Part 16

“I think,” returned the minister, “that the Twentieth Century has no intention of eliminating God! This medicine-man’s prayer, in my belief, is as sacred as the prayer of any churchman. The difference between Wakunda and God is merely orthographical.”

“But,” insisted the cynical young man from the city, “I had not been taught to think of God as of one who forgets! Do you know what I would do if I had no confidence in the executive ability of my God?”

Taking the subsequent silence as a question, the young man answered: “Why, I would take a day off and whittle one out of wood!”

“A youth’s way is the wind’s way,” quoted the preacher, with a paternal air.

“And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts; but what is all this noise about?” returned the reporter.

A buzz of expectant voices had grown at one end of the oval, and had spread contagiously throughout the elliptical strip of shade. For with slow, majestic step the medicine-man, Mahowari, entered the enclosure and walked toward the centre. The fierce sun emphasised the brilliancy of the old man’s garments and glittered upon the profusion of trinkets, the magic heirlooms of the medicine-man. It was not the robe nor the dazzling trinkets that caught the eye of one acquainted with Mahowari. It was the erectness of his figure, for he had been bowed with years, and many vertical suns had shone upon the old man’s back since his face had been turned toward the ground. But now with firm step and form rigidly erect he walked.

Any sympathetic eye could easily read the thoughts that passed through the old man’s being like an elixir infusing youth. Now in his feeble years would come his greatest triumph! To-day he would sing with greater power than ever he had sung. Wakunda would hear the cry. The rains would come! Then the white men would be stricken with belief!

Already his heart sang before his lips. In spite of the hideous painting of his face, the light of triumph shone there like the reflection of a great fire.

Slowly he approached the circle of drummers who sat in the glaring centre of the ellipse of sunlight. It was all as though the First Century had awakened like a ghost and stood in the very doorway of the Twentieth!

When Mahowari had approached within a yard of the drums, he stopped, and raising his arms and his eyes to the cloudless sky, uttered a low cry like a wail of supplication. Then the drums began to throb with that barbaric music as old as the world; a sound like the pounding of a fever temple, with a recurring snarl like the warning of a rattlesnake.

Every sound of the rejoicing and suffering prairie echoes in the Indian’s drum.

With a slow, majestic bending of the knees and an alternate lifting of his feet, the medicine-man danced in a circle about the snarling drums. Then like a faint wail of winds toiling up a wooded bluff, his thunder song began.

The drone and whine of the mysterious, untranslatable words pierced the drowse of the day, lived for a moment with the echoes of the drums among the surrounding hills, and languished from a whisper into silence. At intervals the old man raised his face, radiant with fanatic ecstasy, to the meridian glare of the sun, and the song swelled to a supplicating shout.

Faster and faster the old man moved about the circle; louder and wilder grew the song. Those who watched from the shade were absorbed in an intense silence, which, with the drowse of the sultry day, made every sound a paradox! The old men forgot their pipes and sat motionless.

Suddenly, at one end of the covering, came the sound of laughter! At first an indefinite sound like the spirit of merriment entering a capricious dream of sacred things; then it grew and spread until it was no longer merriment, but a loud jeer of derision! It startled the old men from the intenseness of their watching. They looked up and were stricken with awe. The young men were jeering this, the holiest rite of their fathers!

Slower and slower the medicine-man danced; fainter and fainter grew the song and ceased abruptly. With one quick glance, Mahowari saw the shattering of his hopes. He glanced at the sky; but saw no swarm of black spirits to avenge such sacrilege. Only the blaze of the sun, the glitter of the arid zenith!

In that one moment, the temporary youth of the old man died out. His shoulders drooped to their wonted position. His limbs tottered. He was old again.

It was the Night stricken heart-sick with the laughter of the Dawn. It was the audacious Present jeering at the Past, tottering with years. At that moment, the impudent, cruel, brilliant youth called Civilisation snatched the halo from the grey hairs of patriarchal Ignorance. Light flouted the rags of Night. A clarion challenge shrilled across the years.

Never before in all the myriad moons had such a thing occurred. It was too great a cause to produce an effect of grief or anger. It stupefied. The old men and women sat motionless. They could not understand.

With uneven step and with eyes that saw nothing, Mahowari passed from among his kinsmen and tottered up the valley toward his lonesome shack and tepee upon the hillside. It was far past noon when the last of the older Omahas left the scene of the dance.

