The White Indian Page 6

  “I shall join some chief,” said Red Hawk, “and follow him on the warpath and take scalps wherever I can.”

  “Good heavens!” cried Martha Lester.

  “Hush, my dear,” said the husband. “But listen to me, Red Hawk. The people of this town don’t have chiefs, and they don’t ride on the warpath. They don’t take scalps . . . except for a few hardened fellows who fight the Indians with their own methods. All that we want is peace . . . and we work to make the town grow and the farm lands extend farther and farther through the hills. Do you understand?”

  The mind of Red Hawk grasped vainly at this picture. “I have heard that white men work like squaws,” he said. “Do you use a hoe in the fields?”

  “I work with books,” said Lester. “I am a lawyer. That is to say . . . when two men quarrel, I try to make peace between them . . . or else I try to prove that one is right and the other wrong. For that they give me money.”

  “A peacemaker,” said Red Hawk, “is better in a camp than a great war chief on a man trail.”

  “But all of us,” said Lester, “work in some way. What sort of work would you like to do?”

  “What could he do?” asked Mrs. Lester. “Now there’s Sam Calkins, the blacksmith. He’s lacking an apprentice. That would be a place for him. He looks strong enough.”

  “Sam Calkins,” said the girl, opening the oven door and taking out the platter that held the joint, “is a great, surly brute.”

  “All the better taskmaster for a red-handed . . . ,” began Mrs. Lester.

  “Hush, Martha,” said Richard Lester. “If there’s a place open with Calkins, it might serve to give Red Hawk his start. He wouldn’t have to stay with Calkins if he didn’t want to. In the meantime, I can look around and try to find something worthwhile for him to do. Put the platter down on the floor before our guest, Maisry.”

  The girl, accordingly, placed the big dish in front of Red Hawk and with it a smaller plate, a knife, a fork, a spoon, a dish of baked beans, some bread on another plate, and a steaming cup of coffee.

  “Sugar?” she asked, offering a bowl of it, with a spoon held tentatively above it.

  “Good!” cried Red Hawk, his mouth watering.

  Taking the bowl, he poured a large quantity of that precious sweet stuff into his mouth and began to champ it noisily. There was a gasping cry of disgust from Mrs. Lester, but, in the ecstasy of his pleasure, Red Hawk’s dim eyes were unable to discover the cause of her exclamation. In a few mouthfuls, he had finished the sugar, and began to clear his throat, which had been a little rasped. His mouth being wet to the chin, he dried it on his forearm.

  “I’m leaving the room! I can’t stand it,” said Mrs. Lester. “A more disgusting . . .” Then she broke off to add: “Maisry, what in heaven’s name is the matter with you? Get up off that floor.”

  For Maisry, at this point, had actually sat down cross-legged, opposite to Red Hawk. He smiled and nodded to her, grateful for this company of his own level, as it were. And the girl said: “You know, Mother, we want him to feel at home.”

  “Richard Lester, order your child to get up off that floor!” cried the mother.

  “I can’t do it, Martha,” said the lawyer. “Maisry is right. I ought to do the same thing, I suppose, but I’m afraid of rheumatism, and if . . .”

  His voice died away as Red Hawk took the bone of the meat in both hands, by the joints, and commenced to rip away the flesh with his strong teeth. It was so tender that it came away in large fragments, which he gathered into his mouth with vigorous use of his lips and tongue. Presently the bone was stripped white and gleaming. The beans received his next attention, and, resting the edge of the bowl between his chin and his lower lip, he took the spoon in a comfortable grip and began to shovel. He closed his eyes, and presently the spoon scraped on the bottom of the bowl. At this, he put down the bowl and tried the coffee, but, since it was unsweetened and still very hot, he squirted out on the floor the half mouthful that he tried. After that, he fitted his pipe together and filled it for a smoke.

  The girl set about mopping up the coffee spot with a wet rag, while her father sat by rubbing his chin. Mrs. Lester had left the room.

  A spirit of peace came over Red Hawk as he inhaled the tobacco fumes deeply. Being moved to sing, he parted his lips, swayed a little from side to side to keep the rhythm, and began his song, drawling out the monotony of it, occasionally lifting his voice to a yelp, till in the strength of his pleasure he could see only the face of the girl, and this dimly—the blue stain of her eyes and the smiling of her lips. . . .

