Rusty Sabin, at eighteen, rode his horse behind Spotted Antelope up a ravine in the Black Hills. Although it was late summer, the water still ran strongly down the gorge, sometimes roaring like a wind, sometimes echoing from the walls like human voices. To Rusty Sabin, who knew himself only as Red Hawk, those voices rang with anger and reproaches, for there was wrath, he knew, in the heart of the Cheyenne who had adopted him. He had known it for years, and when he had asked Bitter Root, his foster mother, what could be in the mind of the brave, she would answer: “A wise man speaks only once, and not to a child.”
However, he was about to pass from boyhood to manhood, since he must endure the torment and make the sacrifice of blood tomorrow. Therefore he knew that Spotted Antelope was about to speak, at last, and in respectful fear he had been riding ten strides behind the Indian.
When they came to a place where the ravine made an elbow turn, Spotted Antelope dismounted and hobbled his horse, and Red Hawk immediately did the same. It was nearing sunset, but the midsummer day was close and hot, so that when the gray old Indian gathered his buffalo robe close about him it was plainly no more than a gesture of ceremonial dignity. He pointed a shrouded arm toward a place where the current whirled in a deep pool, making itself smooth with speed.
“Purify yourself with water,” said Spotted Antelope, “and afterward I shall purify you with smoke. My son, you have made me unhappy, and now we are about to pray before the entrance to the Sacred Valley.”
For some ordeal, Red Hawk had been nerving himself, but his breast grew hollow when he heard this name, for it was at the entrance to the Sacred Valley that Sweet Medicine, the hero who brought the buffalo to the Cheyennes, had last been seen by men. The foolish tribe had driven him out and had hunted him far away until, as he came to this gorge, before their eyes he had grown as tall as the clouds. His laughter had rolled from the sky, over the heads of his pursuers, and with one gesture of his hand he had broken from the rocky wall a vast pillar and left it leaning, ready to fall on any who ventured near. Now, at last, the warriors understood what manner of man he was. And stretching out their hands, they called to him like children to a father.
The boy was full of awe of that legend as he pulled off his leggings, his moccasins, his breechclout, until there remained on him only a green scarab that was fastened about his neck by a leather thong. Part of his name had come from it, from that talisman, for among the mysterious figures inscribed on the underside of the beetle there was a clearly drawn hawk. The other half of his name he took from his dark red hair, the long braids of which he now wound tightly around his head, and fastened.
He tried the cold of the water and its force with his foot. Physically he was not true to the brawny Cheyenne type, who is the giant of the plains, although he was perfectly made for speed of hand and foot. Strength had been given him where it would best serve, and about ankle, knee, and wrist the tendons were fitted close and neatly rounded off.
He looked at the obscure and shimmering bronze of his image as he leaned over the pool, his arms extended, his palms turned down, while he prayed: “Underwater People, be good to me . . . and remember that I have sacrificed two good knives and an eagle feather to you.” Then he dived in, shooting himself out from the verge with a strong thrust of his legs. The currents were serpents that coiled on his body and caught at his hands, his knees, his feet. He went blind with effort before his hand touched a rock and he could draw himself, shining and panting, from the stream.
His father, in the meantime, had raised from a bit of tinder a small welter of flame. When Red Hawk had whipped most of the water from his body, he stood near the fire into which Spotted Antelope was sprinkling sweet grass. Of the smoke he took imaginary handfuls and passed them slowly over his naked son, while the fragrance entered the nostrils of Red Hawk. It made him feel much better, and his heart grew lighter. He seemed to cast off evil and become a truer Cheyenne upon whom perhaps the eye of the mystical Sweet Medicine might fall with pleasure.
When this ceremony ended, Spotted Antelope led the way onward, very slowly, for that is the way a man should walk when he wants the spirits to see his whole heart laid bare.
