“My father is white as I am white. I have hunted for him, and I have not found him. But somewhere between the East and West he lives on the prairies. Of that I am sure. And in some way he shall learn of my death, and then Bald Eagle shall die. Let every day now be a happy day, Bald Eagle, for it may be your last! He is coming. He shall take you in his hand and break you as I break this stalk of dead grass.”
At this he strode to me and leaned. I felt the blow was coming and made my glance steel to meet his eye. He put his great hard hand beneath my chin and raised my face. The words he spoke were the purest English.
“Have you a father, boy?” he asked.
“I have.”
“Tell me his name,” he commanded.
“I shall tell you,” I said, “so that you may know when he is coming. For when he comes, ten thousand Pawnees and the speed of White Smoke cannot save you from him. His name is Dorset.”
I felt the grip of his great hand grow sterner while he scowled down into my face. As I watched his face and as I remembered his last words, I was now finally convinced that my first suspicion had been right. This man was white.
He released me and stepped back. “Are you that man’s son?”
“Yes. In the name of God, Bald Eagle, do you know him? Then, when he faces you, tell him before you die that his son….”
He raised his hand to silence me. “That man,” he said, “is dead!” And he spoke with a certain solemnity that made me feel this was the truth, indeed. It seemed to me then it was time for me to die in turn since he was gone before me, and so the last Dorset should pass from the face of the world.
I simply said: “I am also ready to die.”
“Young man,” he said, “you are safe from my hand. I have killed the father. I cannot also kill the son.”
“If I live, I shall find you. And, when I find you the second time, you will die. If you love life, man, put an end to me while you can.”
“I do not love life,” he said. “If I meet you again, I shall crush you again, as I have crushed you today. But, as for your father, boy, he was unworthy to live.”
“That is a lie and a black one!” I cried.
He asked me with a sort of wonder: “Did you love him? A murderer?”
“I know you now,” I said. “You are one of the Connells, and you have followed him from Virginia like a ferret. You followed him, found him, and shot him in the back, because no one Connell ever dared to meet him face to face. Murderer? You know, as I know, that he fought with six men fairly and killed three in open fight. Is that murder? No, by the heavens, and I love him three times more for the three men he killed.”
It seemed to me that his breast rose high and fell as he heard me say it. He turned sharply away and walked up and down for a moment. Then he came back to me and stood, scowling down upon me.
“You know his life, then?” he said.
“I know that he broke from prison and came West.”
“Do you know the things that he has done since he left prison? Boy, boy, I tell you that his hands were redder with blood than mine.”
“They drove him like a hunted wolf. If he turned on them, it was his nature and his right.”
He shook his head.
“You damnable hypocrite!” I shouted at him. “You with your Pawnee throat-cutters to talk of murder… you with your white skin under that cursed painted face!”
He merely smiled down at me in ineffable contempt.
I cried at him: “I tell you, he was worthy of coming back among men and living as honestly and as freely as any man who ever drew breath!”
He shook his head again, talking down to me from a sort of calm height. “His own crimes drove him out,” he said.
Then he turned his back upon me and set about kindling a small fire. I tried to draw him out. I begged him to tell me when and where my father had died. I begged him to tell me how the death fight came to be. I entreated him for his name. But, though I raved at him, cursed him, and swore to have his blood if I lived, he answered not a word until the brush was gathered and the fire rose high. Then he came and stood behind me where I sat, bound and helpless on the ground.
I felt the shadow of his raised hand behind me, and I hardened myself to meet the final blow. But instead of the death stroke, I felt his voice, deep, and strong - and now that his painted face was turned away from me, it seemed to me that there was a familiar sound in it, something I had heard before, as if in a dream.
“Child,” he said, “go back among your own people. Be one among them. Your father is dead. If there was good in him, I tell you this from my heart… I should have known it, because I knew him as no other could have known him. But he was black, black! He deserved to die. And I have killed him. You will never know how he died, except that it was for his sins. You will never know where he fell, except that his bones are on the prairie. As for me, you will never see my face again.”
I heard him through a daze for, as the deep, powerful voice swelled around me, there was such a note of agony in it that it went to my heart and opened the shut doors of my brain to the truth. Yet, what I saw was so blinding and great a light that I was choked by it. I was mute while I saw him turn away westward over the prairie into the dusk of the day, for the sun had set some time before. I saw him go, his huge shoulders swinging with his stride, until he became a dwindling form.
Then my voice came back to me. I shouted: “Come back! For the sake of God and my sake, Father, come back!” He turned as though a bullet had struck him, and I cried: “We will go together, if we must. But not you alone.”
At that I saw him throw out his arms toward me, but it seemed as though the gathering darkness behind him had a power that drew him irresistibly away. He turned, rushed down a dip in the prairie, and was lost to me.
In a frenzy I worked my way to the fire. The flames burned the wrists I held into them as they burned the ropes that bound them until at last, after a long agony, the strands parted with a snap.
White Smoke had drawn near me and was touching my shoulder with an inquisitive muzzle. With the smoke of my own burned flesh thick in my nostrils I turned to him and snatched a revolver from the saddle holster and with it blew in two the rope that fastened my feet. Then I was in the saddle and plunging through the night after him.
BACK AMONG THE SIOUX
I rode like a madman, bending low from the saddle, searching the plains with my eyes. In five minutes I reached a river whose smooth surface was speckled with the silver of the stars. Up the bank I raced, then turned, and fled down it. On the farther side were low, jumbled rocks in which he could hide from me, if he wished, or where his trail would disappear. I swam White Smoke across the stream, and all that night I kept the horse wandering, to and fro. In the dawn I saw a saddled and bridled horse, feeding on the prairie not far from the stretch of rocks, a refugee from the battlefield. My heart sank, for perhaps my father had found another and ridden west upon its back.
I cut for his trail. There were tracks of other horses - yes, and some of them led westward. Which should I follow? I took them one by one that day, and the next, and the next, following each until it ended by swerving east again, a direction in which I was sure he would not go. At last I found one that went west, indeed, and that I followed with a heart hot with hope - except that priceless days had now passed.
It ended, at last, in a herd of wild horses. Still I would not surrender. Those bitter long weeks that followed were an endless torment, a ceaseless agony, until finally I knew that I was beaten. Perhaps he had chosen death in the river, for all I knew. I felt that his ways could never be fathomed by me. So I turned back wearily to find the Sioux.