Dances With Wolves

CHAPTER XII

Wind In His Hair and the men returned to find their village in mourning.

The party that had been out so long against the Utes had come home at last.

And the news was not good.

They’d stolen only six horses, not enough to cover their own losses. They were empty-handed after all that time on the trail.

With them were four badly injured men, of which only one would survive. But the real tragedy was counted in the six men who had been killed, six very fine warriors. And worse yet, there were only four blanket-shrouded corpses on the travois.

They had not been able to recover two of the dead, and sadly, the names of these men would never be spoken again.

One of them was Stands With A Fist’s husband.

Because she was in the once-a-month lodge, word had to be passed from outside by two of her husband’s friends.

She seemed to take the news impassively at first, sitting still as a statue on the floor of the lodge, her hands entwined on her lap, her head bowed slightly. She sat like that most of the afternoon, letting grief eat its way slowly through her heart while the other women went about their business.

They watched her, however, partly because they all knew how close Stands With A Fist and her husband had been. But she was a white woman, and that more than anything else, was cause for watching. None of them knew how a white mind would work in this kind of crisis. So they watched with a mixture of caring and curiosity.

It was well they did.

Stands With A Fist was so deeply devastated that she didn’t make a peep all afternoon. She didn’t shed a single tear. She just sat. All the while her mind was running dangerously fast. She thought of her loss, of her husband, and finally of herself.

She played back the events of her life with him, all of it appearing in fractured but vivid detail. Over and over, one particular time came back to her . . . the one and only time she had cried.

It was on a night not long after the death of their second child. She had held out, trying everything she knew to keep from caving in to the misery. She was still holding out when the tears came. She tried to stop them by burying her face in the sleeping robe. They had already had the talk about another wife, and he had already said the words, “You are plenty.” But it was not enough to stem the grief of the second baby’s passing, grief she knew he shared, and she had buried her wet face in the robe. But she could not stop, and the tears led to sobbing.

When it was over she lifted her head and found him sitting quietly at the edge of the fire, poking at it aimlessly, his unfocused eyes looking through the flames.

When their eyes met she said, “I am nothing.”

He made no reply at first. But he looked straight into her soul with an expression so peaceful that she could not resist its calming effect. Then she had seen the faintest of smiles steal across his mouth as he said the words again.

“You are plenty.”

She remembered it so well: his deliberate rise from the fire, his little motion that said, “Move over,” his easy slide under the robe, his arms gathering her in so softly.

And she remembered the unconsciousness of the love they made, so free of movement and words and energy. It was like being borne aloft to float endlessly in some unseen, heavenly stream. It was their longest night. When they would reach the edge of sleep they would somehow begin again. And again. And again. Two people of one flesh.

Even the coming of the sun did not stop them. For the first and only times in their lives, neither left the lodge that morning.

When sleep finally did find them, it was simultaneous, and Stands With A Fist remembered drifting off with the feeling that the burden of being two people was suddenly so light that it ceased to matter. She remembered feeling no longer Indian or white. She felt herself as a single being, one person, undivided.

Stands With A Fist blinked herself back to the present of the once-a-month lodge.

She was no longer a wife, a Comanche, or even a woman. She was nothing now. What was she waiting for?

A hide scraper was lying on the hard-packed floor only a few feet away. She saw her hand around it. She saw it plunge deep into her breast, all the way to the hilt.

Stands With A Fist waited for the moment when everyone’s attention was elsewhere. She rocked back and forth a few times, then lurched forward, covering the few feet across the floor on all fours.

Her hand went to it cleanly, and in a flash, the blade was in front of her face. She lifted it higher, screamed, and drove down with both hands, as if clasping some dear object to her heart.

In the middle of the split second it took the scraper to complete its flight, the first woman arrived. Though she missed the hands that held the knife there was enough of a collision to deflect its downward flight. The blade traveled sideways leaving a tiny track on the bodice of Stands With A Fist’s dress as it passed over the left breast, ripped through the doeskin sleeve, and plowed into the fleshy part of her arm just above the elbow.

She fought like a demon, and the women had a tough time prying the scraper out of her hand. Once it was free, all the fight went out of the little white woman. She collapsed into the sisterly arms of her friends, and like the flood that comes when a stubborn valve is tripped, she began to sob convulsively.

They half carried, half dragged the tiny ball of shaking and tears to bed. While one friend cradled her like a baby, two others stopped the bleeding and patched up her arm.

She cried for so long that the women had to take turns holding her. At last her breathing started to grow less intense and the sobs faded to a steady whimpering. Then, without opening her tear-swollen eyes, she spoke, repeating the same words over and over, chanting them softly to no one but herself.

