gray wolf sits within the shadow of the agency cottonwood and puffs unhappy kinnikinic from his red stone pipe. heavy, dull and hot lies the august afternoon; heavy, dull and hot lies the heart of gray wolf. there is a profound grief at his soul’s roots. the indian’s is not a mobile face. in full expression it is capable only of apathy or rage. if your indian would show you mirth or woe, he must eke out the dim and half-told story with streaks of paint. but so deep is the present sorrow of gray wolf that, even without the aid of graphic ochre, one reads some shadow of it in the wrinkled brows and brooding eyes.
what is this to so beat upon our dismal osage? there is a dab of mud in his hair; his blanket is rags, and his moccasins are rusty and worn. these be weeds of mourning. death has crept to the tepee of gray wolf and taken a prey. it was catbird, the squaw of gray wolf.
however, his to-day’s sadness is not for the departed catbird. he married her without laughter, and saw her pass without tears, as became a man and an osage. when her breath was gone, the women combed her hair and dressed her in new, gay clothes, and burned the sacred cedar. gray wolf, after the usage of his fathers, seated her—knees to chin—on yonder hilltop, wrapped her in rawhides, and, as against the curiosity of coyotes and other prowling vermin of the night, budded her solidly about and over with heavy stones. you may see the rude mausole, like some tumbledown chimney, from the agency door. that was a moon ago. another will go by; gray wolf will lay off his rags and tatters, comb the clay from his hair, and give a dance to show that he mourns no more. no, it is not the lost catbird—good squaw though she was—that embitters the tobacco and haunts the moods of gray wolf. it is something more awful than death—that merest savage commonplace; something to touch the important fiber of pride.
gray wolf is proud, as indeed he has concern to be. not alone is he eminent as an osage; he is likewise an eminent indian. those two thin ragged lines of blue tattoo which, on each side from the point of the jaw, run downward on the neck until they disappear beneath his blanket, prove gray wolf’s elevation. they are the marks of an aboriginal nobility whereof the paleface in his ignorance knows nothing. thirty indians in all the tribes may wear these marks. and yet, despite such signs of respect, gray wolf has become the subject of acrid tribal criticism; and he feels it like the edge of a knife.
keats was quill-pricked to death by critics. but keats was an englishman and a poet. petronius arbiter, nero’s minion, was also criticised; despite the faultfinder, however, he lived in cloudless merry luxury, and died laughing. but petronius was a roman and an epicure. gray wolf is to gain nothing by these examples. he would not die like the verse maker, he could not laugh like the consul; there is a gulf between gray wolf and these as wide as the width of the possible. gray wolf is a stoic, and therefore neither so callous nor so wise as an epicure. moreover, he is a savage and not a poet. petronius came to be nothing better than an appetite; gray wolf rises to the heights of an emotion. keats was a radical of sensibility, ransacking a firmament; gray wolf is an earthgoing conservative—a more stupendous tory than any bolingbroke. of the two, while resembling neither, gray wolf comes nearer the poet than the sybarite, since he can feel.
let it be remarked that osage criticism is no trivial thing. it is so far peculiar that never a word or look, or even a detractory shrug is made to be its evidence. your osage tells no evil tales of you to his neighbor. his conduct goes guiltless of slanderous syllable or gesture. but he criticises you in his heart; he is strenuous to think ill of you; and by some fashion of telepathy you know and feel and burn with this tacit condemnation as much as ever you might from hot irons laid on your forehead. it is this criticism, as silent as it is general, that gnaws at gray wolf’s heart and makes his somber visage more somber yet.
it was the week before when gray wolf, puffed of a vain conceit, matched sundown, his pinto pony—swift as a winter wind, he deemed her—against a piebald, leggy roan, the property of dull ox, the cunning ponca. the race had wide advertisement; it took shape between the osages and the poncas as an international event. gray wolf assured his tribe of victory; his sundown was a shooting star, the roan a turtle; whereupon the osages, ever ready as natural patriots to believe the worst osage thing to be better than the best thing ponca, fatuously wagered their substance on sundown, even unto the beads on their moccasins.
