Текст книги "LITTLE BIG MAN"

Автор книги: Томас Бергер (Бри(е)джер)

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CHAPTER 4 Pronghorn Slaughter

IT AIN’T BAD to be a boy among the Cheyenne. You never get whipped for doing wrong, but rather told: “That is not the way of the Human Beings.” One time Coyote started to laugh while he was lighting his father’s pipe, because a horsefly was crawling on his belly. This was a serious failure of manners on his part, comparable to a white boy’s farting loud in church. His Pa laid away the pipe and said: “On account of your lack of self-control I can’t smoke all day without disgusting certain Persons in the other world. I wonder if you aren’t a Pawnee instead of a Human Being.” Coyote went out upon the prairie and stayed there alone all night to hide his shame.

You have got to do things rightwhen you’re a Cheyenne. A baby can’t cry just for the hell of it-the tribe might be lying in concealment at the moment and the sound would give away their position to the enemy. Therefore the women hang them cradleboards on bushes some distance from camp until the youngsters inside develop the idea that crying don’t do no good, and get the habit of quiet. Girls need to be trained to control their giggle. I seen Shadow That Comes in Sight line his little daughters up before him and tell them funny stories at which they was supposed to restrain laughter. At first they all flunked, shrieking like birds; then they got so as to only smirk and simper; and finally, after many sessions, they could hold a stony look towards the most hilarious joke. They was free to enjoy it but not to make a demonstration. At the proper time they could laugh their guts out, for an Indian loves his humor and Shadow That Comes in Sight was a great wit.

Other than for that special instruction, the Cheyenne didn’t run a school. They never read nor wrote their language, so what would be the purpose? If you wanted a point of history, you went and asked an old man who kept it in his mind. Numbers got boring when you run out of fingers, so to report the size of an enemy war party you had spotted would go something like this: “The Ute is near the Fasting Place Butte. They are as many as the arrows that Sticks Everything Under His Belt shot at the ghost antelope in the time when the cherries was ripe.” This being a famous story, everybody in Old Lodge Skins’s crowd would know within one or two the number of Ute referred to-and in a moment of emergency, when a person tends to fear the unknown, they could connect it up with something familiar.

A Cheyenne believed his animal was also Cheyenne and knew it. “Tell your pony,” Burns Red would say, “that the people will talk about his bravery all over camp. Tell him stories about famous ponies and their exploits, so that he will try to do as well. Tell him everything about yourself. A man should keep no secrets from his pony. There are things he does not discuss with his brother, his friend, or his wife, but he and his pony must know everything about each other because they will probably die together and ride the Hanging Road between earth and heaven.”

The trouble with me was that I felt like a damn fool, speaking to a dumb beast. That’s the difficulty in being white: you can’t get away with much. Nobody expects more of an Indian; with him fool things are, so to speak, normal. You’d be disappointed in an Indian if he didn’ttalk to horses, the way I look at it, for he is born crazy. But being white, I knowed too much even at the age of ten.

You understand that I can’t give no day-to-day account of my upbringing. It must have took a couple of months to learn to ride without being tied on, and longer to get real proficient with the bow and arrow. But now I got to go back to that very first morning and wake up Old Lodge Skins, who we left dead to the world. That Indian got up intending to fast for twenty-four hours. He had had another dream about antelope. Coming on top of the one of the day previous, it meant he had to get to work.

In the afternoon the chief went up the creek maybe three hundred yards and just beyond the brush erected a little tepee about the size of the play-lodges we kids had, just big enough for him to sit in. He went inside at sunset and did a number of secret things till dawn the next day.

While he was in there, throughout the night certain other Cheyenne would go and beat upon the outside of the tepee cover. What went on here concerned the preparation for a gigantic antelope surround. If when them other men pounded on the lodge skin any quantity of antelope hair fell off the cover, the hunt would be successful.

While this was taking place, a party of Ute run off the whole horse herd, and next morning the only Cheyenne ponies left was the few that their owners had tethered right outside their tepees. However, quite a mess of antelope hair was laying on the ground about the medicine tent, so the lookout was good.

