LITTLE BIG MAN

As to Little Horse, the pressure was off him because of his way of life and he was ever pleasurable company, good for a song or dance or light conversation, not having to worry constantly about his manhood and medicine as a Cheye

Little Horse and Younger Bear: I met both of them fellows in that great camp down on the Washita River, and I’m going to tell you about it.

Late November was the time of year, the river ski

Well sir, on this day of which I speak, a village had come in and settled on the river about a mile below us near the big horseshoe bend of the Washita, where the water was maybe eight foot deep right off the bank, which the ones who knew the place was telling the new people in case they’d want to take that cold bath the Cheye

While watching him, I heard myself being greeted in a voice that was too melodious for either a Cheye

The ma

And he says: “Oh yes, I know you,” and giggles, which I guess by now had become his habit, so while it got upon my nerves, I tried not show it for old times’ sake.

We held a little reunion there on the riverbank among the trampled snow, and of course he never asked me what I was doing here, for that would have been impolite between two fellows raised together, but I did have to submit to an embrace that was more sisterly than brotherly.

“You left your father’s band?” I asks after I got out of his clutches.

“That’s right,” says he, toying with his beads. “That was after Sand Creek. My father told me to. He said his medicine was bad and had brought misfortune to the rest of his family and that he didn’t want anything to happen to me because I was too pretty. Still, I would not have gone even so, were it not that Younger Bear”-he pointed towards the water-“left us after Sand Creek. He had an accident there. You know that a Contrary may not sit or lie upon a bed but sleeps always upon the bare earth. Well, the night before we were attacked, Younger Bear, without waking, in a dream, arose from the ground, arranged a robe into a bed, and lay down upon it and spent the rest of the night in that fashion. To his horror he found himself there in the morning. The softness of the buffalo robe had taken all his Contrary power from him, so when the fight came he was weak as a baby, and I had to help him run away from the soldiers up the dry bed of the stream and hide.”

“I am sorry for that,” I says, and sincerely enough, for the enmity between me and Younger Bear had always gone in only the one direction, though he sometimes a

But Little Horse, typical of a heemaneh I suppose, passed it off fairly negligent. “Oh,” says he, “he got over it. We joined the band of Red-Winged Woodpecker, and Younger Bear sold his Thunder Bow and Contrary power to someone else, which freed him to get married.”

At that moment the subject of these remarks come in out of the Washita, shivering off the water before it could freeze on him, and since Little Horse broke off our talk to dry Younger Bear with a red blanket and help him into his clothes, I got the idea who had participated in that wedding.

So when the Bear was all dressed and looked at me, I couldn’t forbear from needling him a little, for though nobody among the Cheye

So I says: “I have just been talking to your lovely wife.”

“All right,” he says, smiling without malignance, I thought, and squeezing a quart of water out of each of his braids. “Now come and meet the other one.”

He exchanged the wet blanket for a dry one from Little Horse, swathed himself in it, and led the way among the lodges, through the crowds of dogs, and pointing to one sharp-faced animal that had a good deal of coyote in him, I expect, he told Little Horse to cook it for the guest, so the Horse popped it in the head with a club from his beaded belt and carried its limp yellow body by the hind legs along with that wet blanket, and we come to a shabby tepee and went through its entranceway.

A goodly fire was blazing in the center and over it hung the usual black pot being stirred by the usual stout woman, except her face was white beneath the dirt and her hair blonde for all the sooted grease. It was Olga.

Younger Bear turns to me and shows what I took to be an evil sneer at the time, but now I realize it was mainly pure pride, for he had no idea that his female wife and me was related other than by race alone.

“We will smoke,” he says, “and then we will eat.”

Olga looks awful as to her person, wearing a dirty buckskin dress and leggings and old moccasins gone almost to rags. The Bear might have took his regular bath irrespective of the temperature, but I believe Olga abstained according to the same schedule. I said before I seen her blonde hair, but actually it was greenish, and the tail of an uncurried horse was less tangled.

Now, I had left all my weapons back at my own lodge, so as to display my peaceful intentions to any hostile braves I might encounter, and Younger Bear was a great husky fellow more than six foot tall and we was right in the middle of an encampment no doubt full of his friends. I didn’t think of these matters. All I seen was my dear, sweet wife degraded into a slave for this damnable savage, and my fingers curled into murderous claws and I would have been upon the Bear and tore out his throat in the next second … had not Olga looked up right then and sounded off in a voice that for sheer raucousness took the cake from Caroline, or Nothing that time I heard her bawling out her man, or any other female white or red who ever tormented my eardrums.