Also the Brat, in an attempt to win back his horses, played cards with the hospital orderly, and whereby he lost his cowboy kit, a residuary interest in Rich Mixed subject to owner's decease, a three-pound pot of greengage jam and my new private revolver.
To crown all, I was warned for mess fatigue, so that when I bolted I would be missed at daybreak.
Thus dogged by undeserved misfortune, I assuaged my grief by playing cards with the hospital orderly. If he won, he was to have two black eyes, an inflamed nose and a complete set of fractures, as shown on a chart in the surgery. Perhaps this medicine man preferred not to be greedy, for he lost three horses, a cowboy kit and stock saddle, a .38 seven-chambered blue Merwin and Hulbert revolver with adjustable three-inch and six-inch barrels, a pot of jam, a residuary interest, thirty-two dollars and seventy-five cents in cash, and the cook's I.O.U. on a sucking pig.
Much soothed, I addressed a private note to the commanding officer, in which I told him that I had not spoiled his parrot, but tendered in its place a tame whisky-jack, who could swear in French almost as well as himself. With regard to breaking barracks and being absent four days without leave, I felt bound to do so on a point of honor, but left Rich Mixed as a pledge of my return to take my punishment.
The letter, the whisky-jack and the dog were to be delivered after breakfast, when Wormy was always peaceful.
The moment after roll-call, I told the corporal of my barrack room that I had an appointment to smash up the man who had busted old Wormy's parrot. As it transpired, I had already done so, but the corporal seemed pleased, and would not expect me back before he fell asleep. At the stables, I changed into cowboy kit, then took my newly-won saddle to the manure heap, where I dropped it outside the stockade, and jumped down myself. Many Horses was waiting with his ponies, and so I saddled one and we rode away, bound for the herd camp. There lived Brat's ponies which I had won from the hospital orderly, but the event of stealing them fell quite flat, since they were now my property. My blood brother's Indian silence got rather on my nerves.
We rode breast-deep in a silver mist, while the moon came glowing like a coal above the frosty levels in the East, and swung the stars blind across the awful silence. Once in two hours, we rested and took fresh horses, at times would flounder through some deadly river, or pass a sleeping herd of the range cattle, or clatter down the steeps of hills invisible. Then the slow dawn merged into frosty daylight, while on our right Chief Mountain, a snow-draped cube of limestone, captain of the Rockies, glowed in the sun's red glory as he rose. We passed the Medicine Line and entered the United States, quite safe from all pursuit.
Toward noon, when a hundred and ten miles had given us a taste for food and sleep, Mount Rising Wolf was high against the sun, edged with an icy silver to where its wall fell sheer into blue-gray shadows. Then, while the ridged and furrowed plain still seemed to sweep straight on into that shadow, with staggering abruptness a valley opened right before our feet, miles wide, of lake, meadow and timber. We looked down, through scattered Douglas pines, upon a circle of teepees a mile in girth, each tawny lodge of bison hide painted with unnatural history animals, rows of dusty stars, or symbols of lightning, flood, or a protecting spirit. The smoke of feasts went up from within the lodges, the children played about them, gamblers squatted chanting over the stick game, crowds in their gayest best watched some old battle played by warriors, and round the tent-ring crept a gorgeous procession of mounted men, singing some tribal hymn.
Midway between camp and lake, stood a tall post, whence dangled a faggot of sticks, and round it was a circular fence of branches sloping inward as though to form a dome, not quite roofed over. This was the Sun's house, completed after four days of ritual preparation, and now awaiting to-morrow's dedication. Facing its east doorway, Rain kept the long fast, attended by celebrant priests and sacred women.
Many Horses unloaded his pack pony, and after making prayer set out a scrap of looking-glass and an array of face paint, to put on symbolic colors, with all the gravity of a white man busy shaving. Next he adorned his war-horse, who showed much pride and joy. Last, he put on his own ceremonial dress—a quilled and beaded buckskin war-shirt, embroidered moccasins, leggings fringed with scalp locks, a coronal of eagle plumes and a painted robe—each with its proper formula of prayer, as befitting the whole armor of righteousness, which we Christians have abandoned since it went out of fashion. I helped him reload the pack horse, and then he passed me riding his war-horse after the manner of the French haut Ecole. No horsemen in the world rival the plain's Indians in grace, or the Blackfeet in strength, beauty and majesty of bearing, and Many Horses, noblest of all the Piegan leaders, looked gravely pleased with his magnificence. As we rode down the hill, for all my fine cowboy gear, I felt mean and common, consigned to the lower classes. One would have thought this gallant and not myself had come to challenge the nation as Rain's champion.