Etext of "The Last Protest: A Story of Montana." 
By Henry Oyen
The Century Co. 68 (1904): Pages 319-324.
New York
1904

THE LAST PROTEST 
A STORY OF MONTANA
BY HENRY OYEN

WHEN the teachers at the government school had instructed
Young Moon thoroughly in the various branches of knowledge
prescribed in the course, they presented him with an engrossed
diploma setting forth his qualifications as a scholar, and told him
that the great wide world was before him -- his to conquer or serve
as he saw fit. 

The teachers were very well satisfied with Young Moon. They had
seen him come to the school from the tepees up in the valley with
the dark, unreasoning savagery of the ages in his heart. They had
taken him just as he came to them, and had wrought with him; and
now when he departed there was enlightenment where there had
been darkness, and civilization where the savage had held sway.
So the teachers were vain of him, -- for was he not all their
handiwork? -- and had visions of him performing miracles in the
work of elevating his own people. Which was all very pleasant and
satisfying. 

Young Moon took the diploma and went back to the tepees by the
river. The great outside world which the teachers pictured so
alluringly held no charms for him. He had been to the school of the
white man, and he had seen, and he knew that the ways of the
white brother were positively not as his ways. The fact was
ridiculously evident to Young Moon. What possible good could
there be in a community where one must of a necessity eat at
regular intervals and wash himself with alarming frequency, where
the beauties of a mysterious thing called duty were continually
dinned into one's ears, and where the people lived, moved, and had
their being under the rule of an insignificant whirring clock? What
sense could there be in abiding in the tepees of a dubious thrall of
work? Why live, if one must make of himself a slave? No, no;
Young Moon's philosophy of life ran far from such lines. 

So when the teachers at the school were through with him, he was
very well satisfied to return to the loose, duty-free ways of his
fathers, where soap and tooth-brushes were not, and where life was
not a constant, strained pursuit of "golden moments." 

It was good to be back in the tepees by the river. This was the
place to live; it was life to feel the sense of full freedom of the
wide, free prairie, to see the Big Hills beckoning familiarly from
the blue, hazy distance, and to hear the river, which, with its
double rows of green cottonwoods, always sang down the valley.
Verily this was the place for an Indian; here was his home, here his
abiding-place on earth. Here, all undisturbed by any false notions
of work and duty, the old life moved along in the old, old way.
Each day was sufficient unto itself, and the days came in
never-failing supply, and there was peace and quiet. 

But there was not the peace of his fathers for Young Moon. He had
learned too much. He had imbibed the wisdom of the white man to
a disturbing degree, and he had become possessed of ideas. This
was bad, inasmuch as they were ideas scarcely compatible with the
precepts of the teachers. 

The white man was master in a land where he should scarcely be
tolerated. It was this idea that disturbed Young Moon's peace of
mind. The white man was master. All over, everywhere, in the
valley, were the signs of his superiority in numbers and power. His
houses lay scattered over the face of the land, his irrigation ditches
scarred the earth for miles and miles, and his fences were binding
the valley and the foot-hills in a bond of hostile barb-wire. In a few
years there would be only white men in the valley. 

Of course this idea was old and foolish. The old men laughed at
Young Moon in the council-tepee. 

"Yoh, yoh," they said; "what the young man says is true -- very
true. But others have said the same many times before him." And
they lighted their pipes indifferently. 

Young Moon came away from the old men with a hard, dry lump
in his throat. The humbled acquiescence of his people to the order
of things that were had angered him. These things were all wrong,
and the old men knew it. Yet they sat and smoked in indolent,
dog-like content. The old men were surely squaws. 

Young Moon lighted a thin, flat cigarette and gazed out over the
valley. He was not in a frame of mind conducive to sweet,
conventional thoughts. He had gone to the council-tepee with his
mind full of great ideas for the peaceful reform of conditions, and
the old men had laughed at him. They had laughed and scoffed;
they had scoffed at him, Young Moon, who had been to the school
and knew, and all high motives and peaceful inclinations had fled
from him. 

It was July -- hot, sultry July. The Crows came out of their tepees
to sit cross-legged in the sun, gazing blankly out at the dancing
heat-haze and experiencing the many weird emotions that come to
the child of the tepees with the bright sun. The women of the tribe
were methodically performing the duties of the household, but the
men had forgotten that such things existed. An old man
grumblingly ordered a boy to go to work in the corn, and the boy,
sitting with wide-open eyes staring out into space, laughed without
moving. 

The sun is bad for young bucks; it is the sun that brings back the
old, half-forgotten desire for the war-path. Young Moon, as he sat
gazing down the valley, began to feel and see as he had never done
before. There was a red, misty haze over all the landscape. In it
moved men and animals and things; but they were not of the time
of Young Moon, at least the Young Moon whom the teachers had
known. 