Old Lodge Skins emerged from the little tepee next morning. He looked somewhat different from usual in that his eyes seemed to be focused miles away in whatever direction he turned. He was carrying two short black poles, each with a hoop on its end and decorated with raven feathers, and when he walked into open country, the whole camp trooped along behind-men, women, children, and dogs. I have told about antelope as we encountered that little herd the day before at the buffalo wallow: they can run a mile in one minute and will stampede on a change of wind.

This quick beast has one flaw against living to old age: he is nosy. Show an antelope something that flutters and he can’t resist it. That is the practical side of those poles-and-wheels that Old Lodge Skins was carrying: the Cheyenne called them antelope arrows, and they were deadlier than if equipped with iron points, for they made the skittish beast so curious he would run himself and his kin into suicide for a closer look. Admitting that, there was still a lot to a surround that made no sense except as magic.

I suppose we must have walked three miles out in the prairie-everybody except one decrepit old woman and a warrior who stayed behind because he had the sulks. At a certain point on a space of flatland we stopped, and Old Lodge Skins set down on the prairie. He had left behind his plug hat, and wore two eagle feathers braided into his hair. Now the unmarried women come up before him, and he chose the stoutest two by waving the antelope arrows at them, sort of charming them into sitting alongside him. One girl was average fat, but the second was so chubby it took a keen watch to find the features of her face; her eyes was like little seeds.

Set a fat girl to catch fat antelope, was the idea.

Them braves that still kept their horses now mounted, and the rest of us fell in on either side of the chief and the fatties so as to make a half-circle with them in the middle. Two other girls, skinnier people, suddenly grabbed the antelope arrows from Old Lodge Skins and dashed away on diverging tracks like the legs of a V with him at the point. Off go the horsemen in pursuit, the two leaders overtaking the girls and swiping the medicine sticks, then riding on still along the V legs, holding up the little wheels with the raven feathers fluttering. Now a single antelope come into sight on a roll of ground about a quarter mile ahead of the riders, in the exact center between their two files, on a dead line with Old Lodge Skins’s position. Like men, grazing antelope put out sentries. These here signal the herd by putting up their white tails like signal flags. What would you think a pronghorn scout might do when he saw twenty Cheyenne galloping on either flank and a bunch more standing in the midst of the prairie around an old Indian and two tubby maidens?

Well, this one stared so hard you would have thought his ears might shoot off his head. Meanwhile the riders was reaching his lateral. He looked left and he looked right, but them equal forces emanating from the flanks sort of compressed his attention back to the middle, and even at the distance you. could see him quiver from the haunches though his yellow cheeks and black muzzle was froze in wonder.

Old Lodge Skins set within the red blanket, the white plumes on the ends of his two feathers blowing in the soft wind. The two fat girls was still as mounds of earth, nor among the pack of dogs did one cur so much as show a tongue; they was also Cheyenne.

That scout moved forward, placing each dainty hoof as if it was a separate decision, his white neck-bands puffed out like a collar of shirring. Along the crest behind him appeared a margin of little horns, followed at length by little tan heads, staring our way. The forward horsemen gained the rise and went over, the funnel they made ever widening, with its neck pointing to Old Lodge Skins sitting way back here in the crescent of his tribe. There was only enough riders to indicate the lines of flank, with full space between each Indian to let through a nation of antelope, but these beasts, being charmed, had no mind to escape.

Down the slope trotted that sentry; behind him the horizon was full of animals, with more crowding over. He came a hundred yards on, and still there was no end to the massing herd, forming the shape of a huge arrowhead back of his lead, aimed at Old Lodge Skins. Cheyenne and animals were harmonizing in a grand rhythm, for which the old chief beat time. I guess the gods was supposed to have writ the music. If you don’t like that aspect of the affair, then you’ll have a job explaining why maybe a thousand antelope run towards ruin; and also how Old Lodge Skins could know this herd would be in this place, for no animal had showed a hair before he sat down on the prairie.

The lead riders, with the staffs and wheels, having reached the end of the herd out there and crossed behind it, changing sides one to the other, galloped back to Old Lodge Skins and gave him the medicine devices. There was now a magic line tied round the antelope, and with a wand in each hand, the chief began to draw it in.

