Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 (17 page)

           
“Those are good words,” Sam praised
him. “They will be true words in the times that you will see when you are
grown. But now you are a boy. You are brave, but you are the youngest of all
who came here.”

           
“That is true,” assented the boy,
with dignity.

           
“Then do a thing for me. Speak to
this man they call Eagle Wing. Say to him that he must go away. Say to him that
he must never come back to
Twilight
Town
. Say to him that he is like a dead man to
his own town and his own people, because he was their secret enemy and tried to
hurt them so that he could get what he wanted.”

           
The straight, slim young body
shifted around to confront Eagle Wing. The medicine man scowled down from his
height at the youngster.

           
“You do not dare say those things to
me,” he growled.

           
“I dare say them,” said the boy
steadily. “Eagle Wing, go away from us. Go away from
Twilight
Town
. All that the white hunter said is true. You must never come back. You
are dead to us.”

           
They gazed into each other’s eyes,
Eagle Wing as deadly furious as a trapped, wounded beast, the boy with
confident dignity that would have done credit to Chief Woodpecker himself. Then
Eagle Wing stepped aside, turned his back, and walked slowly from among the
gathered warriors.

           
At
Twilight
Town
, the people were pulling down the logs of the stockade that they needed
no more.

           
Those stout, deeply planted defenses
were hard to uproot. A party of workers assailed the logs one by one. Women dug
at the earth around the bottom, loosening it. Then several of the strongest men
pulled and strained together until the log came out of its hole and, to the
accompaniment of loud shouts, was thrown flying to one side. Other ready hands
picked it up and bore it to a pile of others. That great stack of wood, that
had been a protection against Giluhda, would serve many warm fires when winter
came.

           
In an open space among the houses,
half a dozen fires were blazing. The best cooks among the women of
Twilight
Town
saw to the roasting of several newly killed deer, dozens of partridges
and pigeons, and whole strings of fish. More women heaped fire over upturned
clay bowls, each bowl covering a loaf of corn bread ready for the baking. Three
or four busily cracked nuts and stirred them into pots of fresh water, to make
sweet cream for relishing the bread. At sundown, the whole of the Twilight
People would feast and dance and sing to celebrate the destruction of Giluhda.

           
Laughter, whoops and chattering
conversation resounded everywhere, such as Sam never remembered hearing among
Indians. He stood with Woodpecker and Otter in front of the
chiefs
house, and these two men seemed to Sam to be the only sober-faced dwellers in
the whole town.

           
“My son,” said Woodpecker, “you have
done what you came here to do. Now will you go back to the east, across the
mountains to the home of your own people?”

           
“Chief,” replied Sam, “it is right
for me to go. But I am not glad in my heart when I think of going. I will
remember my friends, the Twilight People.”

           
“And we will remember you, my son,”
promised the chief. “We will praise your bravery and your friendship. We will
tell our children about you, so that they will try to do brave things the way
you would do them. We will remember your wisdom and your strength, and the
thoughts will help us when we decide things for ourselves.”

           
“Chief, you make my heart glad
again,” said Sam. “In my own country, I will say that the Twilight

           
People are a good people. I will say
that I am glad to call the Twilight People my friends.”

           
“Say this, too, when you talk to
your chiefs,” said Woodpecker. “We know that the tribes everywhere are choosing
between the Red Coats and the White Coats in the war that is being fought.
Because you helped us, we, the Twilight People, will be friends of the Red
Coats. We will tell that to other Cherokees, so that they will be friends of
the Red Coats, too. And they will listen. When you Red Coats fight the White Coats,
you need not be afraid that the Cherokees will fight you, too.”

           
“Those will be good words for my
chiefs to hear,” said Sam. “I will be at the feast tonight, and go in the
morning. When a man must leave his friends, it is best to leave quickly.”

           
“Then we will send warriors with you
to the next town,” Woodpecker announced. “They will hunt meat for you, because
your fire-weapon was used to kill Giluhda. They will speak for you to the chief
of the next town, so that he will know that your heart is good, and that the
Red Coats must be his friends. They will ask him to send some of his warriors
to guide you on. At each town, when they hear your story, the Cherokees will be
your friends and send companions on your next journey toward your home.”

           
“Chief, may I speak?” asked Otter.

           
“Speak.”

           
“Chief, I will go with my brother
when he leaves here. But at the next town, I will not turn back with the others
you send. I will go with him all the way to his own home. I will guide him
there as I guided him here.”

           
Sam’s heart leaped with joy.

           
“Then the long journey will seem
short,” he said, “and the hard travel will seem light, because Otter is with
me. Half my strength in fighting Giluhda was Otter’s strength, and half my
wisdom was Otter’s wisdom, and half my courage was Otter’s courage.”

           
“My brother,” said Otter, holding
out his hand.

           
It is easy to forget that American soil once
shook to the heavy feet of giant elephants. But from old rocks and deep tar
pits our scientists have dug the fossil bones of these ancient citizens— the
mammoths that once roamed our continent from Alaska to Mexico, and from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

           
We know that they grew bigger than
modern elephants, eleven, twelve, even thirteen feet tall. Their ivory tusks
curved in great sweeps. Shaggy hair covered them against the cold winters. They
were the largest land animals of their time, and they could be the most
frightening.

           
They possessed the strength, the
cunning and the long life of the elephant people. Nobody knows how long they
flourished on our prairies and in our forests, but certainly they were here
when the Indians came, and perhaps a few of
them survived almost to the time of the first white colonists.

           
Some scholars and scientists believe
that, had
Columbus
gone inland on the North American
continent, he would have met these monsters. The Indians talked about them. And
one early English explorer vowed that he saw elephants in
America
, and perhaps he did.

           
It is not impossible that a last
mammoth remained alive until two hundred years ago. To face and fight such a
creature would be the greatest of adventures. The thought of it caused this
story to be written.

           
Manly Wade Wellman Chapel Hill,
North Carolina