The Trail Book Page 15

  XV

  HOW THE MEDICINE OF THE ARROWS WAS BROKEN AT REPUBLICAN RIVER; TOLD BYTHE CHIEF OFFICER OF THE DOG SOLDIERS

  This is the story the Dog Soldier told Oliver one evening in April, justafter school let out, while the sun was still warm and bright on theyoung grass, and yet one somehow did not care about playing. Oliver hadslipped into the Indian room by the west entrance to look at the DogDancers, for the teacher had just told them that our country was to jointhe big war which had been going on so long on the other side of theAtlantic, and the boy was feeling rather excited about it, andyet solemn.

  The teacher had told them about the brave Frenchmen, who had stood up inthe way of the enemy saying, "They shall not pass," and they hadn't. Itmade Oliver think of what he had read on the Dog Dancer's card--how in adesperate fight the officer would stick an arrow or a lance through hislong scarf, where it trailed upon the ground, pinning himself to theearth until he was dead or his side had won the victory.

  Oliver thought that that was exactly the sort of thing that he would dohimself if he were a soldier, and when he read the card over again, hesat on a bench with his back to the light looking at the Dog Dancers,and feeling very friendly toward them. It had just occurred to him thatthey, too, were Americans, and he liked to think of them as brave andfirst-class fighters.

  From where he sat he could see quite to the end of the east corridorwhich was all of a quarter of a mile away. Nobody moved in it but asolitary guard, looking small and flat like a toy man at that distance,and the low sun made black and yellow bars across the floor. In a momentmore, while Oliver was wondering where that woodsy, smoky smell camefrom, they were all around him, all the Dog Warriors, of the fourdegrees, with their skin-covered lances curved like the beak of theThunder Bird, and the rattles of dew-claws that clashed pleasantlytogether. Some of them were painted red all over, and some wore tallheaddresses of eagle feathers, and every officer had his trailing scarfof buckskin worked in patterns of the Sacred Four. Around every neck wasthe whistle made of the wing-bone of a turkey, and every man's foreheadglistened with the sweat of his dancing. The smell that Oliver hadnoticed was the smoke of their fire and the spring scent of the youngsage. It grew knee-high, pale green along the level tops, stretchingaway west to the Backbone-of-the-World, whose snowy tops seemed to floatupon the evening air. Off to the right there was a river dark withcottonwoods and willows.

  "But where are we?" Oliver wished to know, seeing them all pause intheir dancing to notice him in a friendly fashion.

  "Cheyenne Country," said one of the oldest Indians. "Over there"--hepointed to a white thread that dipped and sidled along the easy roll ofthe hills--"is the Taos Trail. It joins the Santa Fe at the Rio Grandeand goes north to the Big Muddy. It crosses all the east-flowing riversnear their source and skirts the Pawnee Country."

  "And who are you--Cheyennes or Arapahoes?" Oliver could not be sure,though their faces and their costumes were familiar.

  "Cheyennes _and_ Arapahoes," said the oldest Dog Dancer, easing himselfdown to the buffalo robe which one of the rank and file of the warriorshad spread for him. "Camp-mates and allies, though we do not callourselves Cheyennes, you know. That is a Sioux name for us,--Red Words,it means;--what you call foreign-speaking, for the Sioux cannot speakany language but their own. We call ourselves Tsis-tsis-tas, Our Folk."He reached back for his pipe which a young man brought him and loosenedhis tobacco pouch from his belt, smiling across at Oliver, "Have youearned your smoke, my son?"

  "I'm not allowed," said Oliver, eyeing the great pipe which he wascertain he had seen a few moments before in the Museum case.

  "Good, good," said the old Cheyenne; "a youth should not smoke until hehas gathered the bark of the oak."

  Oliver looked puzzled and the Dog Warrior smiled broadly, for gatheringoak bark is a poetic Indian way of speaking of a young warrior'sfirst scalping.

  "He means you must not smoke until you have done something to prove youare a man," explained one of the Arapahoes, who was painted bright redall over and wore a fringe of scalps under his ceremonial belt. Pipescame out all around the circle and some one threw a handful ofsweet-grass on the fire.

