Beyond the sunset

by Arthur D. Howden Smith

Peter, affecting his customary manner of stolid indifference, turned clumsily on his flat feet as the Cheyenne circled him, making no effort to stay the quick rushes by which his opponent gradually drew nearer and nearer. This went on for so long that the Dakota around me commenced to fume with rage and humiliation, whilst the Cheyenne were convulsed with mirth. Then Nakuiman evidently decided to end the farce. He bounded at the Dutchman like a ball flung at a wall, and confident as I had been, I experienced a moment of foreboding as that rush came. Compact with concentrated energy, the Cheyenne drove home his thrust so fast that we bystanders could not follow it.

But Peter could. The Dutchman came awake as though by magic. His lolling stupidity vanished. His great body became instinct with the vitality that flowed inexhaustibly from springs that had never been plumbed. The Cheyenne struck. There was a flash of steel. Peter's arms whipped out. Steel flashed again in a wide arc, and the knife soared high in air and fell, point-down in the sod, twenty feet away. Remained, then, two heaving bodies. Peter held his man by one wrist and a forearm. The Cheyenne was struggling with every ounce of strength to break one of these grips so that he might seize his foe by the throat. Whilst I watched he stooped his head and fastened his teeth in Peter's shoulder.

The blood spurted from the wound and a quiver convulsed Peter's mighty frame. But he refused to be diverted from his purpose. Slowly, inexorably, he applied his pressure. And slowly, but inevitably, the Cheyenne's straining sinews yielded to him. Nakuiman's left arm was forced back—and back. Suddenly there was a loud crack. The Indian yelped like an animal in pain. The arm fell limp—and with the swift ferocity of a cat Peter pounced on the man's throat.

The jaws still fastened in the Dutchman's throbbing shoulder yielded to that awful pressure. A single gasping cry reached us. The Cheyenne's head sank back, and by a marvelous coordination of effort, Peter heaved the man's body at arm's-length over his head. A moment he held it there, his eyes on the ranks of Cheyenne warriors who had laughed at him. Then he flung it at them as though it had been a sack of corn.

It twisted through the air, struck the ground and rolled over and over into a huddle of inanimate limbs.

Peter shook himself, turned on his heel and walked slowly back to us.

"Oof," he remarked mildly. "Dot made me sweat."

That matter-of-fact action, brought the Cheyenne to realization of what had happened. Carried away by the spectacle of their chief's end, they abandoned all thought of moderation and charged us, bow-strings twanging. But the Dakotas were not unprepared. Chatanskah had fetched along a dozen of the French firelocks, in the use of which we had instructed his warriors, and we were able to meet the enemy with a devastating discharge which brought them up short. Leaderless and doubly dismayed, they had no fight left in them, and fled across the prairie pursued by the fleetest young men of the band.

We were left with the pleasant task of reaping a full toll of buffalo-meat, and the remaining Dakota, after scalping the dead Cheyenne and congratulating Corlaer, formed in a long line and trotted down toward the flank of the moving herd. The firing of the muskets had disconcerted the outer files of its mass, but these so far seemed to have made no impression upon the inner columns, and the net result of their perturbation was to slow up the herd's pace and start a confusion which was accentuated to a horrible degree as soon as the Dakota came within bow-shot.

Chatanskah afterward assured us that this herd must have wandered far without encountering men because it showed so little evidence of fear at our approach. He was also of the opinion that any herd of such enormous dimensions was more difficult to stampede than a herd of comparatively small size. At any rate, it was several moments after the booming twang of the bow-strings began that the herd showed a tendency to mill and change its direction. And during those few moments the Dakota slew enough meat to last their village through the Winter. Aiming between the ribs of the shaggy beasts they drove their flat-headed hunting-arrows into the fat carcasses up to the feathers, and it was seldom that two shots were required for one buffalo. Some staggered on a ways, but any buffalo that had a Dakota hunting-arrow in its vitals was sure to drop.