Chapter XX Eagle Eye Remembers
When Eagle Eye left the Peniman family, striding away across the plains without a word of gratitude or farewell, Mrs. Peniman and the girls felt grieved and disappointed.
It would have comforted them perhaps if they could have seen his face; if they could have detected the surreptitious glances he threw backward, or if they could have beheld the moisture that blurred his eyes, which he hurriedly wiped away as if ashamed of his weakness.
He was not yet strong, and could not make rapid progress, and as he sat down in the grass now and then to rest his eyes turned ever backward to the homestead, while he turned over and over in his mind the story Joshua Peniman had told him.
Of that story he knew more than the white man suspected.
He was a Sioux, and had seen Red Snake among his people.
When, after many days’ travel, he at last reached the Sioux village on the Missouri River, near the mouth of the Niobrara, he went at once to the head chief of the tribe.
“Where Red Snake?” he asked in his own language.
“I know not,” answered the chief in the same language, “I have not seen him for many sleeps.”
“Red Snake bad man,” continued Eagle Eye, and proceeded to tell the chief the story that Joshua Peniman had told him, adding to it much that he had learned about the family while being nursed back to health among them.
When he had finished the tale the old chief looked thoughtful.
“Red Snake has a bad heart to the white brother,” he said after a long pause. “He has done much harm to my people. He leads my young men into much trouble. He has brought fire-water among us, he has taught our young men to drink. And when my young men are drunk he takes them on raids on the white people. He make me much trouble with the white man’s government. I wish he would come to my teepees no more.”
Eagle Eye fervently echoed the wish.
“Where is the boy—the young maiden—he captured?” he continued.
Eagle Eye shook his head. “Gone!” he said laconically.
Both Indians puffed their pipes solemnly for a while. Then Eagle Eye asked the question he had been making ready to ask from the beginning.
“Does the Great Chief know what is Red Snake’s name?”
The old chief shook his head slowly.
“I know nothing. One time when the big fire burn the grass of the prairies Black Bear brought a white man to our camps. He was drunk and had been caught in the great fire. He was heap sick, sleep two, three, many days. He gave Black Bear much presents, gun, knife, beads, many things. He gave other young men of my camp presents. At last he gave them firewater, and my young men were pleased. They gave the paleface a place in the lodge of my people. They called him ‘Red Snake’ because he moved so still and the Great Spirit had given him red hair. After a while he married Wahahnesha. He has been with my people ever since.”
“And you never heard the true name of the white man?”
“No. He never told his name.”
For some minutes they smoked in silence. Then rising slowly the old chief went to the back of the lodge and returned with a pouch made of deerskin in his hand. From it he drew a small red morocco-covered book, which he held out to Eagle Eye.
“He lose. Me find. Me keep.”
Eagle Eye took the book and turned it over and over in his hands. As he turned its pages he could make out a lot of queer-looking marks and signs, which meant nothing to him. After scrutinizing it carefully but uselessly for a while he handed it back to the chief. The chief waved his hand.
“You keep,” he said laconically, “give white man some day.”
After another silence he burst forth: “He no red snake, he black snake. Heap bad man. Some day he make heap trouble for Sioux. Bring white soldier—shoot my young men. Wish he killed—wish he come back to my people no more.”
Eagle Eye sat smoking silently for a time, then rose and left the lodge.
He heard the sound of voices, and following it came to a great camp-fire, about which a number of young men of the tribe were sitting cross-legged on the ground. He greeted, then joined them, listening idly to the talk that went on among them.
He learned after a time that they were talking about a great hunt that was to take place the next day, and that Red Snake, who had been suffering from a wound in the knee and had gone to Bellevue to see a white man’s doctor, had returned the day before and was to accompany them. There was much joking about the presents he had brought them and the fire-water that was to be taken with them on the hunt, and which was to enliven their night camps.
“And where is the hunt to be?” asked Eagle Eye, a quick alarming thought running through his head.
“To the Minne-to-wauk-pala. He say heap much antelope, elk, buffalo out that way.”
The eyes which had given the young Indian his name blazed hotly. In an instant he saw the plan. He knew as well as if he had heard the details that the drunken degenerate white man was planning to take these young men on a hunting expedition, and when they were crazed with fire-water lead them on a raid on the Peniman homestead, for which, if trouble arose, they would be blamed, and he would escape free, and yet would be enabled to work out his fiendish designs upon the family.
