CHAPTER XIX. A STRONG TEMPTATION.
As Jack and Hugh walked away from the crowd, Hugh leading the horse, he talked with Jack about all the mysterious performances of the Medicine Lodge, and said how sorry he felt that they had been away when the ceremonies began.
"It's a great religious performance with these people," he said; "kind o' like Christmas, when everybody gives presents and everybody prays, and then the Medicine Lodge women pray for everybody in the camp and for the welfare of the whole tribe. It's a mighty solemn time, I tell you."
They had nearly reached the lodge when Hugh handed the horse's rope to Jack and told him to tie the animal near it.
"I want to stop to speak to Double Runner," he said, and he turned and entered one of the lodges.
Jack went on to John Monroe's and tied the horse to a pin, and then went on beyond, within the circle of the lodges, looking at the paintings on the different ones, and at the bundles tied to tripods that stood behind each. He wondered what the different paintings meant, and thought he would sometime get Hugh, or maybe Joe, to walk around the camp with him and see if they could explain them. As he was thinking about this, he suddenly heard quickly running footsteps behind him, and turned to see Joe rushing towards him as fast as he could; his hair flying in the wind, and his white teeth disclosed by a broad grin. His arms were stretched forward as if he were about to seize Jack. Jack sprang to one side, but Joe turned quickly and caught him around the body, trying to swing him off his feet, but Jack had the under-hold and resisted, and for a moment or two they wrestled there in silence. Then Joe laughed and said, "Can't I throw you?" and gave him a swift twist to the left, but Jack responded only by bending Joe's back toward him as strongly as he could. For a moment the back was stiff, and then, little by little it began to yield, but before this had gone far Joe made a mighty effort, and twisted himself free from the encircling arms, and started off running as hard as he could go. Jack pursued and for some minutes they raced around in and out among the lodges until at last, Joe finding himself before John Monroe's, threw himself on the ground, laughing merrily.
"Ha! my brave one," he said; "you are strong and run fast. I thought I should throw you at once, but I could not." Jack sat down beside him and for some moments nothing was heard except their quick breathing.
"Well," said Joe, "I think you must feel proud of what has happened this day. It was a great thing to be able to stand out in front of all the people and count a coup. I was proud myself to see this thing happen to my friend."
"Well," said Jack, "I was so surprised that I did not think anything about it, and I didn't know what Hugh was going to do when he dragged me out into the open space. I guess the idea must have come to him all of a sudden; anyhow, he never said a word to me about it, but just got up and took a hold of me, pulled me out, and the first thing I knew he was talking. Then I didn't know what he was talking about, but it made me ashamed to be standing with everybody looking at me."
"Well," said Joe. "It's a big thing. It's the biggest thing ever happened to anybody near your age since I have been in the camp. I tell you, if such a thing had happened to me, I wouldn't speak to anybody for a week, I think, I would feel so big.
"And then your having a horse given to you, that made it all the better. He is a nice horse, too, a good riding horse, maybe a buffalo horse."
"Yes," said Jack, "it's a pretty good looking horse. I am going to ask John Monroe about him when I see him."
"Why do you call him John Monroe?" said Joe; "that's his white man's name; but we here all call him Pis'kun; that means buffalo corral."
"Oh, yes," said Jack; "I have heard Hugh tell about how they used to drive the buffalo over the cliff into the pen. I don't suppose they do that any more, do they?"
"No," said Joe, "there's plenty of men in the camp that's helped to do that, but since they got so many guns and such good horses they don't do it no more. Some day likely the camp will stop near one of the old places where they used to jump the buffalo, and then we can go there and see the piles of stones on the prairie, where the buffalo used to run. And down under the jumping off place you can see yet lots of bones and old horns."
"I'd like to see one of those places," said Jack; "maybe you could dig round in the dirt and find some of the old tools that the Indians used to use."
"Sure," said Joe. "Often they dig up the old stone arrows, and sometimes other tools of stone and bone there, that were left by the old-time people."
"Gracious," said Jack, "I'd like to get some of those things to take back with me when I go home."
"When are you going?" said Joe.
