XXXVII Ashes
A light night wind had arisen from the lower prairie, and occasionally puffed a stray wisp of smoke or heat across the westernmost curve of the circle. Hot sparks shot up in the air swiftly, paused, and floated dying down the wind. Above, occasionally, the clear stars peeped in through the canopy of blackness which the firelight so jealously guarded. There was a perceptible chill in the air. As the long speech continued and drew to a close, the half-breed, seated on the prairie side of the fire, shivered convulsively from time to time, for he was now almost exhausted by excitement and lack of sleep and food. At first he had submitted to the trial, if so it might be called, unwillingly enough, to tell the truth, but without a suspicion that it could result in anything more serious than a fine for desertion. It might almost be looked upon as a ransom, and this he was willing to pay. His principal emotion had been that of frantic chafing because, for the present, Jim Buckley and Billy Knapp were free to make trouble for him. He had no doubt they would do so, although he did not know exactly how they would go at it.
As Lone Wolf so dramatically outlined the grounds of his accusation, however, Lafond really began to see the face of fear. He gathered that the very night he had chosen to quit the tribe, some one had killed the tribe’s medicine man and defiled the totem in a way not to be mentioned here. This is with Indians the Unforgiveable Sin. Suspicion had naturally coupled the sacrilege with his own coincidental disappearance. Probably even at the time no one had doubted his guilt or had suspected any other cause for his desertion. The real criminal had been able easily to cover his trail; and now, so many years would have hardened even a slight suspicion, let alone a positive certainty, into conviction absolute. Lafond saw that his chances were desperate, and yet so suddenly was the knowledge forced upon him that he could hardly realize it. But a few hours before, he had held in the hollow of his hand more power than any other one man in the territory. Now he was in danger of his life.
He knew well enough that his only chance lay in keeping cool. He must not interrupt the orator with denials. He must try to make his eloquence tell.
Lone Wolf ceased abruptly, drew his blanket about his shoulders and sat down. Two squaws noiselessly entered the circle, bearing wood for the fire. After they had withdrawn, Lafond rose to his feet.
He was at once uncomfortably conscious of the circle of snake eyes. It was for him the predominant note in the scene.
He began haltingly, partly because he did not know what to say, partly because long disuse had impaired his fluency in the Indian tongue. But in a moment, as he began to realize that he was now in the act of making the only plea for his life which his captors would permit him, his speech quickened until it was as rapid as that of Lone Wolf himself.
It was a masterly effort, for Lafond had not lost the old eloquence which had earned him the name of “Man-who-speaks-Medicine.” He reviewed, as had Lone Wolf, his services to the tribe. He did it modestly, stating plainly the facts and leaving the savages to draw their own conclusions. He showed further that in so bending his efforts to the tribe’s betterment, he had been actuated by no selfish motives, in proof of which proposition he enumerated one by one the various opportunities he had let pass of decamping enriched beyond any one warrior’s dreams of wealth; to which proposition he further pointed out as a corollary that he had in reality departed with but his own weapons and the clothes on his back. This made an impression. Having thus established his disinterestedness as regards his services to the tribe, he went on further to show that these argued, furthermore, an intense personal interest in its welfare. He loved his people. He challenged them to cite one of his deeds which would bear the contrary construction.
And then, with a boldness that almost amounted to genius, he drew before them vividly that night on the battlefield when he had so long contemplated the fallen white chief, and he detailed to them the reasons he had then for believing the Indians’ warlike power was from that moment doomed to wane.
“I saw these things,” he said, “as one to whom Gitche Manitou had spoken, and I knew they were true. But my brothers were victorious; they saw the blue coats scattered as the dust is scattered by the wind. My words would have been as the water that slips away or the cloud that vanishes in the heavens. If I had told my brothers these things, they would not have believed. You, Spotted Dog; you, Firebrand; even you, Lone Wolf, would not have believed. Look well within your hearts and acknowledge that I speak words of truth. Then you would have cast me out as one with forked tongue.”
Such being the case, Lafond argued that, inasmuch as he could do nothing for his people by sharing their disgrace, he had left them. “But only for a season,” he explained. “You are warriors: I am a man of craft. When your bows are broken and your arrows lost, then must I take my weapons and strive as I can. I went forth to fight for my brothers. Behold me; I have fought and I have won. I am rich. My brothers are to share my riches. Now I can return to the lodges of my brothers as one coming from a far war trail, bringing the ponies and scalps of the enemies my hand has struck.”
Then suddenly the speaker took up the question of the crime itself. He dilated on it with horror. He acknowledged no excuse for it. But, he asked them, why should he have committed it? He showed them that he could have had no motive for such a wanton insult. And, most ingenious of all, he pointed out that if, as Lone Wolf had supposed, the tribe’s misfortunes had arisen because of Gitche Manitou’s wrath over this terrible crime, then that wrath and those misfortunes would indubitably have been visited on him, the accused, with the rest; for he was a member of the tribe, and according to the accusation the guiltiest of them all. Such was not the case. On the contrary he had prospered.
