The Prairie (58 page)

"Fool; die, with empty hands!" Mahtoree exclaimed, setting an arrow to
his bow, and sending it, with a sudden and deadly aim, full at the naked
bosom of his generous and confiding enemy.

The action of the treacherous Teton was too quick, and too well matured,
to admit of any of the ordinary means of defence on the part of the
Pawnee. His shield was hanging at his shoulder, and even the arrow had
been suffered to fall from its place, and lay in the hollow of the hand
which grasped his bow. But the quick eye of the brave had time to see
the movement, and his ready thoughts did not desert him. Pulling hard
and with a jerk upon the rein, his steed reared his forward legs into
the air, and, as the rider bent his body low, the horse served for
a shield against the danger. So true, however, was the aim, and so
powerful the force by which it was sent, that the arrow entered the neck
of the animal, and broke the skin on the opposite side.

Quicker than thought Hard-Heart sent back an answering arrow. The shield
of the Teton was transfixed, but his person was untouched. For a few
moments the twang of the bow and the glancing of arrows were incessant,
notwithstanding the combatants were compelled to give so large a portion
of their care to the means of defence. The quivers were soon exhausted;
and though blood had been drawn, it was not in sufficient quantities to
impair the energy of the combat.

A series of masterly and rapid evolutions with the horses now commenced.
The wheelings, the charges, the advances, and the circuitous retreats,
were like the flights of circling swallows. Blows were struck with the
lance, the sand was scattered in the air, and the shocks often seemed to
be unavoidably fatal; but still each party kept his seat, and still each
rein was managed with a steady hand. At length the Teton was driven to
the necessity of throwing himself from his horse, to escape a thrust
that would otherwise have proved fatal. The Pawnee passed his lance
through the beast, uttering a shout of triumph as he galloped by.
Turning in his tracks, he was about to push the advantage, when his own
mettled steed staggered and fell, under a burden that he could no longer
sustain. Mahtoree answered his premature cry of victory, and rushed
upon the entangled youth, with knife and tomahawk. The utmost agility
of Hard-Heart had not sufficed to extricate himself in season from the
fallen beast. He saw that his case was desperate. Feeling for his knife,
he took the blade between a finger and thumb, and cast it with admirable
coolness at his advancing foe. The keen weapon whirled a few times in
the air, and its point meeting the naked breast of the impetuous Sioux,
the blade was buried to the buck-horn haft.

Mahtoree laid his hand on the weapon, and seemed to hesitate whether to
withdraw it or not. For a moment his countenance darkened with the
most inextinguishable hatred and ferocity, and then, as if inwardly
admonished how little time he had to lose, he staggered to the edge
of the sands, and halted with his feet in the water. The cunning and
duplicity, which had so long obscured the brighter and nobler traits of
his character, were lost in the never dying sentiment of pride, which he
had imbibed in youth.

"Boy of the Loups!" he said with a smile of grim satisfaction, "the
scalp of a mighty Dahcotah shall never dry in Pawnee smoke!"

Drawing the knife from the wound, he hurled it towards the enemy
in disdain. Then shaking his arm at his successful foe, his swarthy
countenance appearing to struggle with volumes of scorn and hatred, that
he could not utter with the tongue, he cast himself headlong into one
of the most rapid veins of the current, his hand still waving in triumph
above the fluid, even after his body had sunk into the tide for ever.
Hard-Heart was by this time free. The silence, which had hitherto
reigned in the bands, was suddenly broken by general and tumultuous
shouts. Fifty of the adverse warriors were already in the river,
hastening to destroy or to defend the conqueror, and the combat was
rather on the eve of its commencement than near its termination. But to
all these signs of danger and need, the young victor was insensible. He
sprang for the knife, and bounded with the foot of an antelope along the
sands, looking for the receding fluid which concealed his prize. A dark,
bloody spot indicated the place, and, armed with the knife, he plunged
into the stream, resolute to die in the flood, or to return with his
trophy.

