THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS
It is not the purpose of this story to describe the battle of the Little Big Horn in detail. That has been done many times. There is little about it that is remarkable, excepting always the heroism of the men who fought so desperately. The scene itself must have been impressive, as viewed by the non-combatants of the Indians from the bluffs near at hand—the swirl of brown about the melting patch of blue. After Custer fell, the savages turned eagerly down the valley to attack Reno, leaving the dead as they lay. Lafond did not accompany them. The sight had aroused certain reflections in his breast, and he wished to work the thing out.
After sunset, he went alone and on foot over to the battlefield. The troopers lay as they had fallen—first, Calhoun's company in line, with its officers in place; then Keogh's; finally, on the knoll, the remnant, scattered irregularly among the dead of their enemies. In the cold light their faces shone white and still, even yet instinct with the eagerness of battle; an eagerness which death had transmuted from flesh to marble. Near the centre lay Custer, his long yellow hair framing his face, his hands crossed on his breast. He alone was unmutilated, save by the shot that had taken his life.
The half-breed did not hesitate on the outer circle of the combat, but picked his way among the corpses until he stood on the summit of the little knoll. Then he folded his arms and looked steadily down on the white man's inscrutable face.
Whatever might be Lafond's intellectual or moral deficiencies, lack of perspicacity was not among them. Through the red glory of this apparent victory, the most sweeping ever accomplished by the plains Indians, he saw clearly the imminence of final defeat. The dead man before him lay smiling, and Lafond perceived that he smiled because he saw his people arising to avenge him. The beat of the muster drum calling the avengers to the frontier now sounded in prophecy to his hearing, and the echoes of the last battle shot merged into the clang of an iron civilization, which was destined to push these exulting victors dispassionately aside. It was a striking picture of light and of shadow—this dark, savage figure silhouetted against the softened brightness of the sky, this bright-haired warrior lying bathed in the glorification of a Western night; the white man humiliated, defeated, slain, but seeing with closed eyes that at which he smiled with deep content; the savage, proud in success, triumphant, victor, but perceiving somehow, in the very evidences of his achievement, that which made him knit his brows. How little was this great victory against the background of the people whom it had outraged, and yet how mightily it would stir that people when once it became known!
Michaïl Lafond the savage stood before the body of Custer the fallen, for an hour, moving not one muscle all the time. At the end of the hour Michaïl Lafond the civilized turned slowly away, and walked thoughtfully toward the lodges on the other bank of the Little Big Horn River. The sight of a brave man, who had died as he lived, had reformed Lafond, but whether moralists would have approved of the reformation is to be doubted.
The night ran well along toward morning. The squaws, who had been plundering and mutilating the dead, had long since returned to hear the report of the warriors who had gone to attack Reno. The attack had failed, but the fight had been desperate and the losses on both sides heavy. Six of Custer's command, captured alive, were burned to death. At last, the entire camp, with the exception of the women sentinels, had gone to rest. Toward daybreak, even these became drowsy.
Lafond arose quietly. He gathered a few necessaries into a pack, placed them outside the doorway of the lodge, hesitated a moment, and then returned. His two squaws slept, as usual, one each side of the little girl. Lafond lifted the child carefully in order that he might not awaken her guardians or herself, and wrapped her closely in his blanket. At the doorway he again hesitated. Then, chuckling grimly, he deposited the child by the bundle he had already prepared, and returning, took down from the tent pole the string of scalps which went to show how successful and how savage a warrior he had been. By the light of the stars he selected one of these and laid it carefully between the two sleeping women. It was the scalp of the little girl's mother. Then he rehung the string on the tent pole, and went outside immensely pleased with his bit of humor.
It was his good-by to the wild life. From that time on he dwelt in the towns, where in a very few years his name became known as standing for a shrewdness in management, a keenness in seizing opportunities, and an inflexibility of purpose rarely to be met with among his Anglo-Saxon competitors. His present objective point, however, was the Spotted Tail Agency, which was, from the valley of the Little Big Horn, an affair of five days. Michaïl Lafond did it in four; or at least at the end of the fourth he was within a few miles of the agency buildings. By the evening of the third day, he had transformed both himself and the little girl into an appearance of civilization, reclothing her in the garments she had worn at the time of her capture, and himself in a complete outfit which he had collected piece by piece on that last night with the savages. The change was truly astonishing.
