Chapter VII: The Holy Lodge

I

Europe has two groups of languages, the Aryan and the Basque, but the North Americans had ten, with hundreds of tribal dialects. Only the nations on the northwest coast had a trade jargon to unite their isolated villages.

The Indian of the hunting tribes made his whole life the exercise of a religion expressed in endless ceremonial, even the songs and dances being forms of prayer. The song was derived from the notes of birds and beasts, the ritual and the dance were a careful mimicry of the wild creatures, and the whole art of pantomine gave to the Indian extraordinary expressiveness, variety, and grace in gesture. So North America had what Europe lacked, the basis for a language of signs, in universal use, breaking down tribal barriers, welding all nations into one brotherhood. The population was so small, its tribes were so far apart, that war was informal, a hunting for trophies to please the girls, not a campaigning for conquest; but the sign talk made an immense telegraphy which carried news from hill to hill across the wilderness, scout's warning to the home camp, signal of tribe to tribe guiding the hunt, as well as an instrument in diplomacy, a vehicle for treaties.

So far back as they remembered their life, Rain had instructed Storm in the ways of her people, and they could spend hours together conversing in the hand talk without one spoken word. Their first earthly meeting occurred on a dark night when the fire was out; but when they had light to see by, they talked as deaf and dumb folk do among ourselves. Even when Storm learned Blackfoot, they would revert to the graceful, happy game, as one might turn for fun from prose to poetry.

Think, then, of Storm on his knees enjoying a bright fire, and the haggard priestess sitting up affronted because he had bedded No-man down on the other side of the tipi. "That thing, No-man," she sig- naled, "profanes my lodge. Chuck him out!" No-man! Such was the name which Thunder Feather had called the white man Hunt-the-girls, her daughter's enemy.

"Don't fuss," he answered, "here's your soup all steaming, and I'm Old Squaw who smacks the children to make them good inside. You shan't have any soup until you agree to be good."

Rain wanted that soup.

No-man did not want soup. He was Hiram J. Kant, a free-born American citizen, what had a right to die if he pleased.

"Not at all," said Storm. "You got no right to sneak out of a fight."

"What fight?"

"I'm Rain's husband."

"Some liar," said No-man with admiration.

"You're going to fight me, Hiram," Storm added, "knives, guns, or teeth, but you'll fight."

"Eh?" The American became quite cheerful with something to look forward to.

"Gimme that soup!"

Both patients were acutely disagreeable. Rain determined to finish murdering No-man the moment she felt well enough, while the trapper had but one motive for living, a duel with his nurse. Moreover, all three of them had to be fed. So the nurse went hunting with No-man's gun or Rain's arrows daily to get meat, just at the height of the season when the animals were either in love or looking after their children. No-man wanted rainbow trout, Rain said fish were unclean. Storm could not catch them anyway, and only the little fishes enjoyed the joke. The camas lilies made the pastures blue as a sunlit lake, and Rain turned rabid vegetarian, but Storm had never learned to use the rooting stick, shaped like a packing needle. The bulbs came up in broken bits. As to the cooking of them in a grass-lined pit, with a fire on top, that really needs a bit of practice, and Rain's explanations in the hand talk were merely an aggravation of his worries. His nursing was rough, his surgery a peril, his hunting a failure, his cookery a besetting sin, his housekeeping an outrage on decency, and in short his conduct of affairs most stimulating. Both patients in self-defense made hasty convalescence.

The worker, arraigned by his conscience and condemned by his fellows as a failure, sees but one side of life, while on the other spirits invisible may be praising his service as one of immortal beauty. The wise women, Catherine and Thunder Feather, saw the excellence of Storm's deeds, but also the error in his thoughts which brought his work to naught. He supposed his honor to demand a duel with No-man, while Rain's desire was wholly set on murder, and the trapper lived but for the single motive of a fair fight to the death with his only friend. Such thoughts were not curative to the sick or helpful to the nurse, but liable to end in some unpleasantness. Catherine and Thunder Feather prayed for help to Hiawatha.

He came, not to Rain's tipi, but to her place of sacrifice, that hill which like an altar stood in the middle of the Apse of Ice. He called the children to him, and when they arrived borne, in their dream, through the hush of the night, they found him. Remote and spectral under the moonlight, the walls went up to spires of frosty silver, and at their feet five glaciers crouched, half seen through a veil of mist.

"May the Light defend us," said Hiawatha, "from spiritual perils and in earthly danger."

Rain sat on his right hand, Storm on his left, their hearts at rest.

"I come to tell you about certain angels."

The story-teller's duty is to amuse and interest the folk, setting forth real and golden truth, not of events as though he were historian, not of philosophy as though he were a scholar, not of religion as though he were a priest, but of human character, adventure, humor, tragedy, and fun. He is the jester in a fool's cap, motley, and bells, but it would be a poor joke to trap the unwary reader with a sermon. That would be dishonest and the book a swindle.

