Nodaswana

by Roy Norton

 

By Roy
Norton NODSAWANA

NODS” he was called, not because he was particularly sleepy, but rather as an abbreviation for the only name which he had ever known, his Indian appellation of Nodsawana. Maybe he got the name without christening. When the Nez Perces got a white boy, they didn't go much on formality.

When Sandy Smith first saw him, he was about three years old and was in trouble. He was about as dirty as any member of the tribe which harbored him, and save for occasional light spots, where his skin accidentally broke through the crust, and save for his top shock of straw-colored hair, it would have been rather difficult to recognize him as white. He was standing outside a teepee at a safe distance—where things couldn't be thrown at him—gritting his teeth, sobbing, and kneading his eyes with two very dirty, very pudgy fists.

Sandy had been on a kind of vacation, the kind that suited him best. By selling some timber-land in the Olympics and reinvesting in a mining-claim, he stood in a pretty fair way to get rich. That is, almost everybody in the district thought so. So he'd been making a little trip over into Idaho. But that hasn't much to do with Nods. Coming back to him—Sandy happened to ride through this camp just at the time when Nods was feeling pretty bad.

If the angel Trouble had a job on hand, he must have felt like pulling a gun when Sandy Smith came around; because that was Sandy's weak point. Couldn't bear to see anybody, let alone a child, in sorrow.

Seeing Nods crying, out in front of the teepee, Sandy pulled up his horse, swung over into the side of his saddle, and took a look at such an amazing thing as a little white boy in an Indian village a hundred or so miles from anywhere; and, naturally, Nods reciprocated the attention.

The pudgy fists came away about a foot from the tear-stained face and then stopped. The eyes, which looked just like gentian flowers, opened wide, and Nods sized Sandy up for all he was worth. Then, either because he hadn't forgotten white folks, or because there was something about Sandy that went to his baby heart, he twisted his face into a smile that was like a big burst of sunshine over a rain-swept meadow.

Now all this time Sandy had been watching him with kind of a paralyzed look. When Nods gave him that smile, he couldn't help giving it back. Sandy's face, with its long, straggling mustache, was one of the set, steady kind that seldom changed; but if any one ever saw him laugh, it was sure to be a surprise. It was so unexpected, and made you think there were things in Sandy that you never knew about before.

Nods saw this, and without delay trudged up alongside the pony and held up both hands. Wanted to be taken up and away from that village; to go some place with some one who had a kind word instead of a kick for him. Sandy fairly fell off his horse, dropped down on his knees, and put his big, long arms around Nods and that's how it began. How Sandy and Nods became acquainted.

Nods gave a sigh big enough for a full-grown man, and, soon as he could get room, put his two little arms around Sandy's neck, snuggled his face right up against Sandy's, and held it there. And from that on Sandy could have died for him. It wasn't anything he was used to. He had, in his time, loved and been loved by lots of things, but not by a small chap like this. A pardner's grip, a pony's nicker, a burro's muzzling, or a dog's tongue licking your hand, are all things that send the heart along a little faster; but there isn't anything in all the great, wide world that will send it off into a gallop and bring the tears racing into your eyes like two baby arms around your neck. It's about the only thing that makes you want to cry and laugh at the same time—cry because the arms are so weak, and laugh because you are big enough to take care of them.

So Sandy was crying and laughing, when he felt something looking at him, turned round, and saw three or four blanketed bucks. But in all the crowd there wasn't anything white. They didn't look as though they liked Sandy much. And he, being of the border, frowned back, and let them know he didn't have a heap more affection for them. He straightened up all of his big six-feet height and stood, giving them back scowl for scowl. Nods looked from the bucks to Sandy, and then anchored himself around Sandy's legs, which was his way of showing that he didn't want to be left behind.

A powwow brought out the fact that this youngster had been left with an old squaw by a man who claimed to be his daddy. Said he was coming back in a week, but a year had slid off into the nowhere. This squaw was too old to do much camp work; but she wasn't too old to think a heap of Nodsawana. And probably about all the kindness the little shaver ever knew in all that year had been from her. The old woman, being not much use, had to subsist off the camp pickings, so there may have been times when both she and Nods went pretty hungry. It was easier for her to stand abuse, though, than it was for Nods. She was more used to it, having lived longer.

The minute Sandy showed signs of wanting Nods, the chief valued him highly. It took a day and a night's trading to get him, but Sandy won out, being the kind of fellow that never quits. Once or twice he decided he'd end the difficulty by going to war with the whole Nez Perces nation, grabbing Nods and riding off, trusting to God and his Winchester to pull him through.

