When Red Hawk returned to the teepee of his father, he found the sixty-year-old warrior doing a hatchet dance around and around in narrow circles before the lodge, now and then springing into the air to strike down enemies. Other people passed back and forth before the teepee, never regarding the dancer. The younger boys were taking out the horses of the camp to graze, but they would be back in time to enjoy the spectacle of the blood sacrifices.
Spotted Antelope stopped dancing when he saw his foster son. “You are almost late!” he called to Red Hawk. “The sacrifices already have begun, and you must be painted. Quickly, my son.”
They hurried to the lodge. Outside, there were women and children waiting for the happy moment when some tortured youth fainted in the lodge and was taken from the enclosure to be dragged around and around at the end of a rawhide rope tied into his flesh. Then the young boys would throw themselves at the prostrate body so as to jerk it free, and, if that failed, the horseman halted, backed up twenty feet, and made his pony bolt away at full speed. The whiplash at the end could not fail to tear the rawhide free from the tough flesh. More than once, from his childhood on, Red Hawk had seen that ceremony, and the dull noise of the rending flesh was still fresh in his mind and felt in his body. Now he saw some of the youngsters dance on their toes, pointing at him, gibbering to one another. Well, because he had delayed the torture at least two years beyond the usual time, he could be sure that his treatment would be of the roughest.
Now he was entering the medicine lodge, making the proper ceremonial gestures, aware of the customary trappings of the rite. He looked at the gaudy center pole, at the two naked Indian lads who already were tied to it by long thongs. Dancing, chanting loud prayers, from time to time they wrenched back their weight in an effort to tear out of their flesh the ropes that had been tied into their pectoral muscles. For the more quickly a man freed himself, the greater his honor, the more perfect his prayer, the more certain the strength of his resolution.
Not far away, Running Elk was now at work with two more candidates, and the blood that ran down the scrawny arms of the medicine man dripped steadily from his elbows. One glance showed thus much of the picture to Red Hawk. After that, with black mist spinning before his eyes and with sagging knees, he looked down at the paint that Spotted Antelope was putting on him. There was a band of red, half an inch wide, painted around the body just above the hips, and another around his right arm just below the elbow. On his breast appeared a sun, with red rays running from it to the hips and shoulders. His forearms and legs were now being reddened, then the trunk would be blackened except where the other designs had been drawn.
The heart of Red Hawk was soothed by these lavish adornings; this magic made it impossible for him to fail in the ordeal. Red Hawk knew of but one Cheyenne who had blenched under the torture. That unfortunate was literally a nameless creature, never to be mentioned, never to be called by the crier to a feast or a ceremony, never taken on the warpath, never admitted to the medicine lodge.
The painting had ended.
The tall form of Standing Bull came to his friend and took his hand.
“Look on your own blood,” said Standing Bull, “as though you looked upon the blood of your enemy. Do you think that the spirits can fail to see? As the blood runs from you, the beat of your feet will be on their breasts, and their ears will be opened as you pray to them for glory for scalps, and for many coups.” He stepped closer and murmured: “Breathe deeply . . . look high. Think of your spirit as of the mountains, and of your flesh as the grass that dies on them every year. I shall pray for you, brother.”
It seemed to Red Hawk that he was smiling in answer, and murmuring thanks, and then he found that his father had led him close to Running Elk and had retired. He was alone. His knees shuddered. Was it the smoke that made him choke?
He saw, in front of Running Elk, a lad of fourteen whose boy name was Leaping Frog. He was a half-deformed, stunted youngster with very wide shoulders and a meager, starved body. The bony roundness of his face had given him the important half of his name. Now, as Running Elk laid hold of the right breast of the boy with thumb and finger, pulling out the loose skin, the Frog caught the glance of Red Hawk and pointed into his own eyes, smiling an invitation to watch closely and see if even the flicker of a lid gave token of the pain he was about to endure.
Running Antelope slashed quickly on the right and on the left of the flesh that he held. Blood spurted, but as Red Hawk stared into the eyes of Leaping Frog, they smiled calmly back at him while the medicine man drove the knife through between the cuts. With two fingers the old man stretched out the band of loosened flesh, carelessly, like one handling dead meat, so that he could easily pass under the loop the end of a strong rawhide thong that he now tied, drawing the knot up hard. Still Leaping Frog continued to smile, and Red Hawk turned his dizzy eyes away.