“I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing.”

In the early evening they filled a hollowed-out horn with a thin broth and fed it to her. She began with hesitant sips, but the more she drank, the more she needed. She drained the last of it with a long gulp and lay back on the bedding, her eyes wide as they stared past her friends to the ceiling.

“I am nothing,” she said again. But now the tone of her pronouncement was measured with serenity, and the other women knew she had passed through the most dangerous stage of her grief.

With kind words of encouragement, murmured sweetly, they stroked her tangled hair and tucked the edges of a blanket around her small shoulders.

At about the same time exhaustion carried Stands With A Fist into a deep, dreamless sleep, Lieutenant Dunbar woke to the sound of hooves, stamping in the doorway of his sod hut.

Not knowing the sound, and hazy from his long sleep, the lieutenant lay quiet, blinking himself back awake while his hand fumbled along the floor for the Navy revolver. Before he could find it, he recognized the sound. It was Cisco, come back again.

Still on guard, Dunbar slipped noiselessly off the bunk, and creeping past his horse in a crouch, he went outside.

It was dark but early yet. The evening star was alone in the sky. The lieutenant listened and watched. No one was about.

Cisco had followed him into the yard, and when Lieutenant Dunbar absently laid a hand on his neck, he found the hair stiff with dried sweat. He grinned then and said out loud:

“I guess you gave them a hard time, didn’t you? Let’s get you a drink.”

Leading Cisco down to the stream, he was amazed at how strong he felt. His paralysis at the sight of the afternoon raid, though he recalled it vividly, seemed something far away. Not dim, but far away, like history. It was a baptism, he concluded, a baptism that had catapulted him from imagination to reality. The warrior who had ridden up and barked at him had been real. The men who took Cisco had been real. He knew them now.

As Cisco fiddled with the water, splashing it with his lips, Lieutenant Dunbar let his mind run further along this vein of thought and struck pay dirt.

Waiting, he thought, That’s what I’ve been doing.

He shook his head, laughing inwardly to himself. I’ve been waiting. He chucked a stone into the water. Waiting for what? For someone to find me? For Indians to take my horse? To see a buffalo?

He couldn’t believe himself. He’d never walked on eggs, and yet that was what he’d been doing these last weeks. Walking on eggs, waiting for something to happen.

I better put a stop to this right now, he said to himself.

Before he could think any further, his eyes caught something. Color was reflecting off the water on the other side of the stream.

Lieutenant Dunbar glanced up the slope behind him.

An enormous harvest moon was beginning to rise.

On pure impulse, he swung onto Cisco’s back and rode to the top of the bluff.

It was a magnificent sight, this great moon, bright as an egg yolk, filling the night sky as if it were a whole new world come to call just on him.

He hopped off Cisco, made himself a smoke, and watched spellbound as the moon climbed quickly overhead, its gradations of topography clear as a map.

As it rose, the prairie grew brighter and brighter. He had known only darkness on previous nights, and this flood of illumination was something like an ocean suddenly drained of its water.

He had to go into it.

They rode at a walk for half an hour, and Dunbar enjoyed every minute of it. When he finally turned back, he was charged with confidence.

Now he was glad for all that had happened. He wasn’t going to mope anymore about soldiers who refused to arrive. He was not going to change his sleeping habits. He was not going to patrol in scared little circles, and he was not going to pass any more nights with one ear and one eye open.

He wasn’t going to wait any longer. He was going to force the issue.

Tomorrow morning he was going to ride out and find the Indians.

And what if they ate him up?

Well, if they ate him up, the devil could have the leftovers.

But there would be no more waiting.

When she opened her eyes at dawn, the first thing she saw was another pair of eyes. Then she realized there were several sets of eyes staring down at her. It all came rushing back, and Stands With A Fist felt a sudden wave of embarrassment at all this attention. She’d made the attempt in such an undignified, un-Comanche-like way.

She wanted to hide her face.

They asked her how she felt and if she wanted to eat, and Stands With A Fist said yes, she felt better, and yes, it would be good to eat.

While she ate she watched the women go about their little bits of business, and this, along with the sleep and the food, had a restorative effect. Life was moving ahead, and seeing this made her feel more like a person again.

But when she felt around for her heart, she could tell by the stabbing that it was broken. It would have to be healed if she was to continue in this life, and that could be best accomplished with a reasoned and thorough mourning.

She must mourn for her husband.

To do that properly she must leave the lodge.

It was still early when she made ready to go. They braided her tangled hair and sent two youngsters off on errands: one to fetch her best dress, the other to cut one of her husband’s ponies from the herd.