the race was run; the ubiquitous roan, fleeter than a shadow, went by poor sundown as though she ran with hobbles on. dull ox won; the poncas won. the believing osages were stripped of their last blanket; and even as gray wolf sits beneath the agency cottonwood and writhes while he considers what his pillaged countrymen must think of him, the exultant poncas are in the midst of a protracted spree, something in the nature of a scalp dance, meant to celebrate their triumph and emphasize the thoroughness wherewith the osages were routed. is it marvel, then, that osage thought is full of resentment, or that gray wolf feels its sting?
over across from the moody gray wolf, bill henry lounges in the wide doorway of florer’s agency store. bill henry is young, about twenty-three, in truth. he has a quick, handsome face, with gray eyes that dance and gleam, and promise explosiveness of temper. the tan that darkens bill henry’s skin wherever the sun may get to it, and which is comparable to the color of a saddle or a law book, testifies that the vivacious bill is no recent importation. five full years on the plains would be needed to ripen one to that durable hue.
bill gazes out upon gray wolf as the latter sticks to the cottonwood’s shade; a plan is running in the thoughts of bill. there is call for change in bill’s destinies, and he must have the gray wolf’s consent to what he bears in mind.
bill has followed cattle since he turned his back on maryland, a quintet of years before, and pushed westward two thousand miles to commence a career. bill’s family is of that aristocracy which adorns the “eastern shore” of lord baltimore’s old domain. his folk are of consequence, and intended that bill should take a high position. bill’s mother, an ardent church woman, had a pulpit in her thoughts for bill; his father, more of the world, urged on his son the law. but bill’s bent was towards the laws neither of heaven nor of men. the romantic overgrew the practical in his nature. he leaned not to labor, whether mental or physical, and he liked danger and change and careless savageries.
civilization is artificial; it is a creature of convention, of clocks, of hours, of an unending procession of sleep, victuals and work. bill distasted such orderly matters and felt instinctive abhorrence therefor. the day in and day out effort called for to remain civilized terrified bill; his soul gave up the task before it was begun.
but savagery? ah, that was different! savagery was natural, easy and comfortable to the very heart’s blood of bill, shiftless and wild as it ran. bill was an instance of what wise folk term “reversion to type,” and thus it befell, while his father tugged one way and his mother another, bill himself went suddenly from under their hands, fled from both altar and forum, and never paused until he found himself within the generous reaches of the texas panhandle. there, as related, and because savagery cannot mean entire idleness, bill gave himself to a pursuit of cows, and soon had moderate fame as a rider, a roper, a gambler, and a quick, sure hand with a gun, and for whatever was deemed excellent in those regions wherein he abode.
bill’s presence among the osages is the upcome of a dispute which fell forth between bill and a comrade in a barroom of mobeetie. bill and the comrade aforesaid played at a device called “draw poker;” and bill, in attempting to supply the deficiencies of a four flush with his six shooter, managed the other’s serious wounding. this so shook bill’s standing in the panhandle, so marked him to the common eye as a boy of dangerous petulance, that bill sagely withdrew between two days; and now, three hundred miles to the north and east, he seeks among the indians for newer pastures more serene.
when we meet him bill has been with the osages the space of six weeks. and already he begins to doubt his welcome. not that the osages object. your indian objects to nothing that does not find shape as an immediate personal invasion of himself. but the government agent—a stern, decisive person—likes not the presence of straggling whites among his copper charges; already has he made intimation to bill that his osage sojourn should be short. any moment this autocrat may despatch his marshal to march bill off the reservation.
bill does not enjoy the outlook. within the brief frontiers of those six weeks of his visit, bill has contracted an eager fondness for osage life. your indian is so far scriptural that he taketh scant heed of the morrow, and believeth with all his soul that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. here was a program to dovetail with those natural moods of bill. his very being, when once it understood, arose on tiptoe to embrace it. bill has become an osage in his breast; as he poses with listless grace in florer’s portals, he is considering means whereby he may manage a jointure with the tribe, and become in actual truth a member.
there is but one door to his coming; bill must wed his way into osage citizenship. he must take a daughter of the tribe to wife; turn “squaw man,” as it is called. then will bill be a fullblown osage; then may no agent molest him or make him afraid.
this amiable plot, as he lounges in florer’s door, is already decided upon by bill. his fancy has even pitched upon the damsel whom he will honor with the title of “mrs. bill.” it is this selection that produces gray wolf as a factor in bill’s intended happiness, since gray wolf is the parent of the saucy paoli, to whom bill’s hopes are turned. bill must meet and treat with gray wolf for his daughter, discover her “price,” and pay it.
