I was away because I had heard of a big white trapper, a sour-faced hermit of a fellow, and decided that it might be my father. I had made a two-hundred-mile trip until I found him. It was a false clue again, and I went back to the village only in time to hear about the calamity.
I found that the whole village was in mourning, and the teepee of Three Buck Elk was under a deep cloud. This was what had happened. A war party of about three hundred and fifty braves had been picked up here and there under the leadership of Little Buffalo, a Brule chief, and had ridden off to find the Pawnees. After they were gone, taking some of Standing Bear’s men along with them, Sitting Wolf sneaked away and joined them two days out. He was only a shade over fourteen at the time, but he was tall and strong, and he not only had a rifle, but he knew how to use it better than anyone in the tribe except Morris and myself. I had seen to his teaching. He was accepted into the war party as a token of good luck, and they rambled on until they reached a Pawnee town, just a small place. It was big enough, however, to make a satisfactory massacre. They drenched that place in blood, without taking a single captive. Young and old were put to the knife, and they started back with a harvest of scalps when they stumbled across Bald Eagle. He had swooped at them out of a clear sky - like his namesake. He beat them in a fair fight and then rounded them up on top of a hill. There he sat down and waited for thirst to beat them. They had no water, though there was a stream in full sight. They went through the agony for a day, then they began to make rushes for water, and every rush cluttered the hillside with dead bodies until all were gone except Sitting Wolf and one other brave. They both were then captured, being too weak to help themselves. The brave was sent back to tell the story of what the Pawnees had done to his people. Sitting Wolf was taken prisoner by Bald Eagle’s party.
The brave who lived to tell the story to the tribe was the one who told it to me. I went mad for a time. I caught him by the throat and nearly throttled him. Then I went raging into Three Buck Elk’s teepee, where the chief sat with his head in his hands.
“Is the father of Sitting Wolf a dog?” I yelled at him. “Does he sit and whine while his son is carried away to be tortured by Pawnee devils?”
Then I rushed out and mounted my best horse. I remember that Zintcallasappa ran to me while I was saddling. My fingers were fumbling with the straps, and I was half blind, for every moment I was seeing Sitting Wolf lashed to a tree while cruel fiends stood around him, thrusting burning splinters into his flesh. She took hold of my hands.
“Oh, my brother, Black Bear,” she said, “they will not harm Sitting Wolf. He is only a boy, and Bald Eagle does not strike children. But, if you leave me, there will be sadness in my teepee.”
I was so much surprised that I forgot my own sorrow for a moment. I asked her what she meant, and she said in that simple way of hers that was always so touching: “Half the heart of Rising Sun is still with his own people. A little is with me … and the rest is with you, my brother. If you leave us, I cannot keep him.”
“I shall come again,” I told her.
She shook her head. “You are going to do some terrible and great thing,” she said. “When a white man turns pale, it is because he is very frightened or very angry. And you are never afraid, Black Bear. If you go, you will not help Sitting Wolf, but it will make my teepee empty, my brother.”
I took her under the chin and tipped up her face. “Look at me. Now tell me the truth with one tongue. Does Rising Sun seem unhappy?”
Those dark, soft eyes of hers were swimming with tears. “I cannot tell,” she said, “but I am always afraid.. .1 am always afraid.”
Her trouble seemed such a tiny thing compared with mine at that moment I smiled at her and patted her cheek. “You are only a child, Zintcallasappa,” I said, and then I was in the saddle and away. What a fool - and what a young fool - I was, and how deep and clear she had looked into her future.
IN THE CAMP OF THE PAWNEES
After I had started on the way, I wished that I had taken Chuck Morris along with me. But, when I thought of Zintcallasappa, I knew that I had no right to take him into such danger as that toward which I was now going. I had two horses with me, riding one and leading the other, and each day I changed horses. In this way I made excellent time, but, even with that change of mounts, my eagerness was such that I wore both horses to rags before I got to the enemy’s land. I myself had only the vaguest idea where that boundary might be, but one afternoon I was told by a bullet that whistled past my ear.
I used one of the oldest ruses in the world, which Standing Bear himself had taught me and which he said had given him four scalps - the old rascal. The instant I heard the sing of that bullet - and before even the report of the gun, like a great handclap, came to me - I tumbled off my horse and lay like one dead, except that for a dead man I had my rifle astonishingly handy. Another bullet cut the grass at my head. Then I saw the scoundrel coming toward me, and I knew at once that he was a Pawnee hunter. He came at the full speed of his horse, leaning forward, with his rifle slung once more. When that second bullet didn’t make me stir, he was confident that his first shot had gone through my head. Now he was bent on the scalp. I waited until he was thirty yards away. Then I rolled onto my knee and tucked the butt of my rifle into the hollow of my shoulder. He made a futile grab at his own gun, then he seemed to realize all at once that it was too late. He threw out his hands with a howl of despair and brought his horse to a stop almost on top of me.
I said: “Brother, you shoot well, but your rifle is not good. It carries to the left.”
He grunted and then folded his arms. I could not make this fellow out. He had the look and the manner of a real warrior. He sat on his horse and looked down at me with a perfect calm. The manner of a man surrounded by the most hopeless odds.
“The Great Spirit,” he said, “has charmed the rifle of Black Bear so that he cannot help but kill. But you shall not wear the scalp of Two Feather long. Bald Eagle shall stoop and strike you down.”
I was twenty years old, and at that age flattery has a sharp tooth. I was tickled to the core to find that I was so well known to these fellows. So much nonsense had gone abroad about my marksmanship that, I suppose, Two Feather decided it was useless to try to fight once I had the drop on him. I grounded my rifle but kept my hand near the butt of my revolver. He saw the position of that hand and attempted nothing.
“Friend,” I said, “I have done you no harm. Why do you wish to kill me?”
“The scalp of Black Bear would make the hearts of the Pawnees glad, and even Bald Eagle would smile.”
“Could you know me at that distance?” I asked him.
“The eye of Two Feather is not the eye of an old woman.”
Another thought came to me. “What scalps,” I asked, “dry in your lodge?”
Even in the face of an enemy he could not help boasting.
“Three scalps of the Dakotas hang in the teepee of Two Feather, so that his sons may see them and their hearts grow as strong as the heart of Two Feather.”
I began to gather that this fellow was a man of some mark among his people. He was an ugly villain. A knife scar crossed his face and gave one eye a continual squint and an odd, knowing look. I could believe that he had taken two scalps, or even twenty, for that matter.
“How far is it,” I said, “to your people?”
Not a muscle of his face stirred. Plainly he did not intend to betray his tribe, and a little warmth of admiration came over me. Here was a man, whether his skin were red or white.