“We have not come for war,” replied the Sioux. “We have come to eat much meat together, and remember that day when war was good on the Little Horn, and our warriors killed Yellow Hair and all his soldiers.”
Pounded Meat came to where he and Cheschapah had their blankets.
“We shall have war,” said the confident son to his father. “My medicine is good.”
“Peace is also pretty good,” said Pounded Meat. “Get new thoughts. My son, do you not care any more for my words?”
Cheschapah did not reply.
“I have lived a long while. Yet one man may be wrong. But all cannot be. The other chiefs say what I say. The white men are too strong.”
“They would not be too strong if the old men were not cowards.”
“Have done,” said the father, sternly. “If you are a medicine-man, do not talk like a light fool.”
The Indian has an “honor thy father” deep in his religion too, and Cheschapah was silent. But after he was asleep, Pounded Meat lay brooding. He felt himself dishonored, and his son to be an evil in the tribe. With these sore notions keeping him awake, he saw the night wane into gray, and then he heard the distant snort of a horse. He looked, and started from his blankets, for the soldiers had come, and he ran to wake the sleeping Indians. Frightened, and ignorant why they should be surrounded, the Sioux leaped to their feet; and Stirling, from where he sat on his horse, saw their rushing, frantic figures.
“Go quick, Kinney,” he said to the interpreter, “and tell them it’s peace, or they’ll be firing on us.”
Kinney rode forward alone, with one hand raised; and seeing that sign, they paused, and crept nearer, like crafty rabbits, while the sun rose and turned the place pink. And then came the parley, and the long explanation; and Stirling thanked his stars to see they were going to allow themselves to be peaceably arrested. Bullets you get used to; but after the firing’s done, you must justify it to important personages who live comfortably in Eastern towns and have never seen an Indian in their lives, and are rancid with philanthropy and ignorance.
Stirling would sooner have faced Sioux than sentimentalists, and he was fervently grateful to these savages for coming with him quietly without obliging him to shoot them. Cheschapah was not behaving so amiably; and recognizing him, Stirling understood about the dog. The medicine-man, with his faithful Two Whistles, was endeavoring to excite the prisoners as they were marched down the river to the Crow Agency.
Stirling sent for Kinney. “Send that rascal away,” he said. “I’ll not have him bothering here.”
The interpreter obeyed, but with a singular smile to himself. When he had ordered Cheschapah away, he rode so as to overhear Stirling and Haines talking. When they speculated about the soda-water, Kinney smiled again. He was a quiet sort of man. The people in the valley admired his business head. He supplied grain and steers to Fort Custer, and used to say that business was always slow in time of peace.
By evening Stirling had brought his prisoners to the agency, and there was the lieutenant of Indian police of the Sioux come over from Pine Ridge to bring them home. There was restlessness in the air as night fell round the prisoners and their guard. It was Cheschapah’s hour, and the young Crows listened while he declaimed against the white man for thwarting their hospitality. The strong chain of sentinels was kept busy preventing these hosts from breaking through to fraternize with their guests. Cheschapah did not care that the old Crow chiefs would not listen. When Pretty Eagle remarked laconically that peace was good, the agitator laughed; he was gaining a faction, and the faction was feeling its oats. Accordingly, next morning, though the prisoners were meek on being started home by Stirling with twenty soldiers, and the majority of the Crows were meek at seeing them thus started, this was not all. Cheschapah, with a yelling swarm of his young friends, began to buzz about the column as it marched up the river. All had rifles.
“It’s an interesting state of affairs,” said Stirling to Haines. “There are at least fifty of these devils at our heels now, and more coming. We’ve got twenty men. Haines, your Indian experiences may begin quite early in your career.”
“Yes, especially if our prisoners take to kicking.”
“Well, to compensate for spoiling their dinner-party, the agent gave them some rations and his parting blessing. It may suffice.”
The line of march had been taken up by ten men in advance, followed in the usual straggling fashion by the prisoners, and the rear-guard was composed of the other ten soldiers under Stirling and Haines. With them rode the chief of the Crow police and the lieutenant of the Sioux. This little band was, of course, far separated from the advance-guard, and it listened to the young Crow bucks yelling at its heels. They yelled in English. Every Indian knows at least two English words; they are pungent, and far from complimentary.
“It’s got to stop here,” said Stirling, as they came to a ford known as Reno’s Crossing. “They’ve got to be kept on this side.”
“Can it be done without gunpowder?” Haines asked.
“If a shot is fired now, my friend, it’s war, and a court of inquiry in Washington for you and me, if we’re not buried here. Sergeant, you will take five men and see the column is kept moving. The rest remain with me. The prisoners must be got across and away from their friends.”
The fording began, and the two officers went over to the east bank to see that the instructions were carried out.
“See that?” observed Stirling. As the last of the rear-guard stepped into the stream, the shore they were leaving filled instantly with the Crows. “Every man jack of them is armed. And here’s an interesting development,” he continued.
It was Cheschapah riding out into the water, and with him Two Whistles. The rear guard passed up the trail, and the little knot of men with the officers stood halted on the bank. There were nine—the two Indian police, the two lieutenants, and five long muscular boys of K troop of the First Cavalry. They remained on the bank, looking at the thick painted swarm that yelled across the ford.
“Bet you there’s a hundred,” remarked Haines.
“You forget I never gamble,” murmured Stirling. Two of the five long boys overheard this, and grinned at each other, which Stirling noted; and he loved them. It was curious to mark the two shores: the feathered multitude and its yells and its fifty yards of rifles that fronted a small spot of white men sitting easily in the saddle, and the clear, pleasant water speeding between. Cheschapah and Two Whistles came tauntingly towards this spot, and the mass of Crows on the other side drew forward a little.
“You tell them,” said Stirling to the chief of the Crow police, “that they must go back.”
Cheschapah came nearer, by way of obedience.
“Take them over, then,” the officer ordered.
The chief of Crow police rode to Cheschapah, speaking and pointing. His horse drew close, shoving the horse of the medicine-man, who now launched an insult that with Indians calls for blood. He struck the man’s horse with his whip, and at that a volume of yells chorussed from the other bank.
“Looks like the court of inquiry,” remarked Stirling. “Don’t shoot, boys,” he commanded aloud.
The amazed Sioux policeman gasped. “You not shoot?” he said. “But he hit that man’s horse—all the same hit your horse, all the same hit you.”
“Right.