Sam hoped that the Blackfeet would not be on his trail, for he had dreamed of spending a winter in their beautiful country: of hibernating during the months of December and January, like the bear; of eating and sleeping and communing with the creator’s infinite, while playing a few themes from Corelli and Bach and Mozart; of enjoying the pure heaven of being alone, far from policemen and tax collectors and all the parasites who made up any government. Bill Williams had once said there actually were damned fools who spent a good part of their time in wanton romping with women; and other damned fools who thought it the supremest pleasure to stand at bars swilling gin and rum; and still others who thought the good life demanded a neighbor within thirty feet on either side. Nearly all the mountain men agreed with Bill. They were all rebels. Convinced after two hours that no other Crows had been in the area, Sam went down to the horse. It looked like a very ordinary pony but you never could tell about an Indian pony. A trail stained with blood led away to a thicket. Warily Sam followed it and soon came to a man lying on his face, stone-dead. Or a youngster, Sam saw, after turning the body over: not eighteen, perhaps not more than sixteen: a good-looking boy who had slipped away and gone forth to take Sam’s scalp. Poor dead young one! He had a rifle so old that it looked like one the first voyageurs brought down from Canada; and a stone hatchet with a broken handle.

For a full tive minutes Sam looked down at the brave youth, thinking that his son would have been much like him. He did not take the scalp or Cut olf the ear. If he had had a shovel he would have buried this brave kid; if there had been stones in this area he would have built a cairn. The most and the best he could do was to heave the body to the fork of a tree, eight feet up; there, on its belly, the corpse hung down, both head and heels, but it would be safe from the wolves. The old musket Sam tied to the tree just below the youth. If the Crows found this dead son they would know that Sam had hung him in a tree and they would know why.

But there was something that they would never see and never know. It was in Sam’s face and eyes after he had gone fifty yards and had turned to look back.

16

HIS KILLING of the Crow boy chastened his male aggressions a little; but two days later he killed Wolf Teeth, without knowing who the man was; and a week after that he killed Coyote Runs. He sensed that he had an unexpected advantage in the fact that the hotbloods sent out to get him were competing with one another and taking foolhardy risks.

It was while thinking one day of the pathetic form hanging grotesquely in the tree that Sam recalled an experience that had haunted his dreams. It had been two years ago. He and two companions, looking for beaver ponds, had surprised six Blackfeet warriors riding down a ridge. Because members of this tribe had recently killed one of their friends they gave the mountain man’s dreadful war cry and charged. Their first three shots toppled three redmen from their ponies. Reloading while they raced after the survivors, they fired again, aiming at the horses because of the distance; and the three beasts stumbled and fell. Two braves leapt up and fled. The third had a broken leg and was crawling away like a wounded badger when the white men overtook him. The Indian then struggled up to his sound leg and drew a knife. An expert with a Bowie, Sam at that moment had hurled his blade and knocked the Indian down. Leaping from his horse and rushing to the fallen man, Sam had drawn the knife out and plunged it through him, in the region of his heart. Gouts of blood had spouted from the wounds and from the mouth and nostrils.

Sam had then raced after his companions, who were pursuing the two Indians. They lost them and returned to the dead horses. Fifteen minutes passed before one of them looked over at the warrior with the broken leg. His cry of amazement had brought Sam to his feet. The man through whom Sam had twice driven his knife had managed to sit up—even had managed to find his knife; and there he sat, a hideous figure, his whole chest red with the gore that streamed down from his mouth. The thing that had held Sam’s attention was the Indian’s eyes, staring at him through a red mist; they were filled with the deadliest hatred Sam had ever seen. But even more terrible to look at than the eyes were the hands, washed with warm blood and trying feebly to close nerveless fingers around the handle of a dagger. After a few moments the Indian had made a chilling sound, as from agony, mixed with the choking gurgle of blood in the throat; and as blood burst in a red vomit from nose and mouth the head sank forward, and the body, and the warrior was still.

There was nothing in a man that Sam admired more than courage. More than once since that hour Sam had awakened from a dream about this man and had been too disturbed to sleep again; more than once he had been troubled, as now, by contemplation of man’s or beast’s helplessness before an enemy. Nothing else in life went into him so deep, or with such pain and pathos; nothing else drew from him such a cry of pity to the Creator. Man to man or beast to beast, when both were in lighting fettle, was one thing; to be helpless before a merciless enemy was another thing. He knew, he never for a moment forgot, that the Blackfeet tortured their captives with fiendish ferocities that few whitemen could have imagined. It was true that no one could believe, without having seen them, how savage the squaws could be. Were they mothers? Did they feel tenderness when cradling their babes? How was a man to reconcile such hellish cruelties with a courage, sometimes a valor, that brought cries of admiration from their enemies?

Around camplires during the long winters tales were told of the red people’s nature and doings—such as the wager between a Sioux and a Cheyenne, both from a war·loving people. They had met unexpectedly one day, at a time when their nations were not at war, and the Sioux had challenged the Cheyenne to a game of hands. In this simple game one of the two players took a small pebble, and putting both hands behind his back, clasped the stone in one of them. Bringing his hands into plain view of his opponent, knuckles up, he asked him to choose the hand that held the stone. This was a favorite game with Indians; they were such inveterate gamblers that they would wager everything they had, including their horses, weapons, women, and sometimes their lives.

The Cheyenne won everything the Sioux had, and that brave, sitting stark-naked and wondering what else he could wager, offered his coveted scalp. He wagered it against everything he had lost. It was the wily Cheyenne’s turn with the stone, and behind his back he took so much time changing his mind and moving the stone from hand to hand that his opponent cried out with impatience. Suspecting a trick, he demanded to see the stone, for sometimes a brave’s medicine was big. The Sioux took the stone and examined it. He could see no erosion caused by magic, but asked nevertheless that a bullet from his medicine bag be used instead. It was the Cheyenne’s turn to suspect a trick; he stared hard at the piece of lead as he turned it over and over in his hands. Though it looked all right he tested it with his teeth and he smelled of it. His sly mind was telling him that the Sioux was dull and unimaginative and could be deceived; and so he kept the piece of lead in his right hand as he examined it, and it was still in his right hand when he put his hands behind his back. It was still in the right hand when after five minutes of anguished searching of his wits and his magic the Sioux said it was in the left hand. The Cheyenne had guessed that the stupid fellow would get hooked by the notion that the bullet would be slipped over to the left hand.