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WHEN THE TREE FLOWERED

JOHN G. NEIHARDT

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

All rights reserved--no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.

Printed in the United States of America

WHEN THE TREE FLOWERED

A one-room log cabin, with an indolently smoking chimney, squatted in sullen destitution a hundred yards away. Before the door a ramshackle wagon stood waiting for nothing with its load of snow. Down yonder in the brushy draw an all-but-roofless shed stared listlessly upon the dull February sky. With a man-denying look, the empty reservation landscape round about lay hushed and bluing in the cold.

Raising the flap of the tepee, with its rusty stovepipe thrust through its much-patched canvas, I stooped in a puff of pleasant warmth and entered, placing my last armload of cottonwood chunks behind the sheet-iron stove.

The old man threw back his blankets and sat up cross-legged upon the cowhide robes that served for bed, his gray hair straggling thinly to his shoulders about an aquiline face that had been handsome, surely, before time carved it to the bone.

"It will be good to remember, as you wish. The story that I have will make me young again a little while, and you shall put it down there in your tongue as I could say it if your tongue were mine. Too many snows are heavy on my back, and when I walk, as you have seen, I am like an old three-legged horse, all bone and hide and always looking for the grass that used to be."

Eagle Voice chuckled at his picture of himself.

"But it is only my body that stoops, remembering the mother ground," he continued, "for I can feel my spirit standing tall above the snows and grasses that have been, and seeing much of good and evil days. There are battles to be fought, and ponies to be stolen, and coups to be counted. And there is happy hunting when the bison herds were wide as day, and meat was plenty, and the earth stayed young. That was before the rivers of Wasichus came in flood and made it old and shut us in these barren little islands where we wait and wait for yesterday. And there are visions to be seen again and voices to be heard from beyond the world. And far away on the other side of the great water towards the sunrise where I went when I was young, there are strange things to be remembered, strange ways, strange faces. And yonder there is a woman's face, white and far away; and if it is good or bad I do not know. I remember, and am a boy in the night when the moon makes all the hills and valleys so that he wants to sing; but something afraid is hiding in the shadows."

The old man lit the pipe and his lean cheeks hollowed with a long draw upon the stem. The brooding face went dim behind a slowly emitted cloud of smoke, to emerge presently, shining with a merry light.

"What is very good, Grandfather?" I asked.

"It is what I see clearer than all the rest," he answered, passing the pipe to me; "and that is very strange, for many things were bigger long ago."

He thought awhile, a slow smile spreading until, with a look grotesquely young, he fell to giggling like a mischievous boy. Then his face went sober, and fixing serious eyes upon me he said with great dignity and deliberation:

"It is just a little girl I see, my grandson. I used to be her horse."

His only response to my laughter was a deeper crinkling about the mock-serious eyes.

"Yes, I used to be her horse, and I will tell you how it was."

It might have seemed that he had changed the subject abruptly when he began again, talking eagerly; but I knew that I had only to wait for the connection.

"And maybe there was an old grandmother who was getting fat and heavy because she could not chop much wood any more or carry much water; but she could peg down green hides and tan them with ashes, and sit down and beat them until they were very soft. And her hands were never still, for there were always moccasins to make and warm things of deer-hide for the winter, all fine with beads and porcupine quills.

"Or maybe there was meat to be cut in long thin strips and hung on the drying racks--such thin strips that it was just like unwinding a bundle of meat, around and around. The women used to hold their strips up, to see whose was longest; and the strips my grandmother cut were always a little thinner and longer than the others.

"And maybe there was going to be a new baby in a tepee, and it would need a good start in this life; for it is not easy to live on this earth. So the parents would think of two women who were good and wise and nobody could say anything bad about them. They would be grandmothers, for who can be wise and young too? And the parents would ask these old women to come over and help the baby. So they would come when it was the right time. And when the baby was brought forth in this world, the first grandmother would cut and tie the cord. Then she would clean out the baby's mouth with her forefinger, and when she did that her good spirit would get into the baby so that it would be like her.

"Then the second grandmother would take some of the inside bark of the chokecherry that had been soaked and pounded soft, and with this she would wash the baby; and if it was a girl she would say to it: 'I am a good woman; I have worked hard; I have raised a family; and I always tried to get along with everybody. You must always try to do the same way.' After that she would make it dry and rub it all over with grease and red paint, because red is a sacred color. Then she would take some soft powder that she had made by powdering dry buffalo chips and she would put this in a piece of hide that had been tanned very soft and fasten it around the baby's rump, so that it could be kept dry and clean.

"And always there were little girls who had to learn how to be good women; and a grandmother would teach them, because she had been a woman so long that she knew how better than her daughters did; and, anyway, everything was done better when she was young.

"The first thing this grandmother gave to a little girl was a deer-hide pouch with everything in it that a woman needs to make a home--a knife, an awl, a bone needle, and some fine sinew for sewing. And she would say, 'You must always keep this with you whatever happens and never let it go if you want to be a real woman and good for something. With this you can always make a home.' It was the way a grandfather gave a little boy a bow and arrows, a knife, and a rawhide rope for taming horses.

"And when a little girl was still so little that she could not yet do much with a knife or needle, the grandmother would teach her the rolling game. There was a stick about as long as my finger with three short twigs on one end so that it would stand up; and the little girl had to roll a small round stone at this to knock it over. It was very hard to do, and she had to keep on trying and trying, so that she learned to be patient like a good woman.

