The Girl at the Halfway House Part 8

Juan cast away the bit of rod still in his hand and rushed forward against his enemy, seeking to throttle him with his naked fingers.

White Calf, quicker-witted of the two, slung the thong of his war club free from his crippled right hand, and, grasping the weapon in his left, still made play with it about his head. The giant none the less rushed in, receiving upon his shoulder a blow from the left hand of the Indian which cut the flesh clean to the collar bone, in a great bruised wound which was covered at once with a spurt of blood. The next instant the two fell together, the Indian beneath his mighty foe, and the two writhing in a horrible embrace. The hands of the _mozo_ gripped the Indian's throat, and he uttered a rasping, savage roar of triumph, more beastlike than human, as he settled hard upon the chest of the enemy whose life he was choking out. Again rose the savage cries of the on-lookers.

Not even yet had the end come. There was a heaving struggle, a sharp cry, and Juan sprang back, pressing his hand against his side, where blood came from between his fingers. The Indian had worked his left hand to the sheath of his knife, and stabbed the giant who had so nearly overcome him. Staggering, the two again stood erect, and yet again came the cries from the many red men and the little band of whites who were witnessing this barbarous and brutal struggle. Bows were bending among the blankets, but the four rifles now pointed steadily out. One movement would have meant death to many, but that movement was fore-stalled in the still more rapid happenings of the unfinished combat. For one-half second the two fighting men stood apart, the one stunned at his unexpected wound, the other startled that the wound had not proved fatal. Seeing his antagonist still on his feet. White Calf for the first time lost courage. With the knife still held in his left hand, he hesitated whether to join again in the encounter, or himself to guard against the attack of a foe so proof to injury. He half turned and gave back for a pace.

The man pursued by a foe looks about him quickly for that weapon nearest to his own hand. The dread of steel drove Juan to bethink himself of a weapon. He saw it at his feet, and again he roared like an angry bull, his courage and his purpose alike unchanged. He stooped and clutched the broken war axe, grasping the stone head in the palm of his great hand, the jagged and ironlike shaft projecting from between his ringers like the blade of a dagger. With the leap of a wild beast he sprang again upon his foe. White Calf half turned, but the left hand of the giant caught him and held him up against the fatal stroke.

The sharp shaft of wood struck the Indian in the side above the hip, quartering through till the stone head sunk against the flesh with a fearful sound. With a scream the victim straightened and fell forward.

The horrid spectacle was over.

CHAPTER XII

WHAT THE HAND HAD TO DO

In this wide, new world of the West there were but few artificial needs, and the differentiation of industries was alike impossible and undesired. Each man was his own cook, his own tailor, his own mechanic in the simple ways demanded by the surroundings about him. Each man was as good as his neighbour, for his neighbour as well as himself perforce practised a half-dozen crafts and suffered therefrom neither in his own esteem nor that of those about him. The specialists of trade, of artisans.h.i.+p, of art, were not yet demanded in this environment where each man in truth "took care of himself," and had small dependence upon others.

In all the arts of making one's self comfortable in a womanless and hence a homeless land both Franklin and Battersleigh, experienced campaigners as they were, found themselves much aided by the counsel of Curly, the self-reliant native of the soil who was Franklin's first acquaintance in that land. It was Curly who helped them with their houses and in their household supplies. It was he who told them now and then of a new region where the crop of bones was not yet fully gathered. It was he who showed them how to care for the little number of animals which they began to gather about them; and who, in short, gave to them full knowledge of the best ways of exacting a subsistence from the land which they had invaded.

One morning Franklin, thinking to have an additional buffalo robe for the coming winter, and knowing no manner in which he could get the hide tanned except through his own efforts, set about to do this work for himself, ignorant of the extent of his task, and relying upon Curly for advice as to the procedure.

Curly sat on his horse and looked on with contempt as Franklin flung down the raw skin upon the ground.

"You've sh.o.r.e tackled a bigger job than you know anything about, Cap,"

said he, "and, besides that, it ain't a job fittin' fer a man to do.

You ought to git some squaw to do that for you."

"But, you see, there aren't any squaws around," said Franklin, smiling.

"If you'll tell me just how the Indians do it I'll try to see how good a job I can make of it."