As he was getting ready to go and Nods was waiting, Sandy heard a kind of moaning noise in the teepee where Nods lived, so took a look inside. There, with her blanket over her head and rocking to and fro with her hands clenched in front of her, was Nod's foster-mother. All the time that the trading was going on, no one had paid any attention to her. She didn't count. Nods bossed this job, too. He acted as if he had forgotten something besides the bow and arrows, and about three yards of string, which he had already brought out in the way of baggage. He crawled between Sandy's legs, where the latter stood in the door of the teepee, put his arms around the old woman's neck, and she made one quick grab, and held him close to her breast. Some folks have an idea squaws aren't like other women when you get clear down below their outer skin. Well, they are. Sandy was up against it again, because he understood how she felt.

Then he argued with himself in this fashion: “Although I do know how to care for mules and dogs, I ain't much up on kids. Onc't when I made a shirt out of buckskin for a kid, it took me six months. This old dame would be mighty handy. So she's in the play. She's goin' to be Nod's little nursery maid, because he likes her; even if she is a hundred and fifty years old.”

The chief didn't care. It meant one mouth less to feed, and saved somebody from knocking her on the head. And she, poor wretch, divided between affection for her tribe, distrust of the white man, and love for Nods, finally gave in to the latter, and went along.

Well, in the course of time, they all landed in Canada Gulch, and settled down into the happiest little party you ever saw. Before they came, the only pardner Sandy had was a three-legged dog. Before they came, an eight-by-ten shack had been big enough. Now all this was changed.

Sandy had the finest cabin on the gulch. The biggest in all the district. Had three rooms and a big porch, and some store furniture. Quit using tin plates and tin cups and tin spoons. Swore off on tin, and got so that real china, a half-inch thick, the real, fine kind they use in restaurants in big cities, wasn't any too good. Had chairs inside instead of sawed-off logs, or stools, or benches, such as most everybody else in that country uses. Hired men to help build this palace. And Nods was the busiest one of the lot, lugging sticks and politely offering folks a drink of water.

In less than a year everything looked different. First—and that was the most wonderful thing of ail—the old squaw, whom Sandy named Rebecky, got so that she was clean. Used to have at least three or four beautiful dresses, which Sandy bought for her in Seattle. No pale, weak-looking things, the kind some women like; but pretty, red ones, with big, yellow dots all over them, or right bright yellow ones with purple stripes. But she never got out of the moccasin habit. Couldn't get shoes on her, anyway.

This thing of getting clean is like getting religion. If you get it right, you get it all over. So it was there. Nods was 'most always clean, unless he had a lot of work to do down around the claim, or digging ditches for himself, or some of those other farming things that boys of his age always have to do. Sandy remembered how flowers helped the look of his place up in the Olympics, and this new cabin had plenty of them. Flowers 'most everywhere, which Nods liked and used to water, or when he thought they would look better somewhere else, pulled up and replanted.

Nods brought an addition into the family, not being satisfied with loafing around with the dog and Rebecky. It was a shaggy little burro. He called it Pete, although Sandy thought Jane would be more appropriate, because it wasn't a “Pete” kind of burro.

Sandy, wanting to give Nods an “eddication,” used to come in at night and laboriously teach him his A B C's, until the little yellow head would get the droops, and the eyes would lose their velvety brightness. Then any one passing the cabin would see the glow of a pipe, and, if he took the trouble to walk up the path between the sweet-smelling flowers, he would find a big, lank man sitting on a bench in the darkness of his porch, looking far out over the hills and the lights of other cabins, and either telling stories or holding tight a tired little boy who had gone asleep—very fast asleep. 'Most always at their feet was curled a three-legged dog, ready to fight for them both if harm offered. If you looked farther, where the lamp shone through the cabin door, you would probably see a bent old squaw, squatted on the floor, making something out of beads. When there's money enough to buy them, a squaw never gets completely out of the bead habit, and, if Nods and Sandy could have lugged all the things that Rebecky made for them, they would have been mighty strong. But into her ugly designs she wove her heart. And she won't have to go to an Indian heaven for that!

When one is happier than ever before in all his life, and has everything he wants, and all the love he has starved for through all the years, the heels of Time's moccasins are greased. Then Time is young and travels fast. The fellow who first pictured him as a slow, dragging old man, with a gait like a turtle, and toting a scythe, must have known him only in trouble. That's when he goes slow. Two years, which didn't seem more than an hour long, had passed over before Time went slow in Canada Gulch, then stopped and made each day a month, each week an age, and a lifetime a pack too heavy for the shoulders.

