Little Big Man

We started off soon as it was definitely night, seven of us, and rode twenty mile at the trot over a plain of grass; then walked, leading the animals, for say another three. Much of the latter was rough terrain, in and out of ravines filled with scrubwood, and the only light a half-moon that seemed to carry the same cloud across the heavens with it as a shade. I could just have made out my hand at arm’s length had it not been blackened. But Shadow moved along right smartly as if it was high noon; and three men behind, I let my horse follow his lead.

We fetched up in a deep draw that went down to the Crazy Woman’s Creek, and there across the water were the lodges of the Crow camp, each glowing like a lantern from the fire within, for the older a tepee skin the more it takes on the character of oiled paper and sometimes you can stand outside at night and identify the inhabitants through it. We was still too far away for that, but what I saw was mighty pretty in a toy way, and the wind was moving from them to us, bringing the smell of roast meat. We hadn’t ate all day, for you don’t stuff yourself when you go to steal horses. Yellow Eagle sniffed alongside me and said: “Maybe we ought to visit first.” We could have walked peaceful into camp and them Crow would of had to feed us, for that’s the Indian way.

“We’ll leave the ponies here,” whispered Shadow That Comes in Sight, “and you and you will hold them,” touching me and Younger Bear; it was O.K. by me. But Younger Bear began to protest so strongly you might have thought he was sobbing.

Which infuriated Yellow Eagle. I didn’t know that man well, who had joined our camp only a few months back, but he possessed a deal of scalps and he owned a percussion-cap carbine, which was a rare implement among the Cheyenne in them days. For a long time that was the only gun in our bunch, and it wasn’t no good owing to a lack of the caps, for we avoided the whites, even traders, like Old Lodge Skins said. Elsewhere, though, the Sioux and other bands of Cheyenne were having little run-ins with the Americans along the Oregon Trail, taking their coffee now from the emigrants without waiting for it to be offered and sometimes all else as well. I noticed among Yellow Eagle’s collection of hair some which looked too light for Pawnee or Snake ever to have sprouted. The carbine probably came from the same quarter.

The Eagle was burned up at the improper manner in which Younger Bear was carrying on.

“You have lived for enough snows,” he scolded him, “to understand that among the Human Beings a veteran warrior knows more than a boy about stealing horses. It has nothing to do with who is brave and who isn’t: no Human Being has ever been a coward. You are asked to stay here because someone has to hold the ponies, which is as important a job as going into the Crow camp; and you know that we shall share equally what we capture. I don’t hear Little Antelope complain. He is a better Human Being than you, and he is white.”

Nobody else said a word and Yellow Eagle had been whispering. Nevertheless an awful silence descended, as if after a riot of noise. Younger Bear had been wrong, but the Eagle turned out more so. Not a word had been said about my race since I joined the tribe, not even by the Bear himself, who hated me. That wasn’t done, it could do no good, as the Indians say, and Yellow Eagle no sooner got it out than he knew his error.

“That should not have been said,” he told me. “A devil had control of my tongue.”

I was getting into the wolfskin at the moment, which I slung behind me while I rode; just aligning the eyeholes so I could see through them. The light was poor and everything looked hairy.

“I don’t think bad of you,” was my answer, “for you haven’t been long with our camp.”

“I don’t think it is a good night to steal ponies,” said Shadow, and started to remount while the others murmured agreement and followed suit.

“No,” said Yellow Eagle. “I will take away the bad luck I have brought.” He leaped on his horse and rode off in the direction whence we had come.

“I’ll stay and mind the ponies,” Younger Bear stated contritely, his head down. “With the other one,” meaning me.

So he accepted the halters of three, and I took as many, and so nobody could see us against the moon we kept hard against the left side of the draw that was hereabout maybe seven-eight foot deep, adequate to conceal men and animals from anybody on the plain above. The four big Cheyenne walked towards the Crow camp glowing across the water. In a minute you couldn’t see them any more nor hear them in two. After a while the moon finally got rid of that cloud and brightened some though not enough to throw a shadow.