Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Western stories
"Are the holes dug deep as I marked them on the earth?" said Cheschapah
to Two Whistles. "That is good. We shall soon have to go into them from
the great rain I will bring. Make these strong, to stay as we ride. They
are good medicine, and with them the white soldiers will not see you any
more than they saw me when I rode among them that day."
He had strips and capes of red flannel, and he and Two Whistles fastened
them to their painted bodies.
"You will let me go with you?" said Two Whistles.
"You are my best friend," said Cheschapah, "and to-day I will take you.
You shall see my great medicine when I make the white man's eyes grow
sick."
The two rode forward, and one hundred and fifty followed them, bursting
from their tepees like an explosion, and rushing along quickly in
skirmish-line. Two Whistles rode beside his speeding prophet, and saw
the red sword waving near his face, and the sun in the great still sky,
and the swimming, fleeting earth. His superstition and the fierce ride
put him in a sort of trance.
"The medicine is beginning!" shouted Cheschapah; and at that Two
Whistles saw the day grow large with terrible shining, and heard his
own voice calling and could not stop it. They left the hundred and
fifty behind, he knew not where or when. He saw the line of troops
ahead change to separate waiting shapes of men, and their legs and
arms become plain; then all the guns took clear form in lines of
steady glitter. He seemed suddenly alone far ahead of the band, but
the voice of Cheschapah spoke close by his ear through the singing
wind, and he repeated each word without understanding; he was watching
the ground rush by, lest it might rise against his face, and all the
while he felt his horse's motion under him, smooth and perpetual.
Something weighed against his leg, and there was Cheschapah he had
forgotten, always there at his side, veering him around somewhere. But
there was no red sword waving. Then the white men must be blind
already, wherever they were, and Cheschapah, the only thing he could
see, sat leaning one hand on his horse's rump firing a pistol. The
ground came swimming towards his eyes always, smooth and wide like a
gray flood, but Two Whistles knew that Cheschapah would not let it
sweep him away. He saw a horse without a rider floated out of blue
smoke, and floated in again with a cracking noise; white soldiers
moved in a row across his eyes, very small and clear, and broke
into a blurred eddy of shapes which the flood swept away clean and
empty. Then a dead white man came by on the quick flood. Two Whistles
saw the yellow stripe on his sleeve; but he was gone, and there was
nothing but sky and blaze, with Cheschapah's head-dress in the middle.
The horse's even motion continued beneath him, when suddenly the
head-dress fell out of Two Whistles' sight, and the earth returned.
They were in brush, with his horse standing and breathing, and a dead
horse on the ground with Cheschapah, and smoke and moving people
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account