Curly s.h.i.+fted his leg in his saddle and his cud in his mouth, and pus.h.i.+ng his hat back on his forehead, a.s.sumed the position of superintendent.

"Well, it'll take you a long time," said he, "but I 'low it ain't no use tellin' you not to begin, fer you'll just spile a good hide anyhow.

First thing you do, you stretch yer hide out on the ground, fur side down, and hold it there with about six hundred pegs stuck down around the edges. It'll take you a week to do that. Then you take a knife and sc.r.a.pe all the meat off the hide. That sounds easy, but it'll take about another week. Then you git you a little hoe, made out of a piece of steel, and you dig, and dig, and dig at that hide till you git some more meat off, and begin to shave it down, thin like. You got to git all the grease out of it, an' you got to make all the h.o.r.n.y places soft. Time you git it dug down right it'll take you about a year, I reckon, and then you ain't done. You got to git brains--buffalo brains is best--and smear all over it, and let 'em dry in. Then you got to take your hide up and rub it till it's plum soft. That'll take you a couple of weeks, I reckon. Then you kin smoke it, if you have got any place to smoke it, an' that'll take you a week, it you don't burn it up. Sometimes you kin whiten a hide by rubbin' it with white clay, if you can git any clay. That might take you a few days longer. Oh, yes, I reckon you kin git the hide tanned if you live long enough. You'd ought to put up a sign, 'Captain Franklin, Attorney at Law, an' Hide Tanner.'"

Franklin laughed heartily at Curly's sarcasm. "There's one thing sure, Curly," said he; "if I ever get this thing done I shall have to do the work myself, for no one ever knew you to do any work but ride a horse.

Now, I think I can tan this hide, and do it in less than a year, and in less than a week, too. I can peg it out, and I can make me the iron hoe, and I can soften the hide with brains, and I can rub it until it is finished. I have, or can get, about all the ingredients you mention except the clay. If I had some white pipe clay I believe I could really make me a beautiful robe for a counterpane for my bed next winter."

"If it's only clay you want," said Curly lazily, "I can git you plenty of that."

"Where?" said Franklin.

"Over in a little holler, to the crick back o' town," said Curly. "You go on an' tack out your hide, an' I'll ride over and git you some."

"How'll you carry it," said Franklin, "if you go on horseback?"

"Kerry it!" said Curly contemptuously. "How'd you s'pose I'd kerry it? Why, in my hat, o' course!" and he rode off without deigning further explanation. Franklin remained curious regarding this episode until, an hour later, Curly rode up to the house again, carrying his hat by the brim, with both hands before him, and guiding his pony with his knees. He had, indeed, a large lump of white, soft clay, which he carried by denting in the crown of his hat and crowding the clay into the hollow. After throwing down the clay and slapping the hat a few times on his knee, he seemed to think his headgear not injured by this transaction.

"There's yer blamed clay," said he; "it'll be a good while before you need it, but there she is."

The two were joined at this juncture by Battersleigh, who had come over to pay a morning visit, and who now stood looking on with some interest at the preparations in progress.

"It's makin' ye a robe is it, Ned, me boy?" said he. "I'm bound it's a fine thing ye'll do. I'll give yer four dollars if ye'll do as much for me. Ye wouldn't be leavin' old Batty to sleep cold o' nights, now, wud ye, Ned?"

"Oh, go tan your own robes," said Franklin cheerfully. "I'm not in the wholesale line."

"You might git Juan to tan you all one or two," said Curly. "He kin tan ez good ez ary Injun ever was."

"But, by the way, Curly," said Franklin, "how is Juan this morning? We haven't heard from him for a day or two."

"Oh, him?" said Curly. "Why, he's all right. He's just been layin'

'round a little, like a dog that's been cut up some in a wolf fight, but he's all right now. Shoulder's about well, an' as fer the knife-cut, it never did amount to nothin' much. You can't hurt a Greaser much, not noways such a big one as Juan. But didn't he git action in that little difficulty o' his'n? You could a-broke the whole Cheyenne tribe, if you could a-got a-bettin' with 'em before that fight."

