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  “Friend?”

  “Friend,” said Young River, and he translated the term into the only meaning that he could understand. “Friend good enough to give you teepee and squaw and horses and rifle. Very big friend to you now.”

  “Ah, he bet on the mare?”

  “He bet. He make all the other Cheyennes bet. That was Little Bull. You better go talk.”

  Tarlton, willing enough, followed his guide through the green meadows where the crowd was beginning to break up, forming in little groups, here and there, to talk over the events of the day. Those who remained were chiefly the losing Blackfeet and the Crows. As for the Cheyennes, they had made off with their loot to their teepees. Those who had not looked after Tarlton with no very friendly eyes.

  At this moment, a raw-boned trader, dressed more like an Indian than a white man and mounted on a long-maned Indian pony, into whose hair shells and beads were braided, called to Tarlton and pointed to the side.

  “There comes your man to talk turkey,” he said.

  Tarlton, turning, saw that the defeated champion was coming slowly toward him. He rode a fine pony and led behind him the strange-looking beast that had run so brilliantly that day. The face of this Crow warrior was as blankly indifferent to those around him as though its features had been cut of stone. On the back of the pony appeared the rifle, and all the other accoutrements of which the bet consisted.

  Tarlton checked his horse, and the trader turned in his pony to see the payment of the debt. Instantly a curious little group was formed.

  Said the trader, as the Crow wound his way among the groups of people: “Here’s the only touch of luck that I’ve had since I left Saint Louis, this trip. I liked the look of your horse, stranger, and I got down a couple of bets on her. This pony is one of ’em. This robe is another.” He lifted a beautiful, painted robe from behind the cantle of his saddle. “One day a month like this would keep me pretty. You’ve brought me that luck, stranger. Tarlton is your name, I hear, and they call me Sam Quigley.”

  Tarlton shook the hard, lean hand.

  “When I come out from Saint Louis,” said Quigley, grown talkative, “I left my luck behind me. Agent died, and his son made up my packs . . . not the way I’d ordered ’em, but the way he thought they’d oughta be. Sent out a lot of canvas. Now, why in heaven’s name canvas for plains Indians, I ask? Sent me toys, too, that kids might like, but that even an Indian can see ain’t worth a trick. Sent me a box of phosphorus. Why phosphorus? What trick can I do with that stuff? Sent me some fancy shotguns, too. They don’t shoot ducks; they shoot buffalo, out here . . . and some of them buffalo they hunt has only got two legs, and I half wish that fool of an agent was one of the herd.”

  This outburst came in a quiet, careless drawl. There was much heat in the words, but none whatever in the voice that pronounced them, and the big man looked almost sleepy as he concluded.

  In the meantime, up came the Crow champion, and he held out the lead rope of rawhide to Tarlton. He said, “Sometimes a long jump will win a race, friend, and it is a good trick. It gets many horses.”

  He was about to turn away, when Tarlton called after him. “Friend,” said the boy, looking uncertainly at the horse, “what a man cannot eat, he ought not to kill.”

  “That is true,” said the Crow gloomily, gathering his brows as he waited and wondered at what might come.

  “These long rifles,” said Tarlton, “I never have learned to use. I already have a powder horn and a pouch for bullets. Your saddle, you see, is not what I am used to riding on. Why should I take things that I cannot use? And as for the horse, it would be wrong for me to take a good horse from a famous chief and warrior, who knows so well how to ride him. It was not the horse or the rider that was beaten, but luck and a trick sometimes will win, my friend.”

  Downright embarrassment in not knowing what to do with this winning had really dictated the answer that Tarlton made, and the Crow looked at him in bewilderment. His lips parted to make a sharp answer, such as his pride dictated to him. For he had come more prepared for battle than for friendship, and the heart of the Crow was burning in him when he remembered all the triumphs that his pony had won among his own people and over the fastest horses of the plains.

  Here, in a single stroke, his fortune was restored to him. He stared at Tarlton, and then he was able to see—for an Indian is as acutely sensitive as a child—that there was no scorn or contempt in the face of the white man.

