The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (25 page)

By the way the medicine men pranced around, as the boys lay unconscious, I judged the demonstration had been a success. Anyway, the tribe was so set up and warmed by this butchery that they were kind of taken out of themselves. I won’t tell
all
that happened during this nonsense, but it wasn’t nice to see; it even lacked considerable of being decent. Shep and John had got out some whiskey, which frisked things up more, and while Shep was putting in most of his time with the girls, John sat silent and glum in the edge of the firelight, lost in broody thought, just as before. Well, he
had
come down a peg since the days when he was Murrel, the pirate,
and wore fine clothes. As far as I was concerned, these animals were the lowest note in the scale. If you wanted to make a joke about anything so ornery, you might say they had finished last in the human race. I never saw any others like them, before or since, for outright calculated cruelty.

Well, things were so noisy and rambunctious that everybody got thirsty for
more
amusement—half killing the boys hadn’t been enough—so a couple of drunken braves spied me trying to crawl aside and dragged me forward to run between two lines. This was one of their favorite ordeals; Indians are always cooking up a bone-crusher of a test for somebody else.

They formed two rows, including the squaws and children, and after taking off my foot bonds made me ape it through them, one end to the other. While I did so, they hit me over the head and shoulders with whips and sticks. It was painful; I was all over bruises. This might have gone on till they killed me—they were that fired up—but a lucky accident ended it: a visiting chief, that they called Standing Bear, was goggle-eyed-drunk by now and was doing a kind of solo dance off to one side, twirling his rifle to show what a dangerous fellow he was when aroused, and sure enough he proved it by gyrating so fast and dangerous he whacked his gun against his knee and it went off and shot him through the side, the bullet making a clean hole front and rear.

This broke up the party. When the Indians saw they might get shot themselves, they more or less lost interest. There was a big racket made about the punctured chief, too. You might have thought he was the King of England the way they took on. Squaws enjoy wailing anyhow; they’ve got so many stored-up grievances they go all to pieces when something official happens; it’s like an overloaded dam giving way.

They carried this Standing Bear, who wasn’t any longer able to stand, onto a blanket by the fire and the medicine men got ready to save him. If their prancing and face-twisting had seemed odd before, they let go with everything now, on this emergency case. One threw some root dust into the air and yelled “Goo-Wah!”;
then he bent over and looked at the wound, but it must have been the wrong diagnosis, because the blood kept right on seeping out the back. Another took two gourds with dried peas inside and shook them, very hard, in the injured man’s face, but all he got was a pretty brisk cussing, because this chief was a tough old nut and had troubles enough without any folderol of that sort.

I stuck around, curious. I was relieved to be shut of the gauntlet, and hoped it wouldn’t start up again. In a couple of hours all the bleeding had stopped, and the chief looked sweaty and feverish. I knew these signs from having been around my father on cases. And by midnight it was perfectly plain that the old scoundrel was dying. He was breathing very hard, with wheezing noises, and seemed puffed up. I knew what had to be done—I’d sat in once at the shantyboats when my father treated just such an accident.

It went against my grain to do a service for these monsters but I didn’t think it could hurt any to help a chief. So I hunted up Afraid of His Horse, who was trying to wheedle a drink from a visitor, and told him I had strong medicine to draw devils out of Standing Bear’s wound. Being drunk, I thought for a minute he had decided to hit me, just for practice. When it finally soaked through what I said, he left and told what braves were sober enough to listen, and they called me over.

We talked through Afraid, first the leaders, with the doctors, asking questions and then me answering. I said my father had been the biggest medicine man in Louisville, and had cured up much worse cases than this, and had once fixed a man that had been shot through the stomach with a cannon ball. This was a lie, of course, but I couldn’t see anything wrong with stretching things, and anyhow it was a pretty good lie, and cheered me up. So they held a meeting with Afraid, who turned to me and said:

“Medicine men ask what father wear on head?”

This Afraid of His Horse was such a confirmed jackass that I couldn’t be serious with him very long, even when I knew he was apt to whack me. So I said, “For house calls he wears a derby made
of rooster feathers but for the Marine Hospital he favors an opera hat with a goat’s head on top.”

