“Hau!” said the other cheerfully, and speaking the Indian tongue well enough. “Men tell me that you are Standing Bull, the chief of the Cheyennes?”
Standing Bull wanted nothing so little as to be recognized. He maintained a grim silence and looked the other in the eye.
The white man continued: “We have heard of you. The Dakotas have been here. They had something to say of you and your big medicine.”
Here the boy interrupted: “Hey, you! Are you gonna try to swipe these half-wits out of our booth? Back up, will you, and let us finish our trade with them, or else we’ll . . .”
His employer silenced him with a back-handed cuff that sent the youngster staggering. “It’s Roger Lincoln, you little fool,” he said, and added: “Glad to see you, Mister Lincoln.”
Now at that name there was a little stir among the Cheyennes. In fact, it was known from the Dakotas to the Kiowas and Comanches, over the length and breadth of the plains. They moved back a little, partly as though they did not know what to expect, and partly as if they wanted a better chance to examine and admire the white man. They found him perfect in his appointments, from his hat to his beaded moccasins. Except for the whiteness of his skin—and that was weather-browned enough—he might have stepped into the ranks of any Indian tribe of the plains, a chief, or the favored son of some rich brave.
“I have a house close by,” said Roger Lincoln. “I do not wish to make a trade with a friend. I wish to talk to you about better things than buffalo robes. Will you come?”
He added to the trader a brief sentence, promising that he would not barter for a single one of the robes or any other possession of the Cheyennes. The trader, biting his lip, nodded, and watched in silence while the troop filed off at the heels of Lincoln.
The latter took the Indians to his own trading booth a short distance away, and there he seated them in a circle in his room and offered them tea, sweetened with heaps of sugar. With loud smackings, the red men tasted it, rolled their eyes, and poured down the scalding hot tea. They held out their cups for another service, and again the cups were filled brimming. A pipe was passed. Good humor began to possess Standing Bull, greater than the doubt and suspicion in which he had stood when the white man first greeted them. He waited for the meaning of this to be expounded, and presently the meaning was made clear.
“Now, my friend,” said Roger Lincoln, “look around you at everything. You see rifles here and pistols there. Here are some barrels of powder. There is lead for making bullets. There are some bullet molds. Here are some knives. See them. Take this one for a present and feel its edge. Also, there are saddles and bridles. Here you see the clothes. There is enough red cloth to put a headband around the head of every Cheyenne . . . man, and woman, and child. There are beads in these boxes. And here is a little chest stored with all sorts of wonderful things. Back in this corner you can see the hatchets and the axes.”
The nostrils of Standing Bull fanned out and quickly contracted as he drew in an envious breath. “The white men,” he said, “are rich. The Indians are very poor.”
“Nevertheless,” said Roger Lincoln quickly, “they are men, and a man is worth more than you can put on his back or into his hands.”
Standing Bull smiled, touched with pleasure almost in spite of himself. “Perhaps it is true,” he agreed.
“Have you looked at all these things?” asked Lincoln.
“I have seen them very well.”
“But look at them again. Examine them. Feel them with your hands. Try the weight of this axe. You see that it has a tooth that will never grow dull, and that hatchet was made to sink into the brainpan of a Dakota.”
Standing Bull sighed with a great delight.
“Here, also, are buttons brighter than silver to put along the edges of your trousers. Here are some coils of rope, and look at these iron tent pegs. You know how they are used? And here is an iron-headed hammer that never will break.”
The Indians followed every word with intense pleasure and interest.
“Come back with me,” went on Roger Lincoln. He led the way out of the shack and in the rear a large corral opened. In it were fifty or sixty horses to which an attendant was forking out well-cured hay. “You have the eye which sees horses,” said Roger Lincoln. “When you look at these, you will see that they are not like the other horses of the plains. They are taller. Their legs are longer and stronger. They are crossbred. They are not soft like other horses of white men. They are bred out of plains ponies by fine stallions. Mounted on such horses as these, Standing Bull, you would sweep away from an enemy. You could strike and fly off again out of danger like a hawk playing with a buzzard.”
The Cheyennes devoured those horses with greedy looks. It was true that they understood horseflesh perfectly, and now they proved it by the red-eyed silence in which they observed these animals.
After this, Roger Lincoln went on slowly and impressively: “I am not a rich man, my friends. I have worked many years, and what you have just seen is what I have saved. I have paid for these things with blood, you may be sure. I had hoped that with them I could trade and make more money. At last I could go back among my people and sit quietly in a pleasant lodge by the side of a stream, with trees around me, and take a squaw, and raise many children.
“But dearer than peace and happiness are the life and the happiness of a friend. Do you hear me, Standing Bull? You have in your lodges a man with a white skin, and you call him White Thunder. Is it true?” He said the words as one who puts a statement in question form for the sake of politeness. The Cheyenne leader stiffened a little. His keen eyes turned gravely upon the other, and he said nothing.
“For that man,” said Roger Lincoln, “if you will bring him in safety to Fort Kendry, I will pay you everything that your eyes have seen. If you find anything more, you are welcome. I will give you also even the house in which you find all these things and everything down to the ground on which it stands. I have promised. No man has heard me say the thing that is not so.”
This speech made a vast impression upon the Cheyennes. They drew back a little, murmuring, and among the companions of Standing Bull there was only one opinion. Such a princely offer of dazzling wealth should be accepted at once. Never had they seen such riches heaped together. The whole tribe would be rejoiced.
Standing Bull simply replied: “He is not ours to sell. The Sky People sent him to us, and, if we let him go, they will send us bad luck. Besides, High Wolf never would sell him. And who but a fool, after all, would give up a power that can turn the bullets of the Dakotas as if they were pebbles thrown by children? Do not talk foolishness any more. Besides, Roger Lincoln is a wise man. Would he pay such things except for a man who is worth twice as much? If White Thunder is worth so much to the whites, he is worth ten times more to us!”
He turned to the big, white man and shook his head solemnly. “Our eyes have not seen White Thunder,” he said. “We do not know about what you are speaking.”
XI
Those men who early went to the Western frontier were, almost without exception, children. Great-shouldered, hard-handed, often hard-hearted children, but, nevertheless, children they were. Nothing but childish reasoning could have induced them to leave the cities and the comfortable lands east of the Mississippi for all the chances, the labor, the dangers of the prairie, except that in their heart of hearts they loved a game more than they loved anything else.
So it was with Roger Lincoln. Well-born, well-educated, calm-minded, brave as steel and as keen, he could have had the world at his feet, if he had chosen to live among the civilized. But rather than his knowledge of books he preferred to use his knowledge of the wilderness. Rather than his knowledge of civilized society he preferred to use his knowledge of the barbarians. A fine horse was more to him than a learned companion, and a good rifle better than a rich inheritance.