Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 (6 page)

           
“Chief,” Sam addressed Woodpecker,
“I am of another people, and you will think that I have strange customs and
manners. But I do only the things I was taught by the wise men of my own
people. This is the truth: among the white men, a warrior does not often speak
of his own strength and wisdom. It is the way of white men to let those things
talk for themselves. If a white man praises his own bravery too much, his
people think him proud and foolish.”

           
Woodpecker drew thoughtfully on his
pipe, considering Sam’s words for a long, silent moment. Finally he spoke
again.

           
“White warrior, you make things
clear,” he said, with an almost fatherly kindness. “Perhaps it is good for you
to come here, to another people. You can learn our customs and follow them. We
will try to know your customs, too. What you tell us about this strange
custom—keeping silent about your own bravery—
makes
me
think that you only tried to make it seem a small thing to save Otter’s life—”

           
“It was not a small thing,”
interrupted Otter, forgetting his own manners.

           
“No,” agreed the chief. “Otter is a
good hunter and a brave warrior. It was not a bad thing, or a small one, to
save his life. Now you understand. When you pretend that you did not act
bravely or wisely when you saved his life, it is as though you say that his life
is worth only a little.”

           
“I followed the teachings of my own
people,” Sam pleaded again.

           
“We know that now,” Woodpecker said
encouragingly. “My brothers, the wise men here in this council, know that.” He
raised his voice. “Is that not so?”

           
“It is so,” they boomed out, all
together.

           
But Eagle Wing, the medicine man,
tightened his lips and gazed fixedly at the white youth. Perhaps, thought Sam,
he was displeased that a stranger had been brought to
Twilight
Town
, with a rifle and other strange powers that
he, Eagle Wing, did not understand.

           
Woodpecker rose, slowly and
painfully. He braced himself on his crippled leg and gathered his robe around
him.

           
“We welcome our friend, the white
hunter, who is a brother to Otter,” he declared.

           
“Ahi”
agreed a member of the
council. “He is welcome.”

           
“He is welcome,” repeated the
others. “He is welcome.”

           
“And we are glad that he is here to
help us with his fire-weapon,” went on Woodpecker. “He will be like one of us.
And now it is nearly
noon
. Let the women bring food.”

           
THE MEAL brought in by the chiefs
command was really a banquet. There were big platter-shaped slabs of bark,
heaped high with roast fish and venison. Corn bread was hot and plentiful, in
huge round loaves. The women passed it out to the members of the council, and
then .brought gourd bowls full of something white and creamy.

           
Sam knew what that stuff was. He had
seen it and once or twice had eaten it, in Cherokee villages near Brooke’s
Fort. The women pounded up nuts, shells and all, and soaked them in fresh
water. When the bits of shell sank to the bottom, the top of the water showed
covered thickly with white cream. Skimmed off, this could be used like butter.

           
He dipped chunks of corn bread into
the sweet nut cream and ate them. Woodpecker gestured to two of the women, who
came to Sam and offered more meat and bread. Sam knew that he must make an
effort to eat a vast quantity—it would not do to be discourteous now, after he
had been so thoughtlessly modest about saving Otter’s life and had been kindly
rebuked by the chief of
Twilight
Town
.

           
Nobody talked during the meal.
Cherokees felt that eating was so serious and important a business that it
should take a man’s entire attention. Sam was glad of this, because he wanted
to think and to watch. He looked stealthily at Chief Woodpecker, at Eagle Wing,
the medicine man, and at the members of the council, trying to judge their
thoughts and opinions.

           
At last the emptied bowls and bark
plates were carried out. A young woman brought Sam a pot of water to wash his
hands, and another held out a bunch of turkey feathers so that he could dry his
fingers as on a towel. This, he knew, was a sign of great respect to a guest.

           
“Chief,” he ventured to say as the
last of the women left, “I have been well fed. It makes me strong. Now it is my
wish to start looking for Giluhda, your enemy.”

           
“Ahi,
white hunter,” spoke up
Eagle Wing, “it will be wise of you to wait.
Rest from your
journey.
Make your plans carefully. See that your weapon is ready. A man
does not hunt for Giluhda without much care and thought.”