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as to the lady herself and her generous consent when once her father is won, bill harbors no misgivings. he believes too well of his handsome person; moreover, has he not demonstrated in friendly bout, on foot and on horseback, his superiority to the young osage bucks who would pit themselves against him? has he not out-run, out-wrestled and out-ridden them? and at work with either rifle, six-shooter or knife, has he not opened their eyes? also, he has conquered them at cards; and their money and their ponies and their gewgaws to a healthful value are his as spoils thereof.
bill is all things that a lady of sensibility should love; and for that on those two or three occasions when he came unexpectedly upon her, the saucy paoli dodged within the ancestral lodge to daub her nose and cheeks with hurried yet graceful red, thereby to improve and give her beauties point, bill knows he has touched her heart. yes, forsooth! bill feels sure of the saucy paoli; it is gray wolf, somber of his late defeat by the wily dull ox and the evanescent roan, toward whom his apprehensions turn their face. the more, perhaps, since bill himself, not being a blinded osage, and having besides some certain wit concerning horses, scrupled not to wager and win on the ponca entry, and against the beloved sundown of his father-in-law to come. it is the notion that gray wolf might resent this apostasy that breeds a half pause in bill’s optimism as he loafs in florer’s door.
as bill stands thus musing, the saucy paoli goes by. the saucy paoli is light, pretty, round and wholesome, and she glances with shy, engaging softness on bill from eyes as dark and big and deep as a deer’s. is it not worth while to wed her? the osages are owners in fee of one million, five hundred thousand acres of best land; they have eight even millions of dollars stored in the great father’s strong chests in washington; they are paid each one hundred and forty dollars by their fostering great father as an annual present; and the head of the house draws all for himself and his own. marriage will mean an instant yearly income of two hundred and eighty dollars; moreover, there may come the profitable papoose, and with each such a money augmentation of one hundred and forty dollars. and again, there are but sixteen hundred osages told and counted; and so would bill gain a strong per cent, in the tribal domain and the tribal treasure. altogether, a union with the fair, brown saucy paoli is a prospect fraught of sunshine; and so bill wisely deems it.
for an hour it has leaped in bill’s thoughts as an impulse to go across to the spreading cottonwood, propose himself to the gray wolf for the saucy paoli, and elicit reply. it would not be the osage way, but bill is not yet an osage, and some reasonable allowance should be made by gray wolf for the rudeness of a paleface education. such step would earn an answer, certain and complete. your savage beateth not about the bush. his diplomacy is bismarckian; it is direct and proceeds by straight lines.
thus chase bill’s cogitations when the sudden sight of the saucy paoli and her glances, full of wist and warmth, fasten his gallant fancy and crystalize a resolution to act at once.
“how!” observes bill, by way of salutation, as he stands before gray wolf.
that warrior grunts swinish, though polite, response. then bill goes directly to the core of his employ; he explains his passion, sets forth his hopes, and by dashing swoops arrives at the point which, according to bill’s blunt theories, should quicken the interest of gray wolf, and says:
“now, what price? how many ponies?”
“how many you give?” retorts the cautious gray wolf.
“fifteen.” bill stands ready to go to thirty.
“ugh!” observes gray wolf, and then he looks out across the prairie grasses where the thick smoke shows the summer fires to be burning them far away.
“thirty ponies,” says bill after a pause.
these or their money equivalent—six hundred dollars—bill knows to be a fat figure. he believes gray wolf will yield.
but bill is in partial error. gray wolf is not in any sordid, money frame. your savage is a sentimentalist solely on two matters: those to touch his pride and those to wake his patriotism. and because of the recent triumph of the poncas, and the consequent censures upon him now flaming, though hidden, in the common osage heart, gray wolf’s pride is raw and throbbing. he looks up at bill where he waits.