The greater number of the white men who had witnessed the last thunder dance of the Omahas went homeward much pleased. The show had turned out quite funny indeed. “Ha, ha, ha! Did you see how surprised the old _cuggy_ looked? He, he, he!” Life, being necessarily selfish, argues from its own standpoint.

But as the minister rode slowly toward his home there was no laughter in his heart. He was saying to himself: “If the whole fabric of my belief should suddenly be wrenched from me, what then?” Even this question was born of selfishness, but it brought pity.

In the cool of the evening the minister mounted his horse and rode to the home of Mahowari, which was a shack in the winter and a tepee in the summer. Dismounting, he threw the bridle reins upon the ground, and raised the door flap of the tepee. Mahowari sat cross-legged upon the ground, staring steadily before him with unseeing eyes.

“How!” said the minister.

The old Indian did not answer. There was no expression of grief or anger or despair upon his face. He sat like a statue. Yet, the irregularity of his breathing showed where the pain lay. An Indian suffers in his breast. His face is a mask.

The minister sat down in front of the silent old man and, after the immemorial manner of ministers, talked of a better world, of a pitying Christ, and of God, the Great Father. For the first time the Indian raised his face and spoke briefly in English:

“God? He dead, guess!”

Then he was silent again for some time.

Suddenly his eyes lit up with a light that was not the light of age. The heart of his youth had awakened. The old memories came back and he spoke fluently in his own tongue, which the minister understood.

“These times are not like the old times. The young men have caught some of the wisdom of the white man. Nothing is sure. It is not good. I cannot understand. Everything is young and new. All old things are dead. Many moons ago, the wisdom of Mahowari was great. I can remember how my father said to me one day when I was yet young and all things lay new before me: ‘Let my son go to a high hill and dream a great dream’; and I went up in the evening and cried out to Wakunda and I slept and dreamed.

“I saw a great cloud sweeping up from under the horizon, and it was terrible with lightning and loud thunder. Then it passed over me and rumbled down the sky and disappeared. And when I awoke and told my people of my dream, they rejoiced and said: ‘Great things are in store for this youth. We shall call him the Passing Cloud, and he shall be a thunder man, keen and quick of thought, with the keenness and quickness of the lightning; and his name shall be as thunder in the ears of men.’ And I grew and believed in these sayings and I was strong. But now I can see the meaning of the dream—a great light and a great noise and a passing.”

The old man sighed, and the light passed out of his eyes. Then he looked searchingly into the face of the minister and said, speaking in English:

“You white medicine-man. You pray?”

The minister nodded.

Mahowari turned his gaze to the ground and said wearily:

“White God dead too, guess.”

XX

THE NEMESIS OF THE DEUCES

FRENCHY called for two cards and reached for a glass and the bottle. His head swam dizzily. The clinking of glasses at the bar smote upon his ears like gongs. He was about to risk upon one “show-down” the realisation of a five-years’ dream. He felt certain of losing; that was the strange thing about it. Yet somewhere in the buzzing back of his head a compelling little devil whispered and he obeyed.

He drank three big ones straight, and for a moment things stood still and the buzzing ceased; but in the sudden silence the hissing of the little devil increased to a roaring like the river’s in the June rise. “_All on the deuces! All on the deuces! Every damned cent!_” That is what the little devil in the back of his head was howling now.

“But if I lose it all—and wanting to go back home in the spring?” That was the question his pounding heart hurled at the insistent little devil.

“You won _once_—didn’t you—_didn’t you_?—DIDN’T YOU?” howled back the little devil jeeringly.

“Five hundred,” said Frenchy quietly. His bronze face had grown livid; his black eyes narrowed and glittered with a steady stare. With a hand that betrayed the least perceptible tremor, he pushed the chips to the centre.

The next man tossed his hand into the discards. The next hesitated, carefully studying the face of Frenchy with a furtive lifting of the eyes under his hat brim; he too laid down his hand.

“Raise you two hundred,” said the next with quiet cheerfulness.

“Two hundred more,” said the next nonchalantly, drumming a devil’s tattoo with his fingers on the table.

The fifth drew a long breath, grinned nervously, showing his teeth like a hungry wolf—and tossed his hand into the discards.