His last camp in the open was pitched within sight of the Spotted Tail reservation. The darkness was almost at hand. He had fed himself and the child, had put the latter to rest under one blanket and was just about to wrap himself in the other, when he became aware of a prairie schooner swaying leisurely across the plains in his direction. He at once sat up again. Every man was to him an object of suspicion.
Not until the wagon had halted within a few feet of him could he distinguish the occupant. Then he perceived that the latter was a gentle-faced, silver-haired individual of mild aspect, dressed decently but strangely, and possessed of introspective blue eyes, which he turned dreamily on Lafond.
"May I camp here?" he inquired deprecatingly.
The half-breed considered.
"I s'pose so," he said without enthusiasm.
The old man descended and uncoupled his two animals. After he had picketed them, he returned, and, extracting from the wagon body the materials for a meal, he proceeded to make himself at home over Lafond's fire.
"I never did like to camp alone," he confided to the latter.
Lafond watched him intently. No further words were exchanged until the stranger had finished his supper and had restored his kit to the wagon. Then the younger man offered the hospitality of the plains.
"Yo' smok'?" he inquired, tendering his tobacco.
"Thank you, no," replied the old man with a tone of breeding which Lafond felt but could not define.
The half-breed could not make out the newcomer, and the conversation failed to enlighten him. That was an epoch when all the world turned to the West; but it was a practical world. There one might in time meet all sorts and conditions of men, from the English lord to the turbulent Fenian; from the New York exquisite fallen on hard times to the "bad man" who had never been east of the Mississippi. One never betrayed surprise at anything one might bring ashore from this flotsam and jetsam of the human race. But all these odds and ends were at least made of tough material, strong enough to run wherever a rapid current might dash them, capable of supporting hard knocks against one another or the obstructions in the way; while this placid old man seemed to Lafond like a crystal vessel, of rare quality, perhaps, but none the less fragile. At the last he asked bluntly, "What do you here?"
The old man fell silent for a minute or two and gazed into the coals of the dying fire.
"My name is Durand," he said at last, with an infinitude of sorrow in the tones of his voice. "I am an entomologist. I am here to get specimens—butterflies; but it is not here that I belong. My place is elsewhere, and that I know. But it is not in my country, and——" he broke off. Lafond looked on curiously, for the dreamy haze had faded from the speaker's eyes. "My friend," Durand went on, "there are times when one cares not to see the face of man except in the bosom of the great nature. I do not know that you understand that. It is with the bitterness of a wrong that such knowledge comes, and with it comes the hate of cities and of the things men do. Some men have had their will of me, and I am come to the wilderness. They called it revenge to drive me here."
"Revenge! But you still live!" repeated Lafond in wonder.
"And is it that you think the taking of life is revenge?" cried Durand, with sudden energy. "They who take their revenge in killing are actually the merciful ones, and they cheat no one but themselves."
"Yes?" asked Lafond, his soul in the question.
The other turned in surprise at his companion's vehemence. He saw a stolid; dark-skinned man gazing impassively into the fire.
"They are fools," went on Durand bitterly, after a moment; "just fools. These others were of more ingenuity; they knew what would hurt, what would avenge them better than the killing."
"I do not understand," said the half-breed, feeling his way slowly, for the fear of damming this flow of confidence. He looked away, for his eye glowed, though his voice was steady. "W'at is it? If one kills, if one takes that life, w'at is worse?"
"Worse, worse?" cried Durand, flinging his hands impotently upward. "A thousand things!" He suddenly became calm, and turned to Lafond with impressive forefinger. "Listen, my friend. Life is a little thing. Anyone can take it who has a gun, or a knife, or even a stone. But the true revenge is in finding out what it is that each man prizes the most, and then taking it from him. And that requires power! power! power!
"Few there are who have not something they prize more than life," he added gloomily. The fire died from his eye. He became once again the timid old butterfly hunter, pushing blindly out into the wilderness, wondering at himself for thus exposing an old wound to a chance passer; and yet perhaps feeling in some dim fashion—so inscrutable are the instincts of these half-childish natures—that in so doing he was following for a moment the lines of greater destinies than his own.
And certainly, long after the dipper had swung below the pole star, Lafond sat staring into the ashes of the fire, just as four days since he had stared into the ashes of a brave and chivalrous life. In his history there were the two crucial hours—one after the greatest battle of the plains; the other after a dozen sentences exchanged with a half-crazy old entomologist. From the potent reflections induced by these one hundred and twenty minutes it resulted that Michaïl Lafond became civilized and a seeker for wealth in the development of the young country. In wealth he saw power; in power the ability to give or take away.
The depriving each man of that which he prizes the most!