No one discouraged her when Stands With A Fist ran a belt through the scabbard of her finest knife and fastened it at her waist. They had prevented something irrational the day before, but she was calmer now, and if Stands With A Fist still wanted to take her life, then so be it. Many women had done so in years past.

They trailed behind her as she walked out of the lodge, so beautiful and strange and sad. One of them gave her a leg up onto the pony. Then the pony and the woman walked away, heading out of the basin that held the camp and onto the open prairie.

No one cried after her, no one wept, and no one waved goodbye. They only watched her go. But each of her friends was hoping she would not be too hard on herself and that she would come back.

All of them were fond of Stands With A Fist.

Lieutenant Dunbar was hurrying through his preparations. He’d already slept past sunrise and he’d wanted to be up at dawn. So he hurried through his coffee, puffing away on his first cigarette while his mind tried to order everything as efficiently as possible.

He jumped on the dirty work first, starting with the flag on the supply house. It was newer than the one flying from his own quarters, so he climbed the crumbling sod wall and pulled it down.

He split a corral pole, shoved it into the side of his boot, and, after careful measurement, lopped a few inches off the top. Then he attached the flag. It didn’t look bad.

He worked for more than an hour on Cisco, trimming up the fetlocks around each hoof, combing out his mane and tail, and greasing the heavy black hair of both with bacon fat.

Most of the time was spent on his coat. Lieutenant Dunbar rubbed it out and brushed it down a half-dozen times until, at last, he stepped back and saw that there was no point in doing more. The buckskin was shining like something on the glossy page of a picture book.

He tied his horse up short, to keep him from lying down in the dust, and hustled back to the sod hut. There, he pulled out his dress uniform and went over every inch with a fine brush, snatching off stray hairs and flicking away the smallest balls of lint. He polished all the buttons. If he’d had paint, he might have touched up the epaulets and yellow stripes running down the outside of each trouser leg. He made do with the brush and a little spittle. When he was done the uniform looked more than passable.

He spit-shined his new knee-length riding boots and set them next to the uniform he’d laid out on the bed.

When it was finally time to work on himself, he picked up a rough towel and his shaving kit and hotfooted it down to the stream. He jumped in, soaped himself down, rinsed, and jumped back out, the whole operation taking less than five minutes. Taking care not to nick himself, the lieutenant shaved twice. When he could run a hand over his jaw and neck without hitting a whisker, he scampered back up the bluff and got dressed.

Cisco bent his neck and stared quizzically at the figure coming toward him, paying special attention to the bright red sash fluttering at the man’s waist. Even if the sash had not been there, it’s likely the horse’s eyes would have remained fixed. No one had seen Lieutenant Dunbar in quite this form before. Cisco certainly hadn’t, and he knew his master as well as anyone.

The lieutenant always dressed to get by, putting little emphasis on the glitter of parades or inspections or meetings with generals.

But if the finest army minds had put their heads together in order to produce the ultimate junior officer, they would have fallen far short of what Lieutenant Dunbar had wrought on this crystal-clear May morning.

Right down to the big Navy revolver swinging gently at his hip, he was every young girl’s dream of the man in uniform. The vision he presented was so full of dash and sparkle that no feminine heart could have failed to skip a beat at the sight of him. The most cynical head would have been compelled to turn, and the tightest lips would have found themselves forming the words:

“Who is that?”

After slipping the bit into Cisco’s mouth, he grabbed a hunk of mane and swung effortlessly onto the buckskin’s glossy back. They trotted over to the supply house, where the lieutenant leaned down and picked up the guidon and flag leaning against the wall. He slid the staff into his left boot, grasped the standard with his left hand, and guided Cisco toward the open prairie.

When he’d gone a hundred yards Dunbar stopped and looked back, knowing there was a possibility he would never see this place again. He glanced at the sun and saw that it was no later than midmorning. He would have plenty of time to find them. Off to the west he could see the flat, smoky cloud that had appeared three mornings in a row. That would have to be them.

The lieutenant looked down at the toes of his boots. They were reflecting the sunlight. A little sigh of doubt came out of him, and for a split second he wished for a stiff shot of whiskey. Then he clucked to Cisco, and the little horse rolled into a lope that carried them west. The breeze was up and Old Glory was popping as he rode out to meet . . . to meet he knew not what.

But he was going.

Without being planned at all, Stands With A Fist’s mourning was highly ritualistic.

She had no intention of dying now. What she wanted was to clean out the warehouse of grief inside her. She wanted the most thorough cleansing possible, and so she took her time.