Without a moment’s hesitation he resolved to join the hunt.
Long before the sun rose the next morning the young Indians were on their way. Red Snake, attired in his usual fashion, with his face stained red and great warlike emblems of red and blue and yellow painted on his face and breast, led the way.
He was not intoxicated this day, Eagle Eye observed with some interest, and the fire-water was kept carefully secreted until they made their night camp, when a demijohn was passed around and around among them until the Indians were all wild or stupid. He drank nothing. Eagle Eye, while making a great pretense of roisterous drinking, took little, but pretending to be stupefied lay down beside the fire with his blanket over his head and watched and listened until all was still.
The camp had sunk to silence, the whoops and yelps of the drunken Indians had gradually sunk to grunts and snores, when Eagle Eye saw Red Snake creep from his blanket and signal to Black Bear, a wild young buck who had already been in considerable trouble, and draw him away from the camp.
Eagle Eye lay still for a few moments, then rolling over and grunting, as if in a bad dream, edged himself away from the firelight until he reached the shadows beyond, then on hands and knees crept noiselessly through the grass until he was within earshot of Red Snake and Black Bear. They were talking in low, guttural tones, fortunately in the Sioux dialect.
After a jumble of talk, of which he could make nothing, he heard at last the thing for which he had been waiting; Red Snake and Black Bear were planning a raid upon the Peniman homestead, and to Black Bear was confided the details of leading the raid, while Red Snake himself would be free to carry out whatever nefarious designs on the persons or property of the settlers he might have in mind without danger of detection.
Eagle Eye’s blood boiled hotly. Not only was his indignation aroused against the renegade by the feeling of gratitude for the white family who had nursed and tended him, but because of his loyalty and devotion to his own people.
He had been one of those who had been betrayed into making the assault upon the Peniman place before, and his life had nearly paid the penalty of his folly. Then, as now, the young Indians had known nothing of his plans, but maddened with fire-water, incited by wild tales of loot and treasure, they had followed him, ignorant of the fact that they were being made the cat’s-paw to cover his crimes, and that should detection and punishment follow it was the Sioux who would be blamed and punished by the white man’s law, while the white man who was responsible for it would escape, his villainy covered by the blanket and war-paint of an Indian.
All the next day the party hunted, bringing down many elk, deer, and antelope, cheered and enlivened by the prospect of the evening’s carousal and the tales of the great herds of buffalo they would overtake the next day.
There was little sleep for any one in the camp that night. When darkness fell the camp-fire was lighted, and the supply of fire-water with which Red Snake had liberally provided himself while he was in Bellevue was sent around. No limit was put upon it, and after a time the prairies rung and the night was made hideous by the yelps and howls and wild orgies of the Indians, who, unaccustomed to the poisonous stuff, were made fairly mad and frantic by it.
When the start was made in the morning they were still drunk. Many of them were like mad men, while others were stupefied and logy, scarcely able to sit their ponies and utterly unfitted for the chase. Whether the tales of Red Snake in regard to the great herds of buffalo between them and the Minne-to-wauk-pala were intended as fiction or not they turned out to be true, and shortly after daylight they spied a vast herd feeding to the north of them, for which the Indians started with wild whoops of delight.
Red Snake followed, cursing. His plan was not working out exactly as he intended.
Riding like maniacs the crazed young warriors soon came close enough to the herd to fire, and a volley of arrows whizzed through the air, stinging and maddening the animals, and while not wounding severely making them ready to fight.
Instead of fleeing in terror, as they did from gunfire, they turned about and made a dash into the ranks of the drunken Indians, who, utterly unprepared for such action, became panic-stricken and many of those who sat their ponies unsteadily were thrown and trampled in the wild stampede that followed, while others fired wildly and recklessly, their arrows stinging and maddening the beasts, which gored and trampled the hunters that fell at their feet.
With wild shouts Eagle Eye urged his pony in among them, trying with all the might that was in him to rescue his friends, who, maddened and stupefied by the deadly effects of the liquor they had drunk the night before, were unable to help themselves.
