Mountain Man

He decided to take the chief by surprise, and so slipped past the sentinels and sleeping dogs just before daybreak. He knew the chief’s tent by the size and position of it. At the entrance he drew the skin flap aside and put an ear to the aperture. He had heard that the old chief snored as loud as a shipload of sailors, and after listening a few moments he guessed he had the right tent. Glancing round him, he slipped inside and stood in the dark. He then threw the tent flap far back, exposing to early morning a part of the interior. Because the chief was an old man he made in his sleep the sounds of anxiety and unhappiness that the old sometimes make; and so for a few moments Sam stood above him and looked at the face and listened. Then, filling his lungs, he gave the mountain-man battle cry. Instantly the chief came bolt upright, and though drugged by sleep and shattered by alarm, he reached blindly for his weapons. Sam had placed himself so that the old fellow would see his face and recognize him; he stood with a finger inside the trigger guard of his revolver and the other hand on his rifle. The chief's first recognition was that he was covered; his second, that the person before him was the dreadful killer of his people; and his third, that the killer was offering his hand and speaking.

"Thought I dotta call on you," Sam was saying. "It’s morning. How about some breakfast?"

The old man rose slowly to his feet and stood, facing Sam, his eyes searching his face. He looked down at last to the extended hand. "Time we shook hands," Sam said, and seized the old hand and held it. "I figger mebbe there’s too much killing in the world." Outside, the village was in uproar, with dogs howling, mothers shrieking at children, and braves racing away to their horses. Sam stood his rifle against his belly, released the hand, and drawing his knife, offered it handle first to the chief. When the old man refused to take it Sam laid his rifle on the earth, unbuckled his revolver and dropped it, and expertly threw the knife so that half the blade was buried in earth between his feet and the chief’s. He offered his hand again, saying, "It’s time to be friends."

The old warrior, one of the greatest his nation had ever had, stepped forward, and standing above the knife, looked into Sam’s eyes. Black eye looked into gray-blue, gray-blue into black, for perhaps half a minute. Then the red hand came up to meet the white hand. Going to the tent opening, the chief called and a woman came ru

While the two men smoked and breakfast was prepared in the fires the chief looked at Sam with eyes almost ninety snows old and said, "Dua-wici?" Sam thought of Charley and Cy and tried to remember what these words meant. The chief now asked him in signs if he had a wife. Sam shook his head no. The chief gave a signal. A little old woman, crippled by arthritis and age, hobbled over to him and bent down to listen with half-dead ears; and then hastened away, to return half dragging by the hands a frightened girl. She looked to Sam like a child but she was slender and lovely and reminded him a little of Lotus. This, the chief explained, was his youngest daughter and she was not for sale. He would give her to Sam as a guarantee of that friendship and peace that must henceforth rest between Long Talons and the Sparrowhawks. Sam was touched by the offer. He knew it was a goodwill offering of extraordinary size—to give to the killer of his people the only unmarried daughter of the head chief! It was almost as if George Washington had offered his daughter to Cornwallis at Yorktown.

It took Sam a few moments to sense the magnanimity of it. He then got to his feet and beckoned to the girl to come to him. She came slinking, shy and hostile, and stood before him, looking down. Stooping, Sam put his left arm under her rump and straightened; and there she sat in the cradle of his arm, her black eyes staring at him. One who read the human female more unerringly than Sam might have thought her stare a fascinated blend of hate and admiration; hate, because this was the monster; admiration, because her father had said that as a fighter Long Talons had no match in all the lands of the earth. "Wife for me?" he asked her, but she only stared. She was a little heavier than Lotus, he thought, and a little taller. He liked the womanly female of her on his arm and her pressure against his shoulder. He liked the intelligence in her eyes. He set her down but did not release her at once; with his left arm across her back and her black hair coming to the top of his shoulder, he looked round him at the braves; at the women and children in a large group beyond the braves; and at the smoke of breakfast fires. He did not want the girl but he did not want to offend his host. He now had to match the chief’s generosity, and this, it seemed to him, he could hardly do, unless he gave everything he had and walked away. But then he thought of the pa

While Sam took breakfast with the chief the daughter stood back, her black eyes studying the whiteman. Perhaps she was trying to imagine what life would be for her as his wife. The Crow women were menials but they seemed fairly contented with their lot, and they boasted louder of their lords and masters than any other women Sam had known. This girl, he supposed, was thinking that she would gather the wood, set the fires, cook the food, tan skins, sew and mend garments, find forage for horses and berries and roots for her man, while in fringed and beaded buckskin he rode arrogantly away to kill an enemy or a bull. So far as Sam knew, no Indian girl had ever preferred a whiteman to a red. He didn’t know whether he would ever come back to claim her or ever want another wife. If he could be at peace with all the tribes around him he would have the life he wanted—the free wide world of valleys and rivers and mountains, of natural odors and natural music, where the black currants and red chokecherries and red plums bent their boughs toward him, and his drink was pure water and his bed was the earth. If he were not slain by man or beast, someday he would be old, and like the old bull he would go off somewhere and be alone to wait for death.