Quiet and methodical, she rode for almost an hour before she happened upon a spot that suited her, a place where the gods were likely to congregate.

To one who lived on the prairie it would pass for a hill. To anyone else it would have been nothing more than a bump on the land, like a small swell on a broad, flat sea. There was a single tree at its crest, a knobby old oak that somehow clung to life despite being mangled through the years by passersby. In every direction it was the only tree she could see.

It was a very lonely place. It seemed just right. She climbed to the top, slid off her pony, walked a few feet down the backside of the slope, and sat cross-legged on the ground.

The breeze was bouncing her braids around, so she reached up, undid them both, and let her cherry-colored hair fly in the wind. Then she closed her eyes, began to rock quietly back and forth, and concentrated on the terrible thing that had happened in her life, concentrated on it to the exclusion of all else.

Not many minutes later, the words to a song took shape in her head. She opened her mouth and verses tumbled out, as sure and strong as something she had diligently rehearsed.

Her singing was high. Sometimes her voice cracked. But she sang with her whole heart, with a beauty far surpassing something sweet to the ear.

The first was a simple song, celebrating his virtues as a warrior and a husband. Toward the end of it, a couplet came to her. It went:

“He was a great man,

He was great to me.”

She paused before she sang these lines. Lifting her closed eyes to the sky, Stands With A Fist pulled her knife from its scabbard and deliberately sliced a two-inch cut on her forearm. She dropped her head and peeked at the cut. The blood was coming well. She resumed her singing, holding the knife fast in one hand.

She slashed herself several more times in the next hour. The incisions were shallow, but they produced a lot of blood, and this pleased Stands With A Fist. As her head grew lighter, her concentration grew stronger.

The singing was good. It told the whole story of their lives in a way that talking to someone wouldn’t. Without going into detail, she left out nothing.

At last, when she’d made up a beautiful verse imploring the Great Spirit to give him an honored place in the world beyond the sun, a sudden surge of emotion hit her. There was little she hadn’t covered. She was finishing, and that meant goodbye.

Tears flooded her eyes as she hiked up the doeskin dress to slash one of her thighs. She drew the blade across her leg hastily and gave a little gasp. The cut was very deep this time. She must have hit a major vein or artery, because when Stands With A Fist looked down, she could see the red gushing out with every beat of her heart.

She could try to stop the bleeding or she could go on singing.

Stands With A Fist chose the latter. She sat with her feet stretched out, letting her blood soak into the ground as she lifted her head high and wailed the words:

“It will be good to die.

It will be good to go with him.

I will be going after.”

Because the breeze was blowing into her face, she never heard the rider’s approach.

He’d noticed the slope from far out and decided that, since he’d seen nothing yet, it would be a good place to take a sighting. If he still couldn’t see anything when he got there, he might climb that old tree.

Lieutenant Dunbar was halfway up the rise when the wind brought a strange, sad sound to his ears. Going with caution, he cleared the slope’s crest and saw a person sitting a few feet down the hill, just in front of him. The person’s back was turned. He couldn’t say for sure whether it was a man or a woman. But it was definitely an Indian.

A singing Indian.

He was sitting still on Cisco’s back when the person turned to face him.

She couldn’t have said what it was, but Stands With A Fist suddenly knew there was something standing behind her, and she turned to see.

She only caught a glimpse of the face below the hat before a surprise gust of wind whipped the colored flag around the man’s head.

But the glimpse was enough. It told her he was a white soldier.

She didn’t jump or run. There was something spellbinding about the image of the solitary horse soldier. The great colored flag and the shining pony and the sun blinking off the ornaments on his clothes. And now the face again as the flag unfurled: a hard, young face with shining eyes. Stands With A Fist blinked several times, unsure if she was seeing a vision or a person. Nothing had moved but the flag.

Then the soldier shifted his seat on the horse. He was real. She rolled to her knees and started to draw away down the slope. She didn’t make a sound, nor did she rush. Stands With A Fist had woken from one nightmare to find herself in another, one that was real. She moved slowly because she was too horrified to run.

Dunbar was shocked when he saw her face. He didn’t say the words, not even in his head, but if he had, the lieutenant would have said something like, “What kind of woman is this?”

The sharp little face, the tangled cherry hair, and the intelligent eyes, wild enough to love or hate with equal intensity, had thrown him completely. It didn’t occur to him then that she might not be an Indian. Only one thing was on his mind at the moment.

He had never seen a woman who looked so original.

Before he could move or speak, she rolled to her knees, and he saw that she was covered with blood.

“Oh my God,” he gasped.

It wasn’t until she’d backed all the way down the slope that he raised his hand and called out softly.

“Wait.”

