So the next morning Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck squatted in a quiet place in the woods while the young men, except Sylvester’s John and Owl-by-Night who were still hunting for the horse, stood on guard. “We could fight for her then,” David Hogganbeck said.
“We could fight for her,” Ikkemotubbe said. “But white men and the People fight differently. We fight with knives, to hurt good and to hurt quickly. That would be all right, if I were to lose. Because I would wish to be hurt good. But if I am to win, I do not wish you to be hurt good.
If I am to truly win, it will be necessary for you to be there to see it. On the day of the wedding, I wish you to be present, or at least present somewhere, not lying wrapped in a blanket on a platform in the woods, waiting to enter the earth.”
Then my father said how Ikkemotubbe put his hand on David Hogganbeck’s shoulder and smiled at him. “If that could satisfy me, we would not be squatting here discussing what to do. I think you see that.”
“I think I do,” David Hogganbeck said.
Then my father said how Ikkemotubbe removed his hand from David Hogganbeck’s shoulder. “And we have tried whisky,” he said.
“We have tried that,” David Hogganbeck said.
“Even the racing pony and the general’s coat failed me,” Ikkemotubbe said. “I had been saving them, like a man with two hole-cards.”
“I wouldn’t say that the coat completely failed,” David Hogganbeck said. “You looked fine in it.”
“Aihee,” Ikkemotubbe said. “So did the mule.” Then my father said how he was not smiling either as he squatted beside David Hogganbeck, making little marks in the earth with a twig. “So there is just one other thing,” he said. “And I am already beaten at that too before we start.”
So all that day they ate nothing. And that night when they left Log-in-the-Creek lying on Herman Basket’s gallery, instead of merely walking for a while and then running for a while back and forth between Ikkemotubbe’s house and the steamboat, they began to run as soon as they left Herman Basket’s.
And when they lay down in the woods to sleep, it was where they would not only be free of temptation to eat but of opportunity too, and from which it would take another hard run as an appetiser to reach the Plantation for the match.
Then it was morning and they ran back to where my father and the young men waited on horses to meet them and tell Ikkemotubbe that they still hadn’t found where under the sun Herman Basket’s aunt could have hidden the pony and to escort them back across the Plantation to the race-course, where the People waited around the table, with Ikkemotubbe’s rocking chair from Herman Basket’s gallery for Issetibbeha and a bench behind it for the judges.
First there was a recess while a ten-year-old boy ran once around the race-track, to let them recover breath. Then Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck took their places on either side of the table, facing each other across it, and Owl-at-Night gave the word.
First, each had that quantity of stewed bird chitterlings which the other could scoop with two hands from the pot. Then each had as many wild turkey eggs as he was old, Ikkemotubbe twenty-two and David Hogganbeck twenty-three, though Ikkemotubbe refused the advantage and said he would eat twenty-three too.
Then David Hogganbeck said he was entitled to one more than Ikkemotubbe so he would eat twenty-four, until Issetibbeha told them both to hush and get on, and Owl-at-Night tallied the shells. Then there was the tongue, paws and melt of a bear, though for a little while Ikkemotubbe stood and looked at his half of it while David Hogganbeck was already eating.
And at the half-way he stopped and looked at it again while David Hogganbeck was finishing. But it was all right; there was a faint smile on his face such as the young men had seen on it at the end of a hard running when he was going from now on not on the fact that he was still alive but on the fact that he was Ikkemotubbe.
And he went on, and Owlat-Night tallied the bones, and the women set the roasted shote on the table and Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck moved back to the tail of the shote and faced one another across it and Owl-at-Night had even given the word to start until he gave another word to stop.
“Give me some water,” Ikkemotubbe said. So my father handed him the gourd and he even took a swallow. But the water returned as though it had merely struck the back of his throat and bounced, and Ikkemotubbe put the gourd down and raised the tail of his shirt before his bowed face and turned and walked away as the People opened aside to let him pass.
And that afternoon they did not even go to the quiet place in the woods. They stood in Ikkemotubbe’s house while my father and the others stood quietly too in the background. My father said that Ikkemotubbe was not smiling now. “I was right yesterday,” he said.
“If I am to lose to thee, we should have used the knives. You see,” he said, and now my father said he even smiled again, as at the end of the long hard running when the young men knew that he would go on, not because he was still alive but because he was Ikkemotubbe; “ — you see, although I have lost, I still cannot reconcile.”
“I had you beat before we started,” David Hogganbeck said. “We both knew that.”
“Yes,” Ikkemotubbe said. “But I suggested it.”
“Then what do you suggest now?” David Hogganbeck said. And now my father said how they loved David Hogganbeck at that moment as they loved Ikkemotubbe; that they loved them both at that moment while Ikkemotubbe stood before David Hogganbeck with the smile on his face and his right hand flat on David Hogganbeck’s chest, because there were men in those days.
“Once more then, and then no more,” Ikkemotubbe said. “The Cave.” Then he and David Hogganbeck stripped and my father and the others oiled them, body and hair too, with bear’s grease mixed with mint, not just for speed this time but for lasting too, because the Cave was a hundred and thirty miles away, over in the country of old David Colbert — a black hole in the hill which the spoor of wild creatures merely approached and then turned away and which no dog could even be beaten to enter and where the boys from among all the People would go to lie on their first Night-away-from-Fire to prove if they had the courage to become men, because it had been known among the People from a long time ago that the sound of a whisper or even the disturbed air of a sudden movement would bring parts of the roof down and so all believed that not even a very big movement or sound or maybe none at all at some time would bring the whole mountain into the cave. Then Ikkemotubbe took the two pistols from the trunk and drew the loads and reloaded them. “Whoever reaches the Cave first can enter it alone and fire his pistol,” he said.
“If he comes back out, he has won.”
“And if he does not come back out?” David Hogganbeck said.
“Then you have won,” Ikkemotubbe said.
“Or you,” David Hogganbeck said.
And now my father said how Ikkemotubbe smiled again at David Hogganbeck. “Or me,” he said. “Though I think I told you yesterday that such as that for me will not be victory.”
Then Ikkemotubbe put another charge of powder, with a wadding and bullet, into each of two small medicine bags, one for himself and one for David Hogganbeck, just in case the one who entered the Cave first should not lose quick enough, and, wearing only their shirts and shoes and each with his pistol and medicine bag looped on a cord around his neck, they emerged from Ikkemotubbe’s house and began to run.
It was evening then. Then it was night, and since David Hogganbeck did not know the way, Ikkemotubbe continued to set the pace. But after a time it was daylight again and now David Hogganbeck could run by the sun and the landmarks which Ikkemotubbe described to him while they rested beside a creek, if he wished to go faster.
So sometimes David Hogganbeck would run in front and sometimes Ikkemotubbe, then David Hogganbeck would pass Ikkemotubbe as he sat beside a spring or a stream with his feet in the water and Ikkemotubbe would smile at David Hogganbeck and wave his hand.
Then he would overtake David Hogganbeck and the country was open now and they would run side by side in the prairies with his hand lying lightly on David Hogganbeck’s shoulder, not on the top of the shoulder but lightly against the back of it until after a while he would smile at David Hogganbeck and draw ahead.
But then it was sundown, and then it was dark again so Ikkemotubbe slowed and then stopped until he heard David Hogganbeck and knew that David Hogganbeck could hear him and then he ran again so that David Hogganbeck could follow the sound of his running.
So when David Hogganbeck fell, Ikkemotubbe heard it and went back and found David Hogganbeck
