The eagle's wing: A story of the Colorado — John Shaqi
The eagle's wing: A story of the ColoradoBower, B. M.
General
The eagle's wing: A story of the Colorado
Bower, B. M.
Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico) -- Fiction; Gold mines and mining -- Fiction; Western stories
It was the evening after the funeral, and Rawley was sitting again on the
porch, staring out gloomily over a cold pipe into the yard. His grandfather’s
death had hit him a harder blow than he would have thought possible. The shock
of it, coming close on the heels of his first keen realization that
Grandfather King was a vivid personality, left him numbed with a sense of
loss.
His mother’s evident relief at the removal of an unpleasant problem chilled
and irritated him. Her calm assumption that the Indian must also be removed
from the place, now that his master was gone, seemed to Rawley almost like
sacrilege. The place belonged to his mother only by right of his grandfather’s
generosity. To rob the Indian of a home he had enjoyed since boyhood was
unthinkable.
He turned his head and glanced toward the west wing, his eyes following his
thoughts. A dimly outlined figure stood erect upon the porch of the west wing.
Pity gripped Rawley by the throat; pity and half-conscious admiration. Even
the greatest grief of his life could not bow the shoulders of Johnny Buffalo.
With no definite purpose, drawn only by the kinship of their loss, Rawley
rose, crossed the grass plot by the syringas and sat down on the top step of
the west porch.
Johnny Buffalo stood with his arms folded, the fringe on his buckskin sleeves
whipping gently in the soft breeze that rose when the sun went down. He was
staring straight out at nothing,--the nothingness that epitomized his future.
Rawley slanted a glance up at him and began thoughtfully refilling his pipe.
By his silence he was unconsciously bringing himself close to the soul of the
Indian, the traditions of whose race forbade hasty speech.
Half a pipe Rawley smoked, staring meditatively into the dusk. In that time
Johnny Buffalo had moved no more than if he were a statue of brown stone. Then
Rawley tipped his head sidewise and looked up at him.
“Sit down, Johnny. I want to talk.”
“Talk is useless when the heart is dead,” said Johnny Buffalo after a long
pause. But he came down two steps and seated himself, straight-backed, head
up, beside Rawley.
“The man I love is cold. His spirit has gone. So I am left cold, and my heart
is dead. I shall wait--and be glad when my body is dead.”
Rawley felt a sharp constriction in his throat. For one moment he almost hated
his mother who would drive this stricken old man out into a world he did not
know. A gun against his temple would be kinder. He drew a long breath.
“Would you like to wait here, where he lived?” Intuitively he crystallized his
thoughts into the briefest words possible to express his meaning.
Johnny Buffalo shook his head slowly, with a decisiveness that could not be
questioned. He folded his arms again across his grief-laden breast.
“It is your mother’s. In the fields I can wait for death, which is my friend.
I shall walk toward the land of my people. When death finds me I shall smile.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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