It was now up to Frenchy.

“Pardon me,” said he, “but did you call me?”

His face had turned a dull, ghastly green, but his voice was quiet and clear.

“Raised it.”

“Oh, certainly,” said he, smiling. “Thinking of something else—trip home, I guess.” His voice lowered until it was almost inaudible. This absent-mindedness was unusual for Frenchy.

An oppressive silence had fallen in the barroom of the “Big 6.” There was no longer any clinking of glasses or hum of maudlin voices. The loungers drew up in a hushed circle about the table and stared with fascinated eyes. A “big game” was on—and it was up to Frenchy. Frenchy was no quitter; he was a gambler to his finger-tips. “Frenchy? He’d bet on which’d be the last breath of his dying mother!” That was the way the popular legend ran, and the man lived up to it.

“Stake it all—stake it all on the deuces—_the deuces_—THE DEUCES!” The little devil in the back of his head was shrieking now and stamping red-hot heels into Frenchy’s brain.

“But the trip home—I’ve planned five years——” urged his pounding heart.

“You won on them _once_—didn’t you?—_didn’t you_?—DIDN’T YOU?” reiterated the little devil.

Frenchy quietly poured out another glass and downed it. Then he pulled off his boots, produced a bunch of bills from the bottom of each, put on his boots again and looked at his hand.

“Come two thousand more!” he whispered.

A sound of deeper breathing grew up about the fascinated circle of on-lookers. Frenchy had gone into his boots—they knew what that meant. Would the others stay? _Would_ they?

The place became uncanny with stillness. Nothing moved in the room. The circle of eyes stared steadily upon the three who sat with expressionless faces blanched with the pitiless struggle that was going on. For a minute that seemed endless the soundless battle continued. Psychic forces exchanged invisible sword-thrusts across the table. Nerve wrestled with nerve that cowered but still fought on.

The whole scene vanished for Frenchy. It seemed to him that he was the centre of a silent hollowness; only a voice, that was rather an ache felt than a sound heard, kept up a pitiless jeering.

“They’ll stay—they’ll stay,” shrieked the little devil; “your bluff won’t work—you’re a dead horse and they’re crows—crows—crows!”

“They’re weakening!” beat the heart of Frenchy.

“Deuces—ha, ha! Deuces! And they’ve both got face cards—deuces—ho, ho!—going home, eh?—win on deuces?—ho, ho, ho—deuces!” The insistent devil laughed spitefully.

“Raise you five hundred more!”

The words echoed and re-echoed in the lonesome hollowness. Frenchy stared at his cards.

“Five hundred more!”

Frenchy winced and shivered. It seemed to him that a long, thin-bladed knife had reached out of the silent hollow that surrounded him and stabbed him twice in the breast.

“Ho, ho, ho!” went the little devil at the back of his head. “Stay with ’em! Put up the horses—everything on the deuces—ho, ho, ho!”

“But I can lay down now and save the horses,” urged the sick heart of Frenchy.

“You won on the deuces _once_!” shrieked the little devil; “didn’t you—DIDN’T YOU?”

Frenchy now heard his own voice growing up out of the hollow. “Taken: my five horses and outfit are good for it.”

Then he emerged from the soundless hollow and was aware of the circle of glittering eyes staring down on the field whereon he had just staked five years of his life and his last cherished dream.

“Full house—aces on queens.”

Frenchy heard the words and grinned exultantly. The little spiteful devil was silent.

“Four kings!”

Frenchy dropped his cards face up and reached for the bottle. “Ho, ho, ho!” went the little devil, dancing all over his brain; “everything lost on the deuces—dead horse for the crows to pick!—he, he, he!”

A ripple of exclamations ran about the circle of loungers as they leaned forward to see the hand upon which Frenchy had staked all that he owned.

“Deuces! By the jumping—four dirty deuces!”

“_Deuces?_”

“Four of ’em.”

“How’s that for a bluff?”

“Fool play!”

A buzzing undertone of comment filled the room and steadily grew into a chattering as of crows about a spot where something has just died. Frenchy seemed not to hear; he was busy filling and refilling glasses. The man with the four kings quietly raked in his winnings. “And the horses——?” he suggested.

