The Girl at the Halfway House, Emerson Hough [best summer books .TXT] 📗

was magnificent in mien, superb in confidence. Fear was not in him. His vast figure, nourished on sweet meat of the plains, fed by pure air and developed by continual exercise, showed like the torso of a minor Hercules, powerful but not sluggish in its power. His broad and deep chest, here and there spotted with white scars, arched widely for the vital organs, but showed no clogging fat. His legs were corded and thin. His arms were also slender, but showing full of easy-playing muscles with power of rapid and unhampered strength. Two or three inches above the six-feet mark he stood as he cast off his war bonnet and swept back a hand over the standing eagle plumes, whipped fast to his braided hair. White Calf was himself a giant.

Yet huge and menacing as he stood, the figure opposed to him was still more formidable. Juan, the mozo overtopped him by nearly half a head, and was as broad or broader in the shoulder. His body, a dull brown in colour, showed smoother than that of his enemy, the muscles not having been brought out by unremitted exercise. Yet under that bulk of flesh there lay no man might tell how much of awful vigour. The loop of the war club would not slip over his great hand. He caught it in his fingers and made the weapon hum about his head, as some forgotten ancestor of his, tall Navajo, or forgotten cave dweller, may have done before the Spaniard came. The weapon seemed to him like a toy, and he cast his eye about for another more commensurate with his strength, but, seeing none, forgot the want, and in the sheer ignorance of fear which made his bravery, began the fight as though altogether careless of its end.

White Calf was before his people, whose chief he was by reason of his personal prowess, and with all the vanity of his kind he exulted in this opportunity of displaying his fitness for his place. Yet in him natural bravery had a qualifying caution, which was here obviously well justified. The Mexican made direct assault, rushing on with battle axe poised as though to end it all with one immediate blow. With guard and parry he was more careless than the wild bull of the Plains, which meets his foe in direct impetuous assault. White Calf was not so rash. He stepped quickly back from the attack, and as the mozo plunged forward from the impulse of his unchecked blow, the Indian swept sternly at him with the full force of his extended arm. The caution of the chief, and the luck of a little thing, each in turn prevented the ending of the combat at its outset. Half falling onward, the Mexican slipped upon a tuft of the hard gray grass and went down headlong. A murmur arose from the Indians, who thought at first that their leader's blow had proved fatal. A sharp call from Curly seemed to bring the Mexican to his feet at once. The Indian lost the half moment which was his own. Again the two engaged, White Calf now seeking to disconcert the Mexican, whom he discovered to be less agile than himself. Darting in and out, jumping rapidly from side to side, and uttering the while the sharp staccato of his war call, he passed about the Mexican, half circling and returning, his eye fixed straight upon the other's, and his war club again and again hurtling dangerously close to his opponents head. One shade more of courage, one touch more of the daring necessary to carry him a single foot closer in, and the victory had been with him, for no human skull could have withstood the impact of a pound of flint impelled by an arm so powerful.

Juan the mozo stood almost motionless, his own club half raised, the great muscles of his arm now showing under the brown skin as he clinched hard the tiny stem of the weapon. He seemed not perturbed by the menaces of the chieftain, and though unaware that the latter must in time suffer from the violence of his own exertions, nevertheless remained the fuller master of his own forces by simply waiting in this one position. His readiness for offence was the one defence that he offered. His brute courage had no mental side. The whistling of this threatening weapon was unheeded, since it did not hurt him. He glared in fury at the Indian, but always his arm remained half raised, his foot, but shifted, side stepping and turning only enough to keep him with front toward his antagonist. The desperate, eager waiting of his attitude was awful. The whisper of the wings of death was on the air about this place. The faces of the white men witnessing the spectacle were drawn and haggard. A gulp, a sigh, a half groan now and again came from their parted lips.

White Calf pursued his rapid tactics for some moments, and a dozen times sped a blow which still fell short. He gained confidence, and edged closer in. He feinted and sprang from side to side, but gained little ground. His people saw his purpose, and murmurs of approval urged him on. It seemed that in a moment he must land the fatal blow upon his apparently half-stupefied opponent. He sought finally to deliver this blow, but the effort was near to proving his ruin. Just as he swung forward, the giant, with a sudden contraction of all his vast frame, sprang out and brought down his war axe in a sheer downward blow at half-arm's length. White Calf with lightning speed changed his own attack into defence, sweeping up his weapon to defend his head. On the instant his arm was beaten down. It fell helpless at his side, the axe only hanging to his hand by means of the loop passed around the wrist. A spasm of pain crossed his face at the racking agony in the nerves of his arm, yet he retained energy enough to spring back, and still he stood erect. A cry of dismay burst from the followers of the red champion and a keen yell from the whites, unable to suppress their exultation, Yet at the next moment the partisans of either had become silent; for, though the Indian seemed disabled, the mozo stood before him weaponless. The tough, slender rod which made the handle of his war axe had snapped like a pipestem under the force of his blow, and even the rawhide covering was torn loose from the head of stone, which lay, with a foot of the broken hard-wood staff still attached, upon the ground between the two antagonists.

