Grawson, thought Chance, he’s saving me for himself.
The address to which the information was to be sent was an office number in a government building in Washington, D. C.
Why doesn’t it just say Lester Grawson, Chance asked himself.
Chance clenched his fists, wadding the handbill in his right hand.
He was damn sure he was not wanted for murder, and if he was, there was no thousand-dollar reward. That was a fantastic sum of money-for anything-let alone for information.
There would be no reward.
Grawson might say so, but the reward would never be forthcoming, never. Still its promise might get him for Grawson. The promise would be sufficient. Chance could bitterly imagine the meaningless check drawn on the State of South Carolina which Grawson might, taking his prisoner into custody, bestow on some duped, grinning homesteader or bounty hunter, a custody that would end probably with a bullet in the back of Chance’s head.
The resources of the law belong to Grawson, thought Chance, infuriated. Grawson, with his badge, his credentials, his forged warrant for arrest.
Even the handbill might have been, on Grawson’s authority, printed in Washington and forwarded through standard channels. Chance wondered if anyone would have bothered to check on the matter. Why should they, he asked himself. Grawson has the official papers. Who would expect that Grawson, with his badge, his credentials, his warrant, his letters, was not employed in the work of the law but serving the ends of his personal vendetta?
He’s a killer, thought Chance, and good people will bless his guns.
Chance considered surrendering himself to the authorities, informing them of Grawson’s pursuit, but that would mean involvement at Standing Rock, trouble with the army in the Totter shooting, and at best the law could only tell him that Grawson must first attack, and then they would have a case, in short, that they were helpless until, in effect, Grawson caught and killed him.
So Chance would run again.
“I was told more by Sitting Bull,” said Running Horse.
“What?” asked Chance.
“Today a policeman from the land of the Great White Father, at the end of the wires and rails, came to Standing Rock.”
“Grawson?” asked Chance.
“I do not know,” said Running Horse, “but he is looking for you.”
Chance’s heart stopped.
“How?” asked Chance. “How?”
“I do not know,” said Running Horse.
Chance tried to think, clearly. The handbill, the fight in Good Promise, the army, the authorities.
“I think,” said Running Horse, “that at the agency it is known a white man who heals is staying at the lodges of the Hunkpapa.”
Chance nodded. Word of his being on the reservation might have drifted back to the agency, perhaps from talk of women at the ration points.
He had done what he could in the weeks with Running Horse to practice his craft, examining the sick, setting bones, treating sores, trying to get the Indians, if nothing else, to boil water and wash bandages. A number of Indians, learning of his presence, had made the trip to Running Horse’s cabin to profit from his skills, some from as far away as forty miles. Yes, Chance said to himself, the word that a white doctor was on the reservation might well have made the rounds, and in this circuit might easily have been picked up by the Indian Police, who would then as a matter of course have reported it to the agent. Probably no one had been out to investigate already simply because of the Ghost Dancing. The entire reservation was a powder keg and the authorities were not eager to risk setting it off. The agent, or the army at Fort Yates, or even the sheriff in tiny Good Promise, might have put these things together, and sent the telegrams eastward.
Chance had little doubt that the sum of it was that Grawson was at Standing Rock, and would be looking for him. Grawson-whom he had left so far behind.
“Do you want me to kill him when he comes?” asked Running Horse.
“No,” said Chance, “no.”
“Then you will kill him,” said Running Horse, taking a puff on his pipe.
“No,” said Chance, “no.”
Running Horse put-down the pipe. “Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” said Chance. “I did once-I killed a man-I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
The next morning, before dawn, Chance saddled the sorrel and mounted, intent on a quiet departure from the Standing Rock Reservation.
“Do not forget,” said Running Horse, who watched him preparing to go, “you are my Brother and one of the Hunkpapa.”
Chance smiled, remembering the knife in the grove of cottonwoods.
“I will not forget,” he said, “my Brother.”
In the saddle, Chance turned and unbuckled one of the saddlebags, drew out the briar pipe he had smoked with Running Horse in the cottonwoods, and handed it to him.
“I am grateful to my Brother,” he said.
Running Horse accepted the pipe, simply. “Wait,” he said.
Chance watched as the young Indian went back into the cabin and returned, carrying his own pipe, the beaded, long-stemmed, fragile clay pipe with the high bowl.
“No,” said Chance.
Running Horse handed the pipe to Chance.
Chance, sensing he must take it, did so.
Carefully Chance tied the pipe across the blanket roll behind his saddle.
Then he lifted the reins, pulled the sorrel’s head west and touched his boots to the horse’s flanks.
As he rode from the cabin he turned in the saddle and lifted his hand in farewell to Running Horse, who also raised his hand, the palm open and facing Chance.
The physician from New York rode alone down the street between cabins.
He was running again.
Chance looked around him, at the squatty cabins and the scattered tepees in the background. This morning, in the quiet, he could hear the Grand River slushing between its banks.
A dog barked in the distance, and Chance, turning, saw to his surprise five mounted Indians, young men all of them, leaving the camp and riding gently into the back prairie. They carried rifles. Among their number was Drum, whom Chance recalled had once fought Running Horse before the cabin of Sitting Bull. He dismissed them from his mind, and rode on.
Then Chance reined up.
Standing near the door of a cabin, under the eaves, he saw a girl, a lovely Sioux girl in blue calico, who lifted her hand as though she might speak to him. Her eyes, for some reason, seemed frightened.
He walked the horse to the side of the cabin.
She looked up at him, and then her eyes fell as though she could not speak.
Chance made to move the horse away but her small brown hands held the horse’s mane.
“What do you want?” asked Chance.
“Sing your death song, White Man,” she said, not lifting her eyes.
Chance did not understand.
The death song was sung by warriors who go into battle.
“I am not on the warpath,” he said, smiling at her.
“Sing your death song,” she said, and loosed her grip on the horse’s mane, and turned and ran into the cabin.
“Wait!” called Chance.
The cabin door shut, and Chance could hear the wooden latch snap into place. The door could not be opened from the outside unless the latch string were, from the inside, thrust through the tiny latch hole in the wood.
Chance puzzled for a time and then pulled his horse to the center of the street between the cabins and continued his journey.