           
Having given this excellent advice,
the medicine man folded his arms and sat quietly. One or two of the council
nodded gravely, as if in endorsement of Eagle Wing’s words.

           
“Our guest spoke to me,” said
Woodpecker to Eagle Wing, in a tone of mild rebuke. Then, turning back to Sam:
“But it is good for you to be careful. Giluhda is an easy animal to find. But,
when you have found him, he is not safe to strike with a weapon.”

           
Eagle Wing grunted to himself, and
Woodpecker looked at him again.

           
“Does Eagle Wing have something to
say?”

           
“Maybe our guest has things to ask
about the animal he has come so far to kill,” said Eagle Wing with great
dignity. “Maybe we can answer.”

           
“That is good talk,” approved
Woodpecker, also very dignified. “Speak then, young white warrior. We will
answer you if we can.”

           
“I saw Giluhda for just a moment,”
said Sam. “It was a dark night, and he moved quickly. All I could see was that
he was very broad and tall, and had much hair growing on him. How tall is he?”

           
“He is taller and broader than any
other animal,” said one of the council gravely.

           
“That is true,” agreed another. “I
am old. When I was young, Giluhda did not hate the Twilight People, and I have
stood very close to him. I thought then that if one tall man stood on the head
of another tall man, the two would reach as high as Giluhda’s shoulder.” The
speaker paused. “Or nearly as high,” he added.

           
Two tall men would measure twelve
feet together, Sam reflected.

           
“I have been told that Giluhda has
an arm,” he said. “That was strange talk to me. Beasts do not have arms, only
men. Let somebody tell me about this arm of Giluhda’s.”

           
“Yes, Giluhda has an arm,” another
council member assured Sam. “It grows out of his head. It is long, and it moves
swiftly and easily, like a snake. It is very strong—he can break trees down
with it. But it is skilful, too. Giluhda can pick up a small berry, or a blade
of grass.”

           
Sam tried to digest this amazing
information. He remembered Lycurgus Meehaw’s suggestion that the Indians of
Twilight Town had heard something about elephants and were repeating it to
trick the settlers at Brooke’s Fort. What he had just heard sounded like what
he knew, from pictures and stories, of the elephant kind.

           
“I have been told,” he began again,
“that Giluhda strikes heavy blows, and kills all men he can catch. Yet,” and he
looked at Chief Woodpecker, “some of you have come into Giluhda’s reach and
have lived.” “I was one man he caught and did not kill,” said Woodpecker in a
deep, solemn voice. “He was chasing three of us when we were hunting. He caught
me with his big arm and threw me into the air, like an old moccasin. I fell
among the branches of a tree, and I dragged myself up out of his reach. My leg
was broken. I lived, but I am lame. I limp like an old woman. I cannot hunt or
go to war.”

           
“Not many of those touched by
Giluhda have lived,” remarked Eagle Wing.

           
“You have told me about an animal
that is large and strong and like no other animal in all this country,” said
Sam. “I hear also that Giluhda is wise.” “That is true,” said Otter, speaking
for the first time since they had begun to eat. “Giluhda is wiser than the
hunting wolf or the hunted fox. He knows when traps are set for him. When a man
tries to trail him, Giluhda doubles on his own trail. He waits in ambush for
the hunter. He has a strong, bad medicine against the Twilight People.”

           
“And I hear that he has lived for a
long time,” prompted Sam.

           
“Chief,” said the voice of Eagle
Wing, “let me speak of that to the white hunter.”

           
“Speak,” granted Woodpecker.

           
“My father and my grandfather before
me did not know a time when Giluhda did not live here in this country,” the
medicine man told Sam. “Even the oldest man in
Twilight
Town
does not remember hearing of a time before Giluhda was here. It is my
thought that Giluhda has lived always, here by the
Big
River
. It is my thought that he cannot be killed. He has a medicine that will
make him live forever.”

           
“He had a mate, and she died,” Sam
reminded. “But she was not killed by anybody,” said Eagle Wing. “She died for
some reason we do not know. Maybe a strong medicine was used against her to
make her die.”

