Dances With Wolves

CHAPTER XVI

A few hours after Lieutenant Dunbar’s first visit to the village, Kicking Bird and Ten Bears held a high level talk. It was short and to the point.

Ten Bears liked Lieutenant Dunbar. He liked the look in his eyes, and Ten Bears put great stock in what he saw in a person’s eyes. He also liked the lieutenant’s manners. He was humble and courteous, and Ten Bears placed considerable value on these traits. The matter of the cigarette was amusing. How someone could make smoke out of something with so little substance defied logic, but he didn’t hold it against Lieutenant Dunbar and agreed with Kicking Bird that, as an intelligence-gathering source, the white man was worth knowing.

The old chief tacitly approved Kicking Bird’s idea for breaking the language barrier. But there were conditions. Kicking Bird would have to orchestrate his moves unofficially. Loo Ten Nant would be his responsibility, and only his. Already there was talk that the white man might be responsible in some way for the scarcity of game. No one knew how people would take to the white soldier if he made repeated visits to the village. The people might turn against him. It was entirely possible that someone would kill him.

Kicking Bird accepted the conditions, assuring Ten Bears that he would do everything in his power to conduct the plan in a quiet way.

This settled, they took up a more important subject.

The buffalo were way overdue.

Scouts had been ranging far and wide for days, but so far they had seen only one buffalo. That was an aging, solitary bull being torn apart by a large pack of wolves. His carcass had hardly been worth picking over.

The band’s morale was sinking along with its meager food reserves, and it would not be many days before the shortage would become critical. They’d been living on the meat of local deer, but this source was playing out fast. If the buffalo didