Free The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction by Bernard Malamud

has no business being on this land. Let’s find his horse and take it with us. He’ll freeze to death trying to find his way out of the woods.”
    The three Indians approached the white settler. He was a sturdy man of sixty, half asleep, still staring at the half-moon.
    Then the settler rose and wheeled around. After an instant of
fright he casually studied their Indian faces and laughed. They could smell his whiskey breath.
    “Welcome, friends,” said the white man. “I have strayed off the beaten path and have to ask you to point me in the right direction. I left my horse in the woods and can’t find him. I tried to figger out where I was by studying the moon, but all I can figger is it’s rising in the east. This is for your trouble.” He handed Foxglove a half-empty whiskey bottle.
    Foxglove then handed the settler an almost empty whiskey bottle. The settler shook that bottle to see if the stuff fizzed. It didn’t, so he took a half pull and held up the bottle to see how much was left. It was empty so he tossed it into the snow.
    Small Horse took a long pull of the new bottle and handed it back to the settler; he took another pull, wiped his wet chin with his coat sleeve, and passed the whiskey to Foxglove.
    “I am feeling no pain,” the elderly man said to the three Indians. “You gents are my friends—right?” He said he was on his way back to the fort and had got lost.
    None of them spoke.
    “No speak?” he said. “When we make powwow?”
    The settler resumed sitting on the snowy ground. After a while each of the three Indians sat with him, first Small Horse, then Foxglove, then Windy Voice holding his ankles.
    “What should we do with him?” Windy Voice asked in the tongue of the People.
    “Are you talking about me?” asked the settler.
    “No,” said Windy Voice. “We talk about your firewater. Where you get it? It steals my breath away.”
    The settler said, “I hoped you wasn’t talking about me.”
    The Indians said nothing. Their faces were motionless.
    “He must be the one who tried to rape Penelope,” said Foxglove. “He also touched One Blossom in the crotch. Indian Head said he would kill him on sight if he ever came across the white bastard who had done that.”
    Small Horse pulled out a short pipe and lit it with sparks from two pieces of flint. The settler also had a corncob, which he lit with a spark from Small Horse’s pipe.

    They smoked.
    “What will we do with this white bastard?” Windy Voice asked in their tribal tongue.
    “Where you want to go?” he asked the white man.
    “Home,” said the settler, “if I knew where it was. I thought I came from the east, but my head is spinnin’ so it feels like east, west, and north. Still and all, what I want to do most is take a hot piss and go back to the fort. My horse is waitin’ somewhere t’other side of them pines.”
    “We take you back,” said Windy Voice, imitating a white man.
    “Will you? Thanks, old chum. You boys are the nicest fucking Indians I do believe I have ever met.”
    Even Foxglove laughed at the man’s expression.
     
     
    A brave came galloping into camp one morning as Jozip was sensing spring on its way. The brave ran to Jozip’s tepee, tossed open the tent flap, and proclaimed trouble. “Chief Jozip, we have found a dead settler in the woods. He is a bald-headed man who was scalped.”
    “What do you mean, scolped?” said Jozip. “This tribe does not do such terrible things. We don’t teach our braves to scolp strangers. This we don’t do. My God, where did they leave the body? First we must bury it. No. First call for me Indian Head. Tell him to come fast.”
    Indian Head came on the run. Jozip asked the brave to repeat his story. The brave said he had been in the woods and had found a dead white man lying in the bloody snow. He swore he had never seen him before.
    Jozip told Indian Head the man had been scalped. “Is this possible?”
    Indian Head said it was. “It is not possible