Текст книги "LITTLE BIG MAN"

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

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“As to the white men,” he said after an hour or so, “among my people it was my grandfather’s grandfather who saw them for the first time. His name was Walking on the Ground. In those days our people lived near the Lake You Cannot See Across, in houses of earth, and they raised corn. One morning Walking on the Ground and several other Human Beings were tracking a bear along a creek when they came across the trail of another kind of animal they had never seen before. These new tracks were almost the size of a bear’s, but they showed no toe marks and were round and smooth. Our people believed these tracks to have been made by a water-animal, whose toes were joined one to another so he could swim well.

“They followed the trail until they came to a clearing in the forest, and there they saw six of these new animals, and the grizzly bear too, who had also been tracking them. The new animals looked strange to our people. They seemed to be naked, but each one had a different type of fur or skin and another shape of head. Our men then thought they were cousins or even children of the grizzly bear because like him they stood on their hind feet and had bulky bodies and used their front paws like hands.

“But the next moment, the grizzly bear charged the new animals, and several of the latter took from between their legs their penises, which were longer than their arms, put them against the shoulder, and making a great noise, shot flame and smoke at the grizzly and he fell dead.

“Our people were terribly frightened at this and ran back through the forest to their village to tell the others, and the others were excited and had to see these new animals for themselves. So all the warriors in the village went back to the clearing where the animals were and hid in the bushes and watched them. One of the animals stripped the skin off its body and head and our men clapped their mouths in astonishment. But when the animal’s fur was off, it looked just like a human being except that its flesh was white and it had hair all over its face. It washed itself in the creek and put its skin back on, and our men then realized that what they thought was its hide was actually clothing.

“Several of the animals had hairy faces, and our people supposed these to be the males, whereas the smooth-faced ones were the females. And they saw that the lightning-shooting sticks were not the penises of those animals, but they sometimes stood holding them between their legs, so it had looked that way.

“Our men drew back into the forest and held a counsel. Hungry Bear said: ‘I don’t think we should bother these animals or make them angry, because they are very strange and you can’t tell what they will do.’

“Black Wolf, who had not been with the first party that saw the shooting, said: ‘We could easily kill them, but that white flesh doesn’t look as if it would be good to eat, though the skin might make a pretty shirt.’

“But Walking on the Ground, who was very wise, said: ‘These animals are not Human Beings, but they are men. You know the old prophecy made by our great hero Sweet Medicine, that a new people would one day come among us, their skins white and their ways odd. And you know that he said they will bring us bad luck. But now they are here, and it is better for us to find them than for them to come upon us by surprise.

“ ‘Here is what we should do: I will walk into their camp and look at them. The rest of you watch from the bushes. If the white persons attack me, then we must fight them and someone should go back to the village and send the women and children to hide. If I am not attacked, then some of you can also come into camp.’

“Walking on the Ground stripped himself to the breechclout and went alone into the clearing. The first white person to see him started to raise the lightning stick, but another-without hair on its face, so that it seemed a woman-stepped in front of the first and thrust its hand at Walking on the Ground. My grandfather’s grandfather stopped and looked her in the eyes, for our people had never heard of shaking hands at that time. Then other white men came all around Walking, and our men in the bushes started to stretch their bows, but soon they saw the whites were not trying to harm the Human Being but rather smiling at him and making talk, and so some of them came out of the bushes and went into that camp.

“The smooth-faced persons turned out to be men as well as the hairy-cheeked, and one of them wore a golden cross around his neck and when he took off his hat his head was mostly bare skin except for a fringe around his ears. He got two sticks and making a cross of them, stuck it in the earth, and then all the white men fell upon their knees while the bald one closed his eyes, folded his hands, and talked. Then the whites showed the Human Beings their lightning-and-thunder sticks and let them pull the triggers, but our people were still scared when the shots came.

“Those first white men stayed in that place for about one moon and started to build a square house of logs. Our people would visit them every day, and the man with the cross would give them presents and make signs that they should kneel upon the ground while he talked to the crossed sticks which were his medicine, and so they would do so to be polite.

“But then one night, while half of the white party was sleeping, the other half killed them and took all their things and burned up the house and went over to the Big Water, got into a boat they had there, and went away.

“That is the truth as it has come down to me,” said Old Lodge Skins. “And the same thing happened many times thereafter, whenever the white people appeared. They do not like each other, and sooner or later one will kill the next, and usually not in battle, the way our people do to prove themselves brave and to enjoy the courageous deaths of our enemies and to die on a good day, but rather by shooting in the back or stretching the neck or by infecting one another with the coughing-sickness and sores or making people lose their heads with whiskey.