           
He spoke seriously, as though to
suggest that he knew about death-bringing medicines.

           
“Medicine,” repeated Woodpecker.
“That is why we asked this white hunter to come here. His fire- weapon is a
strong medicine. We hope it is strong enough to kill Giluhda.”

           
He got up, slowly and painfully but
with great dignity. “This council is over,” he announced. “The white hunter
will be a guest in my house. Everybody will treat him well, and with good
manners.”

           
Sam idled the rest of the day away
with Otter. He watched the women of
Twilight
Town
go out with their clam-shell hoes and sharp digging sticks to work in
the fields of corn, beans and pumpkins. He and Otter went as far as the gate
and watched the work.

           
“What will happen if Giluhda comes?”
asked Sam.

           
“Some of the women watch while
others work,” Otter told him. “If they see Giluhda coming, they run back inside
the stockade and shut the gate and brace it with logs.”

           
“Will Giluhda come close today?” was
Sam’s next question. “We saw him last night, half a day’s journey north of
here.”

           
“Giluhda can travel fast and far. In
one day he goes as far as a man can go in two days. More than that, even.”
Otter gazed at Sam, almost pathetically. “Brother, do you think that Giluhda is
too big and strong for your fire-weapon to kill?”

           
“I only want to know everything I
can find out about him. It is good to know everything about your enemy.”

           
A shadow fell upon Sam from behind,
and he turned quickly. Eagle Wing stood there, his expressionless gaze level.
After a moment, he turned and walked slowly away.

           
“Is the medicine man angry with me?”
asked Sam, watching him go.

           
“I told you that he had a different
plan at the council that voted to send me to the Red Coats. He said the White
Coats would be better to fight against Giluhda.”

           
“When we were back there in the town
house,” said Sam, “I thought that he spoke very boldly to the chief.”

           
“Brother, you know the ways of the
Cherokees. A chief is a chief only because his people want him to be. They hear
his words and call him wise. They look at him when they go out to hunt or
fight, and they feel braver and stronger. But when he does not make his
people’s hearts strong any more, he is chief no longer. They choose another to
take his place.”

           
“I know that to be true,” nodded
Sam.

           
“But it is not like that with a
medicine man,” continued Otter. “A medicine man knows many things that are not
known to the people. He can tell what plants will cure sickness. He hears the
voices of spirits in the night. He looks into the days that will come, and he
brings back wisdom from days that are past. He is able to do things like that
because he has learned them from the days when he was a boy, taught by the
medicine man
who
was before him. The people can get
another chief, but it is hard to get another medicine man.”

           
“I see what you mean,” said Sam.
“Yet the word of the chief is obeyed. The medicine man only advises.”

           
“He has power,” insisted Otter.
“Many people fear his strong medicine.”

           
The sun had sunk almost to the
horizon. Sam returned to the big, comfortable house where Woodpecker lived, and
the chief’s women served him with another hearty meal. He felt weary, and after
he had finished eating he was glad to stretch out and sleep on a couch of
soft-tanned deerskins.

           
He woke at dawn, and went out to the
gate of the stockade. He was looking for a dogwood tree, from which to cut a
twig to make a toothbrush. Out in the fields rose a murmur, and Sam glanced
that way.

           
Two women were talking excitedly and
pointing with their hoes to something on the ground. His curiosity aroused, Sam
walked toward them. Timidly they separated and moved away in opposite
directions. They did not glance back at the white stranger.

           
Stooping, Sam looked at the ground
they had examined. Young corn sprouted there, but some of it was smashed down.
Something heavy had fairly driven those tender shoots into the ground.

           
Sam’s young brow crinkled with a
frown as he studied the marks. At his very feet, the hoe-loosened earth had
been tamped into a hard, round stretch. It was about two feet across, and its
edge looked uneven. A circular basket-bottom might have made such a mark, Sam
mused; but such a basket would have to carry a weight of many hundreds of
pounds.

           
“The white hunter wakes up early,”
said a dry voice behind his shoulder.