The Lonesome Trail. John G. Neihardt

giant that ran before, wheezed and coughed an accompaniment to the song, for the ashes were in his nostrils.

      Over hills, through valleys, across gulches the pony ran, with the wall of flame ever a strong man’s bow-shot ahead of him.

      Now the Omahas, who had been deprived of their feast of victory the evening before, had made the feast fires roar upward throughout the village that day and much meat had been eaten.

      Weary with much dancing and singing and heavy with meat, the evening twilight found them sleeping heavily. And the night deepened and still they slept.

      But there was one upon whom the feast had laid but a light hand, and who awoke suddenly in the night with a smell in his nostrils, a roaring in his ears, and a great light in his eyes. He marvelled, for the feast fires were dead in their ashes.

      He arose, and when he reached the door of his lodge he gave a cry that woke the sleeping village and brought the people clamouring into the open air.

      Half the earth and half the sky were aflame. The stars had fled before the great burning. Booming in the strong wind, a wave of flame was coming over the hills and reaching long, spiteful arms toward the village in the valley.

      Spellbound, the people gazed. Then of a sudden a cry ran among them, for they had seen, through a momentary rift in the flame and smoke, high upon the eminence of a peaked, fire-blackened hill, a man standing upon a pony’s back, with his arms above his head. He looked prodigiously big and seemed to ride upon a flood of fire.

      Then the flames closed in, the smoke hid the peaked hill, and frantically the people fled from their village to a nearby creek, where they huddled in the stream, and where the loud flame passed over them, booming on into the north.

      When the gray of morning fell upon the blackened prairie, the people returned to their village. But at the opening in the circle of lodges stood a mounted man. Both he and his pony were blackened as with fire. It was Little Weasel.

      As his people drew near he raised a wheezing voice and said: “Behold Little Weasel, whom the fire-spirits love! All day I rode across the hills, thinking of my people’s unkindness. In the evening a great fire grew up about me. It was not a common fire; it was a medicine fire. It grew up about me and my pony, and lifted us like the waters of a flood. And I was frightened till I heard a voice that thundered, and it said: ‘Little Weasel has been punished by a foolish people. The spirits of fire will take him back and his people will take him in again.’ And lo! here I am, Little Weasel. I want my eagle feather.”

      And the people, believing many strange things, took him in with a great feasting.

      And from that day they called him by another name—Paeda-Nu, the Fire-Man.

      And he was great among his people.

      IV. THE SCARS

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      My friend, the old frontiersman, poked an extra supply of cobs into the stove, meditatively watched the sudden flame lick about the husks, then began this monologue after his usual manner:

      Yes, I’ve got a nice place here—nice ranch. Didn’t work for it either—lied for it!

      Now, I’m not given much to that sort of thing, as you will grant; but when I see a place where a good manly twisting of the truth can sweeten matters up a bit, I’m not so scrupulous.

      Back in the late fifties I was living in St. Louis, pretty nigh broke, for all I’d lived a hard, industrious life up and down the river. One day I got a note bearing the postmark of some California mining town, and it informed me that I had a considerable credit with a certain St. Louis bank. I never heard directly where the money came from, but I thought I knew. I bought this place with some of that money, you see. And there’s a little story attached to this.

      For a number of years I was employed by the American Fur Company as expressman. Every winter I made the trip from St. Louis to Fort Pierre, a distance of about a thousand miles. Carried messages from headquarters to the posts and from the posts back to headquarters. From St. Louis to Pierre the trip was made on horseback, and from there up, other expressmen carried the mail on dog sleds.

      Great days, those! Sometimes when I get to thinking over old times, I wonder if the railroads haven’t taken some of the iron out of the blood of men.

      In the winter of ’50—that was the year the gold fever was raging, you know—I got to Pierre about the middle of February. When I had delivered the mail and was making ready to start south again with the returns, old Choteau, the factor of the post, called me into the hut he called his office, and made an unusual request of me. “We’ve got a half-breed here,” said he, “who’s got to be elevated. Understand? Killed a man in the most atrocious manner. He’s due at a necktie party down at St. Louis about next spring, and I’d rather not keep him at the post; can you take him down?”

      I was somewhat younger in those days, and ready for most anything new. Also, I had found the trail a little lonesome at times. Riding a preoccupied broncho through hundreds of miles of white silence, hearing the coyotes yelp, dodging Indians, and bucking blizzards weren’t ever calculated to be social functions, you know. So I was glad to have company on the trail, even if it had to be the company of a criminal. Anyway, I had been so taught in the great rough school of primitive men, that I had not that loathing for a killer of his kind that is felt by this generation.

      “Certainly,” said I to the factor. “Put him on a mule, and I’ll see him into the government corral at St. Louis.” So it was arranged that I should take the man to the authorities.

      I did not hear his name spoken and I didn’t take the trouble to ask. It seemed to me that a man who was being shipped out with a tag on him reading “Nowhere,” had little use for a name. No one was apt to dispute his identity.

      Well, they put him on a mule, handcuffed, with a chain to his ankles passed around the belly of the mule. He was, of course, unarmed, and I drove him on ahead of me to break trail. He was a powerfully built fellow, neither tall nor short, and close-knit. He had a face that was not so bad, showing the French and Indian strains in him plainly. When we had been riding along silently for several hours, I called to him to stop and rode up beside him.

      I looked into his eyes, and that look satisfied me that I was safe in doing what I had thought of. His eyes were large and black and quiet.

      “I am going to take the cussed irons off your legs and arms,” I said; “you can’t keep warm this way.” He watched me taking them off and said nothing. I threw the irons away. “Go on,” I said. And he went, giving me a look that thanked me more than words could have done.

      He had the eyes of a brave man. I was never much afraid of a brave man; it’s the cowards you have to watch, you know.

      All day we rode, saying nothing. In the evening we made a shelter with our blankets in the bend of a creek where the plum bushes were thick. The man was a good hand at the business, and seemed anxious to please me.

      We cooked and ate supper, then rolled up in our blankets. I put my two six-shooters under my head for fear that I might have somehow misread the man’s eyes.

      When I awoke in the morning, he had breakfast cooked and the nags saddled. When we were eating I said: “Why didn’t you take my horse and run away? I could never have caught you with the mule.”

      He searched me for a moment with his eyes.

      “Because I’m not a coward,” he said.

      And all day we rode again in silence, until, toward evening, he set up a wild sort of a song—a chanson of his fathers, I suppose—in a voice that was strong but sweet.

      “You sing!” said I.

      Breaking off his song and turning about on his mule, he said quietly, as though he were discussing the best way to make biscuits when you haven’t any soda: “Did you ever