“But I say they are white, and not like us, and there may be some reason why they act this way that one cannot understand unless he is himself white. If they ever attack me, I will defend myself. But until such time, I will avoid them.”

That was when we went up into the Powder River country, though we wasn’t in no hurry and first went south for a day or so along the Surprise River and took buffalo there. Them was the days before the railroad and the professional white hunters, and you could find single herds numbering in the hundreds of thousands, maybe a square mile or more of beasts crowded so thick you couldn’t see no grass between them, and the Cheyenne would get them milling and drop one after another with arrow or spear and it would make no appreciable difference in the size of the herd. Then the women would come out for the butchering and when it was done haul the usable parts back to camp on the hide, which was afterward fleshed and stretched on a frame for a robe or lodge cover. We’d eat boiled tongue and roast hump then, the finest grub in the world, alongside which your best beefsteak will taste like a singed bootsole. But it is all gone now.

Now it’s true there wasn’t no white men up on the Powder, but there was Crow Indians roundabout. The Cheyenne and the Crow was generally enemies, but made a peace some years before when the Government got most of the warring tribes together on Horse Creek east of Laramie and had them sign a treaty not to fight one another. This worked fine between tribes that never came in contact with the next, but didn’t last long with them that did, it being normal for a Cheyenne to fight a Pawnee. And if you didn’t fight, you’d turn into a woman.

So with the Crow, who was by the way friends of the whites, claiming never to have killed a white man and for that reason they was always let to keep their country. The Crow was brave men when they fought the Cheyenne and Sioux alone, but when they served as scouts for the U.S. Cavalry, they often turned coward. I don’t know why.

Anyway, we no sooner had got up to the Powder than some of our men who was out spying come in with the news that a big camp of Crow had been located on the Crazy Woman’s Creek.

“If it is a big camp, they must have a lot of ponies,” said Hump.

Shadow That Comes in Sight, one of the spies, said: “Those Crow are very rich in ponies. They are the most beautiful ponies I have ever seen. I hid all day in the scrubwood just to look at those ponies.”

“I have heard you,” said Hump and sighed. The group then went over to talk with Old Lodge Skins, a bunch of us boys following along.

“Do you need ponies?” the chief said after he had been apprised.

Shadow nodded his head very sad, saying: “Never have I been so poor.”

Old Lodge Skins asked the same question of the others and got the same answer. Then he spoke, groping within his blanket: “I received this medal for making my mark on the peace paper between us and the Crow. On it is the face of the Father who lives in the main village of the whites. I said that I would not fight with the Crow while the sun still shines forever, and I do not speak in two directions. But none of you made your mark on that paper and none of you wear this medal. I don’t think the Father knows who you are. My own favorite type of horse is pinto.”

So a party of raiders formed at twilight: Shadow That Comes in Sight, Cold Face, Yellow Eagle, Bird Bear, and Long Jaw. It was autumn of the year, with the nights getting brisk, but of course they stripped to the buff so no clothes would get in the way of their quick work. We boys was hanging around doing little services for these men we admired: honing a knife, filling arrow quivers, and so on, when Younger Bear steps up to Shadow and says: “I am ready to go.”

Shadow, cinching up his moccasin, answers, “All right,” without looking at him.

Younger Bear says: “I have practiced many times, stealing meat from the women.” He was referring to the game we played which like the others trained us for more serious business: the women cut buffalo flesh into thin slices and hung them on rawhide lines to dry in the sun, and we would snake along on our bellies and swipe it, each slice standing for a pony. If the woman saw you, she hit you lightly with a stick and you was counted out. Actually Younger Bear was one of the worst at this game; force, rather than stealth, being his specialty. But he was around fourteen now and he was going to bust if he had to stay a boy much longer.

“I killed a buffalo two days ago,” he went on. This everybody knew because his father had gone around camp singing about it after the hunt and then gave a feast.

“I have heard that,” said Shadow. “You can come.”

“I am the strongest boy in camp,” Younger Bear said.

“You also talk a lot,” said Cold Face, who was tying a little medicine bundle behind his ear for luck. “We’ll stay here and you can go and make a speech to the Crow, who love a big mouth.”

“You can come,” said Shadow, “if you don’t say any more. The Human Beings are the greatest people on the face of the earth, the bravest warriors, have the most beautiful and virtuous women, and live in a place that is perfect. That is known to everybody, even our enemies. A Human Being just isand does not have to talk about it.”

