“That is true,” I said, “and Bald Eagle is a fire …we must fight him in his own way. When he rides out with five hundred men, there is only one brain, and that is the brain of Bald Eagle. And his five hundred men are a thousand hands with which he strikes. But when we ride out, Standing Bear and Three Buck Elk are only two men among five hundred. You lead them until the Pawnees are near. Then each man rides and strikes for himself.”
It was too true for them to miss my meaning. Bald Eagle had beaten them into a state of humility in which they were ready to learn a few fundamentals of the art of war. In a word, they gave themselves into my hands. It was a beautiful opportunity. I have said before that Standing Bear was followed by what was really the cream of the Sioux nation. The exploits of Rising Sun and Black Bear had been enough to attract hundreds of sterling fighters. We could put at least eight hundred men in the field. And that was as many as Bald Eagle ordinarily led. He did not care to work with half-armed thousands. He fought with a handful, armed to the teeth, and well trained. I determined to follow his example on a larger scale.
I confiscated every rifle in the town and made that possible by turning my own into the common store and having Three Buck Elk and Standing Bear follow my example. Altogether, we had eighty rifles and a fair stock of ammunition. With this I started the practice.
In the meantime I sent Three Buck Elk to the fort in charge of a huge caravan to the fort with a letter to Chuck Morris. That caravan was loaded down with beaver pelts and with buffalo robes. I told Morris in the letter that I wanted, in exchange for it, a thousand rifles and as much ammunition as he could get his hands on. I knew that the value of that caravan could never be traded out for a thousand rifles, but I suggested to Morris that new guns were not essential. Any good-working weapons would do, and I suggested that he try for them at some Army depot, for the Army discards a gun the instant it shows a bit of wear. At least it was apt to do so in those days.
While I waited for that caravan to return, I started to work on the tribe. At the time it was thought that the Indian was incapable of organization. At present there is a new idea. We have seen too many football teams turned out of Indian colleges and working like perfect machines, consummate in the art and unity of their work, and only kept from greatness by their lack of poundage. Well, the same essentials that make a football team make an army. The clue I followed was the instinctive reverence the Indians have for the heads of their families and clans. I formed the units in that way. Sometimes there were only five in a unit. Sometimes there were twenty. But each sergeant, if he could be called that, had over his men an absolute authority. Over the clans there were the natural clan heads. The smallest clan numbered fifty-two braves; the largest was two hundred and ten, which was much too large. However, I did not dare employ a regular decimal system. I worked on lines of blood throughout. Before we had been working long, more than a hundred braves from other tribes, hearing that some great thing was afoot, rode in to join us, and so we had for material, fully nine hundred and a few-odd available men, all physically strong, all brave. I divided them into two battalions. Three Buck Elk had one battalion; Standing Bear, of course, had the other.
That was their organization. Then I started their training. The great temptation was to make them learn to drill in squads. But I knew them too well to attempt foolishly formal stuff with them. I kept the tools of war constantly in their hands. I wanted them to learn three things: to fight on foot - to obey blindly as they were commanded - and to shoot straight.
The example of Bald Eagle’s successes was enough to make them realize the value of instant obedience. They did not need to be told shooting straight was an essential. But it was frightfully hard to teach them the importance of fighting on foot when they had been born to the use of horses. I demonstrated in every way I could, but the most successful lesson was by proving that one man lying on the ground could hit a distant target sooner than three men shooting from the back of even a stationary horse.
I formed the sergeants and the captains in small classes, and these I instructed in the most perfect care of a rifle. I offered a prize every day for the clan that showed rifles in the best condition. The prize system started a furious rivalry. I extended it to marksmanship. I instructed them in learning to practice, aiming empty guns, and I told them what Uncle Abner had told me, that a man should be shamed unless every spent bullet meant something dead. It was an idea they understood instantly.
The caravan arrived. Straightway every man was equipped with a rifle that in the intervening month he had learned to take perfect care of. Now I felt that my army was on a true footing.
My odd system of discipline was working out beautifully. Every clan leader could gather his men about him by a peculiar whistle or shout, and his followers learned to look to him for instructions. I kept constantly about me sixty-odd chosen braves. They served me as couriers to carry orders to the clans. They served me also as a select reserve that might deliver a telling blow in time of battle. Altogether, they were forming into an army that would have broken the heart of any army officer through its lack of uniforms, squad drill, or regular formations. But it was a little army that was shooting straighter every day, that trusted me blindly, and that was beginning to gain the greatest strength of all - a certain esprit de corps. They felt the power of their cohesion. I taught them it was as great a sin to charge without orders as it was to run away. Finally, I had a compact body of dragoons who were hungry to test themselves.
Still I delayed. Marksmanship was what I wanted next to cohesion. And at marksmanship I labored valiantly. For two long months after the return of Three Buck Elk I kept putting them through their paces. It was dry autumn before I felt that they were ready for the warpath. By that time their hearts were breaking to be away, for Bald Eagle had conducted two sweeping, ruinous raids in the meantime. When all was ready, I went to say farewell to Zintcallasappa.
SLAUGHTER
I have said nothing about my first meeting with her after I returned from Chuck Morris because I have wanted to put off recording one of the most painful memories of my life. I went to her, of course, on the first day and found her washing at the river. She looked up at me with one wild flare of hope in her eyes, but she said at once: “If he had come, he would have been here with you, or before you. He will not come, my brother! Not even for you.”
Only a fool would have tried to comfort her. All I could do was make a point of seeing her every day. We used to have gay talks, for with a sort of iron strength she refused to allow her sorrow to be seen. She was always smiles when I was near her. Three Buck Elk wanted me to take her and her teepee and her son.
“Because,” he said naively, “they will keep in your mind the memory of your lost brother, Rising Sun.”
I wanted no squaw and told them so in such a way that the topic was never brought up again. In the meantime Zintcallasappa was changing rapidly. I was almost glad that Morris did not return with me, her face had grown so pinched and her eyes so great and staring. She was always beautiful to me, because to me the beauty of a woman is not so much flesh as spirit, like a lamp shining through their flesh. So it was with Zintcallasappa, but every day she grew thinner, more silent.
When I said good bye to her, before I took the warpath with our little host, she reached up, put her hands on my shoulders, and looked into my face. “If you were the father of my son,” she said, “would you be happy with him?”
I was amazed and only stared back at her.