When the tree flowered

by John G. Neihardt

Eagle Voice chuckled for a while, enjoying the boyhood memory; and then—

“Charger could tell sad stories too,” he said. “And when he told one, the people would be looking down their noses, feeling very bad. And he could tell the kind of stories that made a boy feel cold on the back of his neck and keep looking behind in the dark, because something that was not there, was there anyway, and it might grab you all at once.—Like the one about the evil wakon who got his power from eating dead peoples’ tongues. In the night he would sprout great wings like a giant buzzard’s; and when somebody was sick and about to die, the people would hear him flapping, flapping, flapping, with a queer whisking sound above the tepee in the dark. Maybe somebody coming back late in the night would pass a new scaffold, and that man-buzzard would be sitting up there in the moonlight, and maybe the moon would be old and broken and just about to go down. Then the man-buzzard would lift slowly and fly away, and you could see him cross the moon and hear him going—flap, flap, flap, with a queer whistling sound. In the morning when relatives went to look, there would be another tongue missing! It took a long while to tell that story, because it took the people a long while to find out who was the evil wakon. They had to try this and try that and look here and look there. And when they did find out, everybody was surprised and you could hardly believe it.

“But the story that always makes me hungry is the one Charger told that night about the Two Boys Who Had Sister-Trouble. I want to tell it because what I eat these days does not do me much good, and I want to be hungry like a boy again.

“So this is the way it was with the two boys who had sister-trouble.

“A long while ago before the hoop was broken and the people still were good, there was a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and something bad would happen if you did the wrong way. I have told you how a man could not speak to his daughter-in-law and she could not speak to him, even when they lived in the same tepee. If they had to say something to each other, they said it to the son’s mother and she said it to the other one. Neither could the two eat together. It was the same way with a brother and sister when they were no longer little children. They respected each other so much that if they had to say something to each other they would say it to their mother and she would tell it. These ways were good for the people, but now there is nothing good at all. In those days a young man wanted his sisters to be proud of him, and they might make beaded clothing for him to show how proud they were, but they would be so ashamed to say it to him that they would rather die.

“Now there was a young Shyela [Cheyenne] and his name was Thunder Sounds. His father was a chief and people looked up to him. Also the family had many ponies and a fine tepee. Thunder Sounds was a very good-looking young man and his clothes were fine because his mother and his sisters thought so much of him. He wore a shield of otter skin across his breast. His quiver was full of arrows and covered with porcupine quills; and even his blanket was beautifully quilled. Also he had two fine spotted ponies that looked just alike. But I think he was prouder of his two older sisters than he was of the ponies, because they were very good to see and already they could do any woman’s work a little better than any of the other girls could.

“This happened in the spring when the people were moving camp, and Thunder Sounds, not being a man yet, did something just for fun that would bother his sisters at their work. They were so bothered that they forgot all about the right way to do, and scolded him. And that was how it began.

“When the camp moved, Thunder Sounds did not go along. He stayed right there, sitting on the ground in his fine clothes with his head hanging and his two spotted ponies looking at him with their heads hanging too; for it made them sad to feel how sad he was. It was morning when the camp moved, and when the sun was getting low, he still sat there thinking and thinking about his sisters and about death. Not only had they spoken to him and thus shown they did not respect him; they had even scolded him the way you scold a dog for stealing your meat. He knew that he just could not live any more; but how could he find death?

“About that time a young man came back from the camp and stood beside Thunder Sounds and said: ‘Your sisters have sent me. They are sorry and they are crying for you to come back. Also they are cooking some tender meat just for you.’ But Thunder Sounds did not lift his head and the ponies did not lift their heads either, and the young man heard nothing but his own words. So afterwhile he got tired standing there, and went away. And the sun went down and there were stars and it was still.

“Then Thunder Sounds stood up and began singing a death-song there in the big empty night, and the ponies neighed shrill. When he had sung, he mounted and the other pony followed and the three went away in the still starlight, looking for death.