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The next thing Burns Red did was to cut off that black and white rosette of tail from the antelope’s behind, which he would keep for decoration, it being a cu
At the sight of that dripping offal, I shivered off, but Burns Red seized my nape with one hand and pushed the heart in my mouth with the other. That was actually a mark of preference, for he was mighty fond of fresh antelope heart himself, to which he owed his prowess as swiftest ru
So I gnawed off a hunk of bloody heart, which was not the easiest work owing to the stringy vessels that run through it, and he relieved me of the rest and gulped it right down. My nausea disappeared once I fully swallowed the raw morsel, the taste of which I can only describe as live and fleet. Immediately the calf-muscles of my legs started to hum like plucked bowstrings and I felt I could have caught the wind had not we all mounted again, Burns Red with the antelope carcass leaking gore on the rump of his pony, where he toted it.
Old Lodge Skins had detected the beasts on the other side of the hill, though there was no way he could have seen them. He had a gift for that sort of thing, which was unusually acute even for an Indian. The way he knew was having dreamed it. He was dreaming as he rode along that day, right in the middle of the prairie. He didn’t need nighttime or even to fall asleep.
Not long after shooting the antelope we arrived at the Cheye
What could be seen from the knoll was as follows: a couple of dozen hide tepees, pitched on the right bank of the stream. In the meadow beyond, a pony herd of some thirty head. In the water itself, a number of giggling, bare-arsed brown children slapping water at one another. A bunch of able-bodied young men sitting around smoking and fa
As we come down to the creek nobody in camp paid the slightest notice, but when Burns Red in the Sun, who rode last, splashed across with the antelope slung behind, it created quite a stir among the women. I found out later that band hadn’t had a bite of meat for about ten days and was feeding on prairie turnips and old rawhide and considering the chewing of grasshoppers like the Paiutes, which to an Indian is about as low as you can get. This was in late spring, when in those days the plains were ordinarily hairy with buffalo, and if you recall, the grass on the hill near the water hole had been beaten down by a great herd. Yet Old Lodge Skins’s bunch hadn’t ate flesh for more than a week. That’s what I mean about their bad luck.
Now a special mention to their dogs. Little as the band was, they had thirty or more mongrels, the prevailing color of which was pus-yellow though every other hue was also represented, including a good many of the spotted variety. This crowd kept up a constant din at all times, snarling, barking, howling, quarreling among themselves, so that they were generally worthless as watchmen, even in the nights, which they would spend answering the coyotes who wailed from the bluffs while the Pawnee snuck in and cut out a dozen ponies without drawing a growl.
These dogs met us at the creek, swarming among the horses’ legs and jumping at the antelope’s head as it swung lifeless above them. But they was also wary of the rawhide quirt strapped to Burns Red’s left wrist, which he flicked negligently at them like a horse scattering flies with his tail, so though they clamored and snapped their fangs, they didn’t actually bite nothing. The secret to enduring an Indian dog is to ignore his noise; he hasn’t got much worse. I didn’t learn that right off, and had some bad times, as right now: there was one dirty white dog, with red eyes and a slavering mouth, who decided to give me his preference over the antelope carcass. He crouched below our pony’s left haunch, and while studying my face, slowly rolled back his upper lip at the same time as his lower jaw fell away, making all in all a very savage exhibition of yellow ivory. Caroline had to elbow me in the ribs so as to draw breath, I was hugging her that tight.
“Now don’t shame me before our friends, Jack,” said she, straining to smile at the Cheye
But, like anything else, living in it made it your reality, and when next I entered a white settlement, I missed the odor of what seemed to me life itself and felt I would suffocate.
Burns Red in the Sun dismounted and stalked proudly around camp, leaving the throng of women to dispose of the antelope, which they fell on and ski
“This here,” says my sister Caroline, “I believe, is home.” What I could see of her face when she turned in the saddle, looked definitely peaked. “But,” she went on, “would it be seemly for us to foller him indoors? That’s the question.”