The fellow in the plug hat was their leader. He wore one of those silver medals that the Government give out to principal men at treaty signings; I think his showed the image of President Fillmore. He was older than the others and he carried an ancient musket with a barrel four foot long.

Now I haven’t referred to her before, but my eldest sister was six foot tall and, being very strong of feature, she was still unmarried at more than twenty years of age: a great big rawboned girl with a head of flaming orange hair. She used to spell Pa in driving the ox team and could throw a whip better than any of the men except Edward Walsh, who was an Irishman out of Boston weighing two hundred pounds and as a Catholic never cared for Pa’s preaching but was tolerant about it since other than his family there wasn’t any more of his own kind along; the others tolerated him because he was so big.

This sister’s name was Caroline, and on account of her size and doing a man’s work, she wore men’s clothing on the trail-boots, pants, shirt, and flop hat-although there were those who thought the worse of her for it.

A very athletic person and a stranger to fear, she hopped from the box to the ground on the Indians’ approach, and Plug Hat marched up to her, sticking out his brown right hand while the left held the old musket across his front and also kept his red blanket from falling off.

“Right pleased to make your acquaintance,” says Caroline, who is a deal bigger than the old chief, and gives him a grip so hard you can see the pain travel up through his hat and down the other arm. He almost lost his blanket. His chest was naked underneath, and that’s how I saw his medal and also a scar across his belly that looked like a weld on a piece of iron. That provided the name he was known by among the whites, Scar Belly, though among the Cheyenne he was called Old Lodge Skins, Mohk-se-a-nis, and also Painted Thunder, Wohk-pe-nu-numa, and I never did know his real name, which among Indians is a secret; and if you find it out and call him by it he will at the least be terrible insulted and at the worst have ten years of bad luck.

Old Lodge Skins (at present he didn’t identify himself, which always seems irrelevant to an Indian, but I was to see a lot of him in afterdays), when he recovered from Caroline’s shake, give a speech in Cheyenne, which was one phase of his courtesy and the other was that in between sentences he said the English words he knew, “goddam” and “Jesus Christ,” which he had been taught for a joke by earlier immigrants and the soldiers at Laramie, and didn’t of course understand was cursing and wouldn’t have known if it was explained, on account of Indians don’t have swearing in their languages though they have lots of things that are taboo: for example, after you are married you can’t mention the name of your mother-in-law.

My Pa was standing alongside Caroline, and I don’t recall what it was upset him most, the swearing or the attention my sister was getting, but he pushed out in front of her, saying, “If you was looking for the wagonmaster and spiritual leader of this flock, that be me, Your Honor.”

Him and Old Lodge Skins then shake hands, and the latter fetches from a beaded pouch he carries in the vicinity of his belly a filthy, tattered hunk of paper on which some other white wag had scrawled the following:

This heer is Skar-gut he is a good indun and takes a bath unse a yar wether he needs it or not he won’t cut your thoat under enny condishun so long as you keep a gun on him his heart is as black as his hind end yer fren

BILLY B. DARN

The chief evidently figured this to be a recommendation, because he looked right proud while my brother Bill was reading it aloud on request of my Pa (that’s the reason I said earlier I don’t think Pa could read himself; but it’s more than a hundred year ago and I don’t remember everything).

Pa was a considerate person to strangers, especially if they was savages, so he pretended the note said something good and invited the whole bunch to come have a drink, which I don’t believe the Cheyenne understood right off. “Whiskey” they would have known, but Pa put it some long way, “potation” or whatever-and they still didn’t get it when Troy and our men broke out the jugs. You see, an Indian figures no white man in his right mind would give them liquor unless he had a running start. The traders always left the whiskey negotiation till last, brought out the barrels, and rode off fast as they could go.

Indians are first to admit they can’t hold their liquor, and even in those early days some of the chiefs tried to keep it from their young men, though a redskin leader has only advisory power which is frequently ignored. Old Lodge Skins could not believe ten white men, counting the larger boys, half of them unarmed and with only two horses and having seven wagons full of twelve women and girls and eight smaller children, would feed whiskey to two score Cheyenne braves on the open prairie. If he had, he would have warned my Pa before he took a drink, because Indians are fair that way. They don’t feel any guilt about what they do under the influence of liquor, regarding it as a mysterious sort of power like a tornado-and you don’t see reason to blame yourself for knocking a fellow down if a high wind picks you up and throws you into him; although if you see it coming you would tell him to move clear. So with an Indian when he hits the booze, if he hasn’t anything against you.

Old Lodge Skins took the tin cup my Pa handed him and drained it in one swallow, as if it was water or cold coffee, tilting his head back so far the plug hat fell off. The drink was already down his gullet before he altogether comprehended the nature of it, and you might say simultaneous with that recognition he became instantly drunk, his eyes swimming with liquid like two raw eggs. He fell over backwards on the earth and kicked his feet so hard one moccasin flew off and hit the cover of our wagon. His musket dropped, muzzle down, and packed some dirt in the end of the barrel, of which we’ll hear more later.

Meanwhile our men politely ignored him and passed on to the other Indians. Not having brought out more cups, they handed around the jugs, grinning and shaking hands, and Troy thought his idea was proceeding so well that he started a practice of slapping the braves on the shoulder as if they was saloon cronies. Now I could see, at the age of ten, that the Cheyenne didn’t get the import of that: giving him a present with one hand and striking him with the other, and both by an individual of a different race, would call an Indian’s whole code of manners into question, as it would with a horse you fed and flogged at the same time.

The others weren’t so quick to fall drunk like Old Lodge Skins, with whom it was more the surprise than the beverage. Having seen him, they were somewhat prepared-well as a redskin can ever be-and went under the influence by stages: sort of pathetic gratitude when they was handed the jug, puzzlement when Troy hit their shoulder, then a slow beginning of elation when the stuff hit the stomach-all this fairly quiet, except of course for the “how-how’s” and mutterings of satisfaction.

We might still have got away after everybody had one round apiece, but Old Lodge Skins come back to life, got up, and indicated he would swap his pinto pony, his plug hat, his Government medal, his musket, in fact, everything down to the breechclout, for a second swallow.

“Never mind that,” says Pa. “It ain’t going to cost a desert patriarch nothing to partake of our hospitality. I just wish I could talk Hebrew.” With that, he hands the chief a whole jug all for himself.

Troy gives seconds to a flat-nosed brave and claps his back. This fellow, whose name was Hump, swallows slow, licks his lips, hands back the jug, grimaces like he smells something stinking, then begins to howl like a coyote under a full moon. Everybody else is still quiet at this point, so it sounded funny, and Old Lodge Skins takes a breath between pulls at his own jug and looks glassy-eyed at Hump, which seems to annoy the latter, for he draws his iron tomahawk and starts at the chief, who lifts up the ancient musket and fires it at the other, but the earth, remember, is packed into the muzzle and the barrel peels back, like a banana skin, almost to the lock.