Talmage Powell
The Talking Medicine

As the first arrow whispered past his scalp to thunk into the side of his wagon, Sam Tucker decided the major’s warning had been sensible. Action and mental cogitation went hand in hand for a man who had lived for some time by his wits. Sam kicked his coffee pot over the campfire and rolled to one side as a second arrow hissed at him.

The fire died with a quick sizzle. Lying in the shadows with six-shooter in hand and heart pounding so hard they must have heard it in China, Sam scanned the night before him. How many Indians there were or where they had come from were questions to be answered later. Doubtless it was a small party, perhaps a single scout, who had seen his fire.

The major in command of the fort had warned him. “Somebody has been getting rifles into Crow hands. Not healthy for a lone white man to wander up those back-trails alone. We’re doing everything we can to avoid incidents, while trying to get at the bottom of this rifle running. We’ve got to stop it soon or it’ll mean the massacre of outlying settlers, a small war with the Crow Indians. I don’t want any fool medicine pedlars touching off the powder keg.”

That had been final.

Sam had stalked from the major’s office. He had promised to meet Buffalo Biddix, the herb gatherer, on Macklin’s Branch. The old man was depending on it. If there was Indian trouble in the air, it was good reason to be at the appointed spot. Old Buffalo was just the kind to take root at the meeting place, come hell or high danger. Biddix would stay put, depending on Sam, worrying about him, until food was gone — or until marauding Crow braves had spotted him and combed his hair with a scalping knife.

Sam had therefore gone up the branch. He had waited now for two days, the cloud of worry about Buffalo gathering ever heavier in his mind. Now he wondered if the silent treachery of the arrows was a clue to Buffalo’s fate.

Sam inched forward, eyes straining into the velvet of the star-studded night. He had a yen to say: “Look, you characters, I’m one-quarter Cherokee myself, from my mother’s father. Couldn’t we pow-wow over this thing?”

He saw a flicker of movement at the edge of the clearing. He followed it with the six-shooter; then he squeezed the trigger. He heard the scream of a wounded man, and experienced quick amazement at his marksmanship.

He was already rolling to one side, and a rifle was cracking down near the creek. He could hear the slugs beeing around his head and wondered if attack from this new quarter meant there was a whole party of them.

He clamped his teeth to keep them from rattling like a pair of wild castanets, and made his way on his belly toward the creek.

The rifle was still now. Only the gurgling water broke the silence of the night. Then a twig snapped. Sam began shooting, and the rifle talked back.

Again silence, followed by the thud of light, running feet. A horse whickered; then its hoofbeats crossed the creek and the silence dissolved that noise too.

Sam reloaded his gun, gulping for breath; sweat was streaming down his face, and he thought with some respect of the man who’d occupied his skin a few minutes ago.

Cautious, he moved to the creek. The moon rode free of clouds and spilled cool silver on him. No more warriors threatened his life, and he breathed easier.

In the soft bank of the creek, he found a moccasin print. He bent and examined it closely. He wouldn’t forget it in a hurry. The Indian had been big-footed, and he had left a distinct mark. At some time in the past, the moccasin had been cut across the sole, perhaps on a sharp rock. It had been laced back together with a fine rawhide thong, leaving a faint ridge across the sole which had imprinted itself in the soft earth.

Sam moved from the creek to prowl toward the warrior who had screamed in reply to the pistol’s bark. He held his gun at full cock, his nerves so tense the whisper of a leaf might have caused him to squeeze the trigger. He found the warrior two dozen yards from the camp site. The buck was tall, lithe, and bronze. A Crow. Sam knew that from the paint markings and sensed it from the odor.

His lucky slug had caught the Crow squarely in the chest. Bright crimson shone against the duller red of the Indian’s flesh, and a thread of blood crawled from the corner of the wide, thin-lipped mouth.

Sam knelt beside the Indian, and the brave opened his eyes. They were already glazing in death. The brave tried to spit in Sam’s face.

“The other white man,” Sam demanded. “The old one with the jacket of buffalo hide.”

“He will die,” the Indian made it sound like a satisfied curse. “Running Elk will kill him.”

With that, the brave died.

Sam sat hack on his haunches. He thumbed his wide-brimmed hat hack. He tried to reconcile the two statements. “He will die.” That meant Buffalo was in the hands of the Indians, but still alive. Still a chance for him, if his young partner could get to him.