Juan cast away the bit of rod still in his hand and rushed forward against his enemy, seeking to throttle him with his naked fingers. White Calf, quicker-witted of the two, slung the thong of his war club free from his crippled right hand, and, grasping the weapon in his left, still made play with it about his head. The giant none the less rushed in, receiving upon his shoulder a blow from the left hand of the Indian which cut the flesh clean to the collar bone, in a great bruised wound which was covered at once with a spurt of blood. The next instant the two fell together, the Indian beneath his mighty foe, and the two writhing in a horrible embrace. The hands of the mozo gripped the Indian's throat, and he uttered a rasping, savage roar of triumph, more beastlike than human, as he settled hard upon the chest of the enemy whose life he was choking out. Again rose the savage cries of the on-lookers.

Not even yet had the end come. There was a heaving struggle, a sharp cry, and Juan sprang back, pressing his hand against his side, where blood came from between his fingers. The Indian had worked his left hand to the sheath of his knife, and stabbed the giant who had so nearly overcome him. Staggering, the two again stood erect, and yet again came the cries from the many red men and the little band of whites who were witnessing this barbarous and brutal struggle. Bows were bending among the blankets, but the four rifles now pointed steadily out. One movement would have meant death to many, but that movement was fore-stalled in the still more rapid happenings of the unfinished combat. For one-half second the two fighting men stood apart, the one stunned at his unexpected wound, the other startled that the wound had not proved fatal. Seeing his antagonist still on his feet. White Calf for the first time lost courage. With the knife still held in his left hand, he hesitated whether to join again in the encounter, or himself to guard against the attack of a foe so proof to injury. He half turned and gave back for a pace.

The man pursued by a foe looks about him quickly for that weapon nearest to his own hand. The dread of steel drove Juan to bethink himself of a weapon. He saw it at his feet, and again he roared like an angry bull, his courage and his purpose alike unchanged. He stooped and clutched the broken war axe, grasping the stone head in the palm of his great hand, the jagged and ironlike shaft projecting from between his ringers like the blade of a dagger. With the leap of a wild beast he sprang again upon his foe. White Calf half turned, but the left hand of the giant caught him and held him up against the fatal stroke. The sharp shaft of wood struck the Indian in the side above the hip, quartering through till the stone head sunk against the flesh with a fearful sound. With a scream the victim straightened and fell forward. The horrid spectacle was over.

CHAPTER XII WHAT THE HAND HAD TO DO

In this wide, new world of the West there were but few artificial needs, and the differentiation of industries was alike impossible and undesired. Each man was his own cook, his own tailor, his own mechanic in the simple ways demanded by the surroundings about him. Each man was as good as his neighbour, for his neighbour as well as himself perforce practised a half-dozen crafts and suffered therefrom neither in his own esteem nor that of those about him. The specialists of trade, of artisanship, of art, were not yet demanded in this environment where each man in truth "took care of himself," and had small dependence upon others.

In all the arts of making one's self comfortable in a womanless and hence a homeless land both Franklin and Battersleigh, experienced campaigners as they were, found themselves much aided by the counsel of Curly, the self-reliant native of the soil who was Franklin's first acquaintance in that land. It was Curly who helped them with their houses and in their household supplies. It was he who told them now and then of a new region where the crop of bones was not yet fully gathered. It was he who showed them how to care for the little number of animals which they began to gather about them; and who, in short, gave to them full knowledge of the best ways of exacting a subsistence from the land which they had invaded.

One morning Franklin, thinking to have an additional buffalo robe for the coming winter, and knowing no manner in which he could get the hide tanned except through his own efforts, set about to do this work for himself, ignorant of the extent of his task, and relying upon Curly for advice as to the procedure.

Curly sat on his horse and looked on with contempt as Franklin flung down the raw skin upon the ground.

"You've shore tackled a bigger job than you know anything about, Cap," said he, "and, besides that, it ain't a job fittin' fer a man to do. You ought to git some squaw to do that for you."

"But, you see, there aren't any squaws around," said Franklin, smiling. "If you'll tell me just how the Indians do it I'll try to see how good a job I can make of it."

Curly shifted his leg in his saddle and his cud in his mouth, and pushing his hat back on his forehead, assumed