He flang up his arms, and the whole vasty herd began to run, its head some seventy yards out, its tail just coming over the rise. A good three hundred yards of prairie was jammed with animals, haunch to haunch; with the width of the mass at the rear covering about the same measure east to west: an enormous heaving wedge of pure antelope. We people now stirred, extending the crescent horns, rounding out the base of the V into a U, and the beasts came towards a living corral of which the walls was Cheyenne-men, women, children-made solid by their outspread blankets and the dogs between their legs.

Half along the left arm of it, I tried to cock an eye on that first sentry, but he was gone in the rush as faster animals overtook him, and soon all particularity was lost in the churning of numberless legs and clouding dust. The chief waved his wheels as the leaders reached the entrapment, and they diverted left, but there met the Cheyenne fence; then to the right with similar dismay. He crossed the wands twice, and the eyes of the foremost beast followed suit, nose snorting, and it locked hoofs and went to its knees, forming a hurdle for those hard behind, which they failed to negotiate.

This pile-up happened right before me, and from there on it was sheer panic as beast clumb upon beast and butted each other’s brains out, goring one another’s bellies, and some just plain trampled into the earth. We closed in then, and the horsemen completed the great circle, everybody with a club or hatchet or maybe merely a big stone, but no kind of projectile for this tight work. I’d say it took a good hour to beat every last antelope to death though we was swinging incessantly, and a number of animals died of their own efforts.

At no time did Old Lodge Skins put down his wands, but rather kept on gesticulating till no beast lived to see them; that was his duty and obligation, and he took no part in the killing. So far as I went, I had not the strength at that age to do much damage even to such a fragile animal, but joined my efforts to the general mob, pounding a rock at tan hide wherever an opening showed. I might have struck Younger Bear once or twice in the confusion, for he was very near me. That boy tried to break an antelope’s neck with his bare hands, like some of the stronger men could, by twisting its horns. He couldn’t manage it, and finally had to sink his hatchet between the ears, and its starting eyes welled with blood from the inside and its tongue retched forth and it died.

CHAPTER 5 My Education as a Human Being

YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED that Old Lodge Skins started out as a buffoon in this narrative. Let me say that was true only around white men. Among the Cheyenne he was a sort of genius. It was him who taught me everything I learned as a boy that wasn’t physical like riding or shooting. The way he done this was by means of stories. I reckon he told me and the other children many a hundred such tales, and sometimes the grownups would listen too, for he was held to be a wise old Indian and wouldn’t have lived to his ripe age had he not been.

I’m going to tell you two of his tales. One of them saved my life when I went on my first horse-stealing raid. The other, which he spoke at a council-meeting with some Sioux, will give you a better idea of the difference between red men and whites than anything else short of having lived as both, like me.

Several snows had fell and melted since I joined the Cheyenne, and I must have been going on thirteen years of age. We boys was playing war one day and Younger Bear, growing taller by the month, shot a blunt-head arrow with such force that when it struck a lad called Red Dog in the forehead he was knocked cold. I believe it had been aimed at me, but I was ever a shifting target. Old Lodge Skins happened along at the moment in the company of an Indian by the name of Two Babies, who was naked and painted black from head to toe and going out to take an enemy scalp in accord with some vow.

Two Babies just walked by in a kind of trance; but when Old Lodge Skins saw Red Dog laying unconscious, he leaned over him and said: “Come on and eat!” The lad woke up instantly, and the chief sent him over to Buffalo Wallow Woman for a meal, which will cure an Indian of almost anything.

Then Skins said to Younger Bear: “It is a brave warrior who tries to kill his friends.” And the Bear was full of shame.

Old Lodge Skins spread his blanket on the ground, and we all sat around him. His braids was wrapped in weasel fur, and he wore a sort of little scarf ornamented with the old-time beads that dated from before the whites come with their glass jewelry: these was fashioned from the purple section of the ocean shell, and since the Cheyenne lived in the middle of the country, they must have reached the chief by a long history of trading, starting maybe a century or so back when some coastal savage in Oregon or Massachusetts cracked open a clam, sucked down the rubbery meat, and fell with his stone drill to fashion something cunning from the shell.