Then his mind came back to the second statement. “Running Elk will kill him.” But Running Elk was a Sioux chief, and the Sioux hated the Crow.

Sam was not a man who experienced any great yen for danger, violence, or hard labor. But the task was clearly before him. Seek out Running Elk; then if Buffalo was there, bring him out to safety.

Sam considered the warrior, who possessed one thing that might he very handy in powwowing with the Sioux. With a grimace and gulping effort to keep his stomach in place, Sam unsheathed his knife and lifted the Crow’s scalp.

Bathing in the crystal clear waters of T’yehkeela were three Indian maids. Each was beautiful as they splashed and shouted laughter. But one, Singing Waters, was of a perfection to reduce the other two to beggary. She was tall, lithe, straight as the arrow of a chieftain. The water and sunlight made satin of the deep rose of her naked shoulders. Her hair was long, gleaming black, falling about the delicate planes of her face, a glinting cloud free of its braid at the moment.

Then one of the girls saw the horseman come over the rise, uttered a shriek, and the three covered themselves to their necks with water and stared fearfully.

They saw a heavy, big-hocked horse that would have been more in place before a wagon than under a saddle. They saw a rangy, big-boned young man astride the animal. He was handsome, with a square face, deeply weathered, and dark brown eyes. He wore a black mustache and his hair long in the fashion of the buffalo hunters, curling from under his hat about his neck.

He wore a rather dandified suit of black, dusty now from the trail. And the girls did not miss the fact that he was heavily armed, with a knife and two sixguns showing under his open coat, and a carbine in his saddle boot.

Singing; Waters gasped. From the stranger’s saddle hung a gory hank of black hair — a scalp.

The stranger saw the girls and endured a moment of confusion before a slow smile lighted his face. Singing Waters felt the fascination of the smile. Even through her fear, she found herself thinking the smile was nice.

The stranger swept off his wide-brimmed hat and bowed in the saddle. In the most imperfect Sioux Singing Waters had ever heard, he said, “My spirit is suddenly refreshed and weariness drops from me.”

That, Singing Waters thought grimly as she got control of her fear, is exactly what we’re afraid of.

In English learned at the mission school, she said, “Go away!”

The stranger’s eyes rested on her. She felt warm color come into her cheeks. Strangely, her fear took wings on the afternoon breeze. Then she glanced guiltily, as if fearful her companions could read the unbidden thoughts the stranger’s smile tricked into her mind.

Grinning, the stranger said, “I come as a friend, seeking the great chief Running Elk.”

“His camp is down the vale,” Singing Waters said. “His braves will spit you over their fires if you do not go away.”

“A horrible fate,” he managed in his mutilated Sioux, “but one to which I might readily resign myself with the image of creation’s masterpiece fresh in my mind.”

Before Singing Waters could reply, he had gallantly turned his horse, his back toward the creek as he waited. The girls scrambled out of the creek. As she dressed in the shelter of a bush, Singing Waters decided the young white man was to be trusted. Not once did he steal a glance over his shoulder.

Sam Tucker was aware of the lissom Indian girl all the way to the village. Every time he happened to catch her eye, he felt a jolt. He wondered if she felt it too. He thought of her marrying some buck and having to do the work and carry the water until the young proud shoulders had grown slumped and old. The thought disturbed him strangely; but even more disturbing was the possibility of her being married already.

His face darkened. Misbegotten fool, he thought, you came here to find Buffalo Biddix, as loyal a sidekick as a man ever had. Is your purpose so weakling in nature that it dissipates at the mere sight of a perfectly sculptured face and a long, easy stride that means she has trim ankles and slender legs?

They came upon a group of near-naked children, who shrieked and ran. And before them a silence settled as they reached the edge of the camp.

The site was a niche of paradise, nestled alongside the flashing creek, sheltered by tall poplar and oaks, kissed by the softest breeze from the mountains in the north; but there was hell in the camp, too, for the white man who dared enter. Sam could feel the grimness in the silence, the pressure of eyes masked with stolidity. The Sioux were at peace, but this was not the welcome of peace. Rifles were already in the hands of a few of the Crow. Sioux trouble next? Sam felt his forehead ice with beady sweat as he thought of settlers in the remote coves. He had seen massacre once; that was enough to last a lifetime.

Why it should be so, he did not know. He tried to tell himself he was wrong, letting his imagination run away with him. But he had studied Indian faces far too long to fool himself. This Sioux would fight, like any proud people, only if they thought they were being wronged. And their eyes told Sam that wrong had been done them.

