The Lonesome Trail

by John G. Neihardt

“You remember that the season of singing frogs [April] has passed three times since one of the palefaces came among us. He was a paleface, but he was not like his brothers who find gladness in doing deeds that are bad. You have not forgotten how his words and deeds were kind, his voice very good to hear, nor how his face had the beauty of a woman’s, though it was not a woman’s face. Also his hands were white as the first snow fallen on a green place; and his hair was long like the hair of our people, but it clung about his head like a brown cloud when the evening is old.

“He was hungry and lean when he came among us. His pony was hungry and lean. And we took him in with glad hearts; we lit the feast fires for him; his pony we staked in our greenest places: for he was not like his brothers.

“And we called him ‘the man with the singing box,’ for he brought with him a thing of wood and sinews; and over this, while we feasted, he drew a stick of wood with the hair of a pony’s tail fastened to it, making songs sweeter than those of our best women singers, and deeper than the voices of men who are glad.

“Much we wondered at this, for the magic of the paleface is a great magic. And as he made the wood and sinews sing together, we forgot to eat and the feast fires fell blue; for never before had such a singing been heard in our lands. And once he made it sing a battle song that snarled like a wounded rattlesnake in a dry place, and cried like an angry warrior, and shrieked like arrows, and thundered like many pony hoofs, and wailed like the women when the band comes back with dead braves across the backs of ponies. And as he made it sing this song, even we who were wise leaped to our feet and drew forth our weapons and shouted the war cry of our people—so great was the song. And when our shouting ceased, the man made the medicine box sing low and sweet and thin like a woman crying over a sick zhinga zhinga [baby] in the night. And we forgot the battle cries; we gave tears like old women.

“Do you remember? This is the man of whom I speak.

“Many young moons grew old and passed away, and still he lived among us, until, lo! he was even as our kinsman, for he learned the tongue of our people, being great of wit.

“And he told us of a wanderer whose own people were unkind to him; a tale of one who was not of the people of whom he was born, because he loved the spirits that sing, more than a very rich man loves his herds of ponies blackening many hills where they graze. And it was of himself he told; he was the wanderer. So we loved him because of this and because of his kind words and because of the song which he made in his medicine box.

“And all the while my girl here was growing taller—very good to see. Many times I said to my woman, ‘There is something growing between these two.’ And we both saw it with glad hearts, for he was a great man.

“And one night in my first sleep I was awakened by a crying of sorrows better to hear than laughter—a moan that grew loud and fell again into softness like a night wind wailing in a lonesome place where thickets grow. And my woman beside me whispered, ‘It is the spirits singing.’ But the girl here only breathed very hard. I could hear her breathing in the darkness.

“And I got up; I pushed the skin flap aside; I stood as though I were in a dream. For there by the tepee stood the man with the singing box at his neck. His long, white fingers worked upon the sinews; his arm drew the hair-stick up and down. His face looked to the sky and the white fires of the night were upon it. Never had I seen such a face; for it was not a man’s face nor yet a woman’s. It was the face of a good man’s spirit come back from the star-paths. I looked at his lips, for it seemed that the singing grew up from his mouth; but his lips were very still.