The Lonesome Trail. John G. Neihardt
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wish I had not looked upon his face!
“He opened his eyes and they were very dim and sunken. His face was sharp. I sat down beside him. I said, ‘Now die, and I will sing about it.’
“Then his face changed. It became a squaw’s face—and it had the look!—a look that was sad and weak and frightened and begging for pity. And it seemed to me that it was not the face of Black Dog any more. It had the look! I had seen it in the face of Paezha by the spring!
“Now since I have many winters behind me, I wonder if it was not a coward’s face; but then it was not so. I grew soft. There was a great springtime in my breast. The ice was breaking up. I wrapped my blankets about him. I gave him meat. He stared at me and ate like a wolf. I spoke soft words. I made a fire from the brush that was on the frozen stream. I warmed him and he grew stronger. All night I watched him and in the morning I said: ‘Take my bow and arrows, Black Dog; I wish to die. Go on and live.’ For I had lost the wish to kill; I only wished to die. And he said no word; but his eyes were changed.
“I staggered away on the back trail. I had no meat, I had no blankets, I had no weapons. I meant to die.
“But I did not die. When I lay down at night, worn-out and half frozen, someone wrapped blankets about me and built a fire by me. In the mornings I found food beside me. And so it was for many sleeps until at last I came to the village of my people, broken, caring for nothing. And I was thin, my face was sharp, my eyes were sunken, my step was slow.
“And the people looked upon me with wonder, saying: ‘Half-a-Day has come back from killing Black Dog.’
“But the truth was different.”
When Half-a-Day had finished, he stared long into the fire without speaking.
“Do you think Black Dog was all a coward?” I asked at length. “Perhaps he only loved too much.”
“I do not know,” said Half-a-Day; “I only know sometimes I wish I had not looked upon his face.”
III. FEATHER FOR FEATHER
Tum-um-um, tum-um-um, went the drums beaten by the hands of the old men—too old for wars, but now grown momentarily youthful with the victory of the young men who were returning from battle.
Tum-um-um, tum-um-um! So sang the drums—great, glad buckskin drums, exultant beneath the staccato blows of the old men’s drumsticks. Tum-um-um, tum-um-um! Now the women, dressed in their gayest garments of dyed buckskin, radiant in beads, with the spirit of song upon their painted faces, came forth in a long file from a lodge and approached the centre of the open space about which were grouped the mud lodges of the village.
There, in the centre, sat the old men. The drums were singing a glad song, in sullen tones, in this hour of victory, for a runner, breathless with his speed, had brought the good news when the sun was halfway down the sky, and now the slowly setting sun was blazing on the evening hills.
Soon the whole victorious band, fresh from their fight with the Sioux, would come over the hills like an eager, dusty wind, clamorous with glad tongues and thunderous with the driven hoofs of captured ponies.
So the drums sang and the women came forth and circled about them, peering beneath hands raised browward, into the deepening shadows of the valley down which the band would sweep.
They swelled the song of victory, the song of welcome to the victors, and the look of welcome was already upon their faces as they searched the deepening shadows.
There came a rumble over the hills as of a hidden storm in time of drouth, thundering mockingly in the rainless air. The drummers lifted their sticks with trembling hands and listened—with one accord they all listened for the shouts and the hoof beats.
Now the faint treble of distant shouting pierced the growing rumble of the thunder. It was the braves! They were returning with much glory and many ponies. The drumsticks fell snarlingly upon the taut buckskin, but the sound seemed only a whisper, for the entire village was shouting with a tumult that made the grazing ponies snort upon the hillsides and gallop away with ears pricked wonderingly.
“They come! They come!”
The villagers thronged upon that side of the village that looked toward the hills from whence the thunder deepened. A dust cloud gathered behind the hills. It grew until it caught the horizontal sunlight and seemed a scintillating tower of victory. Suddenly the hill above the valley was thronged with mounted braves, waving their weapons above their heads and shouting, and a sunlit cloud of glory seemed about them.
The band swept down the hillside and down the valley, and the dust cloud thickened under the impetuous hoofs that beat the parched and yellow prairie. When they drew near the opening in the circle of lodges, the foremost hurled his panting pony back upon its haunches and the others reared and halted behind, champing at the restraining thongs.
“A-ho!” shouted the foremost, holding his weapons above his head. “We come from the Sioux! We have many ponies and also scalp-locks! Sing! For we have fought a good fight and we are not ashamed!”
A great shout went up from the village, and the drums snarled. Slowly, majestically, the circle of women began moving about the drums, keeping time to the rhythmic beats with a sideward shuffling of their feet in the dust. In a monotonous minor key the singing of the women began—at first like the crooning of an Indian mother to a restless child when the camp fires burn blue, and all the braves are snoring in the dark.
Then it rose into the mournful wail of a wife looking upon a dead face—a wordless, eloquent song. Then, with a burst, it rose into a treble cry, and words became dimly recognisable amid the ecstasy.
“We come, we come, and we are not ashamed!” sang the women to the snarling of the drums. “Let the fires roar and the bison meat be cooked, for we have fought, and now we wish to eat!
“Let the women dance and sing that we may be glad after our fighting! A-ho! A-ho! We travelled far—one sleep, two sleeps, three sleeps, but we slumbered not! We came upon our enemies. They were hidden in the grass like badgers. They were dressed in yellow grass that they might hide. We saw them and we shouted with joy, for we were not afraid! The enemy trembled like wolves who have come to the end of the ravine and the hunters follow behind!”
As the women sang, shuffling about the circle, the braves rode in single file into the enclosure of the village and formed a circle about the dance.
“I saw a big man among my enemies,” sang the women, for so their song ran. “He was strong as a bear and terrible as an elk. His head was proud with eagle feathers, for many men had he killed. I did not tremble when he rushed at me; I raised my club and struck him, and he fell with his eagle feathers. He whimpered like an old woman when she becomes a child again. He said, ‘I have many ponies for you, and my children will cry if I do not go back. Spare me!’ But behold! I have his scalp lock!”
“His scalp lock! His scalp lock!” shouted the braves, as the words of the song were drowned again in the minor drone that followed the snarl of the drums. And they waved scalp locks above their heads—the locks of the fallen Sioux.
Out of the droning the song of the women grew again. It became more ecstatic, running the gamut of human passion—from the shrill shriek of defiance to the mournful wail for those who had fallen in the battle. And then the shuffling stopped; the song died away into a drone and ceased, like the song of a locust at the end of a sultry evening. The drums snarled no more, a great silence fell, the sun had sunk beneath the hills.
Then, in the silence and the shadows of the evening, one came forth from among the circle of braves, and, with a slow, majestic bending of the knees, danced in a circle about the women and the drums, that began again as an accompaniment to the song that he would sing.
Round and round the circle he danced, improvising a song to the rhythm of the