  "What I should like to know," said Oliver, "is why you are called DogDancer?"

  The painted man shook his head.

  "All I know is that we are picked men, ripe with battles, and the Dog isour totem. So it has been since the Fathers' Fathers." He blew two puffsfrom his pipe straight up, murmuring, "O God, remember us on earth,"after the fashion of ceremonial smoking.

  "God and us," said the Cheyenne, pointing up with his pipe-stem; andthen to Oliver, "The Tsis-tsis-tas were saved by a dog once in thecountry of the Ho-He. That is Assiniboine," he explained, following itwith a strong grunt of disgust which ran all around the circle as theDog Chief struck out with his foot and started a little spurt of dustwith his toe, throwing dirt on the name of his enemy. "They are calledAssiniboine, stone cookers, because they cook in holes in the groundwith hot stones, but to us they were the Ho-He. The first time we met wefought them. That was in the old time, before we had guns or bowseither, but clubs and pointed sticks. That was by the Lake of the Woodswhere we first met them."

  "Lake of the Woods," said Oliver; "that's farther north than theheadwater of the Mississippi."

  "We came from farther and from older time," said the Dog Soldier. "Wethought the guns were magic at first and fell upon our faces.Nevertheless, we fought the Ho-He and took their guns away from them."

  "So," said the officer of the Yellow Rope, as the long buckskin badge ofrank was called. "We fought with Blackfoot and Sioux. We fought withComanches and Crows, and expelled them from the Land. With Kiowas wefought; we crossed the Big Muddy and long and bitter wars we had withShoshones and Pawnees. Later we fought the Utes. We are the FightingCheyennes.

  "That is how it is when a peaceful people are turned fighters. For weare peaceful. We came from the East, for one of our wise men hadforetold that one day we should meet White Men and be conquered by them.Therefore, we came away, seeking peace, and we did not know what to dowhen the Ho-He fell upon us. At last we said, 'Evidently it is thefashion of this country to fight. Now, let us fight everybody we meet,so we shall become great.' That is what has happened. Is it not so?"

  "It is so!" said the Dog Dancers. "Hi-hi-yi," breaking out all at oncein the long-drawn wolf howl which is the war-cry of the Cheyennes.Oliver would have been frightened by it, but quite as suddenly theyreturned to their pipes, and he saw the old Dog Chief looking at himwith a kindly twinkle.

  "You were going to tell me why you are called Dog Soldiers," Oliverreminded him.

  "Dog is a good name among us," said the old Cheyenne, "but it isforbidden to speak of the Mysteries. Perhaps when you have been admittedto the Kit Foxes and have seen fighting--"

  "We've got a war of our own, now," said Oliver hopefully.

  The Indians were all greatly interested. The painted Arapahoe blew him apuff from his pipe. "Send you good enemies," he said, trailing the smokeabout in whatever direction enemies might come from. "And a good fight!"said the Yellow Rope Officer; "for men grow soft where there is nofighting."

  "And in all cases," said the Dog Chief, "respect the Mysteries.Otherwise, though you come safely through yourself, you may bring evilon the Tribe. ... I remember a Telling ... No," he said, following thelittle pause that always precedes a story; "since you are truly at war Iwill tell a true tale. A tale of my own youth and the failure that cameon Our Folks because certain of our young men forgot that they werefighting for the Tribe and thought only of themselves and theirown glory."

  He stuffed his pipe again with fine tobacco and bark of red willow andbegan.

  "Of one mystery of the Cheyennes every man may speak a little--of theMystery of the Sacred Medicine Arrows. Four arrows there are with stoneheads painted in the four colors, four feathered with eagle plumes. Theygive power to men and victory in battle. It is a man mystery; no womanmay so much as look at it. When we go out as a Tribe t
o war, the Arrowsgo with us tied to the lance of the Arrow-Keeper.

  "The Medicine of the Arrows depended on the Mysteries which are made inthe camp before the Arrows go out. But if any one goes out from the camptoward the enemy before the Mysteries are completed, the protection ofthe Arrows is destroyed. Thus it happened when the Potawatami helped theKitkahhahki, and the Cheyennes were defeated. This was my doing, mineand Red Morning and a boy of the Suh-tai who had nobody belongingto him.