  Then the eyes of Rising Bird widened a little. He grunted something in his Crow tongue that Tarlton did not understand, but he knew, as most Indians did by this time, that the white man’s greeting was a grip of the hands. So he stretched out his own. Like a vise of iron, those powerful fingers closed over the hand of Tarlton. But he who has held straining hunters balanced across weary miles of hunting fields has a grip second to none, and the grip of the white man steadily met that crushing pressure.

  Pleasure and surprise gleamed in the eyes of the sturdy warrior. He grunted again, and, turning without another word, he took his way back among the people. They stared after him, amazed that he should depart with the articles of the wager.

  “What did he say?” asked Tarlton. “I didn’t understand that last woof-woof.”

  “I know the Crow lingo,” said long Sam Quigley. “He means that his teepee is your teepee and his horses are all your horses, because Rising Bird is a friend.”

  Tarlton went on with Young River, and the half-breed eyed his companion with the keenest attention.

  “What trade you make out of that?” he asked.

  “What trade do you mean?” said Tarlton.

  “Where any profit?” asked Young River.

  “Oh, out of that?” said Tarlton. He squinted at the sky. “I’ll tell you what, Young River,” he said. “I like to gamble as well as the next fellow, but I don’t like to collect by a trick.”

  “Trick?” questioned Young River. “Wouldn’t Rising Bird jump his pony across the ditch if he could?”

  “He never would have raced that course if he’d known that the ditch could be jumped,” said Tarlton. “As a matter of fact, what I did was to win the race by running inside of the flags that were set up to mark the course, and really, it was hard luck for that fellow that I should get the money. Besides, he rode hard, and he rode well, and he should have had the pleasure of beating three horses instead of two.”

  Young River looked at him, for the moment, not as a hard-headed Indian, but as a wondering Negro. For, from time to time, one never could tell which part of his mixed blood would come the nearest to the surface. But at last he said: “I not understand.”

  “Why not?”

  “You come here to make money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you play dice on the way and lose three parts in four. You pay. You not say no. Now come better luck. You win. You give back everything. You tell Young River why?”

  Tarlton looked down into the wondering, puzzled face of the half-breed and shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.

  “We got plenty time,” said Young River.

  “Oh, no,” said Tarlton. “It would take twenty or thirty generations to make you see the point.”

  IX

  They came to the river’s edge and found a considerable sprinkling of people up and down the watercourse. Topping the highest slope was the Blackfoot encampment, which covered much more ground than those of the two other tribes. To the left lay the Crows. To the right were the Cheyennes, and toward the tall teepees of that tribe, the half-breed was now leading the way.

  Meany was seen to the left, having an ardent discussion with two chiefs of the Blackfeet. He even had crossed the river.

  Sam Quigley pointed out: “That’s a fool move for an old head like Meany. He oughta know better than that, now that the Piegans are worked up about that horse race.”

  He turned his newly won pony and straightway pushed across the stream to give his support to the owner of the
fort.

  Young River said: “Pretty easy to see where other man is fool . . . also pretty easy step in same place.” And he jerked his thumb toward Quigley as the latter rode off.

  “You mean to say that the Piegans might tackle those two men?” asked Tarlton.

  “Why not?” Young River said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “Two men, many coups, two scalps. Why not? There is always room on the coup stick to count more deeds.”

  “I think that you’d like a few white scalps yourself,” said Tarlton.

  “No, no,” answered the half-breed. “I like to eat every day in the year. So I stay white.”

  Young River never placed his ideas upon a lofty basis; he was a pure materialist—so pure a materialist that the ideal rarely entered his mind at all.

  “Does it look fair to you,” asked Tarlton, who loved to draw out the brute mind of Young River, “that two men should be jumped by a whole crowd? If there’s any danger of that, I’ll ride over and give them a hand.”

  “No, no,” repeated Young River. “You make more trouble by going. Nobody see one man . . . maybe see two . . . whole people see three.”