They went into this, not understanding, praise the saints, and then Afraid turned back.

“Medicine men no believe—say how father fix coughing broth?”

“It’s a professional secret—I can’t let it out, but I’ll say this—it’s got something to do with tree frogs.”

Another confab, and back again.

“Medicine men say any spiders mixed in?”

“Not any more—they’ve gone out in Louisville. It’s against the law to use medical spiders in Kentucky now.”

Then I sort of overdid things, because I had got too cocky, being as I was having so much fun, and said, looking stern, “If you want to know something, those quacks of yours couldn’t pass the examinations in Louisville. They’d be arrested for practicing medicine without a license. Why—”

I knew it. You could fool Afraid part of the time but you couldn’t do it forever. He fetched me a clout that sent me sprawling.

Well, the leaders of the tribes put their heads together for a few minutes, then they beckoned me over, and didn’t those medicine men look sour! But your general run of Indians, though stupid, comes a long shot from having complete faith in humbugs of that kind; they recognize a lot of it for just what it is—low-down trickery and superstition. Anyhow, the average medicine man, or shaman, isn’t anything more than a general practitioner, of no account in specialized cases, and everybody in the tribe knows it. Still and all, these medicine men aren’t always wrong. For instance, a few hours later I checked up on the incisions they made in those boys and you could scarcely see them. Some of the Indian medicines were sound; there wasn’t the least doubt about that.

I asked for a thin willow twig two feet long; then I borrowed an India silk handkerchief from a girl I’d seen wearing one, and boiled some water. It took a few minutes to strip the bark off the willow, leaving the yellow wood slippery and bare, and after this I pared down the joints. For a minute, I thought the chief had
died, for he gave several astonishing gasps that raised his chest up and down, and when I bent over to look he seemed purplish in the face. I was scared, because if this old polecat skipped out before I began work, they would blame me sure. So I hurried up and wrapped the India kerchief around the wand and dipped it in boiling water, waving it around to cool off a little, then worked the willow in and down, having to force it because the hole had closed back and clotted the blood. As far gone as he was, the old man felt that plunge, for he raised his shoulders clean off the ground and gave out a howl to rouse his ancestors. I never heard such a shriek. And only a few hours before, he had been one of the mainstays against letting those boys make any sound at all.

Afraid of His Horse, with some others, were bending over nearby and I motioned them to help me roll him on his side. For once, they seemed to catch on, and when we got the holes exposed, both entrance and exit, I went right ahead and rammed the rod through. When its end, soaked in red, appeared in the rear, I grabbed it and pulled, missing fire twice because it was so slippery. But it came, and made a little sucking sound when the end popped out.

There was a loud “Ah-h-h!” as a perfect gusher of clogged-up blood that I’d heard my father call “coagulated” came pouring out on the ground. I let it flow, then got two squaws to make hot packs and put them against the holes. We carried him into his tent, where he lay for better or worse.

I felt a little weak, so I said I was going to bed, not even bothering to ask. Nobody tried to stop me.

Next day I was up bright and early, and scooted over to the old man’s to see how he was getting along. Inside his wigwam were several women, and what do you know? He was propped up smiling and taking full notice. Lucky for me, the treatment had worked; he was much easier. But when I wanted to inspect the holes he wasn’t any friendlier than ever. What’s more, before long he called in the medicine men again. They got down on their hands and knees to sniff, then shook their heads as if they’d known it all the
time. And for all the credit they gave me, I might have ranked down amongst the nurses and bedpan squad. So be it I was still alive, and that was what interested me most.

Well, the next day after this, I had the suspicion that something concerning me was up. I kept seeing John and Shep conferring with the chiefs, talking through Afraid of His Horse, and pretty often they stared in my direction and shook their heads. Along toward evening, John and Shep came over, Shep looking satisfied and happy, as if one of his neighbors had contracted the leprosy, and sat down where I was tied.

“We’ve got your hash all settled, you sawed-off piss-ant,” he began, but John interrupted. “Clamp hold of your tongue—leave me talk.”