The chief said: “I’m going to tell you about a warrior who loved his friends. This happened many snows ago, when I was a young man. In those days you seldom saw a gun among us, because we did very little trading with the white men and of course other Indians would keep what firearms they could get hold of. We didn’t even have many iron arrowheads, and in battle we would ride up close to the enemy, hoping to get shot by his arrows so as to get some of those iron points.”

He laughed heartily, and pulled up his legging to show his right calf and its mass of ancient punctures.

“There wasn’t any other way to get them at the time. For horses, we would generally go south to the land of the Snake People, for they are great riders and have the best ponies. It is said the reason for this is that they mate with horses, but I have never seen this with my own eyes.” The Comanche is who he was talking about, the world’s finest riders, excelling other Indians; and whether or not they coupled with mares, I know for a fact they mounted their own women stallion-style, from behind, neighing and snorting; they was all horse-crazy.

“Sometimes we would not really need the horses but would go just for fighting, because the Snakes are a brave people and it lifts your heart to see them come charging, particularly on an early morning when the sun is still a young man in the sky; later on, when he is middle-aged, it gets too hot in their country and you can see why years earlier the Human Beings ran them down there and kept this place for ourselves, which is perfect.”

Talk of war always cheered Old Lodge Skins. He’d lose several decades right in front of you, his eyes would heat up and his cheeks filled out, and he’d positively chortle at a specially gory turn.

“One time a party of six Human Beings was after horses in the Snake Country: Hawk’s Visit, Little Robe, Horse Chief, Iron Shirt, Crazy Mule, and Little Man. With them also was a man called Hairy, of the Arapaho who you know have always been our friends and usually camp with the Human Beings. Now this party had started out with the intention of capturing wild horses rather than stealing those of the Snakes. Otherwise Hairy would not have gone along, because the Arapaho were at peace with the Snakes that year.

“Near the headwaters of the Washita, our men came upon the trail of a big Snake village and determined to raid it after nightfall, although they had no guns and only a few remaining arrows and could not fight long if the Snakes caught up with them afterwards.

“Having located the camp, they hid until dark. Then they crept in and stole a herd of beautiful ponies. Hairy did not take part in this raid, owing to the treaty his people had with the Snakes. He waited outside camp, holding their own ponies for the Human Beings, and when they came driving the herd he went with them. They rode all night and half the next day without stopping until the sun stood where he could have looked right down the smokehole of a tepee. By then they had reached the Stinking Creek, where a horse can drink but not a man. So they watered that herd.

“But they had not been able to ride fast, having to drive the stolen horses, and before they left the Stinking Creek, the Snakes arrived, in a number that was more than ten for every Human Being also including Hairy. Our men mounted their ponies and went up onto a little knoll, then killed the animals to make a fortification, stripped off their leggings and shirts, and singing their songs, prepared to die.

“Before the Snakes charged, a chief of theirs named Moon rode up near enough the knoll to be clearly seen and said, in the signs: ‘You Plenty of Tattooed Marks,’ which is how the Snakes call our friends the Arapaho, ‘why are you stealing our horses with the Striped Arrow People? Your tribe and mine are at peace. Are you a bad person?’

“Hairy stood up and answered: ‘I did not enter your camp nor did I steal your horses. These are my friends. I have lived with them, eaten with them, and fought alongside them. So, although it is true that I do not have a quarrel with you, I think it is a good day to die with them.’

“ ‘I hear you,’ Moon signaled back and joined his people, and they charged the knoll, killing Iron Shirt, Hawk’s Visit, and Little Robe, but the remaining four fought so bravely that the Snakes retired, having lost several of their own, with some others wounded. Then the Snakes charged again, but with only about ten of their warriors instead of the whole party, and Hairy was killed with a lance through the chest, but he put his last arrow into the neck of the man who did it as he was being ridden down. The Snake toppled off his horse, grasping the mane, and in its rearing and plunging the pony kicked Crazy Mule in the stomach and another Snake leaned over while galloping and brained him with a war club. Also Horse Chief was given a bad wound, from which he soon died.

