Never again would the epithet of Short Hair disconcert the boy, the young man, named Running Horse, for he had learned three days ago, at the stake of the Sun Dance, who he was, and now knew himself in his own eyes, honestly, not through the words that others might try to fasten upon him.
“I am Hunkpapa,” said Running Horse, speaking in Sioux. “You are not Hunkpapa. You are Minneconjou. Why are you here?”
Kicking Bear stepped back, angered. He turned to look at Sitting Bull, but the chief was smoking imperturbably, staring at the ground a few feet from him, seemingly lost in thought.
Kicking Bear turned to face Running Horse. “I bring the Ghost Dance,” he said. “I bring the word of Wakan-Tonka. I am a prophet, big medicine.”
Running Horse did not respond.
“Why do you not dance the Ghost Dance?” challenged Kicking Bear.
“How do I know you bring the word of Wakan-Tonka?” asked Running Horse.
Behind Kicking Bear, Drum tensed. He loosened the long-handled hatchet from his belt.
“Because,” said Kicking Bear, simply, “the Son of the Mystery, the Christ, the Messiah, told me so Himself.”
“How do I know you speak the truth?” asked Running Horse.
“You have seen buffalo meat from the spirit world,” said Kicking Bear. “You have seen shirts that will turn bullets.” He snarled at Running Horse, “What signs will satisfy you that I speak the truth? I show you miracles to prove the truth of my sayings.”
“Like white men,” said Running Horse.
For a moment Kicking Bear seemed paralyzed in the rigidity of his anger.
“My miracles,” he said at last, “are true miracles.”
“How do I know this?” asked Running Horse.
“You have seen them,” said Kicking Bear.
“I know what I have seen,” said Running Horse, “but I do not know if what I have seen are miracles.”
Kicking Bear, infuriated, turned again to Sitting Bull, but still the old chief seemed oblivious of what was passing.
The drift of this conversation, partly theological, was at the time lost on Chance, for it was conducted largely in Sioux, but the practical matter involved was nonetheless quite clear to him. There were two men present who wished him to die, and there was a confrontation taking place between them and Running Horse.
In his mind, not moving a muscle, Chance rehearsed the swift movement of his right hand to the butt of the Colt in his holster.
Suddenly Chance was aware that Kicking Bear was speaking in English, undoubtedly for his benefit.
The large Indian, in his Ghost Shirt, carrying the Winchester, turned to the young Indian with the hatchet who stood behind him. “Drum,” he said, “Running Horse brings a white man to watch the dance.”
Drum’s eyes clouded for a minute as he tried to make out Kicking Bear’s English.
Irritably Kicking Bear repeated what he had said in Sioux, and a look of pleasure crossed Drum’s face. Then, haltingly, the English sounds unfamiliar and not coming easily to him, Drum said, Chance thought with creditable pronunciation and grammar, “I will kill him.”
An instant after he had spoken, the handle of the hatchet had been turned in his hand and the hatchet, underhanded, was swinging backward, reached the tip of its backward arc, and then, blade foremost, began to swing smoothly forward.
The head of the hatchet would catch Chance under the chin as he sat cross-legged on the ground.
It would split his skull from the jaw to the hairline.
Chance threw himself backward, pushing against the dirt with the heels of his boots, at the same time moving the Colt from the greased, black leather of its holster. Before Chance had hit the ground on his back the weapon was in position and his finger had nearly closed on the trigger, but Chance did not press the trigger.
Running Horse had leaped between Chance and Drum and had seized the hatchet on the upswing and now the two young Indians, locked in struggle, rocked back and forth, almost over the spot where Chance had been sitting.
Chance scrambled to his feet.
Sitting Bull continued to smoke.
Chance stood with the Colt ready.
He saw Kicking Bear raise the Winchester and put the muzzle behind Running Horse’s ear.
Chance’s Colt chopped once and Kicking Bear’s trigger hand, blown open, smashed against the splattered trigger housing of the Winchester. The weapon leaped from his hands as though it were hot and he had thrown it from him. Kicking Bear, howling, reeled about, thrusting his injured hand in his mouth.
The sound of the gunshot and the howls of Kicking Bear brought several Indians running, those who had been watching the Ghost Dance, or resting.
The wheel of the Ghost Dance itself, incredibly, continued to turn to the left, as always, with the same unbroken rhythm of foot and chant.
Chance, looking about himself, uneasily, but feeling it the safest thing to do, holstered the Colt.
Drum and Running Horse still grappled before Sitting Bull’s cabin, grunting, their feet slipping and scraping in the dust.
Chance noticed that Kicking Bear, to his surprise, was now sitting down quietly, cross-legged, not far from Sitting Bull, philosophically wrapping a strip of scarlet cloth with his left hand and his teeth about his injured hand.
He did not seem particularly disturbed.
Chance saw that Sitting Bull, still smoking, was watching the young Indians fight before the cabin, no expression in his broad, wrinkled face.
Going to the chief’s side Chance hunkered down.
“Can you stop this?” asked Chance.
“Yes,” said Sitting Bull, puffing on his pipe.
“Why don’t you stop it?” asked Chance.
“It would shame the young men to stop them,” said Sitting Bull.
“Somebody can get killed,” said Chance.
“Yes,” said Sitting Bull.
Drum, natively, being a larger man, was undoubtedly stronger than the younger, more slightly built Running Horse, but the latter’s desperation and tenacity had made the match seem fairly even.