Follow the Free Wind by Leigh Brackett

Author:Leigh Brackett [Brackett, Leigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

It was high summer, the time of yellow grass. The Crow counted four seasons, Green Grass, Yellow Grass, Leaf Falling, and Snow Falling, and the yellow grass time was the best of all. The land was open then under the hot winds, the rivers were fordable, the buffalo were fat and the ponies sturdy. Ambitious men went raiding all the year round, in rain and snow and bitter cold, but the yellow grass time was the bright season of the war road.

Jim looked over at Young Bear and smiled. They rode in a cloud of dust kicked up by the hoofs of fifty-odd horses which had lately belonged to the Cheyennes. They rode bareback. Horse raiders always went on foot, making it a point of honor to provide themselves with mounts for the journey home, so it was impossible to carry a saddle. They had ridden two nights and a day from the Cheyenne camp without stopping except to change mounts. After that they had driven the herd more slowly, but by then everybody was suffering from the inevitable wounds of the successful horse raid. Every once in a while Jim or Young Bear or one of the eight other warriors would get down stiffly and walk a while.

But if their backsides were blistered, their hearts were high. Young Bear and two others had won honors, cutting out picketed horses from the enemy camp. Jim had picked out a bunch, probably belonging to a single individual, that looked above average for loose stock, and run them off. By way of an added gift of fortune, they had encountered three members of a Cheyenne raiding party butchering a buffalo and killed them all. Most important, nobody had been hurt. Jim carried the pipe this time, which meant that all the responsibility was his, and the success would add very nicely to the Antelope’s honors and prestige.

The Antelope had done well. Jim was not more brave than most of the Crow warriors. Nobody could be. But he was not bound by their rigid traditions and habits of thought. By a simple application of the white man’s methods of fighting he gained great success on the war road. He struck the coups required to make him a chief, which meant that he had earned his spurs as a war captain. In addition to this, because of his association with Kipp, he was able to get his people better returns for their furs than they had ever had.

These things were his own doing, but part of his success was in the lucky accident of his “family.” It was large, and to an Indian relatives were power. The worst thing a Crow could be was an orphan without relations. That had been Young Bear’s curse, and because of it he remained poor and undistinguished until—after they had become firm friends anyway in the course of Jim’s education—Young Bear proposed that he and Jim become blood brothers. Jim was happy to agree, and by this simple

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