The Lonesome Trail

by John G. Neihardt

And he of the No-Teeth band said: “Let the Poncas speak ill of us, and my band will put on the war paint.”

Then a silence grew and the head chief filled it with few words. “Let us pass the pipe; and all who smoke it smoke for war.”

And there were ten chiefs in the council, sitting in a circle. The first touched the pipe lightly and passed it on as though it burned his fingers; and so the second and third, even to the tenth. And next to him sat Rain Walker. His breath came drily through his teeth, like a hot wind in a parched gulch. With hands that trembled he grasped the pipe from the tenth, who had not placed it to his lips. Rain Walker placed it to his lips nervously, eagerly, as one who touches a cool water bowl after a long thirst. He struck a flint and lit it. Then he arose to his feet, tall, straight, trembling—a Rage grown into a man!

“I smoke!” he cried; “I smoke, and through all the sunlights that come I shall walk alone and kill! The lonesome walker—I am he!

“I shall speak to the snake, and he shall teach me his creeping and his stinging. I shall speak to the elk, and he shall teach me his fleetness, his strength that lasts, his fury when he turns to fight. And I shall speak to the hawk and learn the keenness of his eyes!”

Rain Walker puffed blue streamers of smoke into the still twilight of the lodge, seeming something more than man in the fog he made.

“I smoke!” he cried; and his cry had changed into a song of snarling sounds and sounds that wailed. “I smoke, and I smoke alone; my brothers will not take the pipe with me. In lonesome places shall I walk with my hate, and not even the lone hawk in the furthest hills shall hear me make aught but a hate cry. I have no longer any people! I am a tribe—the tribe that walks alone! The zhinga zhingas of the women that are not yet born shall hear my name, and it shall be like a nightwind wailing when the spirits walk and the fires are blue! I will forget that I am the son of a woman; I will think myself the son of a snake, that bore me on a hot rock in a lonesome place. I will think that I never tasted woman’s milk, but only venom stewed by the hot sun. And now I walk alone.”

His cry had fallen to a low wail that made the flesh of the hearers creep, although they were leaders and brave. And with eyes that peered far ahead as into impenetrable distances Rain Walker strode out of the lodge. The night was coming; he went forth to meet it, walking.

As he walked toward the night his thoughts were of choobay (holy) things. He thought much of the spirits, and he reached a high hill as he walked. It was high; therefore it was a choobay place. And he climbed to the summit, bare of grass and white with flaked rocks against the sky, that darkened fast as the Night walked.

Then he lit his pipe and made choobay smoke. He wished to have the good wakundas with him, even though he walked alone. For well he knew that no man can walk quite alone. So he extended the pipe stem to the west, the south, the east, the north, and he cried, “O you who cause the four winds to reach a place, help me! I stand needy!” Then he extended the pipe stem toward the earth, and he said, “O Venerable Man who lives at the bottom, here I stand needy!” And to the heavens he held the stem and cried, “O Grandfather who lives above, I stand needy; I, Rain Walker! Though my brothers treat me badly, yet I think you will help me!”