Read Ebook: The Black Lion Inn by Lewis Alfred Henry Remington Frederic Illustrator

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Ebook has 1369 lines and 89495 words, and 28 pages

For an hour it has leaped in Bill's thoughts as an impulse to go across to the spreading cottonwood, propose himself to the Gray Wolf for the Saucy Paoli, and elicit reply. It would not be the Osage way, but Bill is not yet an Osage, and some reasonable allowance should be made by Gray Wolf for the rudeness of a paleface education. Such step would earn an answer, certain and complete. Your savage beateth not about the bush. His diplomacy is Bismarckian; it is direct and proceeds by straight lines.

Thus chase Bill's cogitations when the sudden sight of the Saucy Paoli and her glances, full of wist and warmth, fasten his gallant fancy and crystalize a resolution to act at once.

"How!" observes Bill, by way of salutation, as he stands before Gray Wolf.

That warrior grunts swinish, though polite, response. Then Bill goes directly to the core of his employ; he explains his passion, sets forth his hopes, and by dashing swoops arrives at the point which, according to Bill's blunt theories, should quicken the interest of Gray Wolf, and says:

"Now, what price? How many ponies?"

"How many you give?" retorts the cautious Gray Wolf.

"Fifteen." Bill stands ready to go to thirty.

"Ugh!" observes Gray Wolf, and then he looks out across the prairie grasses where the thick smoke shows the summer fires to be burning them far away.

"Thirty ponies," says Bill after a pause.

These or their money equivalent--six hundred dollars--Bill knows to be a fat figure. He believes Gray Wolf will yield.

But Bill is in partial error. Gray Wolf is not in any sordid, money frame. Your savage is a sentimentalist solely on two matters: those to touch his pride and those to wake his patriotism. And because of the recent triumph of the Poncas, and the consequent censures upon him now flaming, though hidden, in the common Osage heart, Gray Wolf's pride is raw and throbbing. He looks up at Bill where he waits.

"One pony!" says Gray Wolf.

"One?"

"But it must beat the Ponca's roan."

Four hundred miles to the westward lie the broad ranges of the Triangle-Dot. Throughout all cow-land the ponies of the Triangle-Dot have name for speed. As far eastward as the Panhandle and westward to the Needles, as far southward as Seven Rivers and northward to the Spanish Peaks, has their fame been flung. About camp fires and among the boys of cows are tales told of Triangle-Dot ponies that overtake coyotes and jack-rabbits. More, they are exalted as having on a time raced even with an antelope. These ponies are children of a blue-grass sire, as thoroughbred as ever came out of Kentucky. Little in size, yet a ghost to go; his name was Redemption. These speedy mustang babies of Redemption have yet to meet their master in the whole southwest. And Bill knows of them; he has seen them run.

"In two moons, my father," says Bill.

There is much creaking of saddle leathers; there is finally a deep dig in the flanks by the long spurs, and Bill, mounted on his best, rides out of Pauhauska. His blankets are strapped behind, his war bags bulge with provand, he is fully armed; of a verity, Bill meditates a journey. Four hundred miles--and return--no less, to the ranges of the Triangle-Dot.

Gray Wolf watches from beneath the cottonwood that already begins to throw its shadows long; his eyes follow Bill until the latter's broad brimmed, gray sombrero disappears on the hill-crests over beyond Bird River.

It skills not to follow Bill in this pilgrimage. He fords rivers; he sups and sleeps at casual camps; now and again he pauses for the night at some chance plaza of the Mexicans; but first and last he pushes ever on and on at a round road gait, and with the end he has success.

Within his time by full three weeks Bill is again at the agency of the Osages; and with him comes a pony, lean of muzzle, mild of eye, wide of forehead, deep of lung, silken of mane, slim of limb, a daughter of the great Redemption; and so true and beautiful is she in each line she seems rather for air than earth. And she is named the Spirit.

Gray Wolf goes over the Spirit with eye and palm. He feels her velvet coat; picks up one by one her small hoofs, polished and hard as agate.

The Spirit has private trial with Sundown and leaves that hopeless cayuse as if the latter were pegged to the prairie.

"Ugh!" says Gray Wolf, at the finish. "Heap good pony!"

Your savage is not a personage of stopwatches, weights and records. At the best, he may only guess concerning a pony's performance. Also his vanity has wings, though his pony has none, and once he gets it into his savage head that his pony can race, it is never long ere he regards him as invincible. Thus is it with Dull Ox and his precious roan. That besotted Ponca promptly accepts the Gray Wolf challenge for a second contest.