In the mean time, the sands became a scene of bloodshed and violence.
Better mounted and perhaps more ardent, the Pawnees had, however,
reached the spot in sufficient numbers to force their enemies to retire.
The victors pushed their success to the opposite shore, and gained the
solid ground in the melee of the fight. Here they were met by all the
unmounted Tetons, and, in their turn, they were forced to give way.

The combat now became more characteristic and circumspect. As the
hot impulses, which had driven both parties to mingle in so deadly
a struggle, began to cool, the chiefs were enabled to exercise their
influence, and to temper the assaults with prudence. In consequence of
the admonitions of their leaders, the Siouxes sought such covers as the
grass afforded, or here and there some bush or slight inequality of the
ground, and the charges of the Pawnee warriors necessarily became more
wary, and of course less fatal.

In this manner the contest continued with a varied success, and without
much loss. The Siouxes had succeeded in forcing themselves into a thick
growth of rank grass, where the horses of their enemies could not
enter, or where, when entered, they were worse than useless. It became
necessary to dislodge the Tetons from this cover, or the object of the
combat must be abandoned. Several desperate efforts had been repulsed,
and the disheartened Pawnees were beginning to think of a retreat, when
the well-known war-cry of Hard-Heart was heard at hand, and at the next
instant the chief appeared in their centre, flourishing the scalp of the
Great Sioux, as a banner that would lead to victory.

He was greeted by a shout of delight, and followed into the cover, with
an impetuosity that, for the moment, drove all before it. But the
bloody trophy in the hand of the partisan served as an incentive to the
attacked, as well as to the assailants. Mahtoree had left many a daring
brave behind him in his band, and the orator, who in the debates of
that day had manifested such pacific thoughts, now exhibited the most
generous self-devotion, in order to wrest the memorial of a man he had
never loved, from the hands of the avowed enemies of his people.

The result was in favour of numbers. After a severe struggle, in which
the finest displays of personal intrepidity were exhibited by all the
chiefs, the Pawnees were compelled to retire upon the open bottom,
closely pressed by the Siouxes, who failed not to seize each foot of
ground ceded by their enemies. Had the Tetons stayed their efforts on
the margin of the grass, it is probable that the honour of the day
would have been theirs, notwithstanding the irretrievable loss they had
sustained in the death of Mahtoree. But the more reckless braves of the
band were guilty of an indiscretion, that entirely changed the
fortunes of the fight, and suddenly stripped them of their hard-earned
advantages.

A Pawnee chief had sunk under the numerous wounds he had received, and
he fell, a target for a dozen arrows, in the very last group of his
retiring party. Regardless alike of inflicting further injury on their
foes, and of the temerity of the act, the Sioux braves bounded forward
with a whoop, each man burning with the wish to reap the high renown of
striking the body of the dead. They were met by Hard-Heart and a chosen
knot of warriors, all of whom were just as stoutly bent on saving the
honour of their nation, from so foul a stain. The struggle was hand to
hand, and blood began to flow more freely. As the Pawnees retired with
the body, the Siouxes pressed upon their footsteps, and at length the
whole of the latter broke out of the cover with a common yell, and
threatened to bear down all opposition by sheer physical superiority.

The fate of Hard-Heart and his companions, all of whom would have died
rather than relinquish their object, would have been quickly sealed, but
for a powerful and unlooked-for interposition in their favour. A shout
was heard from a little brake on the left, and a volley from the fatal
western rifle immediately succeeded. Some five or six Siouxes leaped
forward in the death agony, and every arm among them was as suddenly
suspended, as if the lightning had flashed from the clouds to aid the
cause of the Loups. Then came Ishmael and his stout sons in open view,
bearing down upon their late treacherous allies, with looks and voices
that proclaimed the character of the succour.

The shock was too much for the fortitude of the Tetons. Several of
their bravest chiefs had already fallen, and those that remained were
instantly abandoned by the whole of the inferior herd. A few of the most
desperate braves still lingered nigh the fatal symbol of their honour,
and there nobly met their deaths, under the blows of the re-encouraged
Pawnees. A second discharge from the rifles of the squatter and his
party completed the victory.

