LITTLE BIG MAN

This event touched off a general movement by the Cheye

Now Caroline at last woke up when Spotted Wolf come towards my mother. She shouted at Old Lodge Skins, who simply gri

That left me, with my wet pants, and my sisters Sue A

Caroline tried once again to get the chief’s intervention, but it’s likely that he never knew what she wanted and it’s sure he could have done nothing if he had, and the shadow of Spotted Wolf, an enormous Indian, was already across us and we could smell his stink. My Ma was praying in a low moan. I looked up and saw the Cheye

At that moment the black lash of Caroline’s whip snaked around his throat, drawing up the bear-claw necklace there, and he went over backwards, cracking his head on a rock and didn’t get up.

“You go with the kids to climb in the wagon, Ma,” said Caroline, coolly withdrawing her whip into a big loop. “None of these individuals will trouble you further.” Caroline was completely self-possessed as she said this; she was as arrogant as my Pa.

Old Lodge Skins was pointing at the unconscious body of Spotted Wolf and laughing his guts out. That irked Caroline, but also pleased her, and she flicked her whip sort of flirty at the chief. He flopped onto his back with his arms crucified and laughed his old mouth, dark as a cave full of bats, into the sun. His foot was still bare and his busted gun lay near him like the skeleton of an open umbrella.

Ma did what Caroline said, gathered us kids together, including the two cowards down among the ox dung, and we went into the wagon, where we found room for all of us though there really wasn’t any, what with the furniture, boxes, and bags that represented our worldly goods. Tom’s shoe was in my face, rather nasty considering what he had walked in, and I was wrapped around a barrel now full of crockery but which had once held salt-fish and never lost the aroma, but we was lucky to be alive, so you didn’t hear no complaints.

All afternoon we stayed there; it was like being closed up in a bag lying in the sun, because the junk in the wagon bed cut off the air without insulating any. Outside the noise died away within an hour, and when after midafternoon Bill took nerve to raise the side canvas and peep from under, he reported no one standing within the range of his eye.

We then all shivered at the squeak of somebody climbing into the box out front, but Caroline soon poked her head in through the puckered opening and said: “All quiet, folks. You stay where you are and don’t worry none. I’ll be sitting right here all night.”

Ma whispered: “Can you do anything for your poor Pa, Caroline? What become of him?”

“He is stone-dead,” said Caroline, plenty disgusted, “and all the rest along with him, and I got enough to do right here without keeping the buzzards off them.”

“You know,” said Ma, addressing us all, “if he had had time to learn the Hebrew lingo he would have been all right.”

“Yes, Ma’m,” answered Caroline and withdrew.

I managed after a while to drop off and wrapped around that barrel I stayed asleep till dawn, at which time Sue A

Already before dark on the afternoon before, what with the hot sun, the coyotes and carrion birds had got quick wind of the matter and paid the field a visit. The results was fairly evil. Now with people moving, the birds wheeled high and the coyotes sat out on the prairie just beyond gun range.

The Cheye

It was then I saw my Pa for the last time, as hitherto described. Ma and the rest of the family unpi

Now we was just finished putting our menfolk under the sod, when someone looked up and shrieked like a crow, and there was the Cheye

The other two, with their herd, stayed back some thirty yards while Old Lodge Skins rode forward on his brown-and-white pinto, which had painted rings around the eyes. He put up his hand and orated for about fifteen minutes in a queer falsetto. His plug hat was a little more crushed than yesterday but otherwise he appeared in perfect shape.

It was strange how in no time at all everybody went from fear to being excruciatingly bored, and the very women who yesterday had been helpless victims and just minutes earlier were howling in fright, now began to advance on him threatening with their fists and saying: “Git on out of here, you old skunk!” Which shows something about the way a female is put together; she will suffer any outrage so long as it is interesting, but bore her and she don’t know fear.

But Caroline spoke up. “Settle down, now,” said she, swaggering out in front of the crowd. “Don’t you understand they come back for me? That’s what the horses is for, to pay for hauling me off. You noticed yesterday, didn’t you, that I wasn’t touched while all that nasty business was being done to you? They was saving me, was what they was doing.” My sister’s cheeks were a deal more ruddy than the sun could be held accountable for, and she was tossing around her copper hair like the flies was at her face.

“Now, you’d better let them take me,” she went on, “unless you want to get kilt like the men.”

“But Caroline,” Ma asked plaintively, “what in the world do they want you for?”

“Probly torture me in various devilish ways,” Caroline answered very proudly. I thought it a strange thing to boast about, myself, but held my peace, because what I could see was that my sister reminded me of nobody so much as my Pa. That poor thing was determined to be extravagant.