Sandy had a piece of pipe to mend, and came up to the cabin, on the point of the hill, when he heard steps. He turned round inquiringly to see a man as big as himself. And he wasn't the sort of man you like. One of those bull-necked, thick-lipped, coarse-looking fellows, who leers instead of smiles, and brags when he talks.

“I've come to get my boy—the one you call Nods,” he said.

The wrench dropped from Sandy's clay-covered hands. A minute before the birds had sung, the flowers bloomed, and the sun shone. Now the birds were voiceless, the posies without color, and the sun had slipped from sight. It was very still, and all the world was unreal and full of bloom. A blow in Sandy's face would have brought instant response, but this stranger, in a dozen words, had hit full in the heart, so that it almost stopped beating, and, for the first time in all his life, Sandy trembled and was afraid, and couldn't strike back. He looked at the stranger, at the cabin, and then up into the sky. It didn't seem that God could be so unkind!

This was something he had never thought of. He swallowed several times before he could get speech, then said, in a dazed way: “Your boy? Nods your boy? And you've come for him? Come for him? For Nods? To take him away from me—to take Nods?”

The man didn't really know Sandy, you see, or he wouldn't have broken it so confidently. Most men would have sooner gone against a Kansas cyclone, or a nest of rattlers, or a band of Apaches, than to stir up Sandy Smith. But this fellow didn't know him, and, to tell the truth, for once Sandy was taken off his feet.

Nobody knows what would have happened next, but just then, around the corner of the cabin, with the dog and Pete following, came Nods, talking to Rebecky. The stranger turned, took a look at the squaw, knew her, and triumphantly waved his hand at her. “I can prove it,” he said. “She knows it. I left him with her three years ago—over in Idaho. She'll tell you so. She has to tell you—it's the truth.”

Sandy turned and looked at Rebecky, and she looked at this stranger. But her face never changed a muscle. They all looked at her quite a while; then Sandy woke up. For the first time he was rough with her. He made three quick steps, leaned over and grabbed her so tightly by the arm that she winced, in spite of her Indian blood, and said:

“Rebecky, for God's sake, tell me! Did ye ever see this man before?”

Everything was quiet for what seemed another long time. The man grinned at her, as if pleased over all the trouble he was making, and she looked him straight in the eyes, and, as she looked, her eyes changed. Instead of having a quiet, contented look, like happy old folk have, they grew narrow and black and sharp and young. Then she turned to Sandy:

“Heap lie. Never saw this white man before.” Without waiting to say more, she stooped over Nods, who had stood curiously looking at all of them, fiercely gathered him into her arms, and trudged through the cabin door.

“You see, you're mistaken, stranger Sandy drawled gently, with a big sigh of relief. “She don't know you. You cain't have the boy.”

The stranger began to argue, in a peaceable sort of way, and he and Sandy sat down on a log. Then Sandy heard something “slip-slipping” over the grass behind him, and turned round in time to see Rebecky with a hunting-knife, about ready to end the stranger's claim on Nods, or anything else in the world. She was all Indian again, and was there to kill. Sandy grabbed her, and, although she was withered, old, bent, and small, and he a giant in strength, it was about all he could do to hold her off. She fought like a wildcat trying to get at this intruder.

Sandy got the knife away from her and turned to the man.

The fellow sneered, and said: “Put the knife into her, why don't you? She's nothin' but a lyin' old squaw.”

That started Sandy to boiling, and he moved toward him with that kind of a stealthy, deadly way that panthers have when slipping up on something. The fellow saw he had gone too far, and began to back off.

“Now you hike, and be damned quick,” Sandy said between his teeth, “or I'll put it in you clear up to the hilt.”

The stranger ran away, but in this last move Sandy had practically admitted his own defeat. Had practically admitted that he knew the man was within his rights. Otherwise, why Rebecky's denial, and then her attempt to decide the question at the point of the knife? That was convincing.

He turned into the cabin, an old, old man; dropped on his knees over Nods, who was looking at a picture-book, gathered him into his arms, and sobbed in the way a fellow of that kind does when he goes all to pieces—the big, dry, shaky kind, where the heart jumps and jerks, and tries to hammer its way out of the body. Sandy knew that Trouble had ridden over the trails to tear from him the thing that he loved more than the world—little Nods. And Nods looked up, and traced with his chubby finger a rivulet, saying wonderingly: “Daddy Sands, there's a little sluice right down through the clay on your face.”

The next day the sheriff came—alone. He knew Sandy, and loved him, and dreaded the trip. He knew that to bring a posse would mean a fight in which many men would die. He knew that old Sandy Smith, unless influenced by reason alone, would unflinchingly fight a regiment of officers to hold the thing he loved. But Sandy and the sheriff were friends, so it didn't come to that.