In Red Hawk’s ears ran the wild chant of White Wolf, one of those already tied to the center pole. He was not more than fifteen, but already he had the height of a man, and now he was throwing back his weight against the thong that tied him by his bleeding muscles. A frenzy had come on him.
At the side of the lodge a number of warriors, hideously painted, were beating drums and singing a chant, but the yelling voice of White Wolf soared over all other sound as he shouted: “Underground Listeners, hear me and drink my blood . . . I am giving it to you. I am White Wolf. I shall find many buffalo . . . I shall count many coups . . . I see my days all full of green and sunshine! I take Pawnee hair in my left hand, and I cut the scalp! So . . . so . . . so.” He flung himself back against the rawhide with such force that the thong tore through on the right side with an audible sound, and Red Hawk saw the crimson fly in a spray. The tattered ends of the flesh hung down on White Wolf’s breast, but he went on capering and yelling in louder exultation than before. On the dim margin of his mind, Red Hawk was aware that the braves were standing up to look at this wild young hero, to applaud him, to point him out to one another.
A hand grasped Red Hawk’s own right breast. He looked down and saw the bloodstained hand of Running Elk. Even the eyes of the terrible old man seemed to be washed in blood.
“Wait!” said Red Hawk, gasping. “There is someone else to come before me. There is Leaping Frog to finish.”
“Ah . . . dog,” said Running Elk. “It is true that Sweet Medicine flew over you . . . but it was his shadow that he trailed over your spirit. Hear me, son of Spotted Antelope.” He raised his voice suddenly, so that it ran through the whole of the medicine lodge and brought upon Red Hawk a dreadful battery of eyes. The drumming ceased, or fell to a murmur that was fainter than Red Hawk’s thundering heart. Even the dancers around the center pole of the lodge, even White Wolf, stood still, frozen with dread lest a frightful disgrace now fall upon the tribe.
“Do you give yourself freely?” shouted Running Elk. “Do you give your body and your blood freely to the knife?”
The words began to ring back and forth through the mind of Red Hawk like windy echoes that fly down the narrowness of a ravine. He parted his lips, and thought that he had said “Yes.” But the blood-dripping hand of Running Elk was still held high in suspense.
Then a faint voice drifting across the air touched Red Hawk’s ears, for it was saying: “Strength. Give him strength. I offer six good horses . . . I sacrifice a beaded shirt and a new rifle ....” That was Spotted Antelope, praying for more than the worth of his soul.
“Answer!” thundered Running Elk.
Red Hawk’s head dropped, his knees sank under him, and the knife of Running Elk cut the air just before his face.
“Go out of the lodge!” cried the infuriated medicine man. “It is forever closed to you. I see the face of a man and the heart of a dog. Sweet Medicine has breathed darkness over you . . . your name is forgotten in my ears.”
The drums, suddenly, began to beat; the dancers moved again around the center pole, shouting their prayers. But what Red Hawk heard as he turned toward the entrance was a cry of grief, short and sharp, wrung from the heart of an old man. He saw the dark sweep of the buffalo robe as it was flung over the head of Spotted Antelope.
The keepers of the entrance stood back, opening the way to the young man, their eyes on the ground. He stepped out into the blinding brightness of the morning, and, shrilling in his ears, darkening his brain as the sun was darkening his eyes, he heard the outcry of the children and the women as they realized that the tribe had lost a warrior and gained a lasting shame. He went on rapidly, his head fallen.
Once again he heard lifted a single voice of woe. He knew that that was the cry of Bitter Root, his foster mother.
The eyes of the world were killing him, it seemed, and he began to run. A dog seemed to think it a game, and bounded at his heels, frolicking about him. He came to his father’s lodge, flung open the entrance, and hurled himself on the ground. He bit at the dirt with his teeth; he beat upon it with his hands. Great sobs began to work in his body, swelling his breast, thrusting into his throat, but not a sound could reach his lips.