Frenchy set the drained glass down with a bang, and with a snake-like forward thrusting of the head leered hideously at the winner. “_Can’t you shut up about the horses?_” He forced the words menacingly through his shut teeth.

A hush fell upon the loungers as they looked upon the pinched, malignant face with the upper lip lifted quiveringly and the close-set teeth showing beneath. This was no longer the Frenchy of legend; that Frenchy had always been known as one who lost or won large sums with the utter nervelessness of a machine. This was no longer the face of Frenchy—the gay, careless, haughty face of him who flirted with Fortune. This was a new Frenchy—a terrible Frenchy; with a coiled snake lurking just behind each glittering eyeball. This face sent a shiver through the crowd—like the sight of an ugly knife unsheathed in anger.

The loungers with affected carelessness began to move away. With a lightning sweep of the hands Frenchy drew his guns and banged them down violently on the table before him. “Stay where you are, gentlemen!” he said; “I’m going to talk and I want an audience. When I’m done talking, I’m off on the long trail and the first man that moves goes with me!”

There had always been a winsome something in the voice of the man. It was now commanding, irresistible. The loungers stood still and stared dumbfounded upon this terrible new version of an old legend.

Frenchy picked up four cards from his hand and held them up fanwise before his enforced listeners. “Look at ’em!” he shouted hoarsely. “Look at ’em! Let ’em burn through your hides into your souls! Oh, you don’t see anything, eh? Don’t one of you dare to grin!”

One hand fumbled nervously with the guns.

“What do you see? I say, what do you see? Four deuces? That all? I’ll tell you what _I_ see. I see the red, warm hearts of two friends! I see diamonds that are cheap beside such hearts! I see a club—a black, brutal, treacherous club—that struck down a friend! And I see the devil’s spades that dug his grave! That’s what I see! Look hard!”

Frenchy seemed to exercise an uncanny influence over his hearers. Not one moved—all stared upon the four upheld deuces.

“It’s the devil’s story, gentlemen,” he continued in a low, husky voice. “It’s hung by me for three bloody years—it haunts me! I’ve got to tell it.”

He passed his free hand over his forehead beaded with sweat. Then he whispered a question to the spellbound audience:

“Did any of you know the Kid—Kid Smith?”

A momentary expression of infinite kindness softened the face of Frenchy, only to give way immediately to deep quivering lines of anguish. He continued tremulously.

“I knew him—the Kid. Had the biggest, bravest heart that ever beat in the God-forsaken white spaces of a map. One of that breed of fellows that the world nails to its crosses—the Kid was. And we were friends; that is, he was a friend. He gave and I took, and he was happier in the giving than I in the taking. That’s the way it always goes: one gives and one takes—and God pity the man that only takes!

“Why did I bet on the deuces? Oh, the damned, dirty deuces! Don’t I know the game? By God, I know every card like a kid knows his mother’s face! Didn’t I know it was the last ditch for me and no hope? I tell you, gentlemen, I didn’t play ’em. The Devil played ’em for me—the black Devil of the dirty deuces with the fiery feet that have been kicking me hellward for three aching years!

“Look at the cards! Look at ’em! There’s blood on every one of ’em, and they stink with the writhing flesh of a friend in the flames!”

Frenchy took another drink and his manner changed. The violence of his delirious outburst gave way to quietness. He spoke in a low, penetrating voice, and the black flame of his eyes held his hearers.

“The Kid and I had been riding across a big stretch of brown grass for two days, and our tongues were thick with thirst. I remember how he gave me the last drops of water we had with us, cussing and damning a man who got thirsty. ‘I can go without water with the biggest camel that ever stuck a hoof into the sand,’ said he. And I took the water; I always took and the Kid was always giving.

“And along in the evening we struck a little water hole and camped. How the Kid did drink when he thought I wasn’t looking! Oh, he wasn’t such a camel for carrying water with him! It was his big heart that carried the water—the sweet, pure, sparkling waters of friendship.

“Along about sundown a dull grey cloud grew up in the west—smoke! But the wind was against it, blowing soft and dry from the east where the river lay thirty miles away. ‘Think we’d better ride on?’ says the Kid. But I was tired and wanted sleep, and the Kid gave in. Says he, ‘Horses need a rest, I guess’; didn’t lay it onto me, you know. Giving again, and I taking.