“one pony!” says gray wolf.
“one?”
“but it must beat the ponca’s roan.”
four hundred miles to the westward lie the broad ranges of the triangle-dot. throughout all cow-land the ponies of the triangle-dot have name for speed. as far eastward as the panhandle and westward to the needles, as far southward as seven rivers and northward to the spanish peaks, has their fame been flung. about camp fires and among the boys of cows are tales told of triangle-dot ponies that overtake coyotes and jack-rabbits. more, they are exalted as having on a time raced even with an antelope. these ponies are children of a blue-grass sire, as thoroughbred as ever came out of kentucky. little in size, yet a ghost to go; his name was redemption. these speedy mustang babies of redemption have yet to meet their master in the whole southwest. and bill knows of them; he has seen them run.
“in two moons, my father,” says bill.
there is much creaking of saddle leathers; there is finally a deep dig in the flanks by the long spurs, and bill, mounted on his best, rides out of pauhauska. his blankets are strapped behind, his war bags bulge with provand, he is fully armed; of a verity, bill meditates a journey. four hundred miles—and return—no less, to the ranges of the triangle-dot.
gray wolf watches from beneath the cottonwood that already begins to throw its shadows long; his eyes follow bill until the latter’s broad brimmed, gray sombrero disappears on the hill-crests over beyond bird river.
it skills not to follow bill in this pilgrimage. he fords rivers; he sups and sleeps at casual camps; now and again he pauses for the night at some chance plaza of the mexicans; but first and last he pushes ever on and on at a round road gait, and with the end he has success.
within his time by full three weeks bill is again at the agency of the osages; and with him comes a pony, lean of muzzle, mild of eye, wide of forehead, deep of lung, silken of mane, slim of limb, a daughter of the great redemption; and so true and beautiful is she in each line she seems rather for air than earth. and she is named the spirit.
gray wolf goes over the spirit with eye and palm. he feels her velvet coat; picks up one by one her small hoofs, polished and hard as agate.
the spirit has private trial with sundown and leaves that hopeless cayuse as if the latter were pegged to the prairie.
“ugh!” says gray wolf, at the finish. “heap good pony!”
your savage is not a personage of stopwatches, weights and records. at the best, he may only guess concerning a pony’s performance. also his vanity has wings, though his pony has none, and once he gets it into his savage head that his pony can race, it is never long ere he regards him as invincible. thus is it with dull ox and his precious roan. that besotted ponca promptly accepts the gray wolf challenge for a second contest.
the day arrives. the race is to be run on the osage course—a quarter of a mile, straight-away—at the pauhauska agency. two thousand osages and poncas are gathered together. there is no laughter, no uproar, no loud talk; all is gravity, dignity and decorum. the stakes are one thousand dollars a side, for gray wolf and dull ox are opulent pagans.
the ponies are brought up and looked over. the fires of a thousand racing ancestors burn in the eyes of the spirit; the poncas should take warning. but they do not; wagers run higher. the osages have by resolution of their fifteen legislators brought the public money to the field. thus they are rich for speculation, where, otherwise, by virtue of former losses, they would be helpless with empty hands.
bet after bet is made. the pool box is a red blanket spread on the grass. it is presided over by a buck, impecunious but of fine integrity.
being moneyless, he will make no bet himself; being honest, he will faithfully guard the treasure put within his care. a sporting buck approaches the blanket; he grumbles a word or two in the ear of the pool master who sits at the blanket’s head; then he searches forth a hundred-dollar bill from the darker recesses of his blanket and lays it on the red betting-cloth. another comes up; the pool master murmurs the name of the pony on which the hundred is offered; it is covered by the second speculator; that wager is complete. others arrive at the betting blanket; its entire surface becomes dotted with bank notes—two and two they lie together, each wagered against the other. the blanket is covered and concealed with the money piled upon it. one begins to wonder how a winner is to know his wealth. there will be no clash, no dispute. savages never cheat; and each will know his own. besides, there is the poverty-eaten, honest buck, watching all, to be appealed to should an accidental confusion of wagers occur.
on a bright blanket, a trifle to one side—not to be under the moccasins of commerce, as it were—sits the saucy paoli. she is without motion; and a blanket, covering her from little head to little foot, leaves not so much as a stray lock or the tip of an ear for one’s gaze to rest upon. the saucy paoli is present dutifully to answer the outcome of the gray wolf’s pact with bill. one wonders how does her heart beat, and how roam her hopes? is she for the roan, or is she for the glory of the triangle-dot?