Shep pulled some tobacco out of his shirt pocket. John went on: “You probably ort to know that your train ain’t to say on fire to regain you. They’re sick of you—that was proved last night.”

“What do
you
know about it?”

Shep raised one of his wagon-tongue arms and said, “Lean back a piece so I can box one of his ear flaps loose. I never had any use for this squealing whelp since we first rooted him up in the woods.”

“—leastways they so informed one of our Pawnee brothers [they were brothers now, were they?] when he entered your camp under a flag of truce.”

“Last night?” I cried. “What are you talking about?”

“Their object was to collect three or four horses, but your Mr. Coulter laughed in his face. I doubt if you’d bring a pound and a half of dried beans on the open market.”

“I don’t believe you—what else did they say?”

“Some of the others stated they’d like to see you stood up within sight before further palaver.”

“They’ll pay,” I said, relieved that the first part was mainly a lie.

“The Indians smell treachery, and they’re right. I’ve failed to note anybody on that train,” said John with his old pious look, “that I’d trust with a pair of wore-out suspenders. They’re a bad lot, born bad, raised bad, lacking the true religion, and the whole
stamped plain on their mugs. It makes me ashamed to be white.”

“What else?”

“In a word,” said Shep, “since our friend can’t seem to get at the point for clacking like a magpie, we’ve bought you outright-two dollars silver, a quart and a little over of whiskey, and half a dozen plugs of niggerhead. If you ask me, we’ve been took.”

“ ‘The Silver is mine, and the Gold is mine, saith the Lord of Hosts,’ ” cried John; then he added what seemed to prove just the opposite: “I’m calculating to get a thousand dollars for you, cash. I figure it’d be worth that to your paw for the privilege of tanning your hide.”

“He hasn’t got only about three hundred dollars left,” I blurted out.

“I’m obliged for the information,” said John drily; and I could have bit my tongue off.

They had bought me, all right, and were fixing to take me away the next morning, early. Only it wasn’t apt to be pleasant. Shep filled in the rest: “We’ll contract to turn you over if they meet our offer, but there won’t be nothing in the articles to say we deliver the goods
intact.
Speaking for myself, I’ve got a grudge to settle. Maybe we’ll take an arm off at the shoulder; better yet, we’ll put an eye out. You and Mr. Chouteau try and work yourselves out of
this
fix, hey?”

They’d do it, too. I looked at John, hoping he might say no, but his face was as set as a rock. Bloodletting and violence meant no more to him than eating and drinking. He didn’t relish it, especially, but he didn’t mind it, either.

That night I went to bed feeling the lowest I’d felt on the trip. I couldn’t see any way out. Now that I wasn’t their property any more, Sick from Blackberries courteously held back from kicking me when he came in, but somehow I wasn’t consoled. I wanted both of my eyes; I would need them when we started to look for gold. But that time, talked about so often, seemed more and more remote. It was like the mirage they have on these plains—as you go
on reaching out, it fades farther and farther back in the distance. And then one morning it isn’t there at all.

I must have drifted off to sleep; when I woke up, smelling something wrong, bright starlight winked down through the smokehole. Outside, the camp was deathly still; then I heard a horse whinny. For some reason, my heart began to thump and I made to sit up. But a rough hand fastened over my mouth.

“Quiet, quiet.” It wasn’t any more than a hiss.

I knew the voice, but I couldn’t find him in the dark. Then he shifted into the starlight, soft as a snake, and it was Coulter, right enough. Even here I could see the old sardonic look on his face. No matter what he did, he seemed to despise you for doing it.

“What—?” I started, but he clapped his hand on my mouth again. He didn’t do it easy, either; the palm hit me like a slat.

“Raise up slow and careful—don’t bump anything.”

Then I thought, by George we’re not alone in here, and at that second I saw Sick from Blackberries sitting up and watching us from across the tent. I could make out his eyes shining, a kind of smile on his face.

I gasped, pointing, “Look
out
!”

Coulter’s voice had its usual sting. “He won’t mind—there ain’t any way for him to move his head without it falling off.”

I could see now—the throat laid open more than halfway around, from one ear to the other. It looked sickly; mean as he was, I couldn’t help feeling a little twinge of misery.