The Last Protest | Page 3

gazed stolidly over the fire, apparently mute and deaf.
"Come, Little Wolf, you do not answer," continued Young Moon, sweetly. "Have the fences of the white man run across our great chief's mouth that he is dead of tongue as well as of heart?"
Little Wolf took the pipe from his mouth and arose.
"Listen, boy," said he, solemnly, "to one who saw your father die ere you could speak. Your talk is the talk that all the bucks utter when their years are of a certain number. So have I heard many talk; but all who have done as they talked are dead now. Listen to my speech, Young Moon, and the rest of you, for I know of what I speak. I, too, was once of the age when the thirst for the white man's scalp was strong. But the white man still has his scalp, and I -- I am thankful to raise corn on the land he leaves to me."
The young men, as they looked, saw only a senile old man gabbling aimlessly, while in Young Moon was their ideal of youthful strength and leadership.
Then Young Moon threw off all caution. He was wild now -- wild with the old red desire for strife and bloody violence which had become almost atrophied in him -- and he would make the other young men wild also. He threw back his head and gave vent to a cry such as had never in his day echoed through the tepees of the peaceful Crows. With shaking, twisting body he began to lope slowly toward Little Wolf. With a shout he swung out into a semi-circle, and passing before the old men, returned to his starting-point.
"Young Moon! Young Moon! What is it you do?" cried Little Wolf, in alarm. "It is not the moon of the dance; it is not the time for the feathers. The white man is not a child for boys to make war upon. 'T is better to stay in the camp, where the food and the women are plenty."
Young Moon was looping toward him again.
"For you is the tepee made to stay in, Little Wolf," he shouted derisively. "Go there, stay there with the women. You are old; that is your place now."
He loped back in a slightly more pronounced curve. "You are old, Little Wolf," he called again. "Your time has passed. The old, withered stalk must move to one side when the strong young shoot comes forth."
Another brave sprang suddenly into his wake. The old squaw squatted herself suddenly and began the ugly, monotonous "Ay-yah, a-anah, ah-ya" of the dance-chant. Young Moon sprang forward as if spurred by some unseen power. His course now became a circle around the fire -- a magic path on the ground for others to follow. One by one the bucks fell in behind. The young women came and chanted; the dance was on.
The old men deliberately placed their belongings and women in wagons and moved away to a new camp, leaving the old one in possession of the young men and their women.
Far into the night the fires of the camp showed the weird, dancing figures of Young Moon and his followers. Also, Young Moon, by reason of the knowledge of certain strange things acquired at the school, performed many wonderful miracles, and the young men also hailed him as the great medicine-man, and acknowledged him their leader.
Early on the morning of the next day they rode to the camp of their elders. Before their tepees they sat mounted, and mocked the old men, voicing their praises of the wonderful medicine of Young Moon.
"So may it be," muttered one old man. "Good may his medicine be; but bad -- bad for crazy young colts -- will they find the medicine of the white man."
The young men laughingly turned and rode down the valley toward the Creek of the Rotten Grass, following which they would quickly find the white man -- and strife. The young women, roughly discarded, marched shamefacedly to the new camp; but some who had remained with the bucks, although their husbands were not yet chosen, were driven in disgrace from the tepees they sought to enter. II
"TEDDY" COLLINS, who rode range for the "2 O & E" Ranch, had come north toward the head-waters of the Creek of the Rotten Grass to head off a bunch of strays that had persisted in running off the range and was wandering far north toward the reservation. Collins had the herd headed southward again, and was driving it with language that was picturesque and vigorous down the river-trail, when Young Moon came with a gallop and a whoop over the ridge.
Collins was greatly surprised and very little pleased. Threescore fat steers bearing the 2 O & E brand were directly