“Now only Little Man remained alive, and he had no more arrows. He had to wait until a Snake shot an arrow at him so he could pull it out of his body and shoot it back. In this fashion, he had killed one of the riders and wounded another as the charge went over the knoll. But now the Snakes were coming back from the other side, six or seven of them, riding down on him with their short lances.

“The first Snake had just gained the crest when Little Man seized a blanket from the pile of clothes our people had discarded, and shouting ‘Hu, hu, hu!’ he flapped it at the pony’s head, scaring the animal just enough so that it faltered from the proper line of charge, and the lance missed Little Man, making a long rent in the blanket, instead. Grasping the rider’s belt, Little Man pulled him from the back of the pony. The Snake no sooner struck the ground than Little Man made three quick knife cuts across his throat, but could not take the scalp, for the other Snakes were on him. He leaped upon the pony, and with the captured lance drew so much blood from them that the Snakes retreated across the plain to where their main force was waiting.

“Little Man rode back and forth upon the knoll, singing his death song, while the Snakes held a council. Then Moon came forward and said in the signs: ‘You are a brave man. We have taken back the horses you stole and do not want to fight any more. You may go home.’

“But Little Man said: ‘I do not hear you.’ And Moon went back and the Snakes charged again, this time with twenty men, and Little Man killed several with his lance and went himself untouched. Now the Snakes were really frightened; they had never before tried to fight against such powerful medicine.

“Moon rode forward again and signaled: ‘You are the bravest Striped Arrow Person we have ever seen. Keep that pony you are riding and keep the lance, and we will also give you another horse. Go back to your people. We don’t want to fight any more.’

“ ‘No thank you,’ said Little Man. ‘All my friends are dead, including one who was loyal to the Human Beings although he was himself an Arapaho. Without my friends I would just sit around all day and weep. You had better kill me, too. It is a good day to die.’

“Thereupon Little Man raised the lance above his head, and sounding the war cry and the name of his people, he charged the entire Snake force. Moon was a brave chief, but when he saw Little Man galloping towards him, shouting those terrible cries, he screamed and tried to run away, but Little Man overtook him and ran the lance halfway through his body, where it stuck. So Little Man drew his knife and continued the charge into the Snake army, who fell away before him. He rode among them like the whirlwind, stabbing and cutting on all sides so furiously as if he had a knife for every finger, and the Snakes were howling in fright though they are a valiant people.

“At last a Snake with a musket shot Little Man in the back, and he pitched to the ground and the Snakes cut off his head. But when they had done that, Little Man’s body got up and began to fight again with the knife it still grasped in its hand. And his head, which they mounted on a spear, started again to shout the war cry. The Snakes could take no more. They galloped off fast as they could go, and those that looked back saw Little Man’s headless body running after them, waving his knife. Then when they were out of reach, it walked to the top of the knoll and lay down among its friends. Nobody knows what happened to the head, which was dropped by the man carrying the spear when it began to shout.

“Moon recovered afterwards but was humpbacked like a buffalo for the rest of his life. He bore no shame for his running because Little Man had a medicine that day that no Snake could have been expected to stand against. Moon told me this story himself in a later time when we made peace between our tribes, and the Snakes also found Little Man’s brother and gave him that horse they had promised, so that they could go again to the place where Little Man died, without being attacked by his body.”

I had not seen a white person since Caroline snuck out of camp that night. One time since, when we was camped on the Surprise River and us boys was out hunting prairie chickens, we saw some moving objects a couple miles off that I took for buffalo, but Little Horse, with his Indian eyes, said no, they was white men, that one had yellow hair, was armed with a shotgun, and rode a bay that was slightly lame in the left forefoot; and the other wore a beard and was mounted on a roan with a saddle sore. Also, they was lost, but he could see that the bay had got the scent of water and shortly they would strike the river and know where they was. So we went in the other direction.

