Much contentment in his belly. He washed his hands, filled a pipe, without ceremony, and smoked it in long, slow puffs. He told his friend the story of the day. When he had finished with the prophecy of Running Elk, such an awe came over him that he shuddered, unable to lift his eyes from the ground. Then he heard the careless voice of Lazy Wolf.
“The twilight, of course, is the proper time for an owl to go out hunting . . . and you were in front of the valley gates just at sunset. That owl was not the spirit of Sweet Medicine. He was just a big hungry stomach that was thinking neither of Red Hawk nor of Spotted Antelope, but of field mice and rabbits or anything else he could get into his maw.”
The heart of Red Hawk fell. “I was brave because the owl flew over me, but now I’m afraid again,” he said. “Yet there was a spirit in the bird. His wings stretched farther than across the floor of this lodge. His eyes were golden balls of fire. His wings whispered as he slid over my head and said a word.”
“Well,” said Lazy Wolf, “if the flying of that owl gives you any comfort for tomorrow, keep on believing in it. Are you afraid of the blood sacrifice, my lad?”
Red Hawk half closed his eyes. He realized that the answer was a thing that he could never endure to speak to any Cheyenne, but it was easy to confess even shameful truths to this man. Therefore he gasped: “I am afraid. I think I could stand the cutting of my flesh, even with the notched knives, and the tying of the ropes into my body. But when I think of how they must be torn out again, I am sick.”
“I would be, too,” said this surprising hero and vagabond.
“You? Even you?” exclaimed Red Hawk. “But you are a white man! Only your name is Indian.”
“At least,” said Lazy Wolf, “there are a few brave men among the whites . . . like Wind Walker. He is brave exactly as the Cheyennes are. You remember when he was captured once and tortured, they could not make him stop cursing them and daring them. Yet before the soldiers broke through the camp and saved him, he had been hanging on the pole for two hours. He is brave like the Indians . . . he takes scalps like them . . . and he loves blood as they do. But there are no white men who have ever gone through the blood sacrifice that you’re going to make in order to prove that you’re able to be a man and a warrior. Every white man in the world would have disgust up his nostrils and in his bowels at the mere thought of giving his body to be tormented.”
The flame of the fire leaped for the last time. Red Hawk, puzzled, merely said: “For the white face and the white mind there is one world . . . but when the heart is red, there is another.” He stood up, for suddenly he wanted to be away from this lodge before he had to endure again the quizzical smile of Lazy Wolf.
“Go on, my lad,” said the other. “If I thought that it would do you any good, I’d go to the lodge tomorrow and look on through all that beastliness for the sake of cheering you along. But after the first knife cut, nothing will be of any use to you except a crazy, red-eyed frenzy. Good night. Sleep if you can . . . and, if you have to go through with the torment, try hard to make a wild man of yourself.”
Red Hawk went out into the night. As he stood outside the entrance flap, looking over the moon-washed hides of the teepees and at the stars that scattered down toward the dark horizon like golden sparks, he thought of Blue Bird, and it seemed to him that her touch and the sound of her voice alone could cure his lonely fear. However, it was a matter about which he must see men. Only the day before it had appeared to him that he had a hundred friends. But in this time of need the many shrank to two. Of these, Lazy Wolf had merely smiled and bantered. There remained the second friend, Standing Bull.
Already, at twenty, Standing Bull was a famous warrior because of an exploit of the year before, when, in the narrows of a ravine at sunset time, as he fled with a companion before the rush of a war party of Pawnees, his friend had been wounded and the youth had turned back to hold the narrows until the injured man could draw away. With his rifle and lance he had killed two of the Pawnees, had counted grand coup on both, and had secured the scalp of one of them. Before the Pawnees could surround him, he escaped. For that heroic effort he was given the name of Standing Bull.
In front of the lodge of his friend, Red Hawk now paused and looked for a moment at the crescent moon painted above the entrance flap. Black in the moon shine, he knew that it was a rich blue in daylight. Within, the brave was chanting a song, very softly.
Braid your singing with my song
And the music will be strong.
And the voice of Bending Willow, the wife of Standing Bull, joined with an undertone in the chorus.
