University of Virginia Library

WHEN the teachers at the government school had instructed Young Moon thoroughly in the various branches of knowledge prescribed in the course, they presented him with an engrossed diploma setting forth his qualifications as a scholar, and told him that the great wide world was before him—his to conquer or serve as he saw fit.

The teachers were very well satisfied with Young Moon. They had seen him come to the school from the tepees up in the valley with the dark, unreasoning savagery of the ages in his heart. They had taken him just as he came to them, and had wrought with him; and now when he departed there was enlightenment where there had been darkness, and civilization where the savage had held sway. So the teachers were vain of him,—for was he not all their handiwork?—and had visions of him performing miracles in the work of elevating his own people. Which was all very pleasant and satisfying.

Young Moon took the diploma and went back to the tepees by the river. The great outside world which the teachers pictured so alluringly held no charms for him. He had been to the school of the white man, and he had seen, and he knew that the ways of the white brother were positively not as his ways. The fact was ridiculously evident to Young Moon. What possible good could there be in a community where one must of a necessity eat at regular intervals and wash himself with alarming frequency, where the beauties of a mysterious thing called duty were continually dinned into one's ears, and where the people lived, moved, and had their being under the rule of an insignificant whirring clock? What sense could there be in abiding in the tepees of a dubious thrall of work? Why live, if one must make of himself a slave? No, no; Young Moon's philosophy of life ran far from such lines.

So when the teachers at the school were through with him, he was very well satisfied to return to the loose, duty-free ways of his fathers, where soap and tooth-brushes were not, and where life was not a constant, strained pursuit of "golden moments."

It was good to be back in the tepees by the river. This was the place to live; it was life to feel the sense of full freedom of the wide, free prairie, to see the Big Hills beckoning familiarly from the blue, hazy distance, and to hear the river, which, with its double rows of green cottonwoods, always sang down the valley. Verily this was the place for an Indian; here was his home, here his abiding-place on earth. Here, all undisturbed by any false notions of work and duty, the old life moved along in the old, old way. Each day was sufficient unto itself, and the days came in never-failing supply, and there was peace and quiet.

But there was not the peace of his fathers for Young Moon. He had learned too much. He had imbibed the wisdom of the white man to a disturbing degree, and he had become possessed of ideas. This was bad, inasmuch as they were ideas scarcely compatible with the precepts of the teachers.

The white man was master in a land where he should scarcely be tolerated. It was this idea that disturbed Young Moon's

peace of mind. The white man was master. All over, everywhere, in the valley, were the signs of his superiority in numbers and power. His houses lay scattered over the face of the land, his irrigation ditches scarred the earth for miles and miles, and his fences were binding the valley and the foot-hills in a bond of hostile barb-wire. In a few years there would be only white men in the valley.

Of course this idea was old and foolish. The old men laughed at Young Moon in the council-tepee.

"Yoh, yoh," they said; "what the young man says is true—very true. But others have said the same many times before him." And they lighted their pipes indifferently.

Young Moon came away from the old men with a hard, dry lump in his throat. The humbled acquiescence of his people to the order of things that were had angered him. These things were all wrong, and the old men knew it. Yet they sat and smoked in indolent, dog-like content. The old men were surely squaws.

Young Moon lighted a thin, flat cigarette and gazed out over the valley. He was not in a frame of mind conducive to sweet, conventional thoughts. He had gone to the council-tepee with his mind full of great ideas for the peaceful reform of conditions, and the old men had laughed at him. They had laughed and scoffed; they had scoffed at him, Young Moon, who had been to the school and knew, and all high motives and peaceful inclinations had fled from him.

It was July—hot, sultry July. The Crows came out of their tepees to sit cross-legged in the sun, gazing blankly out at the dancing heat-haze and experiencing the many weird emotions that come to the child of the tepees with the bright sun. The women of the tribe were methodically performing the duties of the household, but the men had forgotten that such things existed. An old man grumblingly ordered a boy to go to work in the corn, and the boy, sitting with wide-open eyes staring out into space, laughed without moving.

The sun is bad for young bucks; it is the sun that brings back the old, half-forgotten desire for the war-path. Young Moon, as he sat gazing down the valley, began to feel and see as he had never done before. There was a red, misty haze over all the landscape. In it moved men and animals and things; but they were not of the time of Young Moon, at least the Young Moon whom the teachers had known.

Young Moon dreamed, and there came into the mist of red a vision of the one-time glory of his people. But he knew that this was the past—dead and gone. He dreamed again, and saw a picture of glorious, bloody strife. Things were clearer in the mist now, and Young Moon saw the visions change, and in the place of the one of strife was one of the glorious future: the Indian come into his own again, and the country once more free—his alone.

The sun grew red before Young Moon's eyes. The river running down the valley turned to a thread of blood. He rose slowly and went inside his tepee. All day he sat there, gazing blankly at the skin sides, but seeing far beyond. Gradually his sight grew stronger. He saw a streak of flaming red which ran from the door of his tepee far away toward the east, and which obliterated all evidence of civilization in the valley. Thus did the Great Spirit evidence itself to Young Moon. The Young Moon of the government school, diploma, and civilization had died, and in his place was the Young Moon of the tepees and primitive, savage instincts.

