Little Big Man

Next thing, the chief said a word to the cook—because as he admitted later, his feelings towards us was really mixed: we would appear to him by turns benign and malevolent. Right then he was kindly disposed to us on account of our breaking bread, or rather antelope, in his tepee, which does an Indian so much honor that the host never takes a bite till his guests are finished; that’s the reason Old Lodge Skins himself wasn’t eating. As I say, the chief gave word to the cook and she beckoned to me to come along with her, which I did in some apprehension and passed while making the half-circle of the lodge all them Cheyenne chewing like goats. When we got outside through the door hole, the sky was about half along towards dark with great purple smears in the west, separated each from the next by streaks of vermilion.

I’ll tell you I was not awfully interested in scenery at that age, and the reason I was looking to the sky could be laid to the reappearance, no sooner than my head cleared the tepee flap, of my enemy that white dog. I was trying to ignore him, but he seized my trouser cuff and proceeded to chaw on it, and he might have ate me up had not the woman looked back at that point.

She was Buffalo Wallow Woman, Old Lodge Skins’s wife, and the other inside who favored her was her younger sister, White Cow Woman, who according to the Cheyenne practice had come along with her kin when the latter married and was obliged in the same degree as the proper wife to make herself available to the chief for all the purposes to which an Indian puts a female.

Anyway, Buffalo Wallow Woman laughed, and pointing at the dog, put a question to me. Taking my tearful look as sufficient answer, she picked up the animal, who thereupon howled with anguish which availed him nothing. For directly Buffalo Wallow Woman carried him inside the tepee, where she busted his skull with a stone hammer, rolled him through the fire to singe his hair, chopped the carcass to a number of bleeding hunks, then into a kettle they went to boil. This was the work of as many moments as it takes to tell it, for she was a plump and powerful soul, and smiling all the while.

Old Lodge Skins was looking proud enough to bust. There isn’t any better eating to an Indian than dog, and white dog is the very best of that. To show you how high they regard this victual, they had had no fresh meat for more than a week yet forbore from touching their dog pack.

I’m afraid that me and Caroline failed to understand the honor we was being done at that juncture. My sister stood fast at the massacre of people, including her own Pa, but when it come to seeing that ugly dog butchered before our eyes, she began to sway on her crossed legs and try to swallow her fist.

That was when Old Lodge Skins all at once looked at Caroline and sneezed so hard his plug hat slipped down over one eye. He sneezed again, and off it fell entirely. Twice more he spasmed in his big nose—it sounded like the barking of a fox—and his braids flew and his medal leaped up, falling back with a thunk against his breastbone.

Now the whole pack left off stuffing grub down their gullets and gawked at us like they should have when we first appeared but I guess failed to because, having minds of one track, they was fascinated with the prospect of eating that antelope. The pretty woman with the doe eyes went so far as to come and set right on Caroline’s very buffalo skin and peer incessantly at my sister, who had all she could put up with just in trying not to vomit on account of the white dog, who you could already smell in the steam from the pot, sort of the odor of a wet overcoat hanging near a fire to dry.

Shooting Star was that woman’s name and she was the wife of Burns Red in the Sun and had give birth to the several children she had brought to the chief’s tepee, including one tiny baby in a cradleboard hanging from a lodgepole, who had beady little black eyes like a bird. His contraption was arranged so he could water without being took out of the sling.

The curiosity of Shooting Star served to take Caroline’s mind off the perturbations of her stomach, and she summoned her strength to say: “Right proud to meet you, Mrs.,” offering one of her big paws to shake on it. But what the Indian woman did instead was reach into the fork of my sister’s jeans and feel there, then the same with the chest of her shirt. Concluding which, she spoke one word to Old Lodge Skins: “Vehoa!

” and clapped a hand over her own mouth. The chief followed suit and was joined by everybody present in the same gesture.

Sooner or later an Indian will sneeze when he is near a white woman. Some say that is due to perfume or talcum powder, but I never saw my sister use anything on herself but yellow soap.

However you want to explain it, that was the first time any of the Cheyenne knew Caroline for a girl.

CHAPTER 3 I Make an Enemy