All of which has a certain degree of truth in it. If Chuck and I never had the art of chanting about ourselves, the others filled in the gaps. We had two exploits to our credit. One was the harrying of Black Feather and his crew; the other was the turning of that Pawnee charge. Chuck was much more famous than I was, partly because he deserved to be, partly because he was a picture that filled the eye of every Indian, and partly because he was by nature dignified and reserved. However, we were both constant attractions, and our tribe never visited another section of the Sioux nations without detaching a few of the most select young braves to follow our standard.
As for my education, I had learned to ride and to swim, though I am afraid that I was never as expert at either art as nine-tenths of the Indian youths. They were inclined to smile at me on most occasions, except when I had a gun in my hand or when I doubled my fist. But in order to be respected by Indians, one needs to excel in only one thing. As I have said, I was never a genius on horseback or in the water. I was never more than an A-B-C scholar when it came to reading sign on the prairies. And, though big Chuck Morris learned to handle a bow and arrow as well as the best of the braves, I could not manage those tough war bows at all. I had no natural talent for the thing. Indeed, except what I learned in the hard school of Abner Dorset, nothing was ever thoroughly mastered by me.
Since I had only the ability to fight, I recognized that fact and clung to it. I studied wrestling and boxing and mixed in with the traders to practice my craft whenever I could. I had filled out to my full bulk, which was never more than one hundred and sixty-five pounds. But every one of those pounds was composed of the most necessary sort of muscle and bone. I looked like a mere morsel beside Chuck Morris, but I could lift pound for pound with him, and the Indians knew it. As for Chuck, he was a dreadful fighter as well as a wise man much prized in their councils, whereas I never opened my mouth in their debates. They had only one thing to say about me, and therefore they gave me a more concentrated celebrity. It was a belief among the Sioux that I could not miss a target. This belief, acting naturally on my pride, made me as anxious with my guns as when Uncle Abner had threatened a hiding to me every time I failed to convert a bullet into dead meat.
Since those two years did little for me except to bring me to maturity, I am going to give a picture of myself at the age of nineteen. I was five feet and ten inches high. I weighed exactly one hundred and sixty-five pounds - which was a weight I kept for thirty years. I was rather light in the legs and gaunt bellied, but thick and heavy around the shoulders. I had very long arms, and my hands were actually larger than those of big Chuck Morris. I was never very particular in my dress. In fact, I was rather an eyesore to my tribe. My deerskins were usually out at the elbow. My moccasins were crude and unbeaded, and my hair was chopped off close to my head. I had a big, blunt jaw, a hooked nose, or at least a very high-arched one, and those bright black eyes which are born in every Dorset I have ever seen. I was not an imposing figure, and not at all close to the romantic hero type. I blush a little even now when I recall the name the Indians gave me - that is to say, my enemies, the Pawnees. The Sioux called me Black Bear, but the name by which I was known among the Pawnees and all the other Indians, together with the trappers and traders, was Stink Bear. Please let me add that there was no olfactory evidence against me. But my ragged, rough appearance was like that of the wolverine, and Stink Bear is the Indian name for that strange animal.
Perhaps one will wonder what name they gave to Chuck Morris, yet you could almost guess it before I say what they selected. They could not have chosen better. When I think of him as he was in those days, with his glorious presence, his beautiful face forever smiling, his bright blue eyes, and the sweeping mass of his hair of purest gold, his Indian name rushes back upon me, and I call him, naturally, Rising Sun. I have said that nothing happened to me during those two years, and I have said the truth, but something did happen to Rising Sun. It was a great deal more important than either he or I, young fools that we were, thought at the time.
I must begin at the beginning in due order and tell the whole thing out, from the moment when Standing Bear walked into my teepee and ordered me to send for Rising Sun. It seemed an immense joke to me, then - it seemed a joke to Chuck, also. The tragedy began later on.
RISING SUN, A SQUAW MAN
It began, as I said, in my teepee which was kept in order. My cooking was done by the squaws of Three Buck Elk, partly because Three Buck was fond of me, partly, because by taking care of me they were also taking care of young Sitting Wolf, and because he was always with me, refused to eat except at my side, and refused to sleep except in my teepee. I had taken the education of the young rascal in hand, and a woeful time I had of it. It was like trying to teach a young eagle to read and write the English language. He wanted to be riding or swimming or hunting - I made him sit quietly. His grave face would never betray a sign of impatience, but sometimes every muscle in his wild body would be twitching. I was reading to him out of ROBINSON CRUSOE and, at the end of every few pages, I used to put down the book - I had traded a fine beaver skin for it the winter before - and would ask him what I had read. I had to make sure that he had heard me.
“What is the name of the man who Crusoe saved?” I asked him.
“Friday,” he responded.
“Who did he save him from?”
He answered in guttural, rattling Sioux: “Men who ate the flesh of other men. Foh.”
“When you are with me,” I said, “talk English.”
“If I do, the father of Sitting Wolf will think that he has a white heart under a red skin.”
We had had that argument over and over again, and I was angry because I had to drudge through it once more. I said: “Boy, we’ll not argue about this any more. You are to speak English to me, because it is better than Sioux.”
He shook his head.
“What is there in Sioux that cannot be said more quickly in English?”
He did not hesitate an instant, but brought out in his native tongue, as quick as a flash: “Stink Bear.” Then he leaped for the open flap of the teepee. I was squatting on crossed legs at the moment, and I nearly missed him which would have meant that he would have got clean away. But I managed to lay my grip on his ankle, by lunging along the floor the length of my body. That sudden check threw him on his face, but he writhed about again like a snake and whirled on me with his knife already in his hand. With the edge of my palm I chopped him on the wrist, and the knife dropped from his numbed fingers.
He was paralyzed not so much by my blow as by the fact that he had drawn a knife on me, though that was as instinctive an act with him as the baring of teeth is with a wolf. He would never have struck me with the weapon, and I knew it. However, the face of Sitting Wolf was gray. He did not alter a muscle, and he stared at me with his unwinking eyes. I wanted to laugh, but I knew that I must make this a lesson for him, so I stood up and pointed.