Then after you were wounded and not killed, with new men coming on, and going through your old processes, you hardened and became a good hard-boiled soldier. Then came the second crack, which is much worse than the first, and then you began doing good deeds, and being the boy Sir Philip Sidney, and storing up treasures in heaven. At the same time, of course, functioning always the same as before. As if it were a football game.
Nobody had any damn business to write about it, though, that didn’t at least know about it from hearsay. Literature has too strong an effect on people’s minds. Like this American writer Willa Cather, who wrote a book about the war where all the last part of it was taken from the action in the Birth of a Nation, and ex-servicemen wrote to her from all over America to tell her how much they liked it.
One of the Indians was asleep. He had been chewing tobacco, and his mouth was pursed up in sleep. He was leaning on the other Indian’s shoulder. The Indian who was awake pointed at the other Indian, who was asleep, and shook his head.
“Well, how did you like the speech?” Yogi asked the Indian who was awake.
“White chief have heap much sound ideas,” the Indian said. “White chief educated like hell.”
“Thank you,” Yogi said. He felt touched. Here among the simple aborigines, the only real Americans, he had found that true communion. The Indian looked at him, holding the sleeping Indian carefully that his head might not fall back upon the snow-covered logs.
“Was white chief in the war?” the Indian asked.
“I landed in France in May, 1917,” Yogi began.
“I thought maybe white chief was in the war from the way he talked,” the Indian said. “Him,” he raised the head of his sleeping companion up so the last rays of the sunset shone on the sleeping Indian’s face, “he got V.C. Me I got D.S.O. and M.C. with bar. I was major in the Fourth C.M.R.’s.”
“I’m glad to meet you,” Yogi said. He felt strangely humiliated. It was growing dark. There was a single line of sunset where the sky and the water met ’way out on Lake Michigan. Yogi watched the narrow line of the sunset grow darker red, thin to a mere slit, and then fade. The sun was down behind the lake. Yogi stood up from the pile of logs. The Indian stood up too. He awakened his companion, and the Indian who had been sleeping stood up and looked at Yogi Johnson.
“We go to Petoskey to join Salvation Army,” the larger and more wakeful Indian said.
“White chief come too,” said the smaller Indian, who had been asleep.
“I’ll walk in with you,” Yogi replied. Who were these Indians? What did they mean to him?
With the sun down, the slushy road was stiffening. It was freezing again. After all, maybe spring was not coming. Maybe it did not make a difference that he did not want a woman. Now that the spring was perhaps not coming there was a question about that. He would walk into town with the Indians and look for a beautiful woman and try and want her. He turned down the now frozen road. The two Indians walked by his side. They were all bound in the same direction.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Through the night down the frozen road the three walked into Petoskey. They had been silent walking along the frozen road. Their shoes broke the new-formed crusts of ice. Sometimes Yogi Johnson stepped through a thin film of ice into a pool of water. The Indians avoided the pools of water.
They came down the hill past the feed store, crossed the bridge over the Bear River, their boots ringing hollowly on the frozen planks of the bridge, and climbed the hill that led past Dr. Rumsey’s house and the Home Tea-Room up to the pool-room. In front of the pool-room the two Indians stopped.
“White chief shoot pool?” the big Indian asked.
“No,” Yogi Johnson said. “My right arm was crippled in the war.”
“White chief have hard luck,” the small Indian said. “Shoot one game Kelly pool.”
“He got both arms and both legs shot off at Ypres,” the big Indian said in an aside to Yogi. “Him very sensitive.”
“All right,” Yogi Johnson said. “I’ll shoot one game.”
They went into the hot, smoke-filled warmth of the pool-room. They obtained a table and took down cues from the wall. As the little Indian reached up to take down his cue Yogi noticed that he had two artificial arms. They were brown leather and were both buckled on at the elbow. On the smooth green cloth, under the bright electric lights, they played pool. At the end of an hour and a half, Yogi Johnson found that he owed the little Indian four dollars and thirty cents.
“You shoot a pretty nice stick,” he remarked to the small Indian.