In conclusion he believed he could direct suspicion to the right channel. From his wonderful past knowledge of inter-tribal and individual jealousies, he rapidly constructed a plausible theory.
His defence, as he could observe, made a profound impression. The savages sat silent and thoughtful while the minutes slipped by, and the wavering light from the central fire alternately illuminated and threw into shadow the strong bronze of their faces. The argument was sophistical enough, but for two reasons it carried conviction. In the first place, the half-breed was pleading for his very life; in the second place, he was in reality absolutely innocent as to the main facts. Therefore he had faith and earnestness—two great qualities. His only misfortune was, that the exigencies of the situation demanded that in the web of truth one falsehood should be woven.
Beyond the circle of light the dim forms of the women and children showed faintly against the dimmer background of the sea-like prairie. They had followed with great attention the deliberations before them, but in silence and with decorum, as is proper in such cases. Now suddenly one of them slipped forward through the circle before her companions or the warriors between whom she passed could detain her. Before the fire she turned and faced Lone Wolf. It was the old hag who had first recognized Lafond.
The warriors looked on her in cold surprise. Such a thing as a woman intruding on a council was unheard of, unthinkable, punishable by almost any penalty.
“My daughter has been deceived,” said Lone Wolf gravely. “This is not a gathering of the women. She must go.”
She did not seem to hear him, but broke out panting as soon as she could get her breath.
“My brothers listen to forked words!” she cried, “and the spirit of lies has blinded them, so that they cannot see the truth. They are deceived by much lying because it is mingled with the truth, like tobacco and willow bark. He says he has been on the long war trail and now returns to his brothers with the ponies of his enemies. The trail has indeed been long, for it is many moons since he took the ponies. How long has he been rich?” she cried. “Many moons! Are the trails closed that he could not find his brothers before, while they were starving? Does he find them now because he calls to them from afar on the war trail? It is lies!
“And my brothers forget,” she went on contemptuously, “the Yellow Hair of the Hills and the little child. What was it this one demanded of my brothers? To defile Pah-sap-pa by the slaying of his enemies. It was for that he made us rich, for that he used his craft to bring us power. It was his power. And when he, led my brothers up into Pah-sap-pa, the voice of Gitche Manitou spoke to them and they went away leaving this one’s enemies unharmed, and so he was angry with my brothers and swore to do them an injury. So he killed Buffalo Voice and defiled the totem in order that Gitche Manitou might turn his hand against us! He speaks forked words. Why has he not brought his gifts long before, if what I say is not true? There has been need.”
She turned as suddenly as she had come and left the circle, again empty except for the leaping fire. In her spoke the spirit of relentlessness, a deserted woman. She touched with unerring instinct on the one weak spot in Lafond’s defence, and thereby discredited the rest. Her reminder of the soreness of their need, when this renegade brother had held out no hand to help them, hardened their hearts and brushed from their minds like cobwebs the structure of confidence which Lafond had so laboriously spun. Without one dissenting voice they condemned him to death. Then the sitting arose.
The hags of the camp advanced and stripped the half-breed naked, in spite of his frantic struggles. They were as strong as men, and they were glad he struggled because that indicated cowardice. Lafond was badly unnerved; his blood was partly Latin and his consciousness of innocence was keen. When he went into a thing with his eyes open, he was ready to take all the consequences with stoicism, should luck turn against him; but a feeling of guiltlessness was unusual enough to render him desperate when unjustly condemned. So he made a pitiful spectacle of himself.
The old hags jeered him. They told him he had a chicken’s heart, and promised themselves the pleasure of tasting it after it was torn from his living body. They spat in his face and pinched his arms to see him wince. When he was stripped quite naked, they staked him out to picket pins with rawhide bands, one to each of his four limbs.
While this was going on, the warriors, having thrown aside their blankets, appeared in the full lithe glory of their naked bodies. To the accompaniment of a strange minor chant, they circled slowly around the fire and their victim, hopping rhythmically first on one foot then on the other, stepping high, stooping low. As they passed the prostrate man, they struck their knives deep into the ground near his head, for the purpose of seeing him shrink. After a little, they became sufficiently excited, and so the tortures began.
Toward morning the squaws wrapped in a blanket the mutilated burnt carcass, and laid it on a litter which had been preparing while the torture was in progress. The litter was raised in the air to the height of ten feet, bound securely to upright poles. Man-who-speaks-Medicine had been a member of the tribe. Whatever his sins, he must have a tribal burial.
Then in the grayness of the dawn the little cavalcade filed away, like muffled phantoms, toward the east. In the sky the last stars were flickering out. On the hill top the last embers of the fire died. A bird high in the heavens piped up clearly for a moment, and was still. The breeze of morning rippled over the faintly distinguished, grasses, and stirred the drying leaves of the litter that stood like a scaffold against the sombre shadows of the Hills.
The End