  "We three were like brothers, but I was the elder and leader. I waitedon War Bonnet when he went to the hunt, and learned war-craft from him.That was how it was with us as we grew up,--we attached ourselves tosome warrior we admired; we brought back his arrows and rounded up hisponies for him, or washed off the Medicine paint after battle, orcarried his pipe.

  "War Bonnet I loved for the risks he would take. Red Morning followedMad Wolf, who was the best of the scouts; and where we two went theSuh-tai was not missing. This was long after we had learned all thetricks of the Ho-He by fighting them, after the Iron Shirts brought thehorse to us, and we had crossed the Big Muddy into this country.

  "We were at war with the Pawnees that year. Not," said the Dog Chiefwith a grin, "that we were ever at peace with them, but the year beforethey had killed our man Alights-on-the-Cloud and taken our iron shirt."

  "Had the Cheyennes iron shirts?" Oliver was astonished.

  "Alights-on-the-Cloud had one. When he rode up and down in front of theenemy with it under his blanket, they thought it great Medicine. Therewere others I have heard of; they came into the country with the men whohad the first horses, but this was ours. It was all fine rings of ironthat came down to the knees and covered the arms and the head so thathis long hair was inside.

  "It was the summer before we broke the Medicine of the Arrows that theTsis-tsis-tas had gone out against the Pawnees. Arapahoes, Sioux,Kiowas, and Apaches, they went out with us.

  "Twice in the year the Pawnees hunted the buffaloes, once in the winterwhen the robes were good and the buffaloes fat, and once in the summerfor food. All the day before we had seen a great dust rising and allnight the ground shook with the buffaloes running. There was a mist onthe prairie, and when it rose our scouts found themselves almost in themidst of the Pawnees who were riding about killing buffaloes.

  "It was a running fight; from noon till level sun they fought, and inthe middle of it, Alights-on-the-Cloud came riding on a roan horse alongthe enemy line, flashing a saber. As he rode the Pawnees gave back, forthe iron shirt came up over his head and their arrows did him no harm.So he rode down our own line, and returning charged the Pawnees, butthis time there was one man who did not give back.

  "Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front said to those around him: 'Let him come on,and do you move away from me so he can come close. If he possesses greatMedicine, I shall not be able to kill him; but if he does not possessit, perhaps I shall kill him.'

  "So the others fell back, and when Alights-on-the-Cloud rode near enoughso that Carrying-the-Shield-in-Front could hear the clinking of the ironrings, he loosed his arrow and struck Alights-on-the-Cloud in the eye.

  "Our men charged the Pawnees, trying to get the body back, but in theend they succeeded in cutting the iron shirt into little pieces, andcarrying it away. This was a shame to us, for Alights-on-the-Cloud waswell liked, and for a year there was very little talked of but how hemight be avenged.

  "Early the next spring a pipe was carried. Little Robe carried it alongthe Old North Trail to Crows and the Burnt Thigh Sioux and the NorthernCheyennes. South also it went to Apaches and Arapahoes. And when thegrape was in leaf we came together at Republican River and swore that wewould drive out the Pawnees.

  "As it turned out both Mad Wolf and War Bonnet were among the firstscouts chosen to go and locate the enemy, and though we had no businessthere, we three, and two other young men of the Kiowas, slipped out ofthe camp and followed. They should have turned us back as soon as wewere discovered, but Mad Wolf was good-natured, and they were pleased tosee us so keen for war.

  "There was a young moon, and the buffalo bulls were running and fightingin the brush. I remember one old bull with long streamers of grapevinesdragging from his horns who charged and scattered us. We killed a youngcow for meat, and along the next morning we saw wolves running away froma freshly killed carcass. So we knew the Pawnees were out.

  "Yellow Bear, an Arapahoe Dog Soldier, who was one of the scouts, beganto ride about in circles and sing his war-song, saying that we ought notto go back without taking some scalps, or counting coup, and weyoungsters agreed with him. We were disappointed when the others decidedto go back at once and report. I remember how Mad Wolf, who was thescout leader, sent the others all in to notify the camp, and how, asthey rode, from time to time they howled like wolves, then stopped andturned their heads from side to side.