The Siouxes were now to be seen flying to more distant covers, with the
same eagerness and desperation as, a few moments before, they had been
plunging into the fight. The triumphant Pawnees bounded forward in
chase, like so many high-blooded and well-trained hounds. On every side
were heard the cries of victory, or the yell of revenge. A few of the
fugitives endeavoured to bear away the bodies of their fallen warriors,
but the hot pursuit quickly compelled them to abandon the slain, in
order to preserve the living. Among all the struggles, which were made
on that occasion, to guard the honour of the Siouxes from the stain
which their peculiar opinions attached to the possession of the scalp of
a fallen brave, but one solitary instance of success occurred.

The opposition of a particular chief to the hostile proceedings in the
councils of that morning has been already seen. But, after having raised
his voice in vain, in support of peace, his arm was not backward in
doing its duty in the war. His prowess has been mentioned; and it was
chiefly by his courage and example, that the Tetons sustained themselves
in the heroic manner they did, when the death of Mahtoree was known.
This warrior, who, in the figurative language of his people, was called
"the Swooping Eagle," had been the last to abandon the hopes of victory.
When he found that the support of the dreaded rifle had robbed his band
of the hard-earned advantages, he sullenly retired amid a shower of
missiles, to the secret spot where he had hid his horse, in the mazes
of the highest grass. Here he found a new and an entirely unexpected
competitor, ready to dispute with him for the possession of the beast.
It was Bohrecheena, the aged friend of Mahtoree; he whose voice had been
given in opposition to his own wiser opinions, transfixed with an arrow,
and evidently suffering under the pangs of approaching death.

"I have been on my last war-path," said the grim old warrior, when he
found that the real owner of the animal had come to claim his property;
"shall a Pawnee carry the white hairs of a Sioux into his village, to be
a scorn to his women and children?"

The other grasped his hand, answering to the appeal with the stern
look of inflexible resolution. With this silent pledge, he assisted the
wounded man to mount. So soon as he had led the horse to the margin of
the cover, he threw himself also on its back, and securing his companion
to his belt, he issued on the open plain, trusting entirely to the
well-known speed of the beast for their mutual safety. The Pawnees were
not long in catching a view of these new objects, and several turned
their steeds to pursue. The race continued for a mile without a murmur
from the sufferer, though in addition to the agony of his body, he had
the pain of seeing his enemies approach at every leap of their horses.

"Stop," he said, raising a feeble arm to check the speed of his
companion; "the Eagle of my tribe must spread his wings wider. Let him
carry the white hairs of an old warrior into the burnt-wood village!"

Few words were necessary, between men who were governed by the same
feelings of glory, and who were so well trained in the principles of
their romantic honour. The Swooping Eagle threw himself from the back
of the horse, and assisted the other to alight. The old man raised his
tottering frame to its knees, and first casting a glance upward at the
countenance of his countryman, as if to bid him adieu, he stretched out
his neck to the blow he himself invited. A few strokes of the tomahawk,
with a circling gash of the knife, sufficed to sever the head from the
less valued trunk. The Teton mounted again, just in season to escape a
flight of arrows which came from his eager and disappointed pursuers.
Flourishing the grim and bloody visage, he darted away from the spot
with a shout of triumph, and was seen scouring the plains, as if he
were actually borne along on the wings of the powerful bird from whose
qualities he had received his flattering name. The Swooping Eagle
reached his village in safety. He was one of the few Siouxes who escaped
from the massacre of that fatal day; and for a long time he alone of the
saved was able to lift his voice, in the councils of his nation, with
undiminished confidence.

The knife and the lance cut short the retreat of the larger portion of
the vanquished. Even the retiring party of the women and children
were scattered by the conquerors; and the sun had long sunk behind the
rolling outline of the western horizon, before the fell business of that
disastrous defeat was entirely ended.

Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?
—Shakespeare.