Now that stuff got my goat even more than Younger Bear’s volunteering to join the raid. I liked the Cheyenne and by this time really felt I was maybe a second cousin to them, but whenever I ran into their arrogance it served only to remind me I was basically white. The greatest folk on earth! Christ, they wouldn’t have had them iron knives if Columbus hadn’t hit these shores. And who brought them the pony in the first place?

I was standing at the side of Little Horse and whispered to him, “I’m going.” He said, “I’m not,” and left Shadow’s tepee. That was the first sign that I can remember he showed of what was to be his life direction.

I stepped up to the men and asked: “Can I go?”

I was in the wrong state of mind for such a dangerous venture, when solidarity is wanted, whereas I was joining out of my difference from my comrades. Them Cheyenne looked at me and then they looked at one 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, “ youcould hold them all, and I might go.”

“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 chock!like when you throw a stone against a keg.

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 goddamnedest sound, reverberating to your testicles.

Now my hair was longer than when I had been with my white kin, but not nearly so long as an Indian wears his. The reason for this is that it grew naturally like snagged wire: let it go a month and I’d look neither Indian, white, male nor female, but rather like the belly of a goat that had been tracking through fresh dung, for along with the tangle the ginger color would darken, the more the hair, and go to brown, and any kind of animal fat laid on it would streak in green.

That was why I’d hack it off now and again when it got more than halfway down my neck. So this Crow, he was already in the act of scalping me when he hesitated for the briefest space on account of the funny feel of that short hair, which sure belonged to no Cheyenne by birth.

This break in rhythm brought me out of the spell I was under, quietly suffering the top of my head to be sliced off, the warm blood running into my right ear. I couldn’t wrestle him, I didn’t have no weapon, Younger Bear so far as I knowed was stone dead, and the other Cheyenne was in the village by now, too far away to help, and if I made a noise the rest of the Crow would be roused and murder my friends. This was the kind of thing for which Old Lodge Skins had told us boys that story about Little Man fighting the Snakes. Sooner or later he knowed it’d come in handy. I couldn’t let a Crowdo this to a Human Being!

I jerked back and bared my teeth.

“Nazestae!” I hissed. “I am Cheyenne!” It would have sounded more impressive could I have afforded to shout it as battle cry; I have explained why I couldn’t.

But do you know, with that the Crow pulled away his knife, fell back on his haunches, and covered up his mouth with his left hand. His thumb had slipped on my movement and run across my forehead, opening up a white streak through that paint made of soot and buffalo grease. He didn’t understand what I said, for Crow and Cheyenne have different tongues, but he spoke as if in answer to it and in English:

“Little white man! Fool poor Crow! Ha, ha, big fooling. You want to eat?”

He was scared I’d take offense, see, because the Crow always sucked up to Americans, and in his dumb way wanted to bring me over to his lodge. It wasn’t his fault, of course, none of it, and that fellow has always been on my conscience. It appeared he was out in the night by himself for some reason when he run across me and the Bear, and worked quiet for he didn’t know how many others of us was in the vicinity. But I couldn’t have known that at the moment; I couldn’t in the time at my disposal explain the situation for him; and least of all could I go as his guest to camp, or even let him talk about it any longer in that loud voice.

So I had to kill him. Murder him, a friendly fellow like that. Shoot him in the back, what’s more. In retrieving my wolfskin that had fell off in the struggle, I had found my bow and quiver on the ground. The Crow at that moment was crawling up the wall of the draw to get the pony he had left on the plain.

Three Cheyenne arrows, thunk, thunk, thunk, in a straight line along his backbone. His hands lost their purchase and his big body slid down again till his moccasins hit bottom, and it stopped rigid on the incline.

That was the first I ever took a human life, and however it sounds to you, it was one of the best times. I was saving my friends, and you shouldn’t never have to apologize for that. And after all, he hadscalped me almost halfway, which though he later veered friendly left its mark I can tell you. The right side of my face and neck was sticky as molasses with lifeblood-mine, very dear to me-and I was afeared to feel up there in case my whole skull-cover flapped loose. I dropped out of the picture then.

Next time I opened my eyes, I was laying inside a little tepee of brush and alongside me squatted some fellow wearing the top of a buffalo’s head, horns and matted hair, and he was singing and shaking a buffalo tail in my face. I had a terrible headache; my skull felt as though it had shriveled like a dried pea. I seemed to be wearing a cap of mud. I tried it gingerly with my fingers, but the medicine man gave a loud buffalo-snort at that moment and spat a mouthful of chawed-up flower petals into my face.