"Odds was a hundred to one against us, shure," said Battersleigh, seating himself in the doorway of the shack. "Ye may call the big boy loco, or whativer ye like, but it's grateful we may be to him. An'

tell me, if ye can, why didn't the haythins pile in an' polish us all off, after their chief lost his number? No, they don't rush our works, but off they go trailin', as if 'twas themselves had the odds against 'em, och-honin' fit to set ye crazy, an' carryin' their dead, as if the loss o' one man ended the future o' the tribe. Faith, they might have-- Ned, ye're never stretchin' that hide right."

"Them Cheyennes was plenty hot at us fer comin' in on their huntin'

grounds," said Curly, "an' they sh.o.r.e had it in fer us. I don't think it was what their chief said to them that kep' them back from jumpin'

us, ater the fight was over. It's a blame sight more likely that they got a sort o' notion in their heads that Juan was bad medicine. It they get it in their minds that a man is _loco_, an' pertected by spirits, an' that sort o' thing, they won't fight him, fer fear o'

gettin' the worst of it. That's about why we got out of there, I reckon. They'd a-took our hosses an' our guns an' our meat, an' been blame apt not to a-fergot our hair, too, if they hadn't got the idee that Juan was too much fer 'em. I'll bet they won't come down in there again in a hundred years'"

"I felt sad for them," said Franklin soberly.

Curly smiled slowly. "Well, Cap," said he, "they's a heap o' things out in this here country that seems right hard till you git used to 'em. But what's the ust carin' 'bout a dead Injun here or there? They got to go, one at a time, or more in a bunch. But now, do you know what they just done with ole Mr. White Calf? Why, they taken him out along with 'em a ways, till they thought we was fur enough away from 'em, an' then they probably got a lot of poles tied up, or else found a tree, an' they planted him on top of a scaffold, like jerked beef, an'

left him there fer to dry a-plenty, with all his war clothes on and his gun along with him. Else, if they couldn't git no good place like that, they likely taken him up on to a highish hill, er some rocky place, an' there they covered him up good an' deep with rocks, so'st the wolves wouldn't bother him any. They tell me them buryin' hills is great places fer their lookouts, an' sometimes their folks'll go up on top o' them hills and set there a few days, or maybe overnight, a-hopin' they'll dream something. They want to dream something that'll give 'em a better line on how to run off a whole cavvie-vard o' white men's hosses, next time they git a chanct."

"Ye're a d----d Philistine, Curly," said Battersleigh calmly.

"I'm sorry for them," repeated Franklin, thoughtfully, as he sat idly fingering the lump of clay that lay between his feet. "Just think, we are taking' away from these people everything in the world they had.

They were happy as we are--happier, perhaps--and they had their little ambitions, the same as we have ours. We are driving them away from their old country, all over the West, until it is hard to see where they can get a foothold to call their own. We drive them and fight them and kill them, and then--well, then we forget them."

Curly had a certain sense of politeness, so he kept silence for a time.

"Well," said he at length, "a Injun could tan hides better'n a white man kin--at least some white men."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Franklin, rousing and replying stoutly.

"The white man wins by dodging the issue. Now, look you, the Indian squaw you tell me about would probably hack and hack away at this hide by main strength in getting the flesh off the inside. I am sure I shall do it better, because I shall study which way the muscles run, and so strip off the flesh along those lines, and not across them."

"I didn't know that made any difference," said Curly. "Besides, how kin you tell?"

"Well, now, maybe there are some things you don't know, after all, Curly," said Franklin. "For instance, can you tell me how many boss ribs there are in the hump of a buffalo?"

"Well, no--o," admitted Curly. "But what's the difference, so long ez I know they're all good to eat ?"

"Plainly, a d----d Philistine," said Battersleigh again, striking a match for his pipe. "But I'm not sure but he had you there, Ned, me boy."

"I'll show you," said Franklin eagerly. "Here it is on the hide. The hump came to here. Here was the knee joint--you can see by the whirl in the muscles as plainly as you could by the curl in the hair there--you can see it under a wolf's leg, the same way; the hair follows the lines of the muscles, you know. Wait, I could almost make you a dummy out of the clay. Now, look here--"

"You're a funny sort o' a feller, Cap," said Curly, "but if you're goin' to tan that hide you'd better finish peggin' it out, an' git to work on it."