The Last Western (6 page)

The people cheered and ran wildly for the great tables laden with food and for the casks of wine that had been made ready for the feast.

At that moment the Eagle cried out again, surprising himself once more and once more acting only on the secret instinct of his heart.

“Wait!” he shouted. “By the custom of the tribe, I have the right to add one law which shall be eternal among our people.”

The people knew this to be true. Each king had the right to set down one particular law that would bind the people forever. But this was the first king ever to make the new law the very first night of his reign.

“What is the law, great and wonderful king?” the general of the army shouted sarcastically. Already he had it in for the new king.

“It is this,” said the Eagle. “All laws are unlawful but one, that we love one another.”

At this the tribe jeered and laughed at the king. The warriors shouted angrily, “He’s crazy!”

The teacher of the tribe stood up and said, “This man would destroy all the laws we have ever had. No one, not even the king, can do that.”

The people shouted in agreement with the teacher.

They were angry now, excited and confused.

The Eagle knew he had tried to do the impossible, and he didn’t know what he should do to quiet the people down. For just a second he doubted the secret in his heart.

Down he came from the stone platform and into the center of the crowd, his heart beating wildly. He sensed the danger and excitement in the air.

He stumbled on a cask of wine.

He stared at the keg and waited for his heart to tell him what to do.

Without a word he seized an ax that was lying on the ground and struck open the cask of wine.

He seized one of the copper goblets that had been set on the royal table and filled it with wine.

Then he turned to the people and raised the goblet as if to make a toast.

“You are right,” he said. “My law was poorly thought out. Then this shall be the law—The Law of the Eagle. Each year at this feast, from now until forever, the new king must take a goblet of wine as I am doing now. He shall hold it high above the people so that all can see. Then he must say these words:
We must try to love each other
. The people then must repeat these words after him. Then all shall drink from the cup.”

The people clapped and shouted, and many laughed. This was the easiest law any king had ever passed—a mere gesture. All other kings had passed hard laws, asking for more taxes, grains, and so forth. This king, they thought, was a weak king to pass such an easy law.

The Eagle said, “I shall be the first to observe the new law and you shall join me. Teacher, write the law in the Book of the Tribe.”

Then the Eagle solemnly held up the goblet full of wine. Slowly he said the words,
We must try to love each other
.

The people, half of them laughing, repeated the words after him.

Then all shared the cup.

Putting the whole thing out of their minds, the people began their feast which would last for three days and three nights.

At this point in the story, there was the sound of a siren in the street, and suddenly a police car, tires squealing, jerked to a stop in front of the Nagasaki Zero.

“What is it, grandmother?”

Cool Dawn said nothing.

Now men came running out of the tavern into the glare of the revolving light on top of the police car. There was shouting and scuffling. Men and women swarmed about the door of the Nagasaki Zero, milling under the popping red, white and blue lights.

The whirling light on the top of the police car flashed red into the room where Cool Dawn and Willie sat watching.

Another police car pulled up, its siren screaming.

There was more shouting. Officer Harlowe Judge, revolver in hand, came out of this second car and dashed into the Nagasaki Zero.

Now two policemen dragged a black man from inside the Nagasaki and forced him into their car. Officer Judge’s gun gleamed in the red light.

It was then that Willie spotted Clio on the edge of the crowd.

“Clio!” he shouted through the open window.

Clio waved back. There was something worried about the way he waved.

“Come on up, Clio,” Willie shouted.

So Clio joined Willie and Cool Dawn in the living room of the apartment.

“What happened?” Willie asked.

“They got papa,” said Clio. “They put him in jail.”

Clio started to cry.

“It’s okay,” said Willie, feeling sorry for his friend. “It’ll turn out okay, Clio,” he said, though he was as frightened as Clio.

Cool Dawn got some cookies and gave them to Clio and Willie.

Willie said, “My grandmother is telling a story about an Indian King. Tell the rest of it, will you grandmother?”

Cool Dawn retold the first part of the story for Clio’s benefit. He listened in a dreamy way. Willie knew he was thinking about his father.

Now the Nagasaki Zero was quiet. The people had gone home. But the lights were flashing as before, and the boys stared at the lights as Cool Dawn continued her story.

Willie listened so closely he could see the Eagle King and the people of long ago.

But with another part of his mind, he thought of his friend sitting next to him.

He tried to think of something to say that would cheer him up.

He looked down at the street. There was no one there but Officer Harlowe Judge. Under the red, white and blue lights he was fondling his gun and peering up at the dark Texas sky.

The last night
of the great feast, the Eagle King went to the bank of the river. He prayed many hours to the Great Spirit, then fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning he awoke to find his warriors standing around him in a circle.

The general of the army came forward and spoke most seriously and urgently.

“We believe we should attack the enemy who has just encamped across the river. His warriors are still sleeping, and we shall take them by surprise.”

“Go get one hundred bushels of grain, one hundred loaves of bread and ten casks of the new wine,” the Eagle King said.

Messengers brought these things to the king.

“What do you plan to do?” asked the general of the army.

“This is the day I shall make peace with the enemy,” replied the Eagle.

Then, taking a bow from one of the warriors, he sent a white-feathered arrow flying across the river into the campsite of the enemy.

Scouts were awakened. When they saw the arrow, they looked out across the river. On the opposite shore the Eagle King stood in his chieftain’s robes.

Alone and unarmed the Eagle paddled his canoe across the river, disembarked and walked into the camp of the enemy.

“It is a trick,” said the enemy warriors. “Let us kill their chief.”

But the enemy king spoke out.

“Bring the king to me,” he said. “We shall see what he wants.”