I had been long enough then among the Cheyenne to hold my peace. Besides, the headache gave one great surge and then began to ebb away. I sat up, and Left-Handed Wolf, for that was the medicine man’s name, started to dance around the robe where I lay, singing that monotone curing song interspersed with snorts and bellows. And he kept chewing more dried flowers from a little pouch on his belt and blowing them at me from the quarter points of the compass.

Then he leaned over and tapped a little stick on my cranium, and off fell the clay cap in two halves in which a few wiry hairs was embedded. Now my head felt especial cool as if indeed the whole scalp was missing, but he spat some flowers on it and it didn’t hurt no more at all.

Now he danced slowly before me and dangled that buffalo tail just beyond my reach. I tried weakly to seize it, but he’d back off a little each time. I felt the strength coming up from the soles of my feet, and when it reached my knees I got up and followed him, still trying to grab the tail that he shook before me while bellowing and tossing his horns. His face was painted black, with the eyes and nostrils rimmed in vermilion.

Wolf backed through the tepee door and I come along, reaching for that tail more and more vigorously, and when I got outside, I saw the whole camp, warriors, women, kids, babies, and dogs, lined up in parallel rows from the lodge entrance to the river. They was all by their presence working for my cure. No Cheyenne suffers alone. I was mighty touched by this display and got the power of it, straightening up my back and walking with almost normal force.

When we reached the riverbank, Wolf said: “Stretch yourself.”

I did so, and some black blood started from the place above my temple where the Crow had first inserted his knife, and falling into the water was carried away and lost in the Powder’s swift current. Then came the good red blood, which Wolf stanched with dried flowers.

“I am well now,” said I. That’s the God’s truth, and was the end of the incident. Afterwards I looked in a trade mirror and found a thin blue tracing at the roots of my hair, but even that was gone in a day or so.

The moral effects was farther-reaching. For one thing, a crier right away went about camp singing about what a hero I was and inviting people to a feast Old Lodge Skins was holding in my honor. The chief for celebration give most of his horses away to certain poor Cheyenne who didn’t have any, and after the eats he made presents to everybody who come: blankets, jewelry, and so on-he ended up almost naked. He also made a speech which from modesty I’ll pass up except for the important points.

After recounting my exploit at great length in a poetic fashion that would just sound silly in English, he said: “This boy has proved himself a Human Being. Tonight there is weeping in the Crow lodges. The earth shakes when he walks. The Crow cry like women when he comes! He is a Human Being! Like the great Little Man, who came to him in a dream and gave him strength to kill the Crow, he walks!”

This was exaggerating some, but as I told you I did think of Little Man and jerked away from the knife, which caused the Crow’s hand to slip proving I was white. I had told Old Lodge Skins only about the inspiration of Little Man, figuring it would please him. He took it from there.

After some minutes of the foregoing stuff, which didn’t embarrass me none, for everybody was beaming at me, including some of the young girls who was allowed to peek under the tepeeskin-I was getting some interest in girls at this point of my life-after that, the chief said:

“This boy’s medicine comes from the vision of Little Man. He is himself little in body and he is now a man. But his heart is big. Therefore his name from now on shall be: Little Big Man.”

That was it, and that’s how I was called ever after by the Cheyenne. True to Indian ways, no one used my real name; no one even knew it. It was Jack Crabb.

The horse-stealing expedition was also in its other respects a job well done. Them four warriors had slipped into the Crow village without rousing a soul and took thirty horses, more or less, driving them back to our camp through what remained of the night into early morning. When they reached where me and Younger Bear was, Bear had come to with a knot on his head but otherwise O.K. Lucky for us that Crow had been wandering without his bow, else we’d both been plugged from the top of the draw and never knowed the difference. So they tied me to my pony and brung me in.

I got four horses from the common loot, thereby becoming a man of certain substance, but had a greater thrill when a little lad, eight or nine, named Dirt on the Nose, asked me: “Now you’re a warrior, can I tend your ponies?” Meaning I could stay in bed of a morning now when the kids got up for chores. Maybe I could, but it was not the Cheyenne way to press your advantages. Shadow That Comes in Sight, for example, the veteran warrior who had led the raid, took a share of three horses, kept the least for himself, giving the best to Old Lodge Skins and the next to Hump-not because they was chiefs, for that cut no ice as such; no Cheyenne kissed the arse of authority-but because they had advised him well. Then Bird Bear and Cold Face each give one of their ponies to Yellow Eagle, who though he made a mistake had done the right thing to correct it. Then I gave him one of mine, for the same reason, and since I had been involved. Then I offered another to Left-Handed Wolf, who refused because you aren’t supposed to be paid for treatment. But it was O.K. to present it to his brother, which I did.