  This seemed logical. The Blackfeet would have even less hesitation in attacking three men than they would in tackling one or two. There would be so much more to gain by striking the first blow, if there was any sort of trouble.

  “They’re honorable people,” persisted Tarlton to himself. “They won’t hit out at helpless men.”

  “One coup is one coup,” persisted this businessman of the plains.

  “Where is the honor,” asked Tarlton, “if a coup is counted? It’s in the danger that a man has faced that he gets honor, eh?”

  Young River smiled and shook his head. “You look buffalo wolf.”

  “Well?”

  “Is he wise?”

  “I suppose he is.”

  “Does he charge at grizzly?”

  “Naturally not.”

  “If he find buffalo calf lying down in the grass, does wolf call big bull buffalo, asleep in the sun? No, he eats calf pretty quick.”

  “Well, what of that?”

  “Wolf very wise,” said Young River.

  “You mean that men ought to act like that, too, and only kill where there’s no chance of resistance?”

  “One coup is one coup,” insisted the half-breed Piegan.

  “Well,” said Tarlton, “we look at the same thing from different sides of the fence.”

  “Not understand,” Young River said deliberately.

  “Of course you don’t, and it would take a million years to make you.”

  “One coup is one coup,” said the Indian. “The man of fire, even, came down to count his coup.”

  “What was that?” asked Tarlton.

  “You saw Spotted Calf?”

  “The Blackfoot chief? Yes.”

  “His father, his father, his father, his father,” said Young River.

  “His great-great-grandfather, you mean?”

  “Well, he was a great chief, too. He was called Spotted Calf, also. That is why the Piegans call this one Young Spotted Calf. Because they still remember that other Spotted Calf because of what happened to him.”

  “And what happened to him?”

  “He was a great chief. He had killed many enemies. The Cheyennes knew him, and his lodge was filled with the scalps of the Pawnee wolves. So it came that this Spotted Calf began to think that he had only to call, and the Sky People would hear him and come down from the blue and give him help.”

  “He was betting on his run of luck, then,” said Tarlton. “And that’s all right, if a man doesn’t keep doubling the stakes.”

  “I not understand,” Young River said with a touch of impatience.

  “You ought to,” said Tarlton, “because it’s a thing that you never do. But go on.”

  “Spotted Calf took a great war party, and he rode with them over the hills. He found the Crows sleeping in their camp. He rode in among them. It was a dark night. In the sky a man of fire appeared, riding a horse of fire. He plunged from cloud to cloud. The Crows saw him and they were afraid. They saw him reaching out his bright lance of fire. They turned and ran, and the Blackfeet rode in under Spotted Calf and counted coups, many and many, and they tore off scalps until their arms were very weary.

  “Then they went among the teepees, and they took all that they wished. They took some young children to raise as Blackfeet and teach them to take Crow scalps, which is a very good thing. Then they rode away through the rain. They came far off in the hills, and they made a camp where there were trees. The rain was very loud on the branches.”

  He paused a moment, and Tarlton felt that he could hear the crash of the volleyed rain upon the trees.

  “Then the man and the horse of white fire were seen again in the clouds of the sky. But they did not stay there. Suddenly they jumped out of the sky and rushed down. They saw the rider stretch out his spear. There was a great shout that came from a greater voice than any warrior’s, as the rider from the sky counted coup.

  “All the Piegans tried to cover their eyes, but they could not help seeing a blast of white fire as the rider of the horse of fire sprang up into the clouds again. After a long time the oldest and the bravest of the warriors were not afraid to come to see what had happened. They found that the horse of Spotted Calf was dead. Spotted Calf himself was burned to ashes, and crumbled when they touched him, and from the tree under which he was camped every leaf was burned.

  “These things were told to my father by old men among the Piegans, and therefore, I know them to be true. Also, men can tell what caused the thing, because everyone in the tribe knew that Spotted Calf thought he was as good as any one of the Sky People. He talked of them as though they were his brothers. That was what made them angry.”