“So we lariated the horses and rolled in. Do you know how a man sleeps after he’s been burning dry for days and fills up at last? I plunged into ten thousand fathoms of soft, soft sleep—deep, deep down, where the cool sweet dreams bloom in worlds of crystal. And everywhere in my sleep there were bubbling springs and I drank and drank and drank, and every gulp was sweeter than the last.

“Then the dreams changed and the many bubbling water holes of sleep went dry, and fine hot dust sprayed up out of the chinks where the water had flowed. Then the wind of sleep grew hot and hotter. It scorched my face and sent thin needles of fire into my brain. And then I was standing up coughing and rubbing my eyes and the Kid was beside me. What did we see?

“The wind had veered about while we slept. All hell was climbing up the west and a booming wind swept howling devils through the smoky twilight. Above the unnatural dawn, long black ragged arms reached out into the zenith and cloaked the stars. I heard a horse snorting and tugging at his lariat.

“‘Good God, Kid!’ I wheezed; ‘let’s be off!’

“The Kid turned his face upon me and smiled—that slow, brave smile haunts me night and day.

“‘Your horse is gone——’ He waved his hand toward the miles of dark that stretched toward the river. ‘Pulled his stake just before you woke up; heard him go.’ The Kid’s voice didn’t even tremble.

“‘Quick!’ I yelled; ‘the matches! Start a back fire!’

“Then a big, cold hand gripped my heart; the Kid had given me the last match that day; I had wanted to smoke.

“All hell behind us and a horse for two! A thirty-mile heat with the mustangs of the Devil, and double weight to carry! It made me sick—dizzy sick. I forgot everything. Oh, gentlemen, when you face hell fire you’ll know if your mother bore a coward.

“For a minute we stared into the west—a minute years long. Big pink waves of smoke rolled into gulfs of purple and disappeared into holes of murk. Above, the blood-red surf frothed and sparkled and fell in yellow showers! Great blankets of dense gloom dropped from the sky and smothered out the hellish morning, hurling momentary night down the howling wind! Then keen zigzag blades of fire ripped through the belly of the night!

“I felt the Kid’s hand grasp mine. O God! the feel of his hand! ‘One horse for two, Frenchy,’ he said, quiet as a man who proposes another drink at the bar. ‘One of us makes a run for his life; and the other——’ He motioned carelessly toward Hell. ‘One more deal of the cards, Frenchy, and the last for one of us. High hand takes the horse; low hand—produce the deck.’

“I produced the deck—greasy and dog-eared; for many’s the social game the Kid and I had played with ’em together. We squatted on the prairie in the red twilight, and the Kid dealt. Not a tremor of his perfect gambler’s hands! Cool as though it was a game of penny ante.

“I drew three deuces! _Deuces!_ Oh, the damned, dirty deuces!

“‘How many?’ says the Kid pleasantly. For the first time in my life I forgot to guard my hand. A deep rolling thunder had grown up out of the burning west. It seemed I could feel the prairies tremble like a bridge under a drove of sheep. ‘Listen!’ I gasped. ‘It’s the critters coming,’ said the Kid; ‘cattle and buffalo and elk and deer and wolves—the whole posse. How many cards did you call for?—_two_, wasn’t it?’

“He thrust two cards into my hand. One of ’em was the deuce of hearts! O God! It wasn’t only the printed heart he gave me; it was the warm, red, beating heart of a friend.”

Frenchy dropped his head into his arms on the table and groaned. When he lifted his face again his eyes were wet.

“Four deuces—and they burn holes in the dark whenever I shut my eyes! And all day I see four pairs of devils dancing in the sunlight till my head swims!”

Frenchy dropped his head upon his chest and breathed deep, uneven breaths for a space.

“The Kid had only a pair of face-cards,” he continued; “a dinky little pair of face-cards. And for a second the man in me came to the surface, and I threw the four hand down and stamped on it and said I wouldn’t leave him. And what did the Kid do? Began with all the blackguard adjectives of the language and ended with ‘coward’ and threw the bunch in my teeth. ‘You’re the first man that ever called me a quitter, Frenchy,’ he said. ‘I played my hand, didn’t I? What would you do to a man who’d ask you to take your money back when you’d lost? If I’d won, do you think I wouldn’t leave your carcass here to stew, you cussed fool?’