There was a reason why we didn’t hanker none to meet these whites: it had begun to mean bad luck for the Cheyenne. You remember what happened at the wagon train of my white family: some Cheyenne had almost killed one another. Then some bad things was occurring from time to time down at Fort Laramie, where a number of Indians camped roundabout to trade. A young man might get drunk and take a shot at a soldier or run off with some horses. And once a Sioux come across an old sick cow strayed from some emigrant train, and killed it for its hide. Burned up at this, the Army attacked the Indian camp and several individuals on both sides was rubbed out.

We was sixty-seventy miles away from Laramie on War Bonnet Creek at the time of this incident but knew about it quick enough. Some Minneconjou, which was a type of Sioux or Lakota, come riding in and held counsel with Old Lodge Skins, Hump, and our other principal men. Anybody can attend such a meeting, and can say anything that isn’t ridiculous, but generally the chiefs do the talking because they are wiser, which is why they are chiefs.

Luckily there was a man with the Minneconjou who knew Cheyenne, for though the Human Beings and the Sioux been allies for generations, they speak altogether different languages and usually have to converse in the signs as if they had no closer connection than a Portuguee and a Russian. So this man interpreted.

Great Elk, a Minneconjou, stood up and told what happened down at Laramie, concluding: “I have met many Wasichu”-which is how the Sioux call whites-“and drunk their coffee and eaten their molasses, which is good.” Here many of the Cheyenne sitting round the tepee said: “How, how.”

“But I have never known why they came to our country,” Great Elk went on. “First there were just a few of those poor homeless ones, and the Lakota took pity on them and gave them food. Then many came with the ugly cattle that one cannot eat because they have lost their testicles and have tough flesh, being good only to pull the Wasichu wagons which are filled with useless things except for the coffee and sugar and the iron hoops of barrels, from which you can make arrowheads. The Wasichu women are sick-looking and make me sneeze. Then the soldiers came with their big, weak horses; and they have no wife each man for himself but share among them a few women whom one must give a present every time he lies with her.

“If a Wasichu does something that the other Wasichu do not like, they tie a rope around his neck and drop him from a high place, so as to pull his spirit from his body. They talk of the great villages they have in the place where the sun rises, but if that is so, why do they come to our country and scare away the buffalo?

“I shall tell you why: the Wasichu are sick, and if they ever had the great villages they brag about, everybody there has died from lying with those sick women or eating that bacon which stinks, and now the rest come here and if we don’t kill them all, they will infect the Lakota and our friends the Shyela.”

The latter was the Sioux name for “Cheyenne.”

Great Elk sat down then and scratched his lice, and another Sioux spoke to the same effect, and then our Hump stood up to talk. He wasn’t much of an orator, but he sure had a grasp of the practicalities.

“If we are going to fight the white man, we had better get some guns and powder. The only place we can get enough guns and powder and shot to fight the white man is from the white man. I do not think that he will want to give them to us for this purpose; we have very little to buy them with even if he would sell them for this purpose; and we certainly can’t take them away from him, for if we could do that, we wouldn’t need guns and powder and shot for this purpose.”

Hump thought for a moment, opening and closing his mouth for air since his nose was permanently obstructed by that damage he sustained at the wagons. “I don’t know, either, what the white men are doing here. I think they may be crazy. I think it’s better to keep away from them, since we don’t have guns and powder and shot.”

Great Elk got up again and said: “At the fort was a young soldier chief who said with ten men he could rub out the entire nation of Shyelas, and with thirty men, all the people of the plains. But we Minneconjou, along with some Oglala, rubbed him out instead. This is his ring that I am wearing on a string around my neck. I used to have his finger, too, but I lost it.”

Old Lodge Skins finally took his turn, and put on that falsetto that proper oratory called for. The following remarks was developed deep in the chest, but come out high and quavering after having fought a passage through his tightened throat. The first time you heard it, you might have thought the poor devil was dying of strangulation; but it could get the wind up in you once you caught the style.

For a while he flattered the Minneconjou and the rest of the Lakota. Then he reminded them of the Cheyenne theory that they was established in the Black Hills and rich in horses at the time when the Sioux showed up there poor as could be and with only dogs for transport, and the Human Beings took pity on them and give them a horse now and again, which enabled the Sioux to prosper into the great tribe they was at present.