  “Why didn’t they let the Crows kill him then?” asked Tarlton.

  “Because,” said the half-breed, “Spotted Calf was very brave, and because he was very cunning. He made his plans so very well that the Sky People themselves were interested, and they said to the man of fire . . . ‘Wait. Let us see what this Piegan will do tonight.’ Then, when they had seen how cleverly he did everything, and how many scalps his people took, they laughed and rubbed their noses, because it is true that the Sky People love the Blackfeet.”

  “Humph!” said Tarlton. “And then they rubbed out Spotted Calf after admiring his methods so much?”

  “They wanted to punish him, but they also wanted to show that they admired him. They could have sent another warrior to kill him, of course. But they would not do that.”

  “They sent down a lightning bolt to kill him, instead?”

  “Lightning?” said Young River.

  “Well, of course. That was what killed him. A blast of lightning happened to jump out of the sky and hit the poor fellow.”

  “Ah?” Young River mused. “And what about the horse of fire?”

  “Lightning playing in the clouds, of course,” said the white man.

  “In the form of a white horse of fire?”

  “This happened a long time ago,” said Tarlton, “and you know that people can’t get things straight, even if they repeat them only the next day.”

  “Perhaps that may be true . . . among the white men. But I am speaking about my own people, who I know, and every Piegan can tell the truth exactly.”

  “Are you a Piegan?” said Tarlton.

  “Yes,” Young River answered with a rare touch of pride.

  “Ah, well,” said Tarlton, “I won’t argue. But I thought that you had a sense of humor, Young River.”

  “Not understand,” Young River said.

  “Why, of course you don’t,” said Tarlton, “because then the laugh would be on you.”

  Young River looked at him a little wistfully. There were times when he felt that he was actually inside the mind of the white man, but then again a wall arose between them, as at this moment. He even sighed a little, but, the next instant, hi
s mind was given entirely to the problem before him, and that was the practical amount of benefit that his master—for the moment Tarlton stood in that relation to him—could gain from his interview with the Cheyenne chief. They had now come down the riverbank to the proper point, and on the farther side they could see Little Bull himself.

  X

  “And now,” Tarlton said to Young River, “if there is danger to Meany back there from the Blackfeet, why isn’t there danger to you and me, here, from the Cheyennes? Or are they better people?”

  “The Piegans,” said Young River, “are the best people in the world.”

  “By that,” Tarlton said, “you mean the readiest people to lift a scalp or count a coup, and the handiest at stabbing a man in the back?”

  Young River was clever enough to see that his own logic now was being used against him, and he winced a little, and then a gleam of amusement came into his small eyes.

  “The man of the fort,” he said, “has made enemies of the Piegans by telling them to bet against your horse.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “Because he is not a wise man. If he had waited longer, he would have known you better.”

  “Well, but today he wanted to know my horse, and not me.”

  “That is not true. Horses fall down, but men win races. And there is Little Bull to thank you for winning many bets for him.”

  So Tarlton crossed the river at the side of his ugly guide, and he found a rich welcome from the Cheyennes on the farther shore.

  There were several things about Tarlton that delighted them—his youth, his fine presence, his open face, and, above all, the horse that he rode. For that leap of his horse had already become an established legend in the minds of the old men who had seen it. In a single year it would take on the dimensions of a fable, and everything would be multiplied by ten, from the length of the leap to the height of the wall of the draw, and, above all, the value of the bets they had won from the unlucky Crows and Blackfeet.

  However, those bets were really considerable.

  The teepee of Little Bull stood close to the river, and in front of it were the bets that he had captured owing to the race. He had at least three rifles and half a dozen painted robes, to begin with. Half a dozen horses were held at one side. There were a few beaded suits, a number of pairs of moccasins, and a great display of cutlery, since cold steel was the particular passion of the chief’s heart. There were hatchets, axes, many knives—from butcher knives to plain hunting knives—spearheads, and everything down to the metal mountings of a bridle that had happened to catch his fancy.