another. I was about thirteen, quite the shrimp in build, and I had red hair, blue eyes, and skin that may have been dirty and sunburned and scratched but withal was pale as a fishbelly.
I believe it might have occurred to them right then that the Crow was friends of the Americans, and that it probably was foolhardy to take along on what was only too likely to be a fatal expedition for some, a fellow whose trust wasn’t secured by blood. Not to mention an untried kid.
But Shadow says: “All right.” You give an Indian a choice and he is sure to take the reckless alternative: he is inclined to let anybody do what they want. Especially the Cheyenne, who don’t have initiation ceremonies for a boy. You want to be a man so you try what men do, and there ain’t nothing to stop you but the enemy.
CHAPTER 6 A New Name
I STRIPPED OFF my leggings and shirt and smeared myself full of black paint so that white hide of mine wouldn’t put me at a disadvantage in the moonlight, and Little Horse showed up again, carrying the whole skin of a black wolf that was so big I could get inside with almost nothing hanging out. Which was the idea: the head went right over my own skull, and I looked out the eyeholes.
We started off soon as it was definitely night, seven of us, and rode twenty mile at the trot over a plain of grass; then walked, leading the animals, for say another three. Much of the latter was rough terrain, in and out of ravines filled with scrubwood, and the only light a half-moon that seemed to carry the same cloud across the heavens with it as a shade. I could just have made out my hand at arm’s length had it not been blackened. But Shadow moved along right smartly as if it was high noon; and three men behind, I let my horse follow his lead.
We fetched up in a deep draw that went down to the Crazy Woman’s Creek, and there across the water were the lodges of the Crow camp, each glowing like a lantern from the fire within, for the older a tepee skin the more it takes on the character of oiled paper and sometimes you can stand outside at night and identify the inhabitants through it. We was still too far away for that, but what I saw was mighty pretty in a toy way, and the wind was moving from them to us, bringing the smell of roast meat. We hadn’t ate all day, for you don’t stuff yourself when you go to steal horses. Yellow Eagle sniffed alongside me and said: “Maybe we ought to visit first.” We could have walked peaceful into camp and them Crow would of had to feed us, for that’s the Indian way.
“We’ll leave the ponies here,” whispered Shadow That Comes in Sight, “and you and you will hold them,” touching me and Younger Bear; it was O.K. by me. But Younger Bear began to protest so strongly you might have thought he was sobbing.
Which infuriated Yellow Eagle. I didn’t know that man well, who had joined our camp only a few months back, but he possessed a deal of scalps and he owned a percussion-cap carbine, which was a rare implement among the Cheyenne in them days. For a long time that was the only gun in our bunch, and it wasn’t no good owing to a lack of the caps, for we avoided the whites, even traders, like Old Lodge Skins said. Elsewhere, though, the Sioux and other bands of Cheyenne were having little run-ins with the Americans along the Oregon Trail, taking their coffee now from the emigrants without waiting for it to be offered and sometimes all else as well. I noticed among Yellow Eagle’s collection of hair some which looked too light for Pawnee or Snake ever to have sprouted. The carbine probably came from the same quarter.
The Eagle was burned up at the improper manner in which Younger Bear was carrying on.
“You have lived for enough snows,” he scolded him, “to understand that among the Human Beings a veteran warrior knows more than a boy about stealing horses. It has nothing to do with who is brave and who isn’t: no Human Being has ever been a coward. You are asked to stay here because someone has to hold the ponies, which is as important a job as going into the Crow camp; and you know that we shall share equally what we capture. I don’t hear Little Antelope complain. He is a better Human Being than you, and he is white.”
Nobody else said a word and Yellow Eagle had been whispering. Nevertheless an awful silence descended, as if after a riot of noise. Younger Bear had been wrong, but the Eagle turned out more so. Not a word had been said about my race since I joined the tribe, not even by the Bear himself, who hated me. That wasn’t done, it could do no good, as the Indians say, and Yellow Eagle no sooner got it out than he knew his error.
“That should not have been said,” he told me. “A devil had control of my tongue.”
I was getting into the wolfskin at the moment, which I slung behind me while I rode; just aligning the eyeholes so I could see through them. The light was poor and everything looked hairy.
“I don’t think bad of you,” was my answer, “for you haven’t been long with our camp.”
“I don’t think it is a good night to steal ponies,” said Shadow, and started to remount while the others murmured agreement and followed suit.
“No,” said Yellow Eagle. “I will take away the bad luck I have brought.” He leaped on his horse and rode off in the direction whence we had come.
“I’ll stay and mind the ponies,” Younger Bear stated contritely, his head down. “With the other one,” meaning me.
So he accepted the halters of three, and I took as many, and so nobody could see us against the moon we kept hard against the left side of the draw that was hereabout maybe seven-eight foot deep, adequate to conceal men and animals from anybody on the plain above. The four big Cheyenne walked towards the Crow camp glowing across the water. In a minute you couldn’t see them any more nor hear them in two. After a while the moon finally got rid of that cloud and brightened some though not enough to throw a shadow.
I sat down in that wolf suit, which I was glad to have for its warmth alone, and sure didn’t grieve none that I was not en route into the camp. On the other hand, if I’d had to go, I couldn’t have picked better comrades than them four. I had started to get a glimmering of what the Cheyenne meant when they always talked about dying: I began to understand the loyalty to friends, but what I didn’t have was the feeling that I myself was disposable.
Now that the rest had gone, Younger Bear took up his grumbling again.
“They should not have done this to me,” he muttered. “I should have gone along. You could hold six ponies alone.”
“For that matter,” says I, “
“You would be scared,” he comes back at me. “Your medicine may be big in play camp, but it wouldn’t fool a Crow. This is the time to be a man.” He was standing there with his chest puffed out as usual, though he wasn’t so husky as formerly, having gone into the skinny lankiness of the teen years.
I don’t know what I’d have been forced to do at this point so as not to let that Indian outface me-probably would have dropped them halters had he refused to take them, therewith losing the horses, and run towards the enemy camp to join the raiding party, thereby losing my life and throwing those of the others in grave jeopardy.
I was saved in a curious fashion. Suddenly an enormous Crow sprang over the bank onto the floor of the draw and knocked Younger Bear senseless with a war club. This in utter silence excepting the impact of his moccasins on the sand, which was scarcely noisy, and the sound of the club against Bear’s head, just a sort of neat
In a flash his knife was out and his left hand drawing Bear’s braids tight so the scalp would begin to pull off as it was being cut.
Then I was at the Crow, who hadn’t taken notice of me because he maybe thought I was a real wolf that Bear was talking to-an Indian wouldn’t have seen that as funny-I was at him and on him as if I was climbing a tree, for he was monstrous large with all his sinews in tension, skin rough as bark. But now I was there, I didn’t know what to do with the son of a bitch. I was now too close to shoot a bow, which anyway I had dropped, and I was clawing for my knife but that wolfskin was all bunched up and I couldn’t find it.
Of course the Crow was not exactly waiting in amused toleration. The big devil flexed his hide and flung me against the other side of the draw, and I was knocked cold by the meeting of my chin with my own right knee.
I come to within the next second, when the point of his knife had already broken skin above my right ear and begun sawing round towards the back of the head. I started some and the knife scraped bone. That makes the