  "There was a great ceremonial march when we came in, the Dog Soldiers,the Crooked Lances, the Fox Soldiers, and all the societies. First therewere two men--the most brave in the society leading, and then all theothers in single file and two to close. The women, too--all the brightblankets and the tall war bonnets--the war-cries and the songs and thedrums going like a man's heart in battle.

  "Three days," said the Dog Chief, "the preparation lasted. Wolf Face andTall Bull were sent off to keep in touch with the enemy, and the womenand children dropped behind while the men unwrapped their Medicinebundles and began the Mysteries of the _Issiwun_, the Buffalo Hat, and_Mahuts_, the Arrows. It was a long ceremony, and we three, Red Morning,the Suh-tai boy, and I, were on fire with the love of fighting. You maybelieve that we made the other boys treat us handsomely because we hadbeen with the scouts, but after a while even that grew tame and wewandered off toward the river. Who cared what three half-grown boys did,while the elders were busy with their Mysteries.

  "By and by, though we knew very well that no one should move toward theenemy while the Arrows were uncovered, it came into our heads what afine thing it would be if we could go out after Wolf Face and Tall Bull,and perhaps count coup on the Pawnees before our men came up with them.I do not think we thought of any harm, and perhaps we thought theMedicine of the Arrows was only for the members of the societies. But wesaw afterward that it was for the Tribe, and for our wrong theTribe suffered.

  "For a while we followed the trail of Tall Bull, toward the camp ofPawnees. But we took to playing that the buffaloes were Pawnees and woreout our horses charging them. Then we lost the trail, and when at lastwe found a village the enemy had moved on following the hunt, leavingonly bones and ashes. I do not know what we should have done," said theDog Chief, "if we had come up with them: three boys armed withhunting-knives and bows, and a lance which War Bonnet had thrown awaybecause it was too light for him. Red Morning had a club he had made,with a flint set into the side. He kept throwing it up and catching itas he rode, making a song about it.

  "After leaving the deserted camp of the Pawnees, we rode about lookingfor a trail, thinking we might come upon some small party. We had leftour own camp before finding out what Wolf Face and Tall Bull had comeback to tell them, that the enemy, instead of being the whole Nation ofPawnees as we supposed, was really only the tribe of the Kitkahhahki,helped out by a band of the Potawatami. The day before our men attackedthe Kitkahhahki, the Potawatami had separated from them and started upone of the creeks, while the Pawnees kept on up the river. We boysstumbled on the trail of the Potawatami and followed it.

  "Now these Potawatami," said the Dog Chief, "had had guns a long time,and better guns than ours. But being boys we did not know enough to turnback. About midday we came to level country around the headwaters of thecreek, and there were four Potawatami skinning buffaloes. They hadbunched up their horses and tied them to a tree while they cut up thekill. Red Morning said for us to run off the horses, and that would bealmost as good as a scalp-taking. We left our ponies in the ravine andwriggled through the long grass. We had cut the horses loose and wererunning them, before the Potawatami discovered it. On
e of them calledhis own horse and it broke out of the bunch and ran toward him. In amoment he was on his back, so we three each jumped on a horse and beganto whip them to a gallop. The Potawatami made for the Suh-tai, and rodeeven with him. I think he saw it was only a boy, and neither of them hada gun. But suddenly as their horses came neck and neck Suh-tai gave aleap and landed on the Potawatami's horse behind the rider. It was atrick of his with which he used to scare us. He would leap on and offbefore you had time to think. As he clapped his legs to the horse's backhe stuck his knife into the Potawatami. The man threw up his arms andSuh-tai tumbled him off the horse in an instant.

  "This I saw because Red Morning's horse had been shot under him, and Ihad stopped to take him up. By this time another man had caught a horseand I had got my lance again which I had left leaning against a tree. Ifaced him with it as he came on at a dead run, and for a moment Ithought it had gone clean through him, but really it had passed betweenhis arm and his body and he had twisted it out of my hand.

