His eyes regarded Chance with hatred, with the inflamed savagery of a mad wolf, not a human being.
He snatched his hatchet, the long-handled hatchet, from the dust before Sitting Bull.
Chance stepped back. He was more afraid of the hatchet than the knives. He could lose an arm even blocking a blow, and bleed to death in minutes.
But Drum, struggling with himself, threw down the hatchet, angrily into the dust before his chief.
It was not permitted him.
Then, unarmed, with a cry, he rushed at Chance and Chance met him and they grappled, grunting in the circle.
“Stop,” said Sitting Bull.
Drum and Chance disengaged themselves and stepped back, breathing heavily, looking at the chief.
“It is enough,” said Sitting Bull.
Old Bear, by his side, grunted his approval.
“You are Hunkpapa,” said Sitting Bull. “Do not fight like drunken white men.”
“Give us weapons,” said Drum.
“Where are your weapons?” asked Sitting Bull.
Drum was silent.
“It is enough,” said Sitting Bull.
Drum looked at Chance. “There is enmity between us,” he said.
“All right,” said Chance, relieved that the business was over, at least for the time.
He knew that Drum had not fared as well in this battle as he had intended, when he began it, with his paint and proud dancing, when he had intended to kill Chance swiftly and skillfully.
He had been, in effect, disarmed, and he himself, to save his life, had thrown the weapons from the circle.
He had been forced to grovel in the dirt to end the flames that had burned in his hair.
It would not be soon that Drum would forget the encounter of the night.
The night had not been worthy of Drum, and there would have to be, Chance understood, another meeting.
There was only one thing to be grateful for, as Chance saw it. They had met as warriors of the Hunkpapa, and that meant that Drum would no longer kill him as he might a white man, or a Crow, silently, without warning, from ambush, for that would have been murder, the unlawful slaying of a member of one’s own people. By meeting Chance in the circle of the council fire, Drum had acknowledged him as a warrior of the Hunkpapa.
Kicking Bear had come to Drum and placed his blanket about his shoulders.
Without another look at Chance, or at anyone, Drum straightened and left the circle, followed by Kicking Bear and one of the two braves who had accompanied him.
The other brave stopped to retrieve Drum’s hatchet from the dust before Sitting Bull.
When he had the hatchet he said something to Sitting Bull, angrily, about using the fists in fighting, as well as Chance could make it out. He began to expostulate with the chief, shamed that his companion had not been victorious.
Indians might wrestle, particularly boys, for sport, but the folding of the hand into a fist and using it as a striking weapon was something that never seemed natural, or acceptable, to them.
The doubled fist, Chance then realized for the first time, is undoubtedly a learned use of the body, like swimming. It is undoubtedly relative to a culture, as unusual to those unaccustomed to it as the oriental practice he had once heard a sailor speak of in a bar, that of using the side of the hand to strike a blow.
At any rate the young Indian was protesting, seemingly on the grounds of Chance having used an unfair method of combat.
Nothing was said about Drum’s biting or his attempt to blind Chance, or for that matter about Chance’s kicking Drum in the stomach.
Chance decided he would like a smoke.
At last Sitting Bull, after listening patiently, shrugged under his blanket and grunted, meaning nothing, and the young Indian, dismissed, gave the matter up and, with a last look at Chance, and holding Drum’s hatchet, left the circle.
Running Horse picked up Chance’s revolver and handed it to him. Chance wiped the weapon as well as he could with his sleeve. He would take it apart, clean and oil it before morning. He slipped it in his belt rather than in the holster. There would be time to put it in the holster when the weapon was clean.
Chance noted that now, lighted by a twig from the fire, which the squaws had now built up again, a single pipe was being passed about the circle of men.
It was the council pipe.
“I’d better go,” said Chance to Running Horse.
“No,” said Running Horse. “Stay, and take council with us.”
And so Chance sat down between Running Horse and Old Bear, near Sitting Bull, and when the pipe came to him, smoked, and passed it to his left, to Running Horse. The full ceremony of the pipe was performed only by Sitting Bull, Old Bear and certain of the older men in the circle. Chance did what he saw most of the others do, simply take a puff or two, acknowledging the council and their role in it, and passing the pipe on.
The smoking and the waiting took time, and Chance saw that few decisions would be likely to be reached in a state of anger or emotion. One had time to think, to settle oneself, to consider matters at some length before beginning to speak of them.
But before the talk began, an Indian, only a boy, came to the side of Old Bear. He said to him, very softly. “Come to your lodge.”
“There is council,” said Old Bear, angrily. Had the young no understanding, no manners in these days?
“Come to your lodge,” repeated the boy.
Grunting, Old Bear stood up and made his way back through the hunched figures of the Indians sitting in their blankets about the fire.
Vaguely Chance wondered what the matter was. He saw Running Horse apprehensively look after Old Bear.
The council at last, the first smoking done, began, and Chance, with his sparse knowledge of Sioux, struggled to follow the proceedings.
Chance and Running Horse, after the council, made their way in silence back toward Running Horse’s cabin.
There had been anger at the rations not having been distributed, and some of the Indians had feared that this meant the soldiers would soon attack, to fill them, an inference which Sitting Bull, with his remarkable and unruffled common sense, tried to discourage. He could not, of course, foresee the events of the following morning.
The Indians themselves, on the whole, though they stood ready to fight if necessary, defending themselves, their chief and their families, were not yet inclined, to Chance’s relief, to put the matter of the rations on rifle muzzle terms.