Yet I did love Hiawatha's sermons, sitting with Rain and Storm to listen, moved as they were moved, crying a little at times or laughing with them, resolved as they were resolved to be more kindly, not quite such a prig, forgiving as they forgave a fallen enemy, and living as they lived on this earth the life immortal.

We are so busy gabbling and fussing that our guardian angels cannot get a word in edgeways unless we are asleep. And then we don't remember. The soul remembers. I deem the world would all go mad but for the good things which happen in the night, while the bodies of the dream-folk rest.

So Hiawatha's sermons shall make a separate volume, a better one than this, and for the time it is enough to specify that through this teaching Rain and Storm forgave No-man his trespass, hoping to be for-given some of their own pet sins.

Long after his children had gone back to their lodge, the Guardian Spirit of the New Race sat by the altar fire peering into the future, the great and terrible days to come. He saw his people play the Game of Life not for the zest of it, but for greed of the counters. In that game, as seen from the spirit planes, the winner is he who gives away the counters, the piteous loser he who stakes his soul to get them, but presently leaving the table, finds his gains no longer a currency in regions where a million of them will not buy so much as a drop of water.

II

When Rain was well enough she made clothes for No-man, but would not as yet speak to him or go near him. Storm was the nurse. He did the hunting also, but his wife sun-dried the meat and dressed the skins. He fished, but she did the cooking; he dug wild vegetables which his wife prepared and stored. When the berry season came he thrashed the sarvis, cherry, and cranberry bushes, while Rain sifted, cured, and stored the fruit for winter. She had many a hard day's work besides to entertain the clients, who came hundreds of miles for healing or for counsel. They had to be fed, bedded down, and listened to for patient hours far into the night.

When there was time, the day's work finished and the gear repaired, if light enough remained of a summer evening, Storm read the Bible spelling it out laboriously and aloud in English, then translating phrase by phrase into his broken Blackfoot and the sign talk.

As rendered, it was something of this kind:

"Jesus went up to the medicine lodge."

Rain could see the camp of the Jews: herders watching their pony herd up on the prairie, and down in the meadow, miles wide and miles long, was the ring of the tribal tipis, in one immense ellipse. There the squaws were busy flenching skins, or sitting in a merry group to piece together the covering of a lodge. The little naked Jew boys chased and roped dogs or went on a make-believe buffalo hunt shooting with blunted arrows. The little girls were moving a doll's camp, or cooking a let's-pretend feast. Out in the open arena stood a row of society lodges for the Pharisee, Sadducee, and Scribe societies where they painted themselves and dressed for ceremonials. The Crazy Dogs, or camp police, were called the "Roman soldiers," much too stuck-up to mix with the other societies.

In the very middle was the medicine lodge, an enclosure of sheltering branches which sloped all inward towards the sacred lodge pole. Close by was the booth where the sacred woman fasted, and there was a shelter with a sweat lodge for the three high priests.

"Jesus went up to the medicine lodge, and found a lot of dog-faced persons who sold birds and trade goods for sacrifice to the Sun-Spirit."

"Shame! Shame!" cried Rain.

"So He threw them out, and pitched the trade goods after them."

"Of course," said Rain, approving heartily.

"He said the holy tipi is a place for prayer, but you have made it an All-Thieves-Society Lodge.

"Then a lot of blind and lame Indians came to the medicine lodge for help. So He mended them.

"But when the big chiefs and medicine men saw that----"

"I see," said Rain. "If He mended the poor people for nothing, they wouldn't have to pay all their ponies and robes to be cured by the medicine men. He was spoiling the medicine business. Of course they didn't understand that He was really Morning Star, the only Son of the Big Spirit. Nobody except Scarface could ever scout the way for the people over the terrible Wolf Trail. O Scarf ace, Star of the Daybreak, Christ our Chief, lead us through the darkness upon that Path of Stars."

On the other side of the hearth fire, No-man lay in torment, half mad with pain, disturbed all day and far into each night by the tireless labor and worship. After a couple of months his nerves were torn to rags. He became hysterical. One morning, while Rain was down at the bathing place, and Storm spelling out an epistle to the people of Salonica, the patient called a halt.

"Say," he drawled, "see here. Whar I was brung up, 'way East, my folks they got religion. They took it bad, at one of them camp meetings, whar more souls is made than saved. See?

"They was mean as snakes to start with, an' if they lost five cents they raised the death wail. But when they got Religion the way they'd slander the unconverted neighbors and whine about their own souls! I cleared. You couldn't see my tail for dust.

