The Lonesome Trail

by John G. Neihardt

But the hawk circled far away and the day droned on.

Among the hills, hidden from one who looked and saw not, the war party rode on with the noses of its ponies to that portion of the sky from which the red sun of summer springs, for in that direction lay the village of the Poncas, perched upon the yellow bluffs of the great muddy river.

On the evening of the second day the air grew soft with the scent of flowing waters, and the Omahas, checking their ponies upon the brow of a hill, beheld to their right the swirling stream, red with the last light of the day; and before them, across a deep hollow, the village of the Poncas, upon the summit of a bluff.

But while their eyes wandered over the misty stretches of the river, a wild shout startled the calm of the scene, while from the village on the opposite summit a line of mounted warriors issued, taking the precipitous hillside at a brisk gallop.

The sudden shout and the beat of flying hoofs hurled the weary ponies of the Omahas back upon their haunches. Yet scarcely had the echoes of the shout cried their last among the distant bluffs, when a hundred Omaha bow thongs twanged and a hundred arrows shrieked their shrill death-song in the quiet evening air. A second and a third flight of arrows, and the rushing Poncas were thrown into confusion. Those in the rear were thrown by the floundering bodies of the wounded ponies in the front, the fury of their momentum hurling them pellmell into the valley below. Then the Omahas swept down the valley, as the eagle sweeps, with the battle cry upon their lips, and the remnant of the attacking Poncas turned and fled up the steep hillside to their village.

The village of the Poncas, in addition to its strong position, was further fortified by stockades, constructed of saplings driven into the ground with their tops sharpened. The fugitives having gained the protection of this barrier, were safe from further pursuit, and emboldened by their protection, they hurled such a flight of arrows into the ranks of the enraged Omahas that the latter were obliged to withdraw beyond arrow flight, contenting themselves with taunting their besieged foes by displaying the dripping scalps of the fallen.

Now the influence of the fading evening cooled the anger and hushed the shouting. From the height whither the assaulting band withdrew to camp, one could hurl the triumphant gaze unnumbered bowshots westward, athwart the brown hills that seemed to have been stricken motionless in liquid turbulence by the enchantment of the sunset, marvellous with the pomp of streamers, violet, purple, saffron, sanguine, dun!

Far up the river the blue haze of the sky-fringed woodland blended into the purple shadow beneath the contrasting yellow of the bluffs, that looked down into the smooth waters, upon their own scarred and wrinkled images crowned with golden crowns by the last scant sunlight. The cottonwoods placed their long shadows like soothing fingers on the muddy madness of the central stream. The Night awakened in the east and stretched its long black arms into the west, and the glory vanished. The distant woodland and the bluffs grew into indistinguishable masses. The river became a faint film above a lower concave of dawning stars. The camp fires in the village reared long towers of light into the darkness, then fell back into a sleepy glow.

One dreaming out a sunset on the prairie cannot wonder at the exquisite hyperbole of the Omaha language; that tongue nurtured amid marvellous possibilities of fury and calm, of beauty and terror, all within the sight-tiring circle of stupendous distance.