Young Moon dreamed, and there came into the mist of red a vision
of the one-time glory of his people. But he knew that this was the
past -- dead and gone. He dreamed again, and saw a picture of
glorious, bloody strife. Things were clearer in the mist now, and
Young Moon saw the visions change, and in the place of the one of
strife was one of the glorious future: the Indian come into his own
again, and the country once more free -- his alone. 

The sun grew red before Young Moon's eyes. The river running
down the valley turned to a thread of blood. He rose slowly and
went inside his tepee. All day he sat there, gazing blankly at the
skin sides, but seeing far beyond. Gradually his sight grew
stronger. He saw a streak of flaming red which ran from the door
of his tepee far away toward the east, and which obliterated all
evidence of civilization in the valley. Thus did the Great Spirit
evidence itself to Young Moon. The Young Moon of the
government school, diploma, and civilization had died, and in his
place was the Young Moon of the tepees and primitive, savage
instincts. 

Outside in the sun the other young bucks of the tribe sat and
awaited only a leader to turn them into heartless, ravaging
warriors. 

When the night came, an old squaw sat in the edge of gloom and
firelight and crooned softly an old war-song. This was bad; not for
years had this song been sung in the tepees. The old men cursed
the squaw fervidly and bade her be silent. 

"No, no!" growled the young men angrily, "she shall sing." 

The old squaw sang again, now an old song of prophecy and
golden promise. A great medicine-man, impervious to death, was
to come and lead his people to the retaking of their own. The time
was now ripe for his advent. It was the old, old undying cry for the
Messiah, and as the old squaw ceased there was deep silence
around the fire. A child coughed feebly as the smoke veered into
its face. Somewhere in the dark a tepee flap flew back, and in an
instant the old men were on their feet, with angry imprecations on
their lips; for Young Moon, arrayed in the full glory of a chief on
the war-path, was standing by the fire. The old squaw ran to him.
With both hands upon his shoulders, she gazed searchingly into his
eyes. Then, raising a skinny claw into the air, she shrieked loudly
and called him the great one, the invulnerable, of whom she had
prophesied. There would be much fighting and blood, and
freedom, now, she cried. The days of sickening calm were over.
The old men sat and smoked, as impassive as graven images; but
the young braves slid noiselessly away in the dark, and returned
wearing the black feathers and buckskin apron of the Crow
dancers. An old chief by the fire deliberately took the pipe from
his mouth. "Young Moon looks well in the feathers -- almost as
well as a cow in harness," he said pleasantly. 

"And Little Wolf is also a great man," retorted Young Moon, hotly.
"He works well in the field, almost as well as the women." 

Little Wolf emitted a puff of smoke from between set teeth for
answer. 

"Why does not the great chief answer?" queried Young Moon,
sneeringly. "A great man -- a man who sells as much hay as does
Little Wolf -- should talk much when the talk is to him." 

Still, Little Wolf gazed stolidly over the fire, apparently mute and
deaf. 

"Come, Little Wolf, you do not answer," continued Young Moon,
sweetly. "Have the fences of the white man run across our great
chief's mouth that he is dead of tongue as well as of heart?" 

Little Wolf took the pipe from his mouth and arose. 

"Listen, boy," said he, solemnly, "to one who saw your father die
ere you could speak. Your talk is the talk that all the bucks utter
when their years are of a certain number. So have I heard many
talk; but all who have done as they talked are dead now. Listen to
my speech, Young Moon, and the rest of you, for I know of what I
speak. I, too, was once of the age when the thirst for the white
man's scalp was strong. But the white man still has his scalp, and I
-- I am thankful to raise corn on the land he leaves to me." 

The young men, as they looked, saw only a senile old man
gabbling aimlessly, while in Young Moon was their ideal of
youthful strength and leadership. 

Then Young Moon threw off all caution. He was wild now -- wild
with the old red desire for strife and bloody violence which had
become almost atrophied in him -- and he would make the other
young men wild also. He threw back his head and gave vent to a
cry such as had never in his day echoed through the tepees of the
peaceful Crows. With shaking, twisting body he began to lope
slowly toward Little Wolf. With a shout he swung out into a
semi-circle, and passing before the old men, returned to his
starting-point. 

"Young Moon! Young Moon! What is it you do?" cried Little
Wolf, in alarm. "It is not the moon of the dance; it is not the time
for the feathers. The white man is not a child for boys to make war
upon. 'T is better to stay in the camp, where the food and the
women are plenty." 

Young Moon was looping toward him again. 

"For you is the tepee made to stay in, Little Wolf," he shouted
derisively. "Go there, stay there with the women. You are old; that
is your place now." 