As he stood with his bow curved, his arrow poised for flight, his eye chanced to fall upon Red Snake, the baleful and malign influence that had brought this and other troubles upon his people. Eagle Eye was a hereditary chief, and loved his people with the love of a father. Suddenly as he gazed upon the renegade white man a fierce anger burned in his breast. He saw red. His blood surged madly through his veins. And changing the aim of his arrow with the quickness of lightning he bent his bow strongly and let it fly, carrying his vengeance with it.
He saw Red Snake throw up his hands, heard above the uproar his yell of rage and pain, and saw him fall and the buffaloes charge on and over him, galloping away over the plains.
When they had gone the survivors of the disaster, sobered by their peril, drew close together and looked about them. On the ground were strewn the carcasses of a number of buffaloes, and among them, mangled and crushed out of all human semblance, were many of the young Indians who had set out that morning so recklessly.
Black Bear, who remained unhurt, went among them turning over those that lay face downward, lifting those that were alive, passing by those that were dead with a grunt. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation and stooped over a prostrate figure. Eagle Eye moved nearer. As Black Bear lifted the trampled and mangled form he saw that it was Red Snake.
“Is he dead?” he asked in his own language.
Black Bear put his ear to the chest of the wounded man.
“No, he is breathing,” he answered in the same language.
“Then put him on your horse and take him home,” thundered Eagle Eye. “He is your friend. You brought him among us to bring death and trouble and disgrace to your own people. Now look out for him. And you”—he pointed his finger in the face of Black Bear with a look that made him cringe, “go to the chief when you get there. I know what you were going to do. I heard your plan. The chief will settle with you for it.”
Without a word the Indian stooped and picking up the body of Red Snake threw it across his horse, mounted behind it, and rode away. Eagle Eye stayed behind to bury the dead, look after the wounded, and see that the Indians who were too drunken to take care of themselves were mounted and started back toward their village.
When he arrived Black Bear was there.
“Does Red Snake still live?” he asked.
“He still lives,” replied Black Bear.
“So much the worse for you,” Eagle Eye told him, and driving Black Bear before him went straight to the lodge of the chief, where he told him the whole story.
When it was finished the old man turned to Black Bear.
“Have you no love for your people,” he asked, “that you are willing to lead them to death and destruction? Well are you named ‘Black Bear,’ who sees not the danger when his nose is tickled by the honey-pots of strangers. You would have betrayed your people. You would have led your own kindred into the snare laid for you by the white man who has a bad heart toward Indians. You have caused the death of our young men. You are not worthy to live in the lodge of your people. Go; from this day forth you are no longer one of us. We cast you out. Now go!”
He slunk away, and at the same moment a young squaw entered the lodge of the chief in search of Eagle Eye.
“You speak the tongue of the white man,” she said. “Come!”
Leading him to a teepee not far away she pushed aside the skin that hung over the door. He entered and saw Red Snake lying on a pile of skins and blankets in a corner, crushed and bleeding, the seal of approaching death upon his face.
As Eagle Eye approached him he opened his eyes.
“You die,” said the Indian, looking down upon him sternly, his arms folded across his breast.
Red Snake looked up, the dew of death upon his forehead.
“Yes,” he sneered. “It’s all over. The game’s up—and I’m glad of it.”
“Who are you? What you name?” asked Eagle Eye.
“No matter who I am. I’ve sacrificed all claim to the name I was born with. I’ll die as I have lived, as ‘Red Snake,’ a squaw-man, a renegade, a drunkard, an all-around bad egg.”
As the words left his lips a shudder ran through his body, his eyes flew wide, and he clutched wildly at his breast; then with a gasping breath fell backward, the blood gushing from his lips.
Eagle Eye bent over him. The Indian head-dress had been lost or cast aside and his thick mane of red hair fell loose about his face. Beneath the buckskin shirt which he had thrust aside in his agony his skin was smooth and white, and, as if in immutable justice for the deed that he had done, a feathered arrow protruded from his breast.
The Indian stood looking down at the dead body for a moment, then spurned it with his foot.
He turned presently and cast his keen eyes about the wigwam. With a step as soft as that of a panther he skirted its walls, and from under a heap of hides, blankets and rubbish in a corner drew forth a battered tin box.
For a moment he stood holding it in his hands and gazing at it curiously. Then he tucked it under his arm under his blanket, and with a backward glance at the body and a muttered “Ugh!” lifted the flap and passed out into the night.