"Then when the little girl was big enough, her grandmother taught her how to make a tepee cover out of hide, and how to set it up with the tepee poles fixed together at the top just so; and how to set the smoke-flap at the peak to suit the wind and make a fire burn without smoking the people out; and how to take the tepee down quickly and put it on a pony-drag in a hurry, if there should be an attack and the women had to run away with the children and the ponies while the men were fighting.

"The little girls used to get together and play village, with their tepees all set in a circle, just right, with the opening to the place where you are always looking ; and there were buckskin dolls stuffed with grass for children; and the little boys played they were chiefs and councilors and warriors. Of course, there had to be horses."

The old man sat chuckling for a while before he continued.

"I think I was about eight years old that time, and I was getting big fast, for my grandfather would let me have some sharp arrows if I would be careful, and I had killed a rabbit already--maybe two. Many of our people were camped not far from the soldiers' town on Duck River . It was summer, and there was big trouble coming. The old people were all talking about the bad Wasichus and how they were crazy again because they had found gold in our country; and they wanted to make a road through it and scare all the bison away, and then maybe we would all starve. It was the time just before Red Cloud went to war, and the people were camped there waiting to see what would happen.

"It was a big fight, a big noise. We could have won a victory, because we all said that one Oglala boy was better than two or three Miniconjous; but some of the bigger boys over there got after us, and we had to run.

"So I let her lead me back to her village; and all the Miniconjou boys poked their fingers at me and yelled and wanted to charge me and coup me; but she picked up a stick and yelled back at them, 'You leave my horse alone or I will hit you.' And, of course, if I was a horse I wasn't a warrior any more.

"So I got down on my hands and knees and she hitched the drag-poles on me and packed her tepee on them. And when I snorted and pranced, she petted me on the rump and sang to me, so that I was as tame as the other little boys who were being horses too and helping to move camp away from the enemy country."

For a while, Eagle Voice seemed to have forgotten me, gazing over my head with a faraway illuminated look. Then he spoke slowly in a low voice as though talking to himself:

"Tashina Wanblee . She was a pretty little girl. I liked to play over there; and she said I was the best horse she ever had."

The old man's laughter trailed off into silence and the boy look went away.

"--And what became of the little girl, Grandfather?" I asked at length. "Did you marry her when you got a little bigger?"

For some time the old man had seemed unconscious of me as he sat there studying the ground, blowing softly now and then upon an eagle-bone whistle suspended from his neck by a rawhide thong. He fixed a squinting, quizzical gaze upon me and said: "That is a story, Grandson, and so is this whistle. I can hear it crying across many snows and grasses. Why are Wasichus always in a hurry? It is not good."

Then he lapsed into meditation as before, blowing softly now and then upon the wing-bone, polished with the handling of many years.

"What is bad, Grandfather?" I asked.

"My daughter in the little gray house yonder is good, but her heart is half Wasichu. She feeds me of the little that she has, and her man brings me wood. They say it is warmer in there; but I was born a Lakota, and I will die in a tepee. It would be well if my young bones had been scattered on the prairie to show where a warrior fell and to make a story, for it is not good to grow old."

For a while the bone whistle called plaintively to him as from a great distance, and he listened, staring at the ground.

"I think I did not believe what Wooden Cup said," he continued; "for I was young and the world was new. There was strangeness everywhere so that maybe something wonderful was going to happen. I remember, before I had sharp arrows for my bow, the way I would be in a valley all alone, and there would be no sound, and all at once the hills would be wrinkled grandfathers looking down at me and saying something good that I could almost hear.

"When we were camped near the soldiers' town on Duck River that time, I heard the old people talking about the iron road the Wasichus were making all along Shell River . And there was a long high dust of Wasichu wagons full of people always going and going to the sunset. It was part of what Wooden Cup saw. Little boys talked about it, and they said afterwhile all the bad Wasichus in the world would be yonder where the sun goes down; or if there were any left when we got big, we would just kill them all, and then everything would be the way it was when our grandfathers were boys.

"So our people broke camp and we traveled fast with Red Cloud until we came to the Powder River country. There many others came to us. Much of what I remember about that time is like something I have dreamed, but some of it is clear; and I have heard much that is like remembering. But I can see my father going away with a band of warriors; and I can see them riding on a hill into the sky, until the sky is empty and the hill looks afraid. I can see warriors coming back, and my father is among them. They are driving many mules that they had taken from the soldiers, and some big Wasichu horses. I can see the warriors riding about the circle of the village with Wasichu scalps on their coup sticks. I can see my father making a kill-talk, and I can hear the drums beat between his tellings of brave deeds, while the people cry out to praise him. And while I listen, far away now, I can see Wasichu wagons burning yet and the people in them dying on the road that was not theirs.

"The big sun dance that summer made the hearts of the people strong to fight and die; and my heart was strong too. When I got a little bigger I would be a great warrior like my father. The little boys played killing Wasichus harder than ever; and we had victory dances and made kill-talks about the brave deeds we were going to do.

"Then it is winter. The snow is deep and heaped along the creek. The wind howls in the night, and the smoke whirls round inside the tepee. Maybe it is afraid to go out there. I crawl deep under the buffalo robe, for there are angry spirits crying in the dark.

"Then there are nights when the wind is dead and something big is crawling close outside without making any noise. If I peek out through the tepee flap, the stars are big and sharp, and everything is listening. Trees pop in the cold. It is the Moon of Popping Trees .

"That was the time when the hundred soldiers died. Lodge Trail Ridge is steep and narrow where it goes down to Peno Creek. It is near to where the soldiers built their town of logs, and that is where they died. I heard it told so often that when I think about it I must tell myself it was my father who was there and I was just a little boy at home with my mother.

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