  "Our horses were going too fast to stop, but Red Morning, from behindme, struck at the head of the man's horse as it passed with hisknife-edged club, and we heard the man shout as he went down. I managedto get my horse about in time to see Suh-tai, who had caught up with us,trying to snatch the Potawatami's scalp, but his knife turned on one ofthe silver plates through which his scalp-lock was pulled, and all theSuh-tai got was a lock of the hair. In his excitement he thought it wasthe scalp and went shaking it and shouting like a wild man.

  "The Potawatami pulled himself free of his fallen horse as I came up,and it did me good to see the blood flowing from under his arm where mylance had scraped him. I rode straight at him, meaning to ride him down,but the horse swerved a little and got a long wiping stroke from thePotawatami's knife, from which, in a minute more, he began to stagger.By this time the other men had got their guns and begun shooting.Suh-tai's bow had been shot in two, and Red Morning had a graze thatlaid his cheek open. So we got on our own ponies and rode away.

  "We saw other men riding into the open, but they had all been chasingbuffaloes, and our ponies were fresh. It was not long before we left theshooting behind. Once we thought we heard it break out again in adifferent direction, but we were full of our own affairs, and anxious toget back to the camp and brag about them. As we crossed the creekSuh-tai made a line and said the words that made it Medicine. We feltperfectly safe.

  "It was our first fight, and each of us had counted coup. Suh-tai wasnot sure but he had killed his man. Not for worlds would he have wipedthe blood from his knife until he had shown it to the camp. Two of ushad wounds, for my man had struck at me as he passed, though I had beentoo excited to notice it at the time ... '_Eyah!_' said the DogChief,--'a man's first scar ...!' We were very happy, and Red Morningtaught us his song as we rode home beside the Republican River.

  "As we neared our own camp we were checked in our rejoicing; we heardthe wails of the women, and then we saw the warriors sitting around withtheir heads in their blankets--as many as were left of them. My fatherwas gone, he was one of the first who was killed by the Potawatami."

  The Dog Chief was silent a long time, puffing gently on his pipe, andthe Officer of the Yellow Rope began to sing to himself a strange,stirring song.

  Looking at him attentively Oliver saw an old faint scar running acrosshis face from nose to ear.

  "Is your name Red Morning?" Oliver wished to know.

  The man nodded, but he did not smile; they were all of them smokingsilently with their eyes upon the ground. Oliver understood that therewas more and turned back to the Dog Chief.

  "Weren't they pleased with what you had done?" he asked.

  "They were pleased when they had time to notice us," he said, "but theydidn't know--they didn't know that we had broken the Medicine of theArrows. It didn't occur to us to say anything about the time we had leftthe camp, and nobody asked us. A young warrior, Big Head he was called,had also gone out toward the enemy before the Mystery was over. Theylaid it all to him.

  "And at that time we didn't know ourselves, not till long afterward. Yousee, we thought we had got away from the Potawatami because our ponieswere fresh and theirs had been running buffaloes. Rut the truth was theyhad followed us until they heard the noise of the shooting where OurFolks attacked the Kitkahhahki. It was the first they knew of the attackand they went to the help of their friends. Until they came Our Folkshad all the advantage. But the Potawatami shoot to kill. They carrysticks on which to rest the guns, and their horses are trained to standstill. Our men charged them as they came, but the Potawatami cameforward by tens to shoot, and loaded while other tens took their places... and the Medicine of the Arrows had been broken. The men of thePotawatami took the hearts of our slain to make strong Medicine fortheir bullets and when the Cheyennes saw what they were doing theyran away.

  "But if we three had not broken the Medicine, the Potawatami would neverhave been in that battle.

  "Thus it is," said the Dog Soldier, putting his pipe in his belt andgathering his robes about him, "that wars are lost and won, not only inbattle, but in the minds and the hearts of the people, and by thekeeping of those things that are sacred to the people, rather than byseeking those things that are pleasing to one's self. Do you understandthis, my son?"

  "I think so," said Oliver, remembering what he had heard at school. Hefelt the hand of the Dog Chief on his shoulder, but when he looked up itwas only the Museum attendant come to tell him it was closing time.

  THE END