The day arrives. The race is to be run on the Osage course--a quarter of a mile, straight-away--at the Pauhauska agency. Two thousand Osages and Poncas are gathered together. There is no laughter, no uproar, no loud talk; all is gravity, dignity and decorum. The stakes are one thousand dollars a side, for Gray Wolf and Dull Ox are opulent pagans.

The ponies are brought up and looked over. The fires of a thousand racing ancestors burn in the eyes of the Spirit; the Poncas should take warning. But they do not; wagers run higher. The Osages have by resolution of their fifteen legislators brought the public money to the field. Thus they are rich for speculation, where, otherwise, by virtue of former losses, they would be helpless with empty hands.

Bet after bet is made. The pool box is a red blanket spread on the grass. It is presided over by a buck, impecunious but of fine integrity.

Being moneyless, he will make no bet himself; being honest, he will faithfully guard the treasure put within his care. A sporting buck approaches the blanket; he grumbles a word or two in the ear of the pool master who sits at the blanket's head; then he searches forth a hundred-dollar bill from the darker recesses of his blanket and lays it on the red betting-cloth. Another comes up; the pool master murmurs the name of the pony on which the hundred is offered; it is covered by the second speculator; that wager is complete. Others arrive at the betting blanket; its entire surface becomes dotted with bank notes--two and two they lie together, each wagered against the other. The blanket is covered and concealed with the money piled upon it. One begins to wonder how a winner is to know his wealth. There will be no clash, no dispute. Savages never cheat; and each will know his own. Besides, there is the poverty-eaten, honest buck, watching all, to be appealed to should an accidental confusion of wagers occur.

On a bright blanket, a trifle to one side--not to be under the moccasins of commerce, as it were--sits the Saucy Paoli. She is without motion; and a blanket, covering her from little head to little foot, leaves not so much as a stray lock or the tip of an ear for one's gaze to rest upon. The Saucy Paoli is present dutifully to answer the outcome of the Gray Wolf's pact with Bill. One wonders how does her heart beat, and how roam her hopes? Is she for the roan, or is she for the Glory of the Triangle-Dot?

The solemn judges draw their blankets about them and settle to their places. Three Poncas and three Osages on a side they are; they seat themselves opposite each other with twenty feet between. A line is drawn from trio to trio; that will serve as wire. The pony to cross first will be victor.

Now all is ready! The rival ponies are at the head of the course; it will be a standing start. A grave buck sits in the saddle near the two racers and to their rear. He is the starter. Suddenly he cracks off a Winchester, skyward. It is the signal.

The ponies leap like panthers at the sound. There is a swooping rush; for one hundred yards they run together, then the Spirit takes the lead. Swifter than the thrown lance, swift as the sped arrow she comes! With each instant she leaves and still further leaves the roan! What has such as the mongrel pony of the Poncas to do with the Flower of the Triangle-Dot? The Spirit flashes between the double triumvirate of judges, winner by fifty yards!

And now one expects a shout. There is none. The losing Poncas and the triumphant Osages alike are stolid and dignified. Only Gray Wolf's eyes gleam, and the cords in his neck swell. He has been redeemed with his people; his honor has been returned; his pride can again hold up its head. But while his heart may bound, his face must be like iron. Such is the etiquette of savagery.

Both Gray Wolf and the Osages will exult later, noisily, vociferously. There will be feasting and dancing. Now they must be grave and guarded, both for their own credit and to save their Ponca adversaries from a wound.

Bill turns and rides slowly back to the judges. The Spirit, daughter of Redemption, stands with fire eyes and tiger lily nostrils. Bill swings from the saddle. Gray Wolf throws off the blanket from the Saucy Paoli, where she waits, head bowed and silent. Her dress is the climax of Osage magnificence; the Saucy Paoli glows like a ruby against the dusk green of the prairie. Bill takes the Saucy Paoli's hand and raises her to her feet.

She lifts her head. Her glance is shy, yet warm and glad. She hesitates. Then, as one who takes courage--just as might a white girl, though with less of art--she puts up her lips to be kissed.

"Now that is what I call a fair story," commented the Red Nosed Gentleman approvingly when the Jolly Doctor came to a pause; "only I don't like that notion of a white man marrying an Indian. It's apt to keep alive in the children the worst characteristics of both races and none of the virtues of either."

"Now I don't know that," observed the Sour Gentleman, contentiously. "In my own state of Virginia many of our best people are proud to trace their blood to Pocahontas, who was sold for a copper kettle. I, myself, am supposed to have a spoonful of the blood of that daughter of Powhatan in my veins; and while it is unpleasant to recall one's ancestress as having gone from hand to hand as the subject of barter and sale--and for no mighty price at that--I cannot say I would wish it otherwise. My Indian blood fits me very well. Did you say"--turning to the Jolly Doctor--"did you say, sir, you knew this young man who won the Saucy Paoli?"

