Red Prophet Page 0,31

tree and settled the keg into a place where three thick branches split apart. Nice and tight, nice and safe. Leaves nice and thick; nobody see it from the ground, not even Red man.

Lolla-Wossiky took the long way round, but pretty soon there he was on the hill where the new walls stood. Lolla-Wossiky looked a long time, but he couldn't understand what this building was going to be. It was the new way of building, those frame walls, like White Murderer Harrison's new mansion, but it was very big. Bigger than anything Lolla-Wossiky ever saw White men build, taller than the stockade.

First the strange bridges, tight as houses. Now this strange building, tall as trees. Lolla-Wossiky walked out from the shelter of the forest onto the open meadow, rocking back and forth because the ground never stayed level when he had likker in him. When he reached the building, he stepped up onto the wooden floor. White man's floor, White man's walls, but it didn't feel like any White man building Lolla-Wossiky ever saw. Big open space inside. Walls very high. First time ever he saw White man build something that wasn't closed in and dark. In this place a Red man still maybe glad to be here.

"Who's that? Who are you?"

Lolla-Wossiky turned around so fast he almost fell. A tall White man stood at the edge of the building. The floor was up so high it met this man at the waist. He wasn't in buckskin like a hunter, or in uniform like a soldier. He was dressed like a farmer maybe, only he was clean. In fact Lolia-Wossiky never saw such a man in Carthage City.

"Who are you?" demanded the man again.

"Red man," said Lolla-Wossiky.

"It's getting on dusk, but it sure ain't night yet. I'd have to be blind not to know you're Red. But I know the Reds close by and you ain't from around here."

Lolly-Wossiky laughed. What White man ever knew one Red from another so well he could say who was from close by and who was from far away?

"You got a name, Red man?"

"Lolla-Wossiky."

"You're likkered, ain't you. I can smell it, and you don't walk too good."

"Very likkered. Whisky-Red."

"Who gave you that likker! You tell Me! Where'd you get that likker?"

Lona-wossiky was confused. White man never asked him where he got his likker before. White man always knew. "From White Murderer Harrison," he said.

"Harrison's two hundred miles southeast of here. What did you call him?"

"Governor Bill Harrison."

"You called him White Murderer Harrison."

"This Red very drunk."

"I can see that. But you sure didn't get drunk at Fort Carthage and then walk all this way without sobering up. Now where'd you get that likker?"

"You going to lock me up?"

"Lock you - now where would I lock you up, tell me that? You really are from Fort Carthage, aren't you. Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Lolla-Wossiky, we got no place to lock up drunk Reds around here, cause around here Reds don't get drunk. And if they do, we find the White man who gave him likker and that White man gets a flogging. So you tell me right now where you got that likker."

"My whisky," said Lolla-Wossiky.

"Maybe you better come with me."

"Lock me up."

"I told you, we don't - listen, you hungry?"

"Reckon so," said Lolla-Wossiky.

"You got a place to eat?"

"Eat wherever I am."

"Well, tonight you come on down and eat at my house."

Lolla-Wossiky didn't know what to say. Was this a White man joke? White man jokes were very hard to understand.

"Aren't you hungry?"

"Reckon so," said Lolla-Wossiky again.

"Well, come on, then!"

Another White man came up the hill. "Annor-of-God!" he called. "Your good wife wondered where you were."

"Just a minute, Reverend Thrower. I think maybe we got us company for supper."

"Who is that? Why, Armor-of-God, I daresay that's a Red.

"He says his name's Lolla-Wossiky. He's a Shaw-Nee. He's also drunk as a skunk."

Lolla-Wossiky was very surprised. This White man knew he was a Shaw-Nee without asking. From his hair, plucked out except the tall strip down the middle? Other Reds did this. The fringe on his loincloth? White man never saw these things.

"A Shaw-Nee," said the new-come White man. "Aren't they a particularly savage tribe?"

"Well, now, I don't know, Reverend Thrower," said Armor-of-God. "What they are is a particularly sober tribe. By which I mean they don't get so likkered as some of these others. Some folks think that the only safe Red is a whisky-Red, so they see all these sober Shaw-Nee and