Thrice he paused, and at the fourth halt Red Hawk dropped without command to his knees, for they had passed the elbow turn of the ravine and he saw before him the entrance gate of the Sacred Valley. Red Hawk’s mind conceived a form that extended to the sky and rested one hand on the leaning stone. He fell on his face, groaning.
After that, he dared not move. He had bruised his knees and elbows; the rock was cold against his belly, but he only ventured to open his eyes slowly, in order to see that his father—be his name praised!—had not left him alone in this dreadful place. Spotted Antelope now sat cross-legged, tamping the tobacco into his pipe with four ceremonial pressures of his thumb. With four gestures he stroked the stem of the pipe, fitted it to the bowl, and lighted the tobacco with a coal that he had brought from the fire of purification. Therefore it was sacred smoke he drew at, his withered cheeks pulling into great hollows as he puffed. Now he blew a breath to the ground, a breath to the sky, four breaths to the four corners of the world, and a last cloud of smoke toward the gate of the Sacred Valley.
The old man prayed: “Underground Listeners, be quiet long enough to hear me. Listeners Above, take pity on me. Sweet Medicine, I am asking not for horses or buffalo or scalps, but only honor for my son. If I have done bad things, I have already been punished. You know that Short Lance was my son, and that a woman killed him . . . but, after she died, I would not take her scalp because I saw a male child. He stood straight . . . he was not afraid . . . I took him home and gave him to my squaw. I knew that the spirits had taken away one son to punish me, but they had given me another because they did not wish to break my heart.
“I began to be glad. Red Hawk was both bold and happy. Soon he was the swiftest runner among the boys, and he could live in the water like a fish. The wild horses could not fling him from their backs. But I grew unhappy, for he left my teepee too often and sat beside the white man, Lazy Wolf, the interpreter and hunter, learning the tongue of the white man until he had two speeches . . . and is it not hard enough to make one tongue talk straight? Also, from Lazy Wolf he learned the same evil laziness of lying for hours looking at the fire as though it were herds of buffalo in a time of famine.
“In our proper ways, in practicing the scalp dance and in the sham battles he took no delight, and at the fighting with wooden knives among the boys, he smiled. Still, he laughed much, and talked much among the women and with the white man, and for three seasons he has shrunk from the initiation and the sacrifice of blood without which he can never go on the warpath or be a man.
“For these reasons I am sad, and I bring him here to your feet, Sweet Medicine, asking you why my own son was taken from me, when he had become a man, and why this son was given to me, who seems to be a woman? His foot is swift and his hand is sure. In wrestling he throws all the young men by the force of many cunning devices, but let him now hunger for glory and a good name, and for the shedding of blood.
“Have pity on me, Sweet Medicine. I have tried to be a good man. I have taken scalps and sacrificed some of them. I have made a scalp shirt . . . there are ceremonial paintings on my lodge. And now that I am old and my horse herd shrinks and my hands weaken, let Red Hawk bring riches and triumph back to my teepee again.”
With this the old man ended by pressing his hands to the ground, raising them to the sky, and extending them finally to the entrance gate of the Sacred Valley.
“Stand!” his father suddenly commanded Red Hawk, and the young man rose slowly to his feet. “Pray,” said Spotted Antelope.
Before the eyes of Red Hawk there was no longer the glimmering vision of the giant between earth and sky. He wanted to pray that he should be given victory in war, many scalps, and, above all, the counting of coups. But all he could find to say was: “Sweet Medicine, give me whatever is in your heart to give to a Cheyenne.”
He had barely finished speaking, his hands were still outstretched when Spotted Antelope fell to the earth with a great cry.
Red Hawk saw a miracle performed before his eyes. A great night owl sailed out past the leaning pillar. The boy fell flat beside his foster father, and close above him he heard the pinions in the air like the whisper of an unknown word.
Afterward, with the cold of his dread still working in his spinal marrow like worms of ice, he heard the broken, gasping voice of his father muttering: “Give thanks, my son. For this give thanks. Your prayer has been heard. Oh, son of my lodge, Sweet Medicine has heard your prayer and come forth to you.”