Part 4 (2/2)
Before many days there was a new tepee among the ”Red Lodges,” and every morning Seet-se-be-a set a lance and s.h.i.+eld up beside the door, so that people should know by the devices that the Bat lived there.
V. ”The Kites and the Crows”
The Bat had pa.s.sed the boy stage. He was a Chis-chis-chash warrior now, of agile body and eager mind. No man's medicine looked more sharply after his physical form and shadow-self than did the Bat's; no young man was quicker in the surround; no war-pony could scrabble to the lariat ahead of his in the races. He had borne more bravely in the sun-dance than all others, and those who had done the ceremony of ”smoking his s.h.i.+eld” had heard the thick bull's-hide promise that no arrow or bullet should ever reach the Bat. He lost the contents of his lodge at the game of the plum-stones--all the robes that Seet-se-be-a had fleshed and softened, but more often his squaw had to bring a pack-pony down to the gamble and pile it high with his winnings. He was much looked up to in the warrior cla.s.s of the Red Lodges, which contained the tried-out braves of the Cheyenne tribe; moreover old men--wise ones--men who stood for all there was in the Chis-chis-chash, talked to him occasionally out of their pipes, throwing measuring glances from under lowering brows in his direction to feel if he had the secret Power of the Eyes.
The year pa.s.sed until the snow fell no longer and Big Hair said the medicine chiefs had called it ”The Falling Stars Winter” and had painted the sign on the sacred robes. The new gra.s.s changed from yellow to a green velvet, while the long hair blew off the horses' hides in bunches and their shrunken flanks filled up with fat. As Nature awoke from the chill and began to circulate the Indians responded to its feel. They stalked among the pony herds, saying to each other: ”By the middle of the moon of the new Elk Horns, these big dogs will carry us to war.
There the enemy will know that the Chis-chis-chash did not die in the snow. There will be blood in our path this gra.s.s.”
Red Arrow and the Bat prayed often together to the Good G.o.d for fortune in war, as they sat in the lodge running their eyes along their arrows, picking those which were straightest, and singing:
”This arrow is straight This arrow is straight It will kill us a man It will kill us a man--”
and the Bat boasted to his chum: ”When I come to the enemy, I shall go nearer than any other Red Lodge man. I shall have more scalps to dance and no bullet or arrow can stop the Bat when he strikes his pony with the whip.” Red Arrow believed this as much as the boaster did, for men must believe they will do these things before they do them. ”Red Arrow, we will not go with a big war-party. We will go with Iron Horn's band of twenty warriors. Then next winter at the warriors' feasts when we tell what we did, we will count for something. Red Arrow, we will see for the first time the great war-medicine.”
The boys of the camp herded the ponies where the gra.s.s was strongest, and the warriors watched them grow. It was the policy of the tribe to hang together in a ma.s.s, against the coming of the enemy, for the better protection of the women and the little ones, but no chiefs or councils were strong enough to stop the yearning of the young Cheyennes for military glory. All self-esteem, all applause, all power and greatness, came only down that fearful road--the war trail. Despite the pleadings of tribal policy Iron Horn, a noted war- and mystery-man, secretly organized his twenty men for glorious death or splendid triumph. Their orders went forth in whispers. ”By the full of the moon at the place where the Drowned Buffalo water tumbled over the rocks one day's pony-travel to the west.”
Not even Seet-se-be-a knew why the Bat was not sitting back against his willow-mat in the gray morning when she got up to make the kettle boil, but she had a woman's instinct which made her raise the flap to look out. The two war-ponies were gone. Glancing again behind the robes of his bed she saw, too, that the oiled rifle was missing. Quickly she ran to the lodge of Red Arrow's father, wailing, ”My man has gone, my man has gone--his fast ponies are gone--his gun is gone,” and all the dogs barked and ran about in the shadows while Red Arrow's mother appeared in the hole in the tepee, also wailing, ”My boy has gone, my boy has gone,”
and the village woke up in a tumult. Everyone understood. The dogs barked, the women wailed, the children cried, the magpies fluttered overhead while the wolves answered back in piercing yells from the plains beyond.
