Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Western stories
everywhere outside. He saw Cheschapah run from the dead horse and jump
on a gray pony and go. Somehow he was on the ground too, looking at a
red sword lying beside his face. He stared at it a long while, then
took it in his hand, still staring; all at once he rose and broke it
savagely, and fell again. His faith was shivered to pieces like glass.
But he got on his horse, and the horse moved away. He was looking at
the blood running on his body. The horse moved always, and Two
Whistles followed with his eye a little deeper gush of blood along a
crease in his painted skin, noticed the flannel, and remembering the
lie of his prophet, instantly began tearing the red rags from his
body, and flinging them to the ground with cries of scorn. Presently
he heard some voices, and soon one voice much nearer, and saw he had
come to a new place, where there were white soldiers looking at him
quietly. One was riding up and telling him to give up his pistol. Two
Whistles got off and stood behind his horse, looking at the pistol.
The white soldier came quite near, and at his voice Two Whistles moved
slowly out from behind the horse, and listened to the cool words as
the soldier repeated his command. The Indian was pointing his pistol
uncertainly, and he looked at the soldier's coat and buttons, and the
straps on the shoulders, and the bright steel sabre, and the white
man's blue eyes; then Two Whistles looked at his own naked, clotted
body, and, turning the pistol against himself, fired it into his
breast.
[Illustration: THE CHARGE]
Far away up the river, on the right of the line, a lieutenant with two
men was wading across after some hostiles that had been skirmishing with
his troop. The hostiles had fallen back after some hot shooting, and had
dispersed among the brush and tepees on the farther shore, picking up
their dead, as Indians do. It was interesting work, this splashing
breast-high through a river into a concealed hornets'-nest, and the
lieutenant thought a little on his unfinished plans and duties in life;
he noted one dead Indian left on the shore, and went steadfastly in
among the half-seen tepees, rummaging and beating in the thick brush to
be sure no hornets remained. Finding them gone, and their dead spirited
away, he came back on the bank to the one dead Indian, who had a fine
head-dress, and was still ribanded with gay red streamers of flannel,
and was worth all the rest of the dead put together, and much more. The
head lay in the water, and one hand held the rope of the gray pony, who
stood quiet and uninterested over his fallen rider. They began carrying
the prize across to the other bank, where many had now collected, among
others Kinney and the lieutenant's captain, who subsequently said, "I
found the body of Cheschapah;" and, indeed, it was a very good thing to
be able to say.
[Illustration: "THE HEAD LAY IN THE WATER"]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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