CHAPTER I

FIRST of all, before anything else is attempted, you must understand that December means Big Hard Face, just as November is called simply Hard Face by the Cheyennes.

As a rule such names have nothing to do with the appearance of an Indian. They have a moral, a sentimental, or most of all a purely incidental significance, and may be picked up in anything from a swimming match to a battle. And as a matter of fact, Big Hard Face was not called by that grim name because he was ugly. His naming was a matter which had to do with the untimely month in which he was born, the very last month of the year, when the vast prairies were covered with wind-furrowed snows.

Three or four other children were born into that group of the tribe in the same month, but they all died, because the winter mortality among the plains Indians used to be a fearful thing. But Big Hard Face, or December, as it may be better to call him, lived through the winter and grew fat and boisterous in the warm spring suns, to the delight of his parents and of the whole tribe. Because so many others had been taken during his infancy, it was felt that their lost good fortunes in war and in peace might accompany the new boy.

Big Hard Face did not disappoint the good prophets. There was only one serious mishap in all of his early life, and that was when he was six years old. The colt which he was riding bucked him off and then trampled across his face. They picked up December with his face an indistinguishable mass of blood and disarranged gristle and bone. Thereafter, above the eyes, he was as likely an Indian as you could ever wish to see, and if you watched him wrapped almost to the forehead in his buffalo robe, when he had gained manhood, you would have picked him as the handsomest of his entire tribe.

But when the robe was removed from the lower part of his face, you changed your mind, be sure, with much speed. For Big Hard Face wore a dismal mask that had very little relation to a human countenance. Here and there you could make out something that should be a human feature. That was the chin, surely, that lopsided thing. And the broad, misshapen slit was the mouth, of course. The nose was not in evidence, but he breathed through two smashed holes. And all the good copper of his skin was altered and slashed across with white hollows and sharp white ridges of scar tissue.

The Pawnees are a brawny and hard-minded race of fellows, but it is creditably reported that when they saw Big Hard Face charging, that ghastly slab of a face distorted with a war cry, a band of fifty of them had taken to their heels and fled for their lives, convinced that the devil in person was after them.

However, beauty is not everything.

Big Hard Face, or December, was strong, brave, and silent, as a youth. He listened when the old men talked. And so, in turn, men were willing to listen to him when he wished to make himself heard.

As he grew older, he counted no fewer than sevencoups, and he was known to have slain with his own hand five enemies in full battle, and their