Fugitives’ Fire
Max Brand
I
It was a small band of buffalo, an offscouring or little side eddy from one of the black masses of millions that moved across the plains, and, when Rushing Wind came on their traces, his heart leaped with the lust for fresh meat. Parched corn and dried buffalo flesh, tasteless as dry chips of wood, had been his diet for days during a lonely excursion upon the prairie. He had gone out from the Cheyenne village like some knight of the olden days, riding aimlessly, praying for adventure, hoping greedily for scalps and for coups to be counted. But no good fortune had come his way. For ten days, patient as a hungry wolf, he had dogged the way of a caravan of white men, pushing west and west, but he had had no luck. In the night they guarded their circle of wagons with the most scrupulous care. In the day, their hunting parties were never less than three well-armed men. And though their plains craft might not be of a very high order, it was an old maxim among the Cheyennes that all white men shoot straight with a rifle. The Indians were apt to attribute it to bigger medicine. As a matter of fact, it was simply that the whites had infinitely more powder and ball to use in practice. The red man had to get his practice out of actual hunting or battle. Accordingly Rushing Wind had at last turned off from the way of the caravan and struck at a tangent from its line across the prairie, and now he had come upon the trail of the buffalo.
When he first came on the trail, he leaned from the saddle and studied the prints. The grass was beginning to curl up and straighten again around the marks of the hoofs. So he knew that the animals had passed within a few hours. He set off after them cautiously, creeping up to the top of every swale of ground.
It was a typical plains day, bright, warm, and so crystal-clear that the horizon line seemed ruled in ink. Presently he saw the moving forms far off. They were drifting and grazing to the south. The wind lay in the southeast. Therefore, he threw a long, loose circle to the north and west, coming up cautiously in the shelter of some slightly rising ground.
Coming to the crest, he dismounted, and lay flat in the tall grass. This he parted before his face and looked out. He was very close to them. There was a magnificent bull. He admired the huge front, the lofty shoulders of the animal, but he knew that the flesh of such an experienced monster would be rank to the taste and so tough that teeth hardly could manage it—not even such white, strong teeth as armed the mouth of this Cheyenne. Then he slid backward through the grass.
As he did so, a second rider to the rear, a man on a silver-flashing gray mare, dismounted and sank into the grass, and his horse sank down with him.
Rushing Wind sat up and looked all around him, as though some shadow of danger had swept across his mind, like the dark of a cloud across the ground. It was not fear of immediate danger, however. It was merely the usual caution of a wild thing hunting in the wilderness, and, therefore, in constant dread of being hunted. For just as he had wandered across the plains in search of adventure and scalps and coups and plunder, so many another individual was cruising about the prairies, as keen as he, as crafty, as clever with weapons, as merciless.
Seeing nothing between him and the horizon, however, the young Cheyenne returned to his patient horse and took from the case strapped behind his saddle a strong war bow made of the toughest horn of the mountain sheep, boiled, straightened, and then glued and bound together in strips. It was flexible enough to stand infinite bending and yet stiff enough to require all the weight of a strong man’s shoulder to draw an arrow home against such resistance.
He had a long and heavy rifle as well, but, as usual, he was abroad with a most scanty supply of the precious powder and lead. He had to save that for human enemies. He strung the bow with some difficulty, tried the strength of the beautifully made cord by drawing it to his shoulder several times, and then selected from the quiver several hunting arrows—that is, arrows that having been shot into game could be drawn forth, and the head, at least, used again and again. The arrows for war, of which he had an additional small supply, were barbed so that it would be a murderous task to draw them from the flesh.
When he had made sure that the bow was in good condition and the arrows all that he desired, he planted in the ground his long lance, hung his shield upon it, with the festoon of eagle feathers hanging from its face, and then carefully leaned the invaluable rifle against this stand. Next he loosed the packs from behind the saddle of the pony.
It might be that the chase would be long. In any case, the pony needed all its agility in the dangerous task that lay before it. After that, he stood before the head of the horse and looked keenly into its eyes.
They were like the eyes of a beast of prey—bright, treacherous, wild. But the Indian looked for no softness and kindness there. He would have been suspicious of a friendly glance. What he wanted was what he found—untamable fierceness, endurance, force of heart.
Assured of this, he bounded into the saddle and began to work the pony around the edge of the hill with much caution, for the buffalo sometimes seemed to be endowed with an extra sense that told them of approaching danger.
In fact, as he rounded the hill, he saw the entire little herd rushing off at full speed, their hoofs clacking sharply together, the ground trembling under the beat of their heavy striding.
He was after them with a yell. Heavy and cumbersome as the buffalo looks, he can run at a good pace, and he can maintain it through a wonderful length of time. It takes a good horse to come up with them, but the pony that this young brave bestrode was the best of his herd, and his own herd was a hand-picked lot.
Like an antelope it flashed forward. It passed a lumbering yearling. It ranged beside a three-year-old cow. Then the bow was at work at once. Drawn to the shoulder, it drove a shaft with wonderful force. At four hundred yards a Cheyenne bow had been known to strike game and to kill it. And if Rushing Wind was an archer not quite up to such a mark as this, at least he sent the shaft into the side of the cow behind the shoulder almost up to the feathers.
The big animal swerved, coughed, and then dropped upon its knees, skidding forward through the grass.
That was food for the Cheyenne. His sport was still ahead of him, and with a yell he sent the pony forward. The bull ran well, but there was still a burst of sprinting left in the horse. It carried its master straight up to the panting bull, and a second arrow went from the bow. This time it struck dense bull hide. It sank deep in the flesh of the big fellow, but the roll of muscles and the looseness of the skin itself forced the arrow upward. The bull was merely stung, and he whirled toward the rider with such suddenness that the second arrow that flew from the string merely ripped a furrow in the tough back of the buffalo.
With a roar came the bull, a veteran of many a battle with his kind and ready to fight once more against such a strange foe. The surge of its head swept past the flank of the pony narrowly as the active little horse bounded to the side.
Presenting his battle front, circling as the Indian circled, the bull waited, tearing up the ground, sending his long, strange bellow booming, so that it seemed to be flooding up from the earth itself and rising now here, now there.
Rushing Wind, his eyes on fire, began to maneuver the little pony like a dancer, but it was some moments before the foaming horse caused the bull make a false step that left the tender flank open again. Then loudly twanged the bow string, and the arrow sank into the side of the monster half the length of the shaft.
The bull charged, but blindly. He came to a halt, tossing his head. His hide twitched convulsively, so that the two arrows imbedded in him jerked back and forth. His head lowered. Blood burst from his mouth. He sank to his knees, and even then, with more courage than strength, he strove to rise, and still he boomed his defiance. Life was passing from him quickly, however. Before the last of his fleeing herd was out of sight, he rolled upon his side, dead.