The Lonesome Trail. John G. Neihardt

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      In the hush that filled that shadowed place naught but the heavy breathing of the people was heard. Little Weasel fitted a feathered arrow to his bow.

      “See!” he cried. “I do not cry about my stolen feather. I give another!”

      The bow-thong twanged, the arrow sang, and lodged deep in White Cloud’s breast.

      “Let White Cloud wear that feather in his breast so that the black spirits will know him! For look! Already he is among them!”

      White Cloud had fallen upon his face. Little Weasel dropped his bow upon the ground, and, raising his hands above his head, he shouted into the stillness: “Fathers, I have given feather for feather!”

      Then a great cry broke from the assembled braves and the women shrieked. But Little Weasel shouldered his way through the throng and went to his lodge, laughing bitterly.

      That evening the fires of the feast did not roar upward into the night. There was no song; there was no babble of glad voices; there was no bubbling of kettle nor scent of meat.

      For a member of the tribe had been murdered by a tribesman, and the murderer, according to an ancient custom, would be driven forth that night from the circle of the lodges into the prairie. And the people sat speechless at the dark doors of their lodges awaiting the signal.

      After a long and wordless waiting in the dark, the people saw the door-flap of the big council lodge swing open, and they held their breaths, for the time of the casting forth had come.

      Through the hush of the starlit night came Little Weasel, pacing slowly about the circle of the village, and the fathers of the council, slow with age, followed behind.

      Three times the outcast made the rounds, and when he began the fourth and last circle (for four is a medicine number), the old men who followed raised their faces to the starlit sky and breathed these words into the quiet:

      “Let the people look upon Little Weasel, our brother, for he has killed a brother and must suffer. Four times shall the bears bring forth their cubs; four times shall the lone goose fly; four times shall the frogs sing in the valleys; four times shall the sunflowers grow; and he must wander, wander. Then shall Little Weasel return and his deed shall be forgotten. Wah-hoo-ha-a-a-a!”

      Then when Little Weasel came the fourth time to the opening in the circle of lodges, looking toward the place of sunrise, he saw one standing in the dark who held a pony by a thong. And Little Weasel leaped upon the pony, laughed a loud, unpleasant laugh, and urged it southward into the night.

      Throughout the night the people in the village heard strange sounds. For at times somewhere in the darkness of the hills, something laughed a loud, unmirthful laugh.

      “Do you hear it?” the people whispered. “It is a wolf. For sometimes in the lonesome nights they laugh so.” But the people muffled their ears in their blankets, for it is not good to hear a wolf laugh almost like a man.

      All night long Little Weasel wandered upon the hills, holding his grazing pony and looking down upon the starlit village of his people. He laughed loudly at times, for he was not one of those who sadden with trouble.

      “How can I get revenge upon my people?” he asked himself. And as yet he could not answer.

      The pale dawn found him sitting upon the hills. Then he arose and mounted his pony and the three went southward—the pony, the man, and the question.

      A light wind blew upon his back.

      “How can I get revenge upon my people?” he sang aloud in endless variation until his question wove itself into a song—a battle song, for Little Weasel had not eaten, and hunger feeds anger. But the light wind sighing at his back made no answer.

      “I will go to the country of the Pawnees and make them angry with my people,” he said to himself, and this seemed the answer to his question until the sun had reached its highest in the sky and the wind had fallen and the yellow prairie had become parched and bare.

      In the afternoon he stopped in the glare of the sun and held one wet finger above his head that he might learn the source of the wind.

      There was a faint breath from the south. As he stood it increased, coming in little puffs, hot and fitful and dry. Suddenly it came with a great puff and boomed in the arid gulches.

      Little Weasel shouted with joy.

      He had heard his answer in the booming of the sudden wind. He dismounted, and, with a flint and some dry grass, lit a little fire.

      The great wind fed it and it grew. Then Little Weasel collected a bunch of grass, lit it and rapidly set fire to the dry prairie.

      Long, yellow flames leaped up from the sun-cured buffalo-grass, howled in the wind that grew stronger and stronger, and raced northward toward the valley where the circled lodges of the Omahas lay.

      “Now I will go back,” said Little Weasel, “and the fire shall go with me.” He kicked his pony in the ribs and pointed its head northward. The wave of flame preceded him, skimming the surface of the grass with great leaps, gaining strength and fleetness as the dry wind lashed it from behind.

      “Aha-ha-he-ha-ha-ha-ha!” sang Little Weasel, and the pony, straining its wiry limbs to keep pace with the yellow giant that ran before, wheezed and coughed an accompaniment to the song, for the ashes were in his nostrils.

      Over hills, through valleys, across gulches the pony ran, with the wall of flame ever a strong man’s bow-shot ahead of him.

      Now the Omahas, who had been deprived of their feast of victory the evening before, had made the feast fires roar upward throughout the village that day and much meat had been eaten.

      Weary with much dancing and singing and heavy with meat, the evening twilight found them sleeping heavily. And the night deepened and still they slept.

      But there was one upon whom the feast had laid but a light hand, and who awoke suddenly in the night with a smell in his nostrils, a roaring in his ears, and a great light in his eyes. He marvelled, for the feast fires were dead in their ashes.

      He arose, and when he reached the door of his lodge he gave a cry that woke the sleeping village and brought the people clamouring into the open air.

      Half the earth and half the sky were aflame. The stars had fled before the great burning. Booming in the strong wind, a wave of flame was coming over the hills and reaching long, spiteful arms toward the village in the valley.

      Spellbound, the people gazed. Then of a sudden a cry ran among them, for they had seen, through a momentary rift in the flame and smoke, high upon the eminence of a peaked, fire-blackened hill, a man standing upon a pony’s back, with his arms above his head. He looked prodigiously big and seemed to ride upon a flood of fire.

      Then the flames closed in, the smoke hid the peaked hill, and frantically the people fled from their village to a nearby creek, where they huddled in the stream, and where the loud flame passed over them, booming on into the north.

      When the gray of morning fell upon the blackened prairie, the people returned to their village. But at the opening in the circle of lodges stood a mounted man. Both he and his pony were blackened as with fire. It was Little Weasel.

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