'Many things, in many ways. You sit by the knees of your old men and hear their tales of warpath and hunt. In our books we have made signs that tell such stories, not only of our grandfathers but of their grandfathers.
'We put upon leaves the stories of our great men, and of wars, but the best books are those that repeat the wisdom of our grandfathers.'
'The Englishman's book was like that?'
'I do not know what book he had, but you said he read from the book. Do you remember what he read?'
'What he reads sings. I think he has medicine songs, but he say, 'Only in a way.' He speaks of the 'snows of yesteryear.' '
'Frangois Villon,' I said.
'What?'
'That line was written by a French poet, a long, long time ago.'
'French? He say Frenchmans his enemy!'
'That was probably right,' I said, 'but that would not keep him from liking his poetry. Did you never sing the songs of another tribe?'
He started to say no and then shrugged. 'We change them. Anyway, they were our songs once ... I think.'
'My leg is better. Tomorrow I shall walk without a crutch.'
'Better you walk,' Keokotah said. 'I think much trouble come. I think we have to fight soon.'
We slept, and once I awakened in the night. Our fire was down to coals, and above us the stars had gone. The air smelled like rain and I thought of us alone in all that vast and almost empty land.
It was a lonely, eerie feeling. Alone ... all, all alone!
I drew my blanket around my shoulders and listened to the rustling of the river.
It was a long time before I was again asleep.
Chapter Twelve.
Now I made ready my pistols. I did not wish to use them but the need might be great. My bow was ever beside me, an arrow ever ready.
Endlessly wound the river along its timbered banks, brushing the roots of leaning trees, heavy with foliage. Dead trees, uprooted far upstream, were a danger to birchbark canoes, and at no time dared we relax. Around each bend, and the twists and turns were many, might lie enemy Indians or some obstruction to rip our bottom out.
Yet there was beauty everywhere and we were lonely on the river. The forest was dark and deep with shadows where cypress trees were festooned with veils of Spanish moss. Water oak, hickory, tupelo gum, and many other trees clustered the banks, and hummingbirds danced above the water, opalescent feathers catching the light as if they played with their own beauty.
We startled a flock of ducks, and Keokotah killed one with an arrow. We lived on and off the river, catching fish, killing wood pigeons and geese. Often we saw bears, but they seemed more curious than aggressive. Ours was an easy life.
'No mans here,' Keokotah suggested.
'Sometimes it is better so.'
He threw me a quick glance over his shoulder, a glance of agreement. Perhaps that was why Keokotah traveled, to be alone with all this, or almost alone. How long would it remain so? Knowing the driving, acquisitive people from whom I came, I did not give it long. We were among the first and the most fortunate. A man might travel forever here, living easily off the country, untrammeled and free.
'The Englishman? You knew him long?'
He held a hand above the water. 'I am no higher when he come. I am a man when he die.'
This surprised me, for I had not realized he had been with them so long. This was a mystery. Why would an educated, intelligent man choose to live his life away from all he knew? And how had he come there in the first place?
'It is good to have a friend.'
He made no reply, but after a few minutes he said, 'It bad. No good for me.'
'No good to have a friend? But that's--'
'I ver' small. He tell stories. I like stories. No stories of coyote. No stories of owl. Stories of men in iron who fight on horseback.' He paused. 'What is horse?'
Of course, he had never seen a horse. 'It is an animal. Larger than an elk. It has no horns. Men ride them.'
'Ride?'
'Sit astride of them and travel far.'
'He has long tail? Two ears ... so?' He held up two fingers.
'That's it.'
'I have seen him. Run ver' fast.'
'You've seen ahorse? But that could not be, you--!' I stopped in time. There had been that other day when he spoke of what could only be an elephant, but with long hair. I had made him angry then. 'Where did you see it?'
'Many.' He gestured off to the south. 'I kill young one. Eat him.' He looked at me to see if I believed. 'Only one toe. Ver' hard.'
I'd be damned. I'd be very damned. Horses here? But then, the story had it that when De Soto died his men built boats and went down the river. What did they do with their horses? If they had turned them loose they might well have gone wild. And the Spanish were inclined to ride stallions, using mares or mules for pack animals.
Horses ... now wouldn't that be something! If we could catch and break a couple of horses--
If a man had something to ride, those plains in the Far Seeing Lands might not seem so vast.
Our canoe glided smoothly upon the waters of the Mississippi and as night came on we held closer to the western shores. Once we saw a thin smoke but kept well into the stream, for we would find no friends here. At night we camped on a muddy point and killed a water moccasin as we landed. It was a big snake.
Keokotah puzzled me. That the Kickapoo were wanderers we had learned from the Cherokees, but I sensed something else in him. Had his boyhood teacher been too good? Had the lonely Englishman taught his pupil too well? Had the Englishman's teaching created a misfit, as I was?
The thought came unbidden, unwanted, unexpected. Yet was I not a misfit, too? Had not Sakim's teaching given me ideas I might never have had?
Kin-Ring and Yance were better fitted for survival in the New World than I. Yance perhaps best of all, for he asked no questions. He accepted what he found and dealt with it in the best way he could. He lived with his world and had no thought of changing it. If a tree got in the way of his plowing he cut it down. If an Indian tried to kill him, he killed the Indian and went on about his business. Kin-Ring was much the same, although Kin was a planner, a looker-ahead.
Sakim had been a philosopher and a scientist in his own way, and like those of his time and country his interests had extended into all things. He had questions to ask and answers to seek. He had learning to do, as I had.
Keokotah had a restless mind. The Englishman had aroused something in him that took him away from his people. I began to see that his thinking was no longer theirs.
We were strange ones, Keokotah and I, but the result was less for me than for him. The Indian peoples I had known belonged to clans, and the clans demanded that each member conform. The Indian seemed to have lived much as he had for hundreds of years, and now here and there an Englishman, a Scotsman, a Frenchman was coming among them with disturbing new weapons, new ideas. Keokotah was a victim of change. His Englishman had dropped a pebble into the pool of his thinking, and who knew where the ripples would end?
'Big village soon.' Keokotah pointed ahead of us. 'Quapaw.' He swept a hand to include the country we were in and where we had come from. 'Osage. Ver' tall mans.' His hands measured a distance of a foot or more. 'Taller than me.'
Six and a half or seven feet tall? It was a lot. By signs he indicated they were slightly stooped and had narrow shoulders.
'No good for us. Kickapoo fight him.'
