American Museum of Natural History -- Fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction; Nature stories, American; Western stories
"Now these Potawatami," said the Dog Chief, "had had guns a long time,
and better guns than ours. But being boys we did not know enough to turn
back. About midday we came to level country around the headwaters of the
creek, and there were four Potawatami skinning buffaloes. They had
bunched up their horses and tied them to a tree while they cut up the
kill. Red Morning said for us to run off the horses, and that would be
almost as good as a scalp-taking. We left our ponies in the ravine and
wriggled through the long grass. We had cut the horses loose and were
running them, before the Potawatami discovered it. One of them called
his own horse and it broke out of the bunch and ran toward him. In a
moment he was on his back, so we three each jumped on a horse and began
to whip them to a gallop. The Potawatami made for the Suh-tai, and rode
even with him. I think he saw it was only a boy, and neither of them had
a gun. But suddenly as their horses came neck and neck Suh-tai gave a
leap and landed on the Potawatami's horse behind the rider. It was a
trick of his with which he used to scare us. He would leap on and off
before you had time to think. As he clapped his legs to the horse's back
he stuck his knife into the Potawatami. The man threw up his arms and
Suh-tai tumbled him off the horse in an instant.
"This I saw because Red Morning's horse had been shot under him, and I
had stopped to take him up. By this time another man had caught a horse
and I had got my lance again which I had left leaning against a tree. I
faced him with it as he came on at a dead run, and for a moment I
thought it had gone clean through him, but really it had passed between
his arm and his body and he had twisted it out of my hand.
"Our horses were going too fast to stop, but Red Morning, from behind
me, struck at the head of the man's horse as it passed with his
knife-edged club, and we heard the man shout as he went down. I managed
to get my horse about in time to see Suh-tai, who had caught up with us,
trying to snatch the Potawatami's scalp, but his knife turned on one of
the silver plates through which his scalp-lock was pulled, and all the
Suh-tai got was a lock of the hair. In his excitement he thought it was
the scalp and went shaking it and shouting like a wild man.
"The Potawatami pulled himself free of his fallen horse as I came up,
and it did me good to see the blood flowing from under his arm where my
lance had scraped him. I rode straight at him, meaning to ride him down,
but the horse swerved a little and got a long wiping stroke from the
Potawatami's knife, from which, in a minute more, he began to stagger.
By this time the other men had got their guns and begun shooting.
Suh-tai's bow had been shot in two, and Red Morning had a graze that
laid his cheek open. So we got on our own ponies and rode away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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