One voice cannot rise so high,
But two voices reach the sky.
Then Red Hawk, unwilling to hear more by stealth, called: “Standing Bull, a friend is at your door!”
Bending Willow cried out in alarm, but Standing Bull said: “It is only Red Hawk. Hush and be still. Come in, my friend.”
Red Hawk entered, instantly drawing shut the entrance flap behind him, for he saw the girl reclining on a willow bed, still half struggling to raise her head from her husband’s lap, while he restrained her and continued to brush her hair with a porcupine comb. As a last resort, she tried to throw the corner of a robe over her head, but Standing Bull prevented this, also, saying: “This is no storm to tear up willows by the roots . . . this is no flood to rip them out of the banks and tumble them down the stream . . . this is my friend, Red Hawk. Lie still. Hush. He wants no greeting. Sing some more of the song. If Red Hawk is to be a brave tomorrow, he will want a squaw the next day, and he will need to know love songs.”
In a moment the three were laughing and singing, while Red Hawk capered around the fire in a slow dance that he finished by kneeling in front of his friend, and crossing his arms on his breast.
The wife of Standing Bull, when she saw this, at once slipped away to the side of the lodge near the pole where the painted shield of bull’s hide was hanging, with a festoon of eagle feathers suspended from the center of it. Twice it had been slashed by bullets, and three times it had turned the point of a charging lance.
The brave now stood up, and Red Hawk extended one hand to him. Looking up, he saw nothing but the ragged scars on the breast of Standing Bull, the proof of how he had torn the rawhide thongs out of his flesh quickly at the blood sacrifice. He had made it in his fourteenth year. He was big, with a shoulder like a buffalo bull, and legs like a deer’s, for speed.
“What is it?” asked the warrior. “If you hold out your hand to me, take whatever I have to fill it. There are nine good horses tethered outside my lodge . . . they are yours. There are two rifles . . . and knives . . . and that bag is filled with beads. You see the pemmican, the dried meat, the knives, the robes, the backrests. Whatever I have is yours, except the scalp of the center pole, and the coup stick and the shield and the medicine bag. These are my medicine, and they would not be good for you. But if you want something more, tell me and I shall kneel with you and pray for it, or go out with you to fight for it.”
Red Hawk looked higher still, into the face of his friend. There was still a boyish softness and beauty about the features of Standing Bull. It was only when he stared fixedly, as now, that one could see how the nostrils pinched in a trifle, and how the eyes grew dangerously bright.
“I have not come to beg for horses or guns,” said Red Hawk. “I want some of the strength of your heart.”
“You would have it all, if I could dip it out with both hands and pour it upon you,” answered the brave. “I still remember, whenever I see still water, how the Underwater People fixed my feet in the quicksands, long ago . . . six years, or five years ago. All the other boys were gone from the side of the pool except you, and you were small. Nevertheless, you dived for me, like a bright fish. You tangled your hands in my hair and jerked me free. We swam to the bank and lay gasping and biting at the air. With every breath I tasted, I knew that life was good, and that you were my brother. When you are a warrior, Red Hawk, we shall exchange blood, and after that we shall be like the son of one mother.”
At this, Red Hawk looked suddenly down because tears were stinging his eyes, and such weakness shamed him. He was able to say, at last: “Tomorrow I must go into the medicine lodge to make the sacrifice. I am weak at heart, Standing Bull.”
He heard Standing Bull sigh. The sinewy hands of the Cheyenne raised him to his feet. “Come,” said the warrior. “We shall go out and face the east until the sunrise, and I shall give you strength.”
But as Red Hawk left the lodge, he saw the eyes of the young wife lift from the beading of a moccasin with a flash of scorn. That glance kept rankling coldly in his vitals, all the way to the low hillock outside the camp, where he stood with Standing Bull through that night, facing east.
When the color of the dawn began, the warrior took his hand and held it, as the huge brilliance rolled over the edge of the earth and started up the hill to heaven.
Red Hawk smiled as he looked at the display. His hand was warm from the clasp of his friend, and he felt that borrowed strength had filled his heart.