Old Lodge Skins set within the red blanket, the white plumes on the ends of his two feathers blowing in the soft wind. The two fat girls was still as mounds of earth, nor among the pack of dogs did one cur so much as show a tongue; they was also Cheyenne.
That scout moved forward, placing each dainty hoof as if it was a separate decision, his white neck-bands puffed out like a collar of shirring. Along the crest behind him appeared a margin of little horns, followed at length by little tan heads, staring our way. The forward horsemen gained the rise and went over, the funnel they made ever widening, with its neck pointing to Old Lodge Skins sitting way back here in the crescent of his tribe. There was only enough riders to indicate the lines of flank, with full space between each Indian to let through a nation of antelope, but these beasts, being charmed, had no mind to escape.
Down the slope trotted that sentry; behind him the horizon was full of animals, with more crowding over. He came a hundred yards on, and still there was no end to the massing herd, forming the shape of a huge arrowhead back of his lead, aimed at Old Lodge Skins. Cheyenne and animals were harmonizing in a grand rhythm, for which the old chief beat time. I guess the gods was supposed to have writ the music. If you don’t like that aspect of the affair, then you’ll have a job explaining why maybe a thousand antelope run towards ruin; and also how Old Lodge Skins could know this herd would be in this place, for no animal had showed a hair before he sat down on the prairie.
The lead riders, with the staffs and wheels, having reached the end of the herd out there and crossed behind it, changing sides one to the other, galloped back to Old Lodge Skins and gave him the medicine devices. There was now a magic line tied round the antelope, and with a wand in each hand, the chief began to draw it in.
He flang up his arms, and the whole vasty herd began to run, its head some seventy yards out, its tail just coming over the rise. A good three hundred yards of prairie was jammed with animals, haunch to haunch; with the width of the mass at the rear covering about the same measure east to west: an enormous heaving wedge of pure antelope. We people now stirred, extending the crescent horns, rounding out the base of the V into a U, and the beasts came towards a living corral of which the walls was Cheyenne-men, women, children-made solid by their outspread blankets and the dogs between their legs.
Half along the left arm of it, I tried to cock an eye on that first sentry, but he was gone in the rush as faster animals overtook him, and soon all particularity was lost in the churning of numberless legs and clouding dust. The chief waved his wheels as the leaders reached the entrapment, and they diverted left, but there met the Cheyenne fence; then to the right with similar dismay. He crossed the wands twice, and the eyes of the foremost beast followed suit, nose snorting, and it locked hoofs and went to its knees, forming a hurdle for those hard behind, which they failed to negotiate.
This pile-up happened right before me, and from there on it was sheer panic as beast clumb upon beast and butted each other’s brains out, goring one another’s bellies, and some just plain trampled into the earth. We closed in then, and the horsemen completed the great circle, everybody with a club or hatchet or maybe merely a big stone, but no kind of projectile for this tight work. I’d say it took a good hour to beat every last antelope to death though we was swinging incessantly, and a number of animals died of their own efforts.
At no time did Old Lodge Skins put down his wands, but rather kept on gesticulating till no beast lived to see them; that was his duty and obligation, and he took no part in the killing. So far as I went, I had not the strength at that age to do much damage even to such a fragile animal, but joined my efforts to the general mob, pounding a rock at tan hide wherever an opening showed. I might have struck Younger Bear once or twice in the confusion, for he was very near me. That boy tried to break an antelope’s neck with his bare hands, like some of the stronger men could, by twisting its horns. He couldn’t manage it, and finally had to sink his hatchet between the ears, and its starting eyes welled with blood from the inside and its tongue retched forth and it died.
CHAPTER 5 My Education as a Human Being
YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED that Old Lodge Skins started out as a buffoon in this narrative. Let me say that was true only around white men. Among the Cheyenne he was a sort of genius. It was him who taught me everything I learned as a boy that wasn’t physical like riding or shooting. The way he done this was by means of stories. I reckon he told me and the other children many a hundred such tales, and sometimes the grownups would listen too, for he was held to be a wise old Indian and wouldn’t have lived to his ripe age had he not been.
I’m going to tell you two of his tales. One of them saved my life when I went on my first horse-stealing raid. The other, which he spoke at a council-meeting with some Sioux, will give you a better idea of the difference between red men and whites than anything else short of having lived as both, like me.
Several snows had fell and melted since I joined the Cheyenne, and I must have been going on thirteen years of age. We boys was playing war one day and Younger Bear, growing taller by the month, shot a blunt-head arrow with such force that when it struck a lad called Red Dog in the forehead he was knocked cold. I believe it had been aimed at me, but I was ever a shifting target. Old Lodge Skins happened along at the moment in the company of an Indian by the name of Two Babies, who was naked and painted black from head to toe and going out to take an enemy scalp in accord with some vow.
Two Babies just walked by in a kind of trance; but when Old Lodge Skins saw Red Dog laying unconscious, he leaned over him and said: “Come on and eat!” The lad woke up instantly, and the chief sent him over to Buffalo Wallow Woman for a meal, which will cure an Indian of almost anything.
Then Skins said to Younger Bear: “It is a brave warrior who tries to kill his friends.” And the Bear was full of shame.
Old Lodge Skins spread his blanket on the ground, and we all sat around him. His braids was wrapped in weasel fur, and he wore a sort of little scarf ornamented with the old-time beads that dated from before the whites come with their glass jewelry: these was fashioned from the purple section of the ocean shell, and since the Cheyenne lived in the middle of the country, they must have reached the chief by a long history of trading, starting maybe a century or so back when some coastal savage in Oregon or Massachusetts cracked open a clam, sucked down the rubbery meat, and fell with his stone drill to fashion something cunning from the shell.
The chief said: “I’m going to tell you about a warrior who loved his friends. This happened many snows ago, when I was a young man. In those days you seldom saw a gun among us, because we did very little trading with the white men and of course other Indians would keep what firearms they could get hold of. We didn’t even have many iron arrowheads, and in battle we would ride up close to the enemy, hoping to get shot by his arrows so as to get some of those iron points.”
He laughed heartily, and pulled up his legging to show his right calf and its mass of ancient punctures.
“There wasn’t any other way to get them at the time. For horses, we would generally go south to the land of the Snake People, for they are great riders and have the best ponies. It is said the reason for this is that they mate with horses, but I have never seen this with my own eyes.” The Comanche is who he was talking about, the world’s finest riders, excelling other Indians; and whether or not they coupled with mares, I know for a fact they mounted their own women stallion-style, from behind, neighing and snorting; they was all horse-crazy.