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the solemn judges draw their blankets about them and settle to their places. three poncas and three osages on a side they are; they seat themselves opposite each other with twenty feet between. a line is drawn from trio to trio; that will serve as wire. the pony to cross first will be victor.
now all is ready! the rival ponies are at the head of the course; it will be a standing start. a grave buck sits in the saddle near the two racers and to their rear. he is the starter. suddenly he cracks off a winchester, skyward. it is the signal.
the ponies leap like panthers at the sound. there is a swooping rush; for one hundred yards they run together, then the spirit takes the lead. swifter than the thrown lance, swift as the sped arrow she comes! with each instant she leaves and still further leaves the roan! what has such as the mongrel pony of the poncas to do with the flower of the triangle-dot? the spirit flashes between the double triumvirate of judges, winner by fifty yards!
and now one expects a shout. there is none. the losing poncas and the triumphant osages alike are stolid and dignified. only gray wolf’s eyes gleam, and the cords in his neck swell. he has been redeemed with his people; his honor has been returned; his pride can again hold up its head. but while his heart may bound, his face must be like iron. such is the etiquette of savagery.
both gray wolf and the osages will exult later, noisily, vociferously. there will be feasting and dancing. now they must be grave and guarded, both for their own credit and to save their ponca adversaries from a wound.
bill turns and rides slowly back to the judges. the spirit, daughter of redemption, stands with fire eyes and tiger lily nostrils. bill swings from the saddle. gray wolf throws off the blanket from the saucy paoli, where she waits, head bowed and silent. her dress is the climax of osage magnificence; the saucy paoli glows like a ruby against the dusk green of the prairie. bill takes the saucy paoli’s hand and raises her to her feet.
she lifts her head. her glance is shy, yet warm and glad. she hesitates. then, as one who takes courage—just as might a white girl, though with less of art—she puts up her lips to be kissed.
“now that is what i call a fair story,” commented the red nosed gentleman approvingly when the jolly doctor came to a pause; “only i don’t like that notion of a white man marrying an indian. it’s apt to keep alive in the children the worst characteristics of both races and none of the virtues of either.”
“now i don’t know that,” observed the sour gentleman, contentiously. “in my own state of virginia many of our best people are proud to trace their blood to pocahontas, who was sold for a copper kettle. i, myself, am supposed to have a spoonful of the blood of that daughter of powhatan in my veins; and while it is unpleasant to recall one’s ancestress as having gone from hand to hand as the subject of barter and sale—and for no mighty price at that—i cannot say i would wish it otherwise. my indian blood fits me very well. did you say”—turning to the jolly doctor—“did you say, sir, you knew this young man who won the saucy paoli?”
“no,” returned the jolly doctor, “i am guiltless of acquaintance with him. the story came to me from one of our indian agents.”
while this talk went forward, sioux sam, who understood english perfectly and talked it very well, albeit with a guttural indian effect, and who had listened to the jolly doctor’s story with every mark of interest, was saying something in a whisper to the old cattleman.
“he tells me,” remarked the old cattleman in reply to my look of curiosity, “that if you-alls don’t mind, he’ll onfold on you a injun tale himse’f. it’s one of these yere folk-lore stories, i suppose, as doc peets used to call ’em.”
the whole company made haste to assure sioux sam that his proposal was deeply the popular one; thus cheered, our dark-skinned raconteur, first lighting his pipe with a coal from the great fireplace, issued forth upon his verbal journey.
“an’ this,” said sioux sam, lifting a dark finger to invoke attention and puffing a cloud the while, “an’ this tale, which shows how forked tongue, the bad medicine man, was burned, must teach how never to let the heart fill up with hate like a pond with the rains, nor permit the tongue to go a crooked trail.”
