John Gneisenau Neihardt
The Singing of the Frogs
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About the print version
The Singing of the Frogs
Overland Monthly
John G. Neihardt
First Edition
pp. 226-230.
Frederick Marriott
San Francisco
September 1901
Published: 1901
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The Singing of the Frogs
BY JOHN G. NEIHARDT
WABISGAHA loved the tawny stretches of the prairie smiling like a rugged,
honest face under the kiss of the sunlight; he loved the storm that frowned and
shouted like an angry chief; he loved the south-wind and the scent of the
spring, yet the love of woman he knew not, for his heart was given to his horse,
Ingla Hota, which means Laughing Thunder.
Why should he have a squaw? Did not Laughing Thunder toss his mane and neigh
when he heard the soft steps of his master? Was not Laughing Thunder his
companion and his helpmeet? Ah, no, Wabisgaha would have no squaw.
And furthermore, his love for Laughing Thunder was not sentiment; it was
religion. Many and weird were the tales that the wise old men told about the
evening fires concerning the horse of Wabisgaha. It was said in a subdued voice,
lest that some demon face should peer into the circle of the fire from the
darkness, that Laughing Thunder contained an evil spirit; that Wabisgaha was
secretly a great medicine man, who had learned the terrible words that tame the
spirits of the thunder, and had made the black Power of the storm come down and
be his horse. Yes, and there was one who had watched Laughing Thunder graze all
day upon the hills and never a blade was nipped; but where the breath of his
nostrils passed, the grass was seared as with lightning. Another had noticed how
Laughing Thunder wasted away when the storms were few, like sunflowers pining
for the rain; and how one night when the lightning flashed and the thunder
howled, he had seen a burning horse leap from the top of a hill and gallop
through the clouds, neighing half like the laugh of a man, half like the shout
of the thunder.
"Some day Wabisgaha will ride to the land of the spirits," they would all
agree, gazing wide-eyed at each other while the last blue flame struggled in the
embers. Then they would shrug their shoulders as though the touch of an
invisible hand chilled them; shaking their heads by which to say, "Ugh! there
are many strange things."
It was the month of the sunflower. Wabisgaha one night, half asleep in his
tepee, was aroused by a strange sound among the horses, which were left to graze
upon the hills near the village. Creeping out of his tepee into the open air, he
could hear nothing but the slumberous moan of the distant thunder, for the
southeast was black and glaring by fits with a coming storm. Then there burst
forth upon the dull sultry air of the night a shrill, clear neigh and the sound
of many hurrying hoofs. That neigh! Ah, it was the neigh of Laughing Thunder. It
came again, but this time dimmer, and the gallop of hoofs grew softer as with
distance.
Wabisgaha rushed out into the night crying, "Ingla Hota, Ingla Hota." But for
answer the storm howled on the hills. By the glare of the lightning he found the
trail of the fleeing hoofs. He would take the trail and find his horse. "Ingla
Hota, Ingla Hota," he cried. The big rain drops drummed upon the hills. It
seemed to him that the thunder cried back, and ended with a sound like the neigh
of a mighty steed. So all night he followed the trail of the hoofs southward,
mingling his cries with the cries of the wind and the thunder; and when the
storm lulled and the day dawned, he climbed to the top of a hill and scanned the
drenched prairies, but no horse! Only the pathless brown sea of grass glinting
in the sun; a maddening monotony, save for the occasional gulch like a
battle-scar on the face of a warrior. No sound except the caw of a distant crow
and the monotone of silence.
With a grunt of despair he again took up the trail. He noted that the trail was narrow and well beaten. Horses of themselves do not travel single file. Then
he knew that he was following a party of warriors. In his haste he had not taken
his bow, and his feet were bare to the cactus and prickly pear; yet all day long
he kept upon the trail, and when night came he slept upon it. Ah, no, he would
not lose Laughing Thunder. Another night passed, and when the sun of the next
day was half way down from the zenith, Wabisgaha, standing upon a hill, gazed
into the sandy valley of the broad and shallow stream, and there in the wooded
bottoms were the jumbled mud lodges of the Pawnee village.
From time unknown the Pawnees and Omahas were friends; yet as Wabisgaha gazed
down upon the village he feared that the ancient friendship had been broken. But
he was very weary, and the thought of losing Laughing Thunder was like a lash of
buckskin behind him. So he passed down into the valley. A band of shouting
Pawnees in war paint came out to meet the lone stranger. Several of the party
seized upon him, binding his arms behind him with thongs of rawhide, while the
others danced deliriously about, shouting and waving their weapons above their
heads. And the captive, weary and unarmed, without resistance was led in among
the lodges.
There has ever been a something appealingly majestic about the defiance of an
Indian; and as Wabisgaha strode beside his captors, naked but for the buck-skin
breech-clout, decorated with colored beads, his broad chest brown as of beaten
copper; the great muscles expanding in impotent anger; the laboring of the
lungs; the flash of the black eye from beneath the heavy brow; the long wiry
hair tossing on his bare shoulders; these would have suggested to an esthetic
imagination the incarnate spirit of the untamed prairies.
As he passed between the rows of shouting Pawnees, he failed to notice among
a bunch of squaws an Indian girl who stared at him, wide-mouthed with interest
and wonder. She was clad more brilliantly than her companions, and the blue spot
upon her forehead at once marked her as a maiden of distinction. It was Umba
(Sunlight), the daughter of the stern warchief of the Pawnees, Pedavashaloo.
As the captive and the captors hurried on to the lodge of the big chief, Umba
gazed longingly after them with that soft light in her eye which is not
star-light nor sunshine, but has something of the gentle tenderness of the one
and the potent glory of the other. A woman is a woman, though her face be
angular and swarthy, and the love of a daughter of the prairie takes unto itself
an element of boundlessness like the plain and of fury like the winds that
sweep.
Umba was moved by the defiant attitude of the captive, for womankind loves
bravery. She was charmed by the magnificent brown limbs, the powerful chest, the
fierce eye.
Wabisgaha was taken before Pedavashaloo, who stood at the door of his lodge.
The bold eye of the captive met the stern glance of the chief, and for a while
both were silent. Then the chief spoke:
"Why do you come among my people?"
The captive threw back his head, and in a fierce guttural, said:
"My people and your people have been friends; your people stole Wabisgaha's
horse; give him back that Wabisgaha may return in peace to his village."
The eye of the chief flashed with sudden anger.
"My people do not steal!" he thundered. "My people make war; you are a
captive; to-morrow you shall die!"
That night the women who slept in the lodge of Umba were often awakened by
her moaning. She was thinking of Wabisgaha. But he, lying bound and guarded, did
not moan; he was thinking of his horse. Now he was going to the land of the
spirits. How lonely he would be without Laughing Thunder. Often through the
night he prayed to Wakunda that his horse might be killed and go with him. When
the sky paled with the early morning he slept and dreamed. He stood upon a high
hill and the clouds were about him. The feverish red sun was sinking below him.
Suddenly the clouds glowed as when a prairie fire roars and crackles through the
night, and then there burst upon his ear a mighty neigh, half laugh, half thunder, and a burning
steed galloped through the parting mist toward him. He awoke, and the Dawn
looked in at the door! It was a good omen; he would not be afraid to die. When
the sun was ...
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