He loped back in a slightly more pronounced curve. "You are old,
Little Wolf," he called again. "Your time has passed. The old,
withered stalk must move to one side when the strong young shoot
comes forth." 

Another brave sprang suddenly into his wake. The old squaw
squatted herself suddenly and began the ugly, monotonous
"Ay-yah, a-anah, ah-ya" of the dance-chant. Young Moon sprang
forward as if spurred by some unseen power. His course now
became a circle around the fire -- a magic path on the ground for
others to follow. One by one the bucks fell in behind. The young
women came and chanted; the dance was on. 

The old men deliberately placed their belongings and women in
wagons and moved away to a new camp, leaving the old one in
possession of the young men and their women. 

Far into the night the fires of the camp showed the weird, dancing
figures of Young Moon and his followers. Also, Young Moon, by
reason of the knowledge of certain strange things acquired at the
school, performed many wonderful miracles, and the young men
also hailed him as the great medicine-man, and acknowledged him
their leader. 

Early on the morning of the next day they rode to the camp of their
elders. Before their tepees they sat mounted, and mocked the old
men, voicing their praises of the wonderful medicine of Young
Moon. 

"So may it be," muttered one old man. "Good may his medicine be;
but bad -- bad for crazy young colts -- will they find the medicine
of the white man." 

The young men laughingly turned and rode down the valley toward
the Creek of the Rotten Grass, following which they would quickly
find the white man -- and strife. The young women, roughly
discarded, marched shamefacedly to the new camp; but some who
had remained with the bucks, although their husbands were not yet
chosen, were driven in disgrace from the tepees they sought to
enter. II

"TEDDY" COLLINS, who rode range for the "2 O & E" Ranch,
had come north toward the head-waters of the Creek of the Rotten
Grass to head off a bunch of strays that had persisted in running
off the range and was wandering far north toward the reservation.
Collins had the herd headed southward again, and was driving it
with language that was picturesque and vigorous down the
river-trail, when Young Moon came with a gallop and a whoop
over the ridge. 

Collins was greatly surprised and very little pleased. Threescore
fat steers bearing the 2 O & E brand were directly in the path of
the redskins, and in the traditions of the range it is told that this is
not good for steers. The tough little cow-pony came around on his
hind legs to face the Indians. 

One man sat quietly in the middle of the trail with his right hand
raised and empty, but the score that came over the ridge swerved
to one side and stopped before they came to the one. Collins
wondered curiously where the Indians had procured the whisky,
for to him it was very evident that they were happily drunk. Young
Moon he recognized easily; he had won a lame pony from him at
the big poker game after the round-up last fall. But at the poker
game Young Moon was attired in a cheap black suit of store
clothes instead of a bonnet of feathers and a gaudy apron. 

Young Moon rode up to within easy-speaking distance and
dismounted. Collins gathered himself up firmly in the saddle. 

"How," greeted the Indian. 

"How," returned the cow-boy. 

"You better go 'way," said Young Moon, with a decisive sweep of
the arm. 

"Go 'way h -- -," replied Collins, laconically. "What yuh driving at,
anyhow?" 

"We going down the creek," said Young Moon. "You and your
people go away -- back to where you come from." 

"Oh, so that's the game, eh?" said Collins, cheerily. "Well, yuh'd
better not do anything rough, ol' pigeon-toe, or they'll have a slue
of those stiff-necks from Fort Custer down here an' shoot yuh good
an' plenty." 

Young Moon laughed. The poor mortal "stiff-necks" attempting to
contend with the Great Spirit -- truly it was amusing. Eloquently
and with many gestures he hastened to inform Collins that before
long the Indian would pitch his tepee on the parade-ground at the
fort. The regime of the white man was at an end in the land;
Young Moon, he whom the spirits had rendered invulnerable, said
it. 

Collins would have laughed gleefully if Young Moon attired in the
ordinary raiment of civilization had given utterance to such
fanciful language. But here was Young Moon, more than half
naked, entirely sober, and with a score of bucks at his back, calmly
saying that the white man was to be driven out of the valley. It was
evident that Young Moon and his bucks were not on a drunk, but
on the war-path. This sort of thing, Collins felt, was distinctly out
of place now. Such things had passed into the school-history stage. 

"Old man, lemme tell yuh something," he said confidingly, leaning
over the saddle pommel. "Yuh're trying to run your bluff away too
late. Don't yuh go for to buck the brass-buttons now; they're too
strong for yuh. Yuh jest mosey 'long back to yer reserve an' act
decent. Sabe? I'm only a-telling yuh for yer own good." 

Again Young Moon laughed scornfully. 