At the sound of the word, Stands With A Fist broke into a stumbling run. Lieutenant Dunbar trotted after her, pleading for her to stop. When he had closed to within a few yards, Stands With A Fist glanced back, lost her footing, and went down in the high grass.

When he got to her she was crawling, and every time he tried to reach down he had to pull away, as if afraid to touch a wounded animal. When he finally took her around the shoulders, she flipped onto her back and clawed out at his face.

“You’re hurt,” he said, batting away her hands. “You’re hurt.”

For a few seconds she fought hard, but the steam went out of her fast and he had her by the wrists in no time. With the last of her strength she bucked and kicked under him. And when she did, something bizarre happened.

In the delirium of her struggle an old English word, one she hadn’t spoken for many years, came to her. It slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it.

“Don’t,” she said.

It gave them both pause. Lieutenant Dunbar couldn’t believe he’d heard it, and Stands With A Fist couldn’t believe she’d said it.

She threw her head back and let her body sag against the ground. It was too much for her. She moaned a few Comanche words and passed out.

The woman in the grass continued to breathe. Most of her wounds were superficial, but the one on her thigh was dangerous. Blood was still seeping steadily from it, and the lieutenant kicked himself for having thrown away the red sash a mile or two back. It would have made a perfect tourniquet.

He’d been ready to throw away more. The longer he’d ridden and the less he’d seen, the more ridiculous his plan had seemed. He’d thrown the sash away as something useless, silly really, and was ready to fold up the flag (which also seemed silly) and return to Fort Sedgewick when he saw the rise and the solitary tree.

His belt was new and too stiff, so with the woman’s knife, he cut a strip out of the flag and tied it high on her thigh. The flow of blood diminished right away, but he still needed a compress. He stripped off his uniform, wriggled out of his long johns, and cut the underwear in half. Then he wadded up the top and pressed it against the deep gash.

For ten terrible minutes Lieutenant Dunbar knelt next to her, naked in the grass, both hands pushing hard against the compress. Once during that time he thought she may have died. He placed a tentative ear on her breast and listened. Her heart was still thumping.

Working there by himself was difficult and nerve-racking, not knowing who the woman was, not knowing whether she would live or die. It was hot in the grass at the base of the slope, and every time he brushed at the sweat dripping into his eyes, he left a streak of her blood on his face. Off and on he would lift the compress and take a look. And each time he would stare in frustration at the blood that refused to stop. Then he would replace the compress.

But he stayed with it.

Finally, when the blood had slowed to a trickle, he went into action. The thigh wound needed to be sewn shut, but that was impossible. He cut a leg off the long underwear, folded it into a dressing, and laid it flat on the wound. Then, working as fast as he could, the lieutenant cut another strip from the flag and tied it securely around the bandage. He repeated this process with the lesser arm wounds.

As he worked, Stands With A Fist began to groan. She opened her eyes a few times but was too weak to make a fuss, even when he took up his canteen and poured a sip or two of water into her mouth.

After he had done all he could as a doctor, Dunbar put his uniform back on, wondering what to do as he buttoned his trousers and tunic.

He saw her pony out on the prairie and thought of catching it. But when he looked at the woman in the grass, it didn’t make sense. She might be able to ride, but she would need help.

Dunbar glanced at the western sky. The smoky cloud was nearly gone. Only a few wisps remained. If he hurried, he could point himself in that direction before the cloud vanished.

He slipped his arms under Stands With A Fist, picked her up, and piled her as smoothly as he could onto Cisco’s back, intending to lead while she rode. But the girl was semiconscious and started to keel over as soon as she was on.

With one hand holding her in place, he managed to jump up behind. Then he turned her around, and looking like a father cradling his stricken daughter, Dunbar steered his horse in the direction of the smoky cloud.

As Cisco carried them across the prairie, the lieutenant thought about his plan to impress the wild Indians. He didn’t look very mighty or very official now. There was blood on his tunic and his hands. The girl was bandaged with his underwear and a United States flag.

It had to be better this way. When he thought about what he had done, cavorting stupidly around the countryside with polished boots and a silly red sash and, of all things, a flag flying at his side, the lieutenant smiled sheepishly.

I must be an idiot, he thought.

He looked at the cherry hair under his chin and wondered what this poor woman must have thought when she saw him in his dandy getup.

Stands With A Fist wasn’t thinking at all. She was in twilight. She was only feeling. She felt the horse swaying under her, she felt the arm across her back, and she felt the strange fabric against her face. Most of all Stands With A Fist felt safe, and all the way back she kept her eyes closed, afraid that if she opened them, the feeling would be gone.