Outside in the sun the other young bucks of the tribe sat and awaited only a leader to turn them into heartless, ravaging warriors.

When the night came, an old squaw sat in the edge of gloom and firelight and crooned softly an old war-song. This was bad; not for years had this song been sung in the tepees. The old men cursed the squaw fervidly and bade her be silent.

"No, no!" growled the young men angrily, "she shall sing."

The old squaw sang again, now an old song of prophecy and golden promise. A great medicine-man, impervious to death, was to come and lead his people to the retaking of their own. The time was now ripe for his advent. It was the old, old undying cry for the Messiah, and as the old squaw ceased there was deep silence around the fire. A child coughed feebly as the smoke veered into its face. Somewhere in the dark a tepee flap flew back, and in an instant the old men were on their feet, with angry imprecations on their lips; for Young Moon, arrayed in the full glory of a chief on the war-path, was standing by the fire. The

old squaw ran to him. With both hands upon his shoulders, she gazed searchingly into his eyes. Then, raising a skinny claw into the air, she shrieked loudly and called him the great one, the invulnerable, of whom she had prophesied. There would be much fighting and blood, and freedom, now, she cried. The days of sickening calm were over. The old men sat and smoked, as impassive as graven images; but the young braves slid noiselessly away in the dark, and returned wearing the black feathers and buckskin apron of the Crow dancers. An old chief by the fire deliberately took the pipe from his mouth. "Young Moon looks well in the feathers—almost as well as a cow in harness," he said pleasantly.

"And Little Wolf is also a great man," retorted Young Moon, hotly. "He works well in the field, almost as well as the women."

Little Wolf emitted a puff of smoke from between set teeth for answer.

"Why does not the great chief answer?" queried Young Moon, sneeringly. "A great man—a man who sells as much hay as does Little Wolf—should talk much when the talk is to him."

Still, Little Wolf gazed stolidly over the fire, apparently mute and deaf.

"Come, Little Wolf, you do not answer," continued Young Moon, sweetly. "Have the fences of the white man run across our great chief's mouth that he is dead of tongue as well as of heart?"

Little Wolf took the pipe from his mouth and arose.

"Listen, boy," said he, solemnly, "to one who saw your father die ere you could speak. Your talk is the talk that all the bucks utter when their years are of a certain number. So have I heard many talk; but all who have done as they talked are dead now. Listen to my speech, Young Moon, and the rest of you, for I know of what I speak. I, too, was once of the age when the thirst for the white man's scalp was strong. But the white man still has his scalp, and I—I am thankful to raise corn on the land he leaves to me."

The young men, as they looked, saw only a senile old man gabbling aimlessly, while in Young Moon was their ideal of youthful strength and leadership.

Then Young Moon threw off all caution. He was wild now—wild with the old red desire for strife and bloody violence which had become almost atrophied in him—and he would make the other young men wild also. He threw back his head and gave vent to a cry such as had never in his day echoed through the tepees of the peaceful Crows. With shaking, twisting body he began to lope slowly toward Little Wolf. With a shout he swung out into a semi-circle, and passing before the old men, returned to his starting-point.

"Young Moon! Young Moon! What is it you do?" cried Little Wolf, in alarm. "It is not the moon of the dance; it is not the time for the feathers. The white man is not a child for boys to make war upon. 'T is better to stay in the camp, where the food and the women are plenty."

Young Moon was looping toward him again.

"For you is the tepee made to stay in, Little Wolf," he shouted derisively. "Go there, stay there with the women. You are old; that is your place now."

He loped back in a slightly more pronounced curve. "You are old, Little Wolf," he called again. "Your time has passed. The old, withered stalk must move to one side when the strong young shoot comes forth."

Another brave sprang suddenly into his wake. The old squaw squatted herself suddenly and began the ugly, monotonous "Ay-yah, a-anah, ah-ya" of the dance-chant. Young Moon sprang forward as if spurred by some unseen power. His course now became a circle around the fire—a magic path on the ground for others to follow. One by one the bucks fell in behind. The young women came and chanted; the dance was on.

The old men deliberately placed their belongings and women in wagons and moved away to a new camp, leaving the old one in possession of the young men and their women.

Far into the night the fires of the camp showed the weird, dancing figures of Young Moon and his followers. Also, Young Moon, by reason of the knowledge of certain strange things acquired at the school, performed many wonderful miracles, and the young men also hailed him as the great medicine-man, and acknowledged him their leader.

Early on the morning of the next day they rode to the camp of their elders. Before

their tepees they sat mounted, and mocked the old men, voicing their praises of the wonderful medicine of Young Moon.

"So may it be," muttered one old man. "Good may his medicine be; but bad—bad for crazy young colts—will they find the medicine of the white man."

The young men laughingly turned and rode down the valley toward the Creek of the Rotten Grass, following which they would quickly find the white man—and strife. The young women, roughly discarded, marched shamefacedly to the new camp; but some who had remained with the bucks, although their husbands were not yet chosen, were driven in disgrace from the tepees they sought to enter.