“Sandy, old friend,” he said, when Sandy had shut down the hydraulic's roaring mouth. “Sandy, God knows I hate this trip. I'd rather not be sheriff than to have to tell you. But you've got to give the boy to his father. The man's got the proof and the order of court for his child. You might kill me, or a dozen other better men who come after, but you can't kill the law. You know that! It's the one thing that follows a man in open fight, and is unwhipable.”

So it was that the big tamaracks moaned that night, and the flowers around the cabin drooped, while in company with them an old squaw moaned upon the floor, and a bent, wearied, heart-stricken old man sat on the door-step with his fingers clutched through his hair—robbed—desolated and alone. And away over across a ridge, in a dirty little shack, on a worthless claim purchased for a song, a big, coarse man brutally cuffed a tired little boy for sobbing and gloated over a triumph. Nods had gone from Sandy's life.

'Most all the boys on the gulch knew Nods and Sandy, and, naturally, couldn't help liking them. In a few days they got to know Nod's father, and couldn't help disliking him. Nod's father's life wasn't worth much about that time, and even now, 'most any day, he's liable to meet with an accident—a very curious accident. There are bullets cast that want but slight excuse to speed.

Of course, Sandy and Rebecky knew, within a day or so, where Nods had been taken. There was just one ridge—a low divide—between Canada Gulch and Poor Man's Gulch, where Nods' father had taken his claim. But it was several days before either Sandy or Rebecky tried to see the boy.

In the meantime, Sandy didn't work. He was kinder to Rebecky than usual, because he knew how the old woman suffered. He thought more of her for it, because it was perfectly natural that he should love anything which had loved Nods. He wandered aimlessly around the cabin, or out among the flowers, where Nods had dug holes. He gulped when he picked up the little A B C books, and when he was alone, out under the big, sympathizing trees, had long talks with the Lord, begging Him to show the way so the little feet might patter into the cabin again. He didn't need to pray for their pattering into his heart; that was open, and sore with desolation.

Then his thoughts took a new turn, and he was the grim Sandy that men feared. Rebecky understood, and she, too, feared. Perhaps it wasn't fear she felt, but rather the old call of the Indian blood. But, anyway, on the morning when Sandy dragged down the dusty Winchester from the wall, oiled it up, and filled the chambers, she showed sense. He was just starting from the door with it in the crook of his arm, his eyes fixed toward the other gulch, when she stopped him, and said in Indian, which they sometimes used when talking together: “Not that way, brother. It would do the boy no good, nor bring him back to you and me. Peace-pipes and the Great Spirit can make smooth rough trail.” He didn't resist when she took the rifle from his hands, and stood quietly thinking, as cartridge after cartridge was ejected by her hand, to rattle, unheeded, on the cabin floor.

Sandy finally went down across the gulch and up to the brow of the opposite hill, where he could look on that other cabin. He was hungry for a sight of his boy. On the door-step, dirty, unkempt, and dejected, sat little Nods, while at his feet, cowering in fear of something, sat a three-legged dog, which had already found the way across the hills.

Nod's father didn't seem to like the dog's presence. He was puttering around at something, when Sandy, sprawled on top of the ridge and peering over, first saw him, then he came over to Nods, shook him, and, when the dog bristled, gave him a kick. The dog wanted to fight, but the man beat him off to a safe distance, while Nods apparently cried. Nods' father then slapped him.

And the man came pretty near going out of the game about that minute. On top of the ridge, a long, red-haired fellow had shut his teeth, pulled a heavy Colt's from his pocket, and was taking very careful aim. Things he drew a bead on didn't live long, as a rule. Then he decided the distance was too far. Decided something else, also; and that was that he would go down and kill this brute, if it cost him his own life, his hope of the hereafter, and Nods. That boy should never be cuffed again. He would see to that, he muttered, as he crashed down into the clearing.

The man started to say something, but got a good square look into Sandy's flaming eyes, and decided this wasn't his hour to talk. Nods looked up, and with cries of “Daddy Sands! Dear Daddy Sands! I knew you'd come. I knew you would find me,” rushed frantically over and clasped his arms tightly around Sandy's legs. For once he was not taken into arms. For once there was no reply.

Sandy had an errand to perform. He wasn't the quiet Sandy of the last two years, but the old Sandy of the Geronimo and other border days. He had a mission.

And Nods' father read it and grew white, and lost his defiant grin. There in front of him stood Death. Just waiting a few minutes to do its work. And it would be done—the glint of the white-hot steel shone in the eyes, and told him so.

