The Black Lion Inn

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Let it be remarked that Osage criticism is no trivial thing. It is so far peculiar that never a word or look, or even a detractory shrug is made to be its evidence. Your Osage tells no evil tales of you to his neighbor. His conduct goes guiltless of slanderous syllable or gesture. But he criticises you in his heart; he is strenuous to think ill of you; and by some fashion of telepathy you know and feel and burn with this tacit condemnation as much as ever you might from hot irons laid on your forehead. It is this criticism, as silent as it is general, that gnaws at Gray Wolf’s heart and makes his somber visage more somber yet.

It was the week before when Gray Wolf, puffed of a vain conceit, matched Sundown, his pinto pony—swift as a winter wind, he deemed her—against a piebald, leggy roan, the property of Dull Ox, the cunning Ponca. The race had wide advertisement; it took shape between the Osages and the Poncas as an international event. Gray Wolf assured his tribe of victory; his Sundown was a shooting star, the roan a turtle; whereupon the Osages, ever ready as natural patriots to believe the worst Osage thing to be better than the best thing Ponca, fatuously wagered their substance on Sundown, even unto the beads on their moccasins.

The race was run; the ubiquitous roan, fleeter than a shadow, went by poor Sundown as though she ran with hobbles on. Dull Ox won; the Poncas won. The believing Osages were stripped of their last blanket; and even as Gray Wolf sits beneath the agency cottonwood and writhes while he considers what his pillaged countrymen must think of him, the exultant Poncas are in the midst of a protracted spree, something in the nature of a scalp dance, meant to celebrate their triumph and emphasize the thoroughness wherewith the Osages were routed. Is it marvel, then, that Osage thought is full of resentment, or that Gray Wolf feels its sting?

Over across from the moody Gray Wolf, Bill Henry lounges in the wide doorway of Florer’s agency store. Bill Henry is young, about twenty-three, in truth. He has a quick, handsome face, with gray eyes that dance and gleam, and promise explosiveness of temper. The tan that darkens Bill Henry’s skin wherever the sun may get to it, and which is comparable to the color of a saddle or a law book, testifies that the vivacious Bill is no recent importation. Five full years on the plains would be needed to ripen one to that durable hue.

Bill gazes out upon Gray Wolf as the latter sticks to the cottonwood’s shade; a plan is running in the thoughts of Bill. There is call for change in Bill’s destinies, and he must have the Gray Wolf’s consent to what he bears in mind.

Bill has followed cattle since he turned his back on Maryland, a quintet of years before, and pushed westward two thousand miles to commence a career. Bill’s family is of that aristocracy which adorns the “Eastern Shore” of Lord Baltimore’s old domain. His folk are of consequence, and intended that Bill should take a high position. Bill’s mother, an ardent church woman, had a pulpit in her thoughts for Bill; his father, more of the world, urged on his son the law. But Bill’s bent was towards the laws neither of heaven nor of men. The romantic overgrew the practical in his nature. He leaned not to labor, whether mental or physical, and he liked danger and change and careless savageries.

Civilization is artificial; it is a creature of convention, of clocks, of hours, of an unending procession of sleep, victuals and work. Bill distasted such orderly matters and felt instinctive abhorrence therefor. The day in and day out effort called for to remain civilized terrified Bill; his soul gave up the task before it was begun.

But savagery? Ah, that was different! Savagery was natural, easy and comfortable to the very heart’s blood of Bill, shiftless and wild as it ran. Bill was an instance of what wise folk term “reversion to type,” and thus it befell, while his father tugged one way and his mother another, Bill himself went suddenly from under their hands, fled from both altar and forum, and never paused until he found himself within the generous reaches of the Texas Panhandle. There, as related, and because savagery cannot mean entire idleness, Bill gave himself to a pursuit of cows, and soon had moderate fame as a rider, a roper, a gambler, and a quick, sure hand with a gun, and for whatever was deemed excellent in those regions wherein he abode.

Bill’s presence among the Osages is the upcome of a dispute which fell forth between Bill and a comrade in a barroom of Mobeetie. Bill and the comrade aforesaid played at a device called “draw poker;” and Bill, in attempting to supply the deficiencies of a four flush with his six shooter, managed the other’s serious wounding. This so shook Bill’s standing in the Panhandle, so marked him to the common eye as a boy of dangerous petulance, that Bill sagely withdrew between two days; and now, three hundred miles to the north and east, he seeks among the Indians for newer pastures more serene.

When we meet him Bill has been with the Osages the space of six weeks. And already he begins to doubt his welcome. Not that the Osages object. Your Indian objects to nothing that does not find shape as an immediate personal invasion of himself. But the government agent—a stern, decisive person—likes not the presence of straggling whites among his copper charges; already has he made intimation to Bill that his Osage sojourn should be short. Any moment this autocrat may despatch his marshal to march Bill off the reservation.