A tall buck detached himself from the crowd lined up before the tipis. He was tall, powerfully built, with flat muscles rippling across his shoulders, chest, and down his arms. He had the chiseled face of a fighting man and eyes capable of great anger.

The buck grasped Singing Waters by the wrist and jerked her toward him. He stood blocking Sam’s path. He said to Singing Waters: “Has this sputum of a sick fox spoken to you?”

Sam understood the words. But he remained loose and relaxed in the saddle, his hands crossed on saddlehorn, ready to reach for both guns at once.

“It was a chance meeting,” Singing Waters said. “He acted with only respect. Let him pass, Strong Boy.”

Strong Boy made no move. The girl jerked her wrist from his grip. Anger was in her face; but she seemed to realize that she would seal the white man’s doom if she shamed the warrior. She said beseechingly, “He is but a lone man who acted with humility, coming in peace. It would not he honorable to block his path longer, and certainly not worthy of Strong Boy.”

Strong Boy stood aside. Sam hoped his effort to swallow his heart back into place was not visible.

Usually gangs of screeching urchins would plague his stirrups, but they were held quiet now behind their mothers’ skirts as he moved across the compound.

He brought his horse to rest before Running Elk. He wondered if the old chief remembered him. Then he decided an Indian never forgets.

Running Elk, as a warrior, had killed the great bear. He still stood tall, proud, and fierce. Yet age had taken the flesh from his strong bones, leaving him gaunt, with the face of an eagle.

Sam dismounted with an assurance he did not feel. “Is this the welcome of Running Elk?”

The old chief remained silent, his eyes like live coals under his hanging brows.

“Perhaps you don’t remember the great medicine of Tucker.”

“I remember,” Running Elk conceded. “You came to my tribe with your bitter brew when the great aches came to our bellies, making the strongest man roll upon the earth with great moans.”

“I cured many of your warriors.”

“True.”

“I cured you.”

“And for that reason, your life is not forfeit now. You may dwell in peace until the sun comes from his resting place with the morning. Then you must go, Tucker.”

Sam faced the chief squarely with contempt edging his face. “Are these the words of Running Elk, the killer of the great bear? He would turn aside his friend who comes in peace?”

“Your own kind has turned you aside, Tucker, by giving guns to the Crow. Again the white man conspires against the Sioux. Your kind would set Crow against Sioux and use that as the excuse to bring in soldiers with the great thunder guns that roll on wheels. You would burn our camps and kill our people.”

“Has Running Elk been touched with the tongue of the serpent?” Sam asked. And the darkening of the chief’s face made his heart lurch with the certainty that he had pushed his words too far. Running Elk stepped once pace toward him, hands clenching as his sides. Tucker’s every muscle wanted to retreat, but instead he stepped one pace toward the Indian. They were close enough for their breathing to mingle.

Running Elk said, “We know you are as many as the sands of the sea. We know we cannot win. We can only die as men should die. Unbroken, unconquered. Now you try my patience, Tucker.”

“And you mine,” Sam said. He moved to his horse, removed the Crow scalp. “By this scalp I swear that the whites wish to live in peace with the great Sioux people.”

“Then why sell guns to the Crow?”

“There are evil persons in any race.”

“True.”

“And this scalp has spoken to me. It tells me you have in your power a man, a wearer of a buffalo jacket, and the scalp says this man is innocent of any wrongdoing and must be permitted to go with me.”

Running Elk regarded Sam and then the scalp with narrowed eyes. “You know a scalp cannot speak,” he said, but there was uncertainty in his voice. He had seen many powerful things of his own medicine man. And this white man had once showed them the most powerful medicine of all, rabbits coming from high silk hats, scarves ripped in shreds only to reappear whole. And the bitter brew that chased the great ache from the belly.

Sam shook the scalp. Distinctly, it said, “Release the wearer of the buffalo jacket.”

There was a gasp from the assembled men of the council at Running Elk’s back. Women muttered and hid their children and covered their own heads.

Even the warrior, surly-faced, sullen-lipped Strong Boy took a step back from his position where he could threaten the white man who had brought Singing Waters into camp.

“I lifted this scalp from the head of a hated Crow,” Sam said, “and rode far to present it to my good friend Running Elk. But he must do as the scalp commands.”