"We go down there. Sabe?" he said positively, pointing down the
trail behind Collins. Then the flash of savage rage, the wild,
blinding desire to slay, came to him, and he whipped the
well-worn short-barreled Winchester from beneath his blanket and
fired from the hip point-blank into the herd. Collins's six-shooter
came out and up with a jerk. He was no longer the suave diplomat
and benevolent Indian adviser; this Indian was killing the cattle
under his charge. 

"Hol' on there, yuh -- -- -- -- -- low-lived -- -- -, yuh!" he called
fiercely. "Don't yuh try any more o' that funny work, or I'll let -- --
-into yuh so quick yuh'll never know what hit yuh. Yuh can go to
Fort Custer, or yuh can go to -- -- , if yuh want to; but I tell yuh
right here, if yuh ever get past here, it'll be after yuh an' me an' a
whole lot of yer friends have cashed in. Sabe?" 

Young Moon understood fully. The cow-puncher was mad. Mad
cow-punchers with big blue six-shooters in their hands are not
objects to fuss lightly with. Young Moon hesitated. 

For a moment the two faced each other silently, the Indian and the
cow-puncher, the gaudy, picturesque savage and the commonplace
utilitarian, the old and the new. Both had much to think of in that
moment. Young Moon tried hard to conceive some manner in
which he could get a good shot at Collins without danger to
himself. 

Collins was thinking of the property under his charge, the herd
running wildly back and forth in the trail below, and the new home
of Peterson the "newcomer," which lay farther down the valley, the
first of the houses in the path of Young Moon and his followers.
Collins suddenly remembered that there was a young wife in the
home of the newcomer; also a little red-cheeked, yellow-haired
baby, who had played in the dooryard when he passed there in the
morning on his search for the strays. 

"I suppose these rowdies 'u'd scare -- -- -out o' that little woman if
they ever get that far," he thought. "They might even -- No; they'll
never get a chance for that; I'm here to see they don't get -- " 

"Here, yuh!" It was Collins who cried out. Young Moon was
deliberately throwing the empty shell out of his rifle. "Hol' on the
-- " 

The words were cut short in Collins's mouth. Action, swift, sure,
terrible, had taken their place. Young Moon was down on his face
in the bunch-grass, and dust and a tiny thread of blue smoke
wreathed upward from Collins's pistol. A dozen shoulders hunched
into shooting position and a dozen black rifle-barrels focused on
Collins. But Young Moon began to rise to his feet slowly,
hesitatingly, as a drunken man rises. His bonnet was off, the
feathers were awry, the hot, stale dust was thick upon a face gray
with terror, and a look of awful, unutterable surprise was in his
small black eyes. He stretched his arms outward -- the gesture of a
chief commanding quiet, peace. 

"You see now that I am the Great Spirit," he said boastfully. "The
white man's bullet slays the flesh, but the spirit still lives." He
stood up straight and virile in the sunlight and shouted, "I cannot
die!" 

Deliberately he turned to take aim at Collins. 

No quick snap-shot this time. Young Moon fell prone on his face,
his limbs out-stretched in the rigidity which tells unquestionably of
death, sudden and violent. 

His followers waited silently and expectantly for him to rise, and
Collins deliberately turned his back on the band and rode down the
trail. 

"Oh, Young Moon! Arise, arise, Young Moon!" called the bucks. 

The wind that waved the prairie-grass stirred slightly some of the
war-feathers; otherwise there was no motion. 

"Speak! Oh, speak, Great Spirit!" they cried as they rode up to him.
But the spirit failed to respond. 

"So, so he is dead," said one who dismounted and turned him on
his back. 

The band glanced as one man down the valley, where Collins was
driving the herd before him at a gallop. It seemed an easy matter to
overtake him, but -- Young Moon, their wonderful medicine-man,
the invulnerable, was dead. 

His brother, with the aid of another, silently placed the body
securely on a pony, and the band silently followed as the pony
turned his nose north toward the reservation. 

"Uh, so only Young Moon is dead?" queried the old men
sneeringly when they saw the laden pony. 

The young men said naught, but with hanging heads accepted the
sneers due them as stoically as the old men had received the taunts
of a few nights ago. The old squaw had the body brought to her
tepee, for his kin would not own him, and a breed-dog sat outside
and howled long and loud in the night. Otherwise the camp would
have slept quite peacefully.

Collins, as he rode past Peterson's with the herd, saw the woman
holding the yellow-haired baby by the hands, while the little one,
gurgling with laughter, tottered around in a somewhat uncertain
circle. 

"Hallo, Meester Cohlenss!" called the woman, cheerily. "Ai see
you got t'ose cows oll right." 

"Oh, yes," said Collins; "yes, I got the cows all right."