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
Rawley turned this over in his mind, seeking some point where argument might
break down bitter resolution.
“Cowards wait for death when life grows hard,” he said at last. “The brave man
meets life and faces sorrow because he is brave and will overcome. The brave
man fights death which is an enemy. He does not run away from life and welcome
his enemy. My grandfather found life very hard. For fifty years my grandfather
faced it because his spirit was strong.”
“Your grandfather’s spirit was strong. His body was broken. My body is strong.
My spirit is broken. Can a strong body live with a broken spirit inside?”
Rawley had to smoke over this for a while. Johnny Buffalo, he conceded
privately, was no man’s fool. Rawley tried to put himself in the Indian’s
place and discover, if he could, something that would make life worth the
living.
“Your people are scattered,” he said quietly. “Few are left. The Mohaves are a
broken tribe.”
“The Mohaves are not my people,” the Indian corrected him calmly. “I am
Pahute. In the mountains along the river you call the Colorado, my people
lived and hunted--and fought. My uncle was the chief, and I was proud. One day
my mother beat me with a stick. I took my bow and my arrows and some dried
meat, and that night I left my people, for I was angry and ashamed. With my
bow I had killed two mountain sheep. With my bow I had hidden in the rocks and
had wounded a white man who was digging in the hillside. I thought I was a
warrior and not to be beaten by a squaw.
“The great thirst found me as I was walking toward the mountains where all my
life I had seen the sun go down. With my bow and arrow I could get meat, but I
could not get water. All my life I had lived near the river. The great thirst
I did not know.
“I fell in the sand. When I awoke, water was in my mouth. I looked, and I was
lying in the arms of a white man. He was big and strong and very handsome. He
was Sergeant King. Your grandfather. I looked into his eyes and I was not
afraid. There was no hate in my heart for him, but all other whites I hated.
He lifted me and carried me in his arms and laid me in a wagon with white
women and children. I hated them. I was weak from the thirst and from much
walking, but I bit deep into the arm of a woman who put her hand on me.
“There was much yelling in that wagon. The woman struck me many times. A horse
came galloping. Your grandfather lifted me out of the wagon and put me on the
horse with him. So we rode together in one saddle. I loved him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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