“Me not shoot so good since the war,” the small Indian replied.
“White chief like to drink a little?” asked the larger Indian.
“Where do you get it?” asked Yogi. “I have to go to Cheboygan for mine.”
“White chief come with red brothers,” the big Indian said.
They left the pool-table, placed their cues in the rack on the wall, paid at the counter, and went out into the night.
Along the dark streets men were sneaking home. The frost had come and frozen everything stiff and cold. The chinook had not been a real chinook, after all. Spring had not yet come, and the men who had commenced their orgies were halted by the chill in the air that told them the chinook wind had been a fake. That foreman, Yogi thought, he’ll catch hell tomorrow. Perhaps it had all been engineered by the pump-manufacturers to get the foreman out of his job. Such things were done. Through the dark of the night men were sneaking home in little groups.
The two Indians walked on either side of Yogi. They turned down a side street, and all three halted before a building that looked something like a stable. It was a stable. The two Indians opened the door and Yogi followed them inside. A ladder led upstairs to the floor above. It was dark inside the stable, but one of the Indians lit a match to show Yogi the ladder.
The little Indian climbed up first, the metal hinges of his artificial limbs squeaking as he climbed. Yogi followed him, and the other Indian climbed last, lighting Yogi’s way with matches. The little Indian knocked on the roof where the ladder stopped against the wall. There was an answering knock. The little Indian knocked in answer, three sharp knocks on the roof above his head. A trap-door in the roof was raised, and they climbed up through into the lighted room.
In one corner of the room there was a bar with a brass rail and tall spittoons. Behind the bar was a mirror. Easy-chairs were all around the room. There was a pool-table. Magazines on sticks hung in a line on the wall. There was a framed autographed portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on the wall draped in the American flag. Several Indians were sitting in the easy-chairs reading. A little group stood at the bar.
“Nice little club, eh?” An Indian came up and shook hands with Yogi. “I see you almost every day at the pump-factory.”
He was a man who worked at one of the machines near Yogi in the factory. Another Indian came up and shook hands with Yogi. He also worked in the pump-factory.
“Rotten luck about the chinook,” he said.
“Yes,” Yogi said. “Just a false alarm.”
“Come and have a drink,” the first Indian said.
“I’m with a party,” Yogi answered. Who were these Indians, anyway?
“Bring them along too,” the first Indian said. “Always room for one more.”
Yogi looked around him. The two Indians who had brought him were gone. Where were they? Then he saw them. They were over at the pool-table. The tall refined Indian to whom Yogi was talking followed his glance. He nodded his head in understanding.
“They’re woods Indians,” he explained apologetically. “We’re most of us town Indians here.”
“Yes, of course,” Yogi agreed.
“The little chap has a very good war record,” the tall refined Indian remarked. “The other chap was a major too, I believe.”
Yogi was guided over to the bar by the tall refined Indian. Behind the bar was the bartender. He was a Negro.
“How would some Dog’s Head ale go?” asked the Indian.
“Fine,” Yogi said.
“Two Dog’s Heads, Bruce,” the Indian remarked to the bartender. The bartender broke into a chuckle.
“What are you laughing at, Bruce?” the Indian asked.
The Negro broke into a shrill haunting laugh.
“I knowed it, Massa Red Dog,” he said. “I knowed you’d ordah dat Dog’s Head all the time.”
“He’s a merry fellow,” the Indian remarked to Yogi. “I must introduce myself. Red Dog’s the name.”
“Johnson’s the name,” Yogi said. “Yogi Johnson.”
“Oh, we are all quite familiar with your name, Mr. Johnson,” Red Dog smiled. “I would like you to meet my friends Mr. Sitting Bull, Mr. Poisoned Buffalo, and Chief Running Skunk-Backwards.”
“Sitting Bull’s a name I know,” Yogi remarked, shaking hands.
“Oh, I’m not one of those Sitting Bulls,” Mr. Sitting Bull said.
“Chief Running Skunk-Backwards’s great-grandfather once sold the entire Island of Manhattan for a few strings of wampum.” Red Dog explained.
“How