Big Hair sat up and filled his pipe. He placed his medicine-bag on the pole before him and blew smoke to the four sides of the earth and to the top of the lodge saying: ”Make my boy strong. Make his heart brave, O Good G.o.ds--take his pony over the dog-holes--make him see the enemy first!” Again he blew the smoke to the deities and continued to pray thus for an hour until the sun-lit camp was quiet and the chiefs sat under a giant cotton-wood, devising new plans to keep the young men at home.
Meanwhile from many points the destined warriors loped over the rolling landscape to the rendezvous. Tirelessly all day long they rose and fell as the ponies ate up the distance to the Drowned Buffalo, stopping only at the creeks to water the horses. By twos and threes they met, galloping together--speaking not. The moon rose big and red over their backs, the wolves stopped howling and scurried to one side--the ceaseless thud of the falling hoofs continued monotonously, broken only by the crack of a lash across a horse's flank.
At midnight the faithful twenty men were still seated in a row around Iron Horn while the horses, too tired to eat, hung their heads. The old chief dismissed his war-party saying: ”To-morrow we will make the mystery--we will find out whether the Good G.o.ds will go with us to war or let us go alone.”
Sunrise found the ponies feeding quietly, having recovered themselves, while the robed aspirants sat in a circle; the gra.s.s having been removed from the enclosed s.p.a.ce and leveled down.
A young man filled the long medicine-pipe and Iron Horn blew sacrificial puffs about him, pa.s.sing it in, saying: ”Let no man touch the pipe who has eaten meat since the beginning of the last sun. If there are any such he must be gone--the Good G.o.ds do not speak to full men.” But the pipe made its way about the ring without stopping.
Iron Horn then walked behind the circle sticking up medicine-arrows in the earth--arrows made sacred by contact with the Great Medicine of the Chis-chis-chash and there would hold the Bad G.o.ds in check while the Good G.o.ds counseled.
Resuming his seat, he spoke in a harsh, guttural clicking: ”What is said in this circle must never be known to any man who does not sit here now.
The Bad G.o.ds will hear what the Good G.o.ds say in such an event and the man who tells against them will be deserted by the Good G.o.ds forever.
Every man must tell all his secrets--all the things he has thought about his brothers since the last war-medicine; all the things he has done with the women of the tribe; all that the G.o.ds have whispered in his dreams. He must tell all and forever say no more,” and Iron Horn rested on his words for a moment before continuing his confession.
”Brothers, I am a great medicineman--no arrow can touch me--I do not fear men. I am too old for the women to look upon. I did not say it at the time but when the sun was low on the land last winter I made it turn blue for a time. I made it cold in the land. Our horses were poor and when I made the sun blue we crusted the buffalo and killed many with our lances. Brothers, it was I who made the sun blue in the winter.
”Brothers, I love you all--I shall say no more,” and Iron Horn threw tobacco on the earth in front of him.
A young man next to him dropped his robe from about his body and with fierce visage spoke excitedly, for it was his first confession, and his Indian secretiveness was straining under the ordeal. It was mostly about gallantries and dreams--all made like the confessions which followed.
They were the deeds and thoughts common to young Indian men. They ministered to the curiosity of people whose world lay within the camping circle of their small tribe, and they were as truthful as a fear of G.o.d could make them, except the dreams, and they too were real to the Indian mind.
The men now began to paint themselves and to take their paraphernalia from their war-bags and put it on. Iron Horn said: ”Brothers--when it is dark I will put a medicine-arrow Into the ground where my feet are now, and if in the morning it has not moved we will go back to the lodges; but if it has moved, we will go in the direction in which it points.
When we start toward the enemy no man must eat, drink or sit down by day, no matter how long or fatiguing the march; if he halts for a moment he must turn his face toward his own country so that the G.o.ds may see that it is his wish to return there. We must sleep with our own faces toward our village. No two men must lie covered by the same robe. He must not ride or walk in a beaten path lest the spirit of the path go running on ahead of us to warn the enemy, and if by chance we do, we must come to the big medicine and rub it on the horses' legs to ward off the danger.” This said, Iron Horn said much more to his young braves--all the demon fears which the savage mind conjures up in its contact with the supernatural, together with stated forms of decorations to be painted on the ponies, and then he dismissed them, saying: ”Come to the circle before the moon rises while it is yet dark, but meanwhile sit each man alone and in silence and we will see what the Good G.o.ds do with the arrows.”
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