him through a gap in the door-flap of deerskin.

He raised himself on an elbow and drew the flap aside. From where he lay he could see the indigo peaks of the Big Horn Mountains against the moonlit sky, and, nearer, the dark prairie was cut by the glistening sheen of Silver Creek. From far away there came to him the long-drawn plaintive howl of a wolf and the subdued bellow of a buffalo. He shivered under the cold of the night air.

“The warriors say that I am afraid,” he meditated. “But I will not be afraid. Eagle Speaker’s gift will give me courage. I will carry it with me always. It will shield me from harm. It will give me strength and bravery. I shall kill many buffaloes. I will go on the war-path. Eagle Speaker knows the secret of this medicine gift. He told Softfoot to trust in its power to make him brave. It came to me in my sleep that I must do this thing.”

He rose very silently from his bear skins, and in the black darkness crept with cautious tread across the earthen floor to the place where he had hung his sacred bundle. Very reverently he took the bundle down and thrust his hand into its wrappings of soft doeskin until his fingers closed upon the thing he sought.

“It is very strange that it should have such power,” he whispered in superstitious awe. “What can be its secret?”