"I'm shorely disabled, and heap sick, but I'm what's left of a man, and you're a white-livered skunk with cold feet, which daresn't meet me, either with knives, guns, or teeth."

There was just enough truth in No-man's words to stab, to torture, sufficient injustice to enrage Storm almost to the point of murder. And he had fallen so far short of his own ideals. A fugitive from justice because he was afraid to face the gallows; an outcast of the master race contented in his shame to be a sham Indian among savages; a frontiersman, but so poor a specimen compared with this wounded trapper; a Christian yet angry, jealous, full of spiritual pride mixed up with devilish hatred. He doubted if he was really fit to live.

His heart cried, "Is this man right? Am I unfit to live?"

No-man got to his knees unsteadily and swayed with weakness as he took up the weapon and loaded. His head swam. He fumbled with tremulous fingers, muttering that there wasn't room for two men in Rain's tipi. Then he turned himself round, confronting Storm, who sat with the Book clasped in his hands.

"Whar's yo' gun?"

"My gun?"

Storm's mind flashed back to his interview with a real bear, a much more formidable enemy than this, and how his faith proved then of better avail than any medicine iron.

"Perhaps," he thought more cheerfully, "if I hadn't been no good at all, that grizzly would have got me."

"Oh," he said, "that's all right, Hiram. One gun is enough. We'll draw lots, if you like, or you can have first shot. It's all the same to me."

"Huh!" the Trapper snorted. "Play-acting, eh?"

"Oh, yes," Storm sighed. "I'm just trying to play at being a man. That's all. Shall we draw lots?"

But if the trapper waited for that, the pain would master him. He hesitated.

"All right," said Storm. "Fire!"

"Of all the cold-blooded frawgs!"

"You'll need a touch of bear oil on that lock, Yank. It's 'ard on the draw."

Storm wanted that minute. He hoped it wasn't cowardly. Just one minute before--to serve in this life, or in another world?

"Oh, well," he said out loud, "it doesn't really matter. Aim low."

"I'm going to call your bluff!" cried No-man, and took aim. "Damn you! I'll call your bluff!"

"Too low," said Storm, "Hiram, that gun kicks!"

It did!

The recoil knocked the invalid head over heels against the wall of the tipi. Then he looked at the slow-drifting smoke as it swept upwards, and from behind came Storm's rather hysterical chuckle. "You'll catch it, Yank! A bullet hole through the skin of the lodge, a leak just over where she sleeps!"

No-man scrambled back to some sort of posture for defense, but when the smoke cleared he saw Storm still sitting, the Book clasped in his hands, a broad grin on his face.

"Still acting!" the trapper sneered, "showing off to yourself, eh? Of all the humbugs! Of all infernal hypocrites! I'll make you own to the sham! I'll----"

"Call my bluff!" cried Storm, exulting. "Try again. Aim lower. Ask Him to help. I always have to, 'cause I'm such a rotten bad shot."

"Ask the Devil!" cried No-man, wild with rage.

"Friend of yourn?" asked Storm, then with biting sarcasm: "Ask him then! You couldn't hit me with the muzzle against my ribs!"

"What'll you bet?"

"My burning-glass. You has always envied that."

"Agin what?"

"Your soul, Yank. My burning-glass to your soul, you daren't fire!"

"Done!"

Beside himself, cursing, raving, the trapper loaded, reviling the powder, wad, ramrod, gun, himself, and the Devil, then with a burst of frantic blasphemy, he advanced the weapon against Storm's ribs, and let fly. The lock snapped in the pan.

"You'd really ought," said Storm, "to have primed that pan. Why, Hiram, you didn't stand no chance."

The trapper flung the weapon out through the door of the tipi. "I ain't no crawler. And if you thinks you've won my soul, you're away off. It's done lost."

Storm laughed gayly. "That's all right, partner," said he; "we'll catch it!"

"Well"--No-man smiled at last--"it's up to you. You won. And I shorely loves the way you acts."

"Found! The very first thing is loving your enemy, specially when you hates him like poison as you does me. Shake 'ands on it."

Shamefacedly No-man shook hands with Storm.

"Mush. I'm getting mushy," said the trapper to himself. "Softer than a woman, plumb unmanly believing of things which ain't so. Sick, of course. But this man isn't no hypocrite. He don't scare none. He don't preach. His medicine is powerful strong too, by the way he's healing this yer wound. Now, if I don't roll my tail down to the nearest white men and have a fortnight's drunk--why, dammit, they'll have me saved. I'm off!"