The Eagle walked up to the enemy king. He held out his hand in friendship and said, “Brother King, I come to you in gentle peace. Let us end our fighting, which has brought us nothing but suffering and hardship. The children of both our tribes are hungry. The women weep for their dead husbands. Let us declare a new day of friendship between our people.”

“How do I know you are telling the truth?” asked the enemy king.

Then the Eagle sent for the grain, the bread and the wine and set it before the enemy warriors.

It was food enough for many days.

“I give you this as a sign of peace,” said the Eagle. “And now I must return to my people.”

As the Eagle turned to go, a warrior thrust a spear against his chest and shouted, “This is a trick!”

The enemy king looked at the king curiously. He knew that the Eagle was unarmed and that it had taken great courage to come into the camp alone and unprotected. Then the enemy king spoke.

“Have the chieftain eat a piece of the bread and drink some of the wine and let him chew some of the grain he has brought,” he said. “Then we shall see if the food is poisoned.”

The Eagle ate and drank as the enemy king commanded.

“You see,” said the Eagle, “the food is perfectly good.”

Many of the warriors still insisted that the Eagle was deceiving them.

“Release him,” said the enemy chief. “After all, we see his warriors standing idly on the opposite shore. They are not waging attack.”

“One more thing remains to be done before we are at peace,” said the Eagle. “Release to me the four warriors of our tribe you are holding as prisoners.”

“Now it is clear why he has come,” said the enemy general. “It is a trick after all.”

“The warriors are but two young boys and two wounded men,” said the enemy king. “They are of no use to anyone.”

“Then you can’t refuse to release them,” said the Eagle.

The enemy chief said, “I cannot release them without the vote of the war council, and I know the members of the council well enough to assure you that they will not release them.”

Then the Eagle, listening to something that was whispered in his heart, said, “Let the four men go and keep me in their stead.”

This astonished the enemy chief and all his warriors.

“He is crazy,” said the general of the army.

“Nevertheless,” said the chief, “do as he says.”

So the four men were released from the wooden cages where they had been imprisoned and were free to return to their tribe in the Eagle King’s canoe.

As they filed past him on their way to the river, the Eagle King embraced each man and said, “Remember, you must try to love other people as your brothers and sisters.”

These four men who had been condemned to die would never forget what the Eagle said.

When they returned to their own camp, the warriors wanted to know why the Eagle had remained with the enemy.

“He offered to take our place as a prisoner of war,” they told them.

“He is a fool,” said the general of the army.

That night, the enemy king went to the wooden cage where the Eagle was held prisoner.

“Why have you done this?” he asked.

Then the Eagle told the enemy king about the Great Spirit. He said that all the tribes of the world were in truth one great family, that all the people of earth were brothers and sisters and that through love they could learn to be happy together.

The enemy king had never heard such things before. That night he slept uneasily.

The next morning, the enemy scouts found ten bushels of golden apples sitting on the shore, a gift from the Eagle’s tribe.

“This is his ransom,” said one of the scouts, taking one of the apples. He bit into the golden fruit and immediately fell dead.

When the enemy king heard of this, he was furious.

“You lie to me,” he shouted to the Eagle in his cage. “You send my people poisoned fruit.”

“My people have forgotten what I told them,” the Eagle said sadly.

“He must die for this,” said the general of the enemy tribe.

The king said, “I must consider this carefully.” Then he went to his tent where he spent the day trying to decide what to do.

The king remembered all that the Eagle had told him the night before. He remembered the sincerity of his manner, the straightforward and simple way he said things. He knew in his heart that the Eagle had had nothing to do with the poisoned apples.

That night the king spoke to all his tribe.

“The Eagle himself is innocent. It is his people who have lied. They must make good for the suffering they have caused. Send word to them that they must give to our tribe 500 bushels of grain, 50 horses and 50 casks of wine. We will then release their king, and we shall have peace between our peoples.”

Word was sent to the tribe of the Eagle, but the warriors refused to send the grain, the horses and the wine.

The enemy king then said, “Very well. Then tell them to send a healthy colt in exchange for the scout whom they poisoned.”

This demand, too, was rejected.

The enemy king said, “Send this message. If by sunset tomorrow, the enemy does not give us at least one bushel of grain and one cask of wine, then the Eagle will be hurled from the top of the mountain into the river.”

All that night and through the next day, the enemy king waited for the grain and the wine. He did not want to kill the Eagle, knowing him to be innocent. But he had given his royal command before the tribe, and now he could not go back on it without disgracing himself before the people.

He could not understand why the Eagle’s tribe did not try to save him.

Late in the afternoon he went to the wooden cage.

“Your people do not love you,” the king said.

“They have not yet learned how to love,” said the Eagle.

“I shall have to give the order to kill you if the gifts do not come soon.”

“I understand,” said the Eagle.

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes.”

The king said, “It is not right that you should die.”

“Perhaps it will be necessary,” said the Eagle.

An hour later, with the sun lowering little by little in the west, the enemy king, moved by pity for the first time in his life, sent the two guards away, took a knife, and cut the rope that held the door of the Eagle’s cage.

“I shall speak to the guards for a while,” said the king. “We shall walk over into that grove of trees. Then you can escape.”

“You have a merciful heart,” said the Eagle.

The king called the two guards and led them into the grove.

The Eagle looked at the door of his cage. He broke into a sweat and began to weep.

He wanted to escape and save his life. Yet the secret in his heart told him to stay.

“Why must I die?” he asked himself.

He cried to the Great Spirit, “You sent me to teach love and I have tried and failed. I can do no more. Am I not justified in escaping?”

His heart told him nothing at first. Then slowly these words came to him:
Stay here and destroy the cage for others
.

When the king and the guards returned, they found the Eagle still in his cage, weeping.

“Look!” said one of the guards. “He has cut the rope!”