"I don't know," said Jack; "not for a good while yet; not until the autumn comes."
"That's good," said Joe, "we will have plenty of fun first then."
"Oh, yes," said Jack, "I guess so. I expect we will be here a couple of months yet. I haven't spoken to Hugh yet about it."
There was a moment's pause, and presently Joe burst out, and said:
"Say, don't you want to go off on the warpath with some young men? There's a war party going to start out pretty soon, and the young men have asked me to go along, and the leader said he'd like to have you go too. He didn't say that until after you had counted your coup."
"Jerusalem," said Jack, "I'd like that. That would be fun," and he looked at Joe with his face beaming with excitement. Suddenly, his look changed, and he said:
"But no, I could not go anyhow. Hugh would never be willing for me to go on a trip like that, and I wouldn't sneak off without speaking to him about it.
"You see, Joe," he went on, "when I came up here, I promised my uncle that I would listen to Hugh about everything, and would take his advice always. It wouldn't be square either to Hugh or to my uncle if I didn't do as I promised I would. Besides that Hugh has been mighty good to me. He has helped me a whole lot and pretty much everything I wanted to do he's said I could. Look at his going off with us the other day when we went to hunt antelope. I don't expect that there was much fun for him in that. I think he went because he thought I wanted to go and wanted to give me pleasure. It wouldn't be the square thing for me to go back on Hugh that way.
"He'd be mighty uneasy all the time I'd be gone. Likely he'd be hunting for me, and what would be lots of fun for me would be giving him a mighty bad time. Besides, suppose anything should happen to me, and I should get hurt or killed, he'd feel mighty mean going back to my uncle and telling him what had happened."
"Well," said Joe, "I guess what you say is right. It would be mean to make White Bull feel that way. I'd like to have you come. We could go and get a lot of horses and come back and people would say we had done well. I wish you could go, but you have got to do what you think is good."
Jack felt badly. He could think of nothing that would be so much fun as to go off with these young men and make a long journey, and take some horses from the enemy's camp and then return and be praised by all the people, but he knew as well as he knew anything that Hugh would never consent to his going, and he felt that it was impossible to break faith, even for so great a pleasure. He remembered all that Hugh had done for him, and especially how he saved his life at the Musselshell River, and he knew well that the more he thought about it the more firm would be his resolve not to give Hugh this great anxiety.
They talked about it a little longer and at last Joe got up to go and Jack went into the lodge. There he found John Monroe's woman cooking supper, and spoke to her, thanking her for the gift of the horse made to him that afternoon.
"Why," she said, "I was proud that anybody living in my lodge should have done so brave a thing as you did. Many years ago the Assiniboines killed my brother. Since then my heart is always glad when I hear of one of their people being killed."
Jack sat down on his bed and gave himself up to gloomy reflections. What a wonderful time he could have if he were to go off with this war party; how much he could learn of the ways of the Indians in their fighting; what adventures he might perhaps have, and what strange stories he could tell to the people at home when he returned to New York. But there seemed no way in which he could decently go. He determined, at all events, he would speak to Hugh about it, and see what he said.
He had not long to wait, for presently, the curtain of the door was thrown aside and Hugh entered. When he had seated himself and had filled his pipe, and lighted it by a coal from the fire, Jack said:
"Hugh, I have got something to say to you, something that's troubling me and that I think I ought to tell you. Joe came to me this afternoon, and told me that a war party of young men is going to start out, and they'd like to have me go with them. At first I jumped at the invitation, but then when I thought about it, I felt 'most sure that you would not be willing for me to go, and I told Joe so. Of course, I'd love to go more than anything, but I suppose there's no use thinking about it."
For a moment or two, Hugh said nothing, and then he turned and looked at Jack.
"Well, son, suppose your uncle was here, do you think he'd be willing to have you go?"
"No," said Jack, "I don't believe he would."
"Well," said Hugh, "suppose your father and mother were here, what do you think they'd say about it?"
"Well," said Jack, "I suppose you know as well as I do."
"Yes," said Hugh, "I expect I do, and if you and I both know what your uncle and your father and mother would say about it, we both know what I will say about it."