"No," returned the Jolly Doctor, "I am guiltless of acquaintance with him. The story came to me from one of our Indian agents."

While this talk went forward, Sioux Sam, who understood English perfectly and talked it very well, albeit with a guttural Indian effect, and who had listened to the Jolly Doctor's story with every mark of interest, was saying something in a whisper to the Old Cattleman.

"He tells me," remarked the Old Cattleman in reply to my look of curiosity, "that if you-alls don't mind, he'll onfold on you a Injun tale himse'f. It's one of these yere folk-lore stories, I suppose, as Doc Peets used to call 'em."

The whole company made haste to assure Sioux Sam that his proposal was deeply the popular one; thus cheered, our dark-skinned raconteur, first lighting his pipe with a coal from the great fireplace, issued forth upon his verbal journey.

"An' this," said Sioux Sam, lifting a dark finger to invoke attention and puffing a cloud the while, "an' this tale, which shows how Forked Tongue, the bad medicine man, was burned, must teach how never to let the heart fill up with hate like a pond with the rains, nor permit the tongue to go a crooked trail."

The time is long, long ago. Ugly Elk is the great chief of the Sioux, an' he's so ugly an' his face so hideous, he makes a great laugh wherever he goes. But the people are careful to laugh when the Ugly Elk's back is toward them. If they went in front of him an' laugh, he'd go among them with his stone war-axe; for Ugly Elk is sensitive about his looks.

Ugly Elk is the warchief of the Sioux an' keeps his camp on the high bluffs that mark the southern border of the Sioux country where he can look out far on the plains an' see if the Pawnees go into the Sioux hills to hunt. Should the Pawnees try this, then Ugly Elk calls up his young men an' pounces on the Pawnees like a coyote on a sage hen, an' when Ugly Elk gets through, the Pawnees are hard to find.

It turns so, however, that the Pawnees grow tired. Ugly Elk's war yell makes their knees weak, an' when they see the smoke of his fire they turn an' run. Then Ugly Elk has peace in his tepees on the bluffs, an' eats an' smokes an' counts his scalps an' no Pawnee comes to anger him. An' the Sioux look up to him as a mighty fighter, an' what Ugly Elk says goes as law from east to west an' no'th to south throughout the country of the Sioux.

Ugly Elk has no sons or daughters an' all his squaws are old an' dead an' asleep forever in their rawhides, high on pole scaffolds where the wolves can't come. An' because Ugly Elk is lonesome an' would hear good words about his lodge an' feel that truth is near, he asks his nephew, Running Water, to live with him when now the years grow deep an' deeper on his head. The nephew is named Running Water because there is no muddiness of lies about him, an' his life runs clear an' swift an' good. Some day Running Water will be chief, an' then they will call him Kill-Bear, because he once sat down an' waited until a grizzly came up; an' when he had come up, Running Water offered him the muzzle of his gun to bite; an' then as the grizzly took it between his jaws, Running Water blew off his head. An' for that he was called Kill-Bear, an' made chief. But that is not for a long time, an' comes after Ugly Elk has died an' been given a scaffold of poles with his squaws.

Ugly Elk has his heart full of love for Running Water an' wants him ever in his sight an' to hear his voice. Also, he declares to the Sioux that they must make Running Water their chief when he is gone. The Sioux say that if he will fight the Pawnees, like Ugly Elk, until the smoke of his camp is the smoke of fear to the Pawnees, he shall be their chief. An' because Running Water is as bold as he is true, Ugly Elk accepts the promise of the Sioux an' rests content that all will be as he asks when his eyes close for the long sleep.

But while Ugly Elk an' Running Water are happy for each other, there is one whose heart turns black as he looks upon them. It is Forked Tongue, the medicine man; he is the cousin of Ugly Elk, an' full of lies an' treachery. Also, he wants to be chief when that day comes for Ugly Elk to die an' go away. Forked Tongue feels hate for Running Water, an' he plans to kill him.

Forked Tongue talks with Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, an' who has once helped Forked Tongue with his medicine. Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, is very wise; also he wants revenge on Forked Tongue, who promised him a bowl of molasses an' then put a cheat on him.

When Forked Tongue powwows with Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear thinks now he will have vengeance on Forked Tongue, who was false about the molasses. Thereupon, he rests his head on his paw, an' makes as if he thinks an' thinks; an' after a long while he tells Forked Tongue what to do.

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