He left Maisry and got swiftly to his mustang. But he had one other thing to do before he got away from Witherell.
He went to the house of the lawyer, Richard Lester, who he found pacing up and down the path in front of his house with hands clasped behind his back and with bowed head.
Red Hawk had dismounted, tethered the mustang, and entered the yard before Lester was aware of him. For is the mind of the white man ever unimpeded by burdens, unobscured by the mists of thought? For a moment there was no recognition in Lester’s face. Then he came suddenly to himself and took the hand of the youth, saying: “I’ve heard that Sam Calkins has lost an apprentice and learned the taste of his own blood. It may make a better man of him. But why are you dressed like this, Red Hawk? As if you were becoming an Indian again.”
“I leave the whites and return to my own people,” said Red Hawk simply.
“Your own people! Why, my friend, you have a whiter skin than most of us. Why do you talk of leaving? To join the traders, perhaps? To use your Indian knowledge in order to make your fortune? Surely not to return to the Cheyennes!”
“Why should I try to make a fortune?” asked Red Hawk.
“Why? Well, because money can buy any comfort. It builds homes, feeds children, and . . .”
He paused to gather more ideas, and Red Hawk answered: “The best lodge is that which a man’s squaw makes for him . . . the best meat is that which a man shoots and his woman cooks. Money cannot buy a north wind in summer or a south wind in winter ....”
The lofty brow of the lawyer gathered into wrinkles of pain and of thought.
Then Red Hawk took his hand again, continuing: “Kindness has brought you into the blacksmith shop many times, and I have been silent. When sadness darkens the eyes, it closes the throat, also. Father, farewell. I have made a great vow. Now I am going to hunt it as a hawk hunts a bird in the sky . . . but, if I live, I shall return to look into your face again.”
“If you must go,” said Richard Lester, “speak to my wife and to Maisry. She has been unhappy about you all this year. Also, take the gray horse . . . it will be of greater use to you than that shaggy pony.”
“No,” said Red Hawk. “Men say that a gift is always sad when it returns to the giver. And as for your wife and daughter, when I speak to the master of the lodge, I speak to everyone in it. Farewell.”
That was how he left Richard Lester and rode out of the town of Witherell.
At the entrance to the pass through the hills he paused for a moment on the high ground to look back at the fire of the moon, which was showering down over the roofs of the white lodges. Shimmering heat waves rose with an invisible dance. It seemed to Red Hawk that he was looking back upon a prison, or a grimy hand that was closed around a single bright thing. Then he pointed the head of the fiery-eyed pony into the pass and put it to a steady trot. . . .
When he reached the place of the fallen sod house, the heat of the day had gone; the color of the evening had burned up in tall flames and sunk toward the horizon in smoke that was still faintly luminous in the sky and on the face of Witherell Creek. From the edge of the high bank of the stream he called loudly.
That call was answered at once. Horse and man came scrambling up from the gorge, and the voice of Standing Bull shouted joyously to him: “You have counted coup! Tell me that it is so!” “His throat was in the hollow of my arm. I could feel him dying,” said Red Hawk, “but then I remembered that I had eaten his food, and so I let him live. Tell me one thing . . . have you sat by the white stone that has the writing on it?”
“I have,” said the Cheyenne.
“Did the voice come up to you out of the ground?” asked Red Hawk.
“I listened very hard,” said Standing Bull, “but all that I could hear was the wind brushing its bare toes through the grass, and then whistling through the hair of my head. I listened till I could hear the water talking around the stones in the bed of the creek, but not a sound came out of the ground. My medicine was not good enough to make the voice speak to me.”
“I shall go to the stone and sit by it,” said Red Hawk.
He sat by the white stone, his hand feeling the heat of the day run out of it and the cold of the night enter it. He closed his eyes, while memory began in him again, like the work of magic. He stood up with a gasping cry. “I have seen her face, brother! I heard her voice say the word again. The bowstring draws tight in my heart and trembles.”
“Look at the ground and look at the stars,” said Standing Bull. “When the ghosts speak, their voices should be heeded. What does the word mean?”
“You may laugh, Standing Bull,” said Red Hawk. “The word she speaks is the word that among the whites means the red that covers old iron when it begins to rot away after its own nature. That is what Rusty means. Brother, I am about to make a great vow.”
Kindling a fire no larger than the palm of his hand, Red Hawk sprinkled into it some sweet grass that his friend gave to him, and, as the fragrant smoke arose, he bathed himself with it. Then he offered four handfuls of it to the corners of the sky, to the earth, to the Listeners Above. After that, he lifted his hands until he could see stars trembling and shining at the tips of his fingers, as he said: “All you Listeners Above and Underground, this is the vow of Red Hawk . . . that he will sacrifice to you, now, the thing that is most useful to him. He will sacrifice it to you and to the dead squaw of Wind Walker, whose ghost is my friend. Look well at Red Hawk, because if from this moment you ever see his feet pointed away from the trail, he asks you to strike him with sickness or with fire. Or if ever he turns his face until he has put his hand on the mane of White Horse.”
A faint cry came from Standing Bull, but Red Hawk maintained his attitude for a long time, until the stars began to swim before his eyes.
As his hands fell to his sides, he said: “Tell me, Standing Bull. What is the most precious thing that I have with me, if I am to hunt White Horse? Is it my gun?”
“No, it is the horse you now have. Oh, my brother, the wise men and the strong men of four great nations . . . and the white men, also . . . have hunted White Horse. He is a medicine horse. He is a ghost. How shall you put your hand on his mane?”
“Hush!” commanded Red Hawk. “Speak no words that come between me and my vow. This is a very hard thing . . . to sacrifice my horse and go on foot after one that runs like the wind. But, after all, it is not by the speed of my horse but by the pain of my body and soul that I shall win the indulgence of the Listeners.”
He led the horse, saddled as it was, to the white stone, now but a vague, starlit blur against the shadow of the ground. The pony he held by the under jaw, drew the bright length of his knife, and offered its point to the ground and to the sky. Then he drove it deep into the animal’s body behind the shoulder. The horse fell. Red Hawk drew out the knife, cleaned it on the grass, restored it to the sheath. He took up his rifle, a weight of ammunition, and faced the west.
“Rest here till the morning,” said Standing Bull, “or else let me make one march with you.”
“I must go by myself. When you come to my father’s lodge, tell him that, when he sees me again, I shall be riding White Horse . . . unless it has died. But living or dead, I shall either touch the stallion or wander forever.”
Briefly he took the hand of the brave, and then he marched toward the west with a long stride. When he had gone a distance, he heard behind him, faintly, the Cheyenne chant for the dead, and he knew that Standing Bull was singing the lament.