The Lord mayn't always work things out the way we like best, but, somehow or another, if you're on the square, He seems to run things pretty well, after all. Keeps us from doing a heap of things we shouldn't do. Now, about this time the Lord noticed that Sandy was going to make a mighty big mistake, so took a hand.

“Daddy Sands,” a little voice said, “why don't you take me in your arms? I do so want your arms!” Sandy, naturally, couldn't kill a man and hold Nods at the same time, and when he grabbed up the boy, the Lord, having interrupted at the right minute, kind of took him out of his madness, and led him into sanity. The red things quit floating around in front of his eyes. His brain, so weary and so tired for all the sleepless nights since Nods had gone, grew clear again, and he saw what a big mistake he was about to make.

Sandy finally put Nods down on the ground. When he did so, he saw three black-and-blue welts on the bare skin, where the unbuttoned blouse was open. Well—he would have a little satisfaction for that, anyway. He made one quick jump to where the man stood, his arm shot out with terrific force, and Nods' father fairly flew into the air.

Before he could realize what had happened, Sandy was on him, one hand on his throat and the other battering his face.

“I came here to kill you,” he rasped between his teeth. “You've been beating Nods. Take this as a promise that I'm coming here now every day, and if ever I find another mark on him, by God, I'll tear your heart out of your body, as sure as my name's Smith!”

It seemed there wouldn't be any necessity for a return trip, the way Sandy's arm was working. His blood was boiling again, and the desire to kill so strong that, unless the Lord had interfered again, it would have ended differently. It must have been the Lord who put it into Nods' father's mouth to say: “Let me go! Let me go! If you want the kid so bad, why don't you buy him?”

Sandy's fingers released their hold. Buy Nods? Buy Nods? He had never thought of that before. It seemed so incomprehensible that anybody would offer to sell anything as dear as Nods; that of all the ways he had contemplated in these last weary days, this had been the one way overlooked.

Slowly he climbed to his feet, and Nods' father, shrinking and battered and cowed, but hopeful for his craven, worthless life, also arose. Cupidity was in the man's every look. He was reaching the very end for which he came, and for which—alone—he had claimed the boy. This was his chance.

“Give me your claim,” he said, “and I'll deed you all my right, now and forever—to him.”

“It's done!” said Sandy, without a moment's hesitation. His claim, the richest in all this land, the thing that could produce the gold which would buy a king's ransom, could go as a ransom for this boy. Gold? What was gold? Nothing! A paltry metal, which, though all of it in the world were within his reach, couldn't pay for one clasp of those little arms that again hugged him around his feet, and were soon after transferred to his sun-tanned throat.

 

They went into the cabin, where Sandy, on a sheet of paper, wrote:

Know all men by these here documents—that one William Martin does hereby sell to one Smith, known to most folks as Sandy Smith, one white boy named Nodsawana. And this here thing calling himself a man—aforesaid, and whereas known as Martin—takes as full pay number four claim on Canada Gulch, and it's agreed by one of the aforesaid named Sandy—that he will kill this man Martin if he ever speaks to or claims this aforesaid boy Nodsawana again. So help me God.

P. S.—This is also a quit-claim deed to the aforesaid boy, and just the same as a bill of sale for a pony or anything else a lawyer might write transferring the boy to Sandy Smith.

They signed it in several places, Sandy wanting to make dead sure, and Martin, who was mighty pleased at the deal, being perfectly willing.

There had been a time when a paying claim, a big cabin, a heap of furniture, and a field of flowers, would have seemed just about all in life that Sandy wanted. But the boys on the gulch know, and will tell you that all these things were passed up like a pawn and without thought, when on the following day Sandy and his family rode away.

They got up to that point you can see on the very brow of the hill, where the trail dips off toward the sunrise, the morning after. In the lead was Sandy Smith, holding Nods on the pommel of his saddle. Next came two pack-ponies with an outfit, another pony with old Rebecky, and then Pete, on whose back was packed a big basket, in which a three-legged dog could ride.

Right up on that point they stopped and looked back, most of us hope and believe without regret, on the cabin, and the claim, and the flowers. Somehow it was like the thing you remember out of the Bible, long after you've forgotten the words; perhaps you know the place—where a man named Joseph and a woman named Mary, and a tender, smiling little boy, rode off and out into the big world, with none but God to care for them, and right sure in the knowledge that He looks after His own.

The man's arms closed round the little boy, the old woman behind was happy, and old Pete and the three-legged dog were willing to go along after, knowing that green pastures can be found for all things which are faithful to the end.