"Yes," said Jack with a sigh, "I suppose so."
"You see, son," said the old man, "a good many people would have thought it was a mighty big risk for a boy of your age to go travelling across the country the way we done, to an Indian camp to stop here for two or three months. Of course, there's danger in it; but then there's danger everywhere, and if people have good sense, and keep their wits about them, there ain't no more danger travelling on the prairie, than there is travelling on a railroad train, or going about back in the states. Anyway that's how I look at it, but as I have often told you before, I don't want you to go hunting for danger. I want you to keep as far from it as you can. Now, I told your uncle when he let us come off up here, that I would take as good care of you as I knew how. I have done it and I am going to keep on doing it. You might go off on a war party and never have any trouble at all, and then again you might get killed. I don't want to see you get any nearer to danger than you have to, and I wouldn't let you go to war if I could help it. Now, there's one more thing. I understand just as well as if you'd told me how much you want to go with this party, and what fun you think you'd sure have. 'Course, you could have slipped away out of the camp without saying anything to me, and as likely as not I never would have seen you until you got back again, and of course, while you were gone I should have felt mighty bad, not knowing but what you might get killed. Your speaking to me this way just makes me think more than ever what I have always thought since I first got to know you; that you are square; that when you say you will do a thing you will do it. Now, it ain't every boy of your years that would have had the pluck to say no when a chance of this kind came to him, just because he knew that to say yes, would make a friend feel bad. I understand pretty well how you felt about it and just what has been going on in your mind, and I won't never forget it. It makes us closer friends than we have ever been yet;" and reaching out his hand, he grasped Jack's in a firm, close grip, that brought the tears to the boy's eyes.
"Never you mind, son," Hugh went on, "we'll have plenty of good times yet while we are in this camp, and we'll keep our words to the people down south and back east that we made promises to. We may have trouble of one sort or another, but we won't give anybody a chance to call us liars."
That night after supper as they were sitting around the fire, Hugh and John Monroe talking, and Jack listening, partly to what they said, and partly to the distant sounds of the camp—the singing, the drumming, the hum of conversation, the laughter and the galloping hoofs—he noticed that some of the singing sounded constantly more distinct, and presently it was directly in front of the lodge. Here two or three songs were sung, and Hugh taking a piece of tobacco from his pocket handed it to the woman who passed it out through the door of the lodge. A moment later Joe's smiling countenance appeared in the doorway, and he said to Jack:
"Come on out, and go round the camp with us."
"Go on," said Hugh to Jack. "They're a lot of young men going round singing in front of the different lodges; maybe it's your war party getting ready to start out."
Jack seized his hat and dived through the doorway, and when he was outside and his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness he saw that a group of eight young men stood before the lodge. Joe took him by the arm and said to him:
"We're going round singing in front of the lodges, and sometimes they give us presents. These are the men that are going off to war. You know Bull Calf, and likely before you leave the camp you will know all the rest of them."
In a moment or two, the little group started on, and after passing several of the lodges, stopped before one, where they sang two or three songs. These were plaintive and melancholy to Jack's ear, and yet full of spirit. Of course, he did not know the airs and could not sing, but he listened. He looked about over his strange surroundings and half wondered whether it could be possible that he were standing here with these Indian boys under the brilliant moon and in this circle of white lodges. The music as it was sung thrilled and moved him strangely and it seemed to him as if it must all be a dream.
A little bundle was passed out from this lodge door, and they set out again. Jack whispered to Joe, as they walked along:
"How strange these songs are."
"Yes," said Joe, "they ain't much like white men's songs. These that they are singing now are all camp songs, but there are lots of other kinds. Some of them for war and some of them for dancing, or songs that young fellows sing when they are courting their girls, or songs that they sing when they are praying; lots of different kinds."
"Well," said Jack, "I'd love to know some of them so that I could sing them when I went back East."
For a long time the young men wandered about through the camp, but at last stopped not far from John Monroe's lodge. There they separated and went to their several homes. Joe walked back with Jack and said good night to him in front of the lodge. When Jack entered he found Hugh and John Monroe still talking. Soon after, they all went to bed and the fire died down.