He went, his hosts proclaiming so frequently and with such insistence how greatly they were relieved at his departure, that one might even think they needed some persuasion of proof they did not miss the fellow at all. Of course he had to earn his living as a trapper, and naturally must sell the season's takings, but why not trade with Two Bits? News came by various clients at the lodge that No-man was here or there, in all sorts of scrapes, trying to get himself killed in the most lunatic adventures among hostile tribes, yet with a charmed life. He hunted Death, so of course Death had to run away; always does if you chase him. He was trying to find a white man's camp and get a proper drunk, or so he told the Indians. Why was it, they wanted to know, that when by accident he came on a white man's trading camp, he ran away? Was he afraid of his own tribe, or was he ashamed to meet them? And why was it that, when the women made eyes at Hunt-the-girls, he always fled from the camps?

Then, dreading the very sight of the priestess, horribly afraid lest Storm should unman him altogether by making a Christian of him, the trapper came back to the tipi because he was lonely, homesick, hungry of heart, and desolate.

Always after that, when he went away for a season's trapping, No-man was full of pomp and ostentation to himself, as well as towards his hosts, about the big drunk he would have in the spring at the nearest trade house, how he was hitting civilization, what presents he was taking to the folks down East. Young America always proposes to do things, whereas the other white men are grown-ups content to let the accomplished deed speak for them. Still, it pleased the exile to dream ahead, and he found in that a satisfaction which would never come from a drunk realized, a visit to the civilization which he dared not face, a return to the home love he never would know again, or any other fair-appearing dead-sea fruit, which in his mouth would change to ashes. Rain said she hated the very sight of No-man, Storm proclaimed him a nuisance; yet they saw through him, their hearts ached because of the tragic emptiness of the life he faced with such gay valor, and when they expected his return to this, his only home, they certainly looked forward to his gossip.

While that sort of thing continued through six years, they might have realized, had they thought of it, how No-man would hardly be silent among the Indians. He had to make some sort of face, put up something, anything for appearances. Craving for sympathy, affection, respect, or even enmity, he could claim attention only in one way. He had no strength to boast of, no wealth to display, or power, or virtue, fame of deeds, or other merit save this: that his home was the sacred tipi, that his friends were the holy woman of the Blackfeet, and her husband the medicine man, Storm. He boasted of Rain's oracles and her miracles of healing as though they were given under his management. More and more the mountaineers and the warrior hordes of the plains regarded the sacred lodge as a place of pilgrimage. Yearly the Apse of Ice became more central to that Indian world which was swept by mysterious pestilence, ravaged by hopeless wars, appealing for guidance, and getting fire water.

III

As the work increased a guest lodge was set up for the use of the Indian pilgrims, who hunted and cooked for themselves. Only No-man was admitted to the sacred tipi, where his visits formed a pretext for a bit of meat now and again which Rain and Storm would share without too much offense to Hiawatha. Of course they knew that they were doing wrong--so much the better fun. Early in their life together the Spirit Guide showed them the life of an Indian tribe as seen from the astral plane. The slaughtering of the buffalo, the dressing of meat, and the feasting was all done in a cloud, a fetid mist caused by the fumes of blood. "Poor things," said Hiawatha, as he watched, "if they do not hunt they will lose their training for war, and the other tribes will rub them out. They eat flesh, they are strong, they have the intellect which leads them to slaughter and despoil their enemies, to lie, to steal, to cheat. Only the blood fumes cloud their intuition, fog their conscience, and take away from them that foreboding which warns the animals when there is danger. That Veil of Blood is the heaviest of all the seven which shut men out from Vision."

Of course that was all very true; but, on the other hand, the camas bulb is sweet enough to cloy, and though there is a great variety of wild vegetables and fruits, they are not an exciting diet. As to rainbow trout, they are very shy of holy anchorites.

But that was not the worst. Bears are unscrupulous: at certain seasons also vegetarians because meat is rather scarce. When Rain caught a grizzly raiding the holy tipi, her thrashings tickled him so nicely that he would fetch his wife to share the fun. The wood rats, a special nuisance in that district, the porcupines, squirrels, chipmunks, polecats, all shared Rain's views on diet, treating her supplies as a public larder. So great was their enthusiasm that she and Storm were like to starve to death, rather than relinquish their principles, but for the pilgrims who brought offerings of dried fruits or vegetables.

Had there been seeds to start a garden without any birds or bears to inspect the produce, had there been eggs, milk, cheese, honey, groceries, or cereals, there were no merit in a meatless regimen; but housekeeping at the holy tipi was not without its worries.

Still, it is a verity that with rare exceptions prophets, seers, hermits, saints, monks, some sorts of clergy, all kinds of people as a whole who visit the spirit-realms must abstain from eating any creature which is able to look them in the eyes. The most carnal among us observe that rule with regard to dogs, cats, and horses.

Howbeit when No-man came on a visit, his fleshly lusts were a very good excuse for a lapse from grace which the anchorites were depraved enough to enjoy. It was he who contrived the animal-proof cavern with a rock door which finally solved the problem of the vegetarian larder.