  When he had finished, she said to him: “What is your song about, Red Hawk?”

  “I am glad that you ask me,” he said. “This is what it says in white words, without singing . . . ‘Old winter, you are gone from me. The new grass is rising through the brown. There’s plenty of back-fat in the pot, stewing with buffalo tongues. My belly is full and my heart is comforted. Smoke fills me with happiness. Then why will not sleep come to me? Because, when I close my eyes, I see my love like a place of flowers in the middle of a great plain.’” He made a gesture toward the girl, palm out. “That is for you,” he said.

  Her eyes were pleased, and perfectly calm. She smiled straight at him. “Thank you,” she said.

  “It’s growing late,” said Richard Lester suddenly. “I’ll show you a bed where you may sleep, Red Hawk. And in the morning I’ll see the blacksmith and try to get him to let you work for him . . . at least for a while.”

  “Do you mean that I must work with my hands?” said Red Hawk. He looked down at his palms and moved his fingers.

  “Either with your hands or with your wits,” said Richard Lester. “And until you’ve learned the ways of the whites, you’d better depend on your hands. It’s a painful medicine, but a good one.”

  He stood up from the chair. Red Hawk arose, also. He was greatly contented, for the white chief had spoken to him with much kindness. If among the whites there were such men, if among the whites there were such girls as this, if the lodges were filled with such miracles of crystal and fire and comfort, was not life at least possible?

  “Good night,” said the girl.

  “May the night be good to you, also,” said Red Hawk. “May kind voices speak in your dreams.”

  He followed his host down a narrow hall and into a small chamber that contained, in one corner, a bed raised on four legs and covered with blankets in many thicknesses. On the wooden floor of the room there was more shining paint. On a small stand stood a pitcher of the white glistening stone in a vast bowl. The pitcher was filled with water.

  “Sleep well,” said Richard Lester, “and good night, Red Hawk.”

  “May all the white tribes honor you,” said Red Hawk with emotion.

  But when he was left alone it seemed to him that the muffled voices that spoke in other parts of the place were stealing toward him, and, when he laid himself on the bed, there was a stirring and a thin creaking of metal under it. Moreover, when he turned his body, the bed seemed to be turning with it.

  Then he remembered his horse. He got up, took his buffalo robe, and spent many long minutes before he could get out of the place without bringing a creak from a single board underfoot. When he leaped the fence, the gray stallion began to whinny, but he caught it by the nostrils and held on until the tremor of effort ceased.

  Afterward he found a bit of grass not far from the lodge of Richard Lester, so he stripped off the saddle, hobbled the horse, gave the blanket a single twist around his body, and lay down, as it were, in the middle of a camp of enemies. But before sleep came he grasped in his right hand the little green beetle of stone, with the hawk engraved upon it, which hung from about his neck.

  “Beetle,” he said softly, “you have opened your wings and carried me a great distance. You have taken me into a good land. My belly is full. The same stars shine on me as on the Cheyennes. So why does my heart ache so?”

  Then he slept. . . .

  Ch
apter Nine

  All was still black when he awakened. Standing up, he saw the pale hand of day behind the hills, blackening them, and so he saddled the gray and rode up the side of a hill. It was still too dark for him to distinguish features in the valley beneath him, therefore he was guided to water by the sound of its running. In the cool wind of dawn he stripped, washed with icy water, and pulled on his clothes again.

  By this time the first color was beginning and the trees along the tops of the hills were awash with flame. At last he could see the camp in the hollow clearly.

  As it first grew on his eye out of the darkness, he refused to credit his senses, for one beyond the other he saw big huddling shapes, each larger than a medicine lodge. He discovered that there were lodges by twenties and twenties and twenties, many of them far larger than that of Richard Lester. Were they all chiefs, then? Were they all great? Incredulity overwhelmed his mind, for these were not lodges of buffalo skins, but all of wood, a mighty labor of thronging hands.

  Riding down to the lodge of his white friend, he saw a strange matter. The girl was in a fenced enclosure behind the house, milking a cow that closed its eyes in dull content and chewed its cud with a wagging jaw. This was very proper. But at a pile of wood that had already been cut into lengths, the great chief, Richard Lester, the peacemaker and chief, was wielding an axe and splitting the logs.

  Red Hawk regarded this marvel with a dropping jaw. It was true that the squaw seemed small for such labor, but, then, why did not the chief take a second wife into his lodge—a young strong woman, able to hew and carry?

  He put his horse into a closed pasture and came thoughtfully toward the house. Smoke was spouting from the top of it. An odor of food crept out to him.

  A large, gray-striped cat jumped down from a fence and came straight toward him. No creature is so wild as these hunters of birds and prairie dogs. Yet this one advanced straight toward him, and actually rubbed itself against his leg. The thing was tame! More medicine, and powerful medicine, indeed, if the savage hunters from the wilderness could be so enchanted.

  Then Richard Lester hailed him, cheerfully. The girl came in with a bucket half filled with milk, frothing and slopping in the pail. The back door of the lodge opened, and the sharp voice of Mrs. Lester called out that breakfast was ready.

  It was a meal made memorable by Red Hawk’s initiation to flapjacks and syrup, and by the fact that he sat for the first time in a chair. He was confused by the explanations that his few questions brought upon him. The making of porcelain—the weaving of cloth—mills that sawed and planed wood—and, above all, the mystery of the oil lamp was made clear to him.

  In the meantime, he imitated the actions of the others at the table very successfully until it came to the flow of the thick, amber-colored syrup. This, being an utter novelty, he first smelled. He mopped up some from his plate with the flat of his thumb, and tasted it. It was pleasanter far to the taste than to the smell, so straightaway the syrup pitcher was inverted above his mouth. Mrs. Lester, with an exclamation, fled from the table, but, when Red Hawk lowered the pitcher, he saw the last of a smile passing between the father and the daughter.

  I have done something wrong, Red Hawk thought to himself, and was buried in gloom during the rest of the meal. The cold of homesickness suddenly breathed through him like a winter wind.

  After breakfast, Richard Lester gave him a blue woolen shirt and strongly urged that he should have his hair cut off. “Everything that makes you strange to the people of the town,” said Lester, “will help to keep you at a distance. I have some old clothes. Perhaps even my shoes will fit you. If you are to live among us, you ought to take up all our ways.”

  Red Hawk looked from his skin-fitted leggings to the clumsiness of the trousers, from his supple moccasins to the unwieldy leather shoes. He shook his head. “If I change so much,” he answered, “it would be as though I wore a new face. My Cheyenne brothers would never know me. But the shirt is very good. It makes me half a white man, at once.”

  So he put it on, letting the tails of it fall down outside his leggings, of course. Over the shirt he threw his robe, and in that garb he left the house of Richard Lester, accompanied by his host.

  Mrs. Lester peered at them from a window, but the girl went on to the gate of the garden and shook hands with Red Hawk. “This is his first day of school,” she said to her father. “Be good to him.”

  “It is a woman of understanding who makes happiness in the teepee,” remarked Red Hawk as they went down the street. “But why does she speak of school?”

  “Because there’s a great deal for you to learn,” said the lawyer. “Most of it will be hard, simply because it is new. And here come the boys to plague you. Boys have no manners, and they’ll laugh at anything new.”

  It seemed as though all the youngsters in the town had been lurking in wait to fall on the stranger, for now they poured out into the street and made a whirling pool around Red Hawk. They shouted, they leaped, they pointed deriding fingers at him, they raised an acrid dust that blew into his face, but he stepped on with unseeing eyes.

  So they came to the small square that made the center of the town of Witherell, and there Red Hawk saw a figure from the plains that made his heart jump. He was of the type of those wild white men who took scalps as readily as the Indians, but without any Indian ceremonies. He was dressed in deerskin so grease-stained and time-polished that they looked like varnished leather, and on his head he wore a flopping hat of black felt, with his hair pouring from under it in tangled strings as far as his shoulders.

  The plainsman used a saddle with vast Mexican stirrups, and on his heels were a pair of enormous spurs. In a shoulder belt was a bullet mold, a worm for cleaning his rifle, a powder horn, and an awl. He sat on a mustang with a braided mane, and across the pommel of the saddle balanced one of those long-barreled, old-fashioned rifles that, in certain hands, seemed unable to miss.

  When the trapper saw the Indian figure of Red Hawk, he shifted his rifle suddenly to the ready and remained with it so, on guard. He was not the only one to mark the howling mob of boys and the strange figure in the center of the cluster, for there were many other men opening for the day the stores and small shops and saloons that surrounded the square. All of them paused to stare at Red Hawk. It was true that Indians were often seen in Witherell, but white Indians very seldom.

  Now Lester cut straight across the square toward a low shed in front of which half a dozen horses were hitched at a long rack. From the wide-open doors of the place there rolled an atmosphere of blue smoke, while the clangor of iron on iron rang from it.

  “This is Sam Calkins’s blacksmith shop,” said Lester. “He’s a big, rough fellow, full of fight . . . but I believe he’s honest enough and he loves his work. I’m going to ask him if he can give you a place. Just wait a moment at the door while I talk to him.”

  Red Hawk, at the side of the double door, looked in upon new marvels. Compared with them, even Lester’s house was nothing, for along the walls hung tools of iron or of bright steel, in shapes so many and strange that the imagination of a medicine man would have been strained to conceive them. In a corner, with a metal hood stretched over it to collect most of the smoke, there was a large box filled with the center of it. Beside the box, Red Hawk saw, was a contrivance of leather, with a long wooden handle that was worked up and down by the blacksmith. At every downstroke it made a strong wheezing sound, and the yellow flame of the fire turned into a shooting blue with a double tongue that stabbed the air. With a long-handled tool of iron, the smith now lifted out of the fire a mass that glowed almost white, and sent off a constant shower of sparks. It was metal, therefore.

  Sam Calkins was a six-foot giant, not that six feet made a man look tall on the plains, but because Nature had piled on him a load of muscle and fat that had bowed his legs and made him walk with a waddle. About him there was no weak part. Everywhere was an immensity of bone and flesh, and the very legs that appeared hardly able to be
ar up the bulk of his body were twice the normal size. He wore a pair of corduroy trousers, and slippers of soft leather—his feet were his point of tenderness. His clothing stopped at the waist, above which the mass of his muscles and paunch protruded behind a leather apron. He was half bald. A long wisp of moustache hung on either side of his mouth, with a large naked space between. Like his body, his face was swollen, and constantly polished with a greasy sweat; his eyes were as pale and bright as knobs of dim blue glass.

  He had not yet given any answer to Lester’s words, nor any sign that he had so much as heard him speak. Now he stepped with the knot of iron to the ponderous square of black metal that was nailed in place on the round section of a log. With his tongs in the left hand, he managed the iron, and with his right hand he wielded a twelve-pound hammer, beating the lump of iron into shape.

  Presently he took it back to the fire, and again began to lean his weight rhythmically on that apparatus that forced the wind whistling up through the flames. It was apparent to Red Hawk that here was a medicine man to whom fire was like a child or a tame dog in the teepee.

  As he worked, he spoke, and presently Lester waved Red Hawk into the shop.

  He approached close to the fire-handler. A hot, sulphurous damp oppressed his lungs.

  “Young feller,” said Sam Calkins’s thick voice, “it don’t mean much to me to have an apprentice hangin’ around . . . white or Injun. Mostly they’re only in the way, and the minute that they learn enough to make a weld they go off somewhere and set up for themselves. It ain’t funny. It’s a sad thing, when you think about the tons of iron that fools spoil every year in the world. If a new man comes to work for me, he’s gotta stay till he’s a smith, or I don’t want him.”

  “How long would that be?” asked Lester.

  Sam Calkins’s bulging eyes retracted behind their lids for an instant. Then he said: “This here long.” In the grasp of one fist he swayed his hammer in a wide arc, so that it swept up through the air and dropped down as though to batter against his own upraised chin. But at the last moment, with an exertion of power that made his arm and all his vast shoulder tremble, Sam Calkins checked the impetus so that the bright steel face of the hammer head touched his jaw lightly. He twisted it back through an arc and laid it back in place against the wall. “When he can do that, he’s blacksmith enough to suit me,” said Calkins, and his glance traveled over the slender body of Red Hawk.