Grass-in-Hair looked up at his visitor. “I have met a few of the other white men who have passed through this country. Some spoke of you. They said you could do strange things.”
Malone laughed as he lit his pipe with a blazing splinter from the fire. “They probably meant to say that I was strange.”
“They also said you were crazy. Here.” The disgruntled Two-Feathers-Falling meaningfully tapped the side of his head.
“Might be as they were right.”
“Only a crazy man would challenge Tongue Kills.”
Malone chose not to comment.
“If you will try to help us in this,” said Grass-in-Hair, “I will give you my eldest daughter. She is a fine woman and will bear many children.”
“Wal, now, that’s a swell offer, sir, but I fear I must decline. I ain’t quite ready yet to start in on a family.”
Grass-in-Hair nodded, disappointed but understanding. “What, then, could we give you?”
“Your friendship… and mebbe that knife. I’ve kind o’ taken a fancy to that knife of yours.”
Grass-in-Hair held up the blade he’d used to partition the dog. It was a good knife made of the kind of shiny black stone that always held its edge. But it was not irreplaceable.
“I would give it to you gladly. But I must tell you that I do not think it is worth risking one’s life for.” He gestured toward the visitor’s belt. “You already have a knife of metal, one that is better.”
Malone shook his head. “Not necessarily better. Just different. Somethin’ about your knife calls out to me, Grass-in-Hair. And when somethin’ calls to me, I make it my business to listen.”
“Then I make you a gift of it. Will you use it to slay Tongue Kills?” he asked curiously as he handed it over.
Malone took the knife, admiring the way the light from the fire shone through the carefully honed edges. “Hope not. After all, y’all don’t necessarily want him made dead. Just agreeable.” He slid the knife into his belt alongside its steel cousin and leaned forward.
“Now, then. What makes this Tongue Kills’s medicine so strong? What songs does he use? What powders? What is his animal? Badger, bear, eagle?”
Two-Feathers-Falling replied tiredly, knowing it would make no difference. “He uses no songs, no powders. He has no animal.”
“Then how the devil does he make medicine?”
“With words,” Two-Feathers-Falling explained. “Only with words.”
Malone nodded as if this meant something, took a couple of puffs, then removed his pipe and passed it to the old chief, who inhaled experimentally.
“Good tobacco,” he said as he handed the pipe back.
“Thanks,” Malone told him. He grinned at Two-Feathers-Falling. “I kin tell you don’t think I’ve much of a chance against this feller Tongue Kills, but don’t count me out till you see me down. I know a few words of my own.”
The sleepy Cheyenne medicine man started. For an instant the mountain man’s eyes seemed to have disappeared, the whites and the dark blackness to have vanished completely, leaving only dark pits beneath heavy brows. For an instant, within those twin voids could be seen stars and music, tenderness and power, indifference and compassion. Wide awake, Two-Feathers-Falling blinked.
But there was only a very large white man sitting there opposite him. One with real eyes. The rest, he decided, had been a trick of the fire.
“What do you think?” Grass-in-Hair asked the next morning as they watched the white man ride westward out of camp. “Of course he must be as mad as the other white men say, else he would not try this for us. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.”
Two-Feathers-Falling held his buffalo robe snug against his body. Though it was warming up as the sun rose, stars still lingered in the blueing sky, pieces of ice the morning was slow to melt. “I think you have lost a good knife,” he muttered as he shuffled off in the direction of his tepee.
It truly was beautiful country, Malone mused as he nudged Worthless to his right. Green and heavily forested. While his mount usually could be left to his own devices to find the easiest path down a slope, sometimes his bad right eye played him false and Malone had to help out.
Plenty of forage, good water. Excellent country. Elk and deer in abundance and a host of lesser animals. Grizzlies, too, of course, but they didn’t bother Malone. Those possessed of a cantankerous disposition usually sought alternative routes as soon as they set eyes on him.
He settled in by the side of a meandering stream lined with new spring growth. There were trees nearby from which he’d soon raised a fine lean-to against a smooth outcropping of granite. Upstream he found beaver and remarked the location for future visitation.
He was preparing to put a door on the lean-to one afternoon, when he heard footsteps approaching. He tensed as he turned, alert but in no way particularly concerned. His rifle lay close at hand, within convenient reach. In wild country a man always kept his rifle closer to him than anything else, including his woman.
His visitor’s attire was simple and traditional, except perhaps for an unusual breastplate that was decorated with feathers from a bird Malone couldn’t identify. They were orange tending to yellow at the tips. The man wore much red paint on his face and clothing. His braids were long and, despite his apparent age, black as soot. He carried no weapons. Worthless spared him a glance, snorted, and returned to cropping the fresh new grass behind the lean-to.
The visitor was shorter than Malone, but then, so was most of the human race. He stopped to study the mountain man. Malone waited for a while, then shrugged and returned to his work.
As the day wore on, the visitor maintained his silent inspection, eventually taking a seat on a small rock that protruded from the bank of the stream. Malone finished the door, peeled two large poles, and used them to brace the roof by jamming them into holes he’d dug earlier. Then he fished three good-sized trout from the stream, gutted and filleted them, and set about building a cookfire. Not one word had passed between the two men.
When evening arrived, Malone put the spitted fish on the fire, crossed his legs, and sat down to wait for them to cook. “For someone who’s supposed to be master of a lot o’ words, you’re downright stingy with ’em, friend.”
“You know who I am.” Tongue Kills did not have a voice. He was possessed of an instrument, nay, an entire orchestra. Strings and brass, woodwinds and percussion, all were present and active, vibrating and resonant within his throat. Each word that fell from his lips was of itself a self-contained speech, a declamation, an oration of conciseness and import admirable. It was a thing wondrous and beautiful to behold.
“I expect so,” Malone told him.
“Then you must know, white man, that you are a trespasser on my land.”
Malone gestured expansively. “Plenty o’ land here. Why are you so reluctant to share it?”
Tongue Kills sat a little straighter. “It is my wish. I have taken this place for my own.”
“Your brothers think you greedy.”
“They are not my brothers, and I do not care what they think. I do not care what you think. Like them, you must leave.”
Malone arched his back, stretching. “Shucks, I was jest gettin’ comfortable here. Reckon I might stay awhile.”
Tongue Kills leaned forward. Light danced in his eyes like individual flames skating on sheets of mica. “I say that you will leave. If you try to stay, I will make it bad for you.”
“With what? Some words? Mister, I’ve been around. I’ve seen a lot and heard a lot. Why, you’re lookin’ at the original lover o’ words. I know all the words of my own people as well as those of the Crow and Shoshone. Not to mention the Assiniboin and Kwakiutl, the Zuni and Arapaho, the Choctaw and the Seminole and Sioux. I know words in languages you ain’t never heard of: Chinee and Nippon, Tamil and Urdu, Basque and Romany and pidgin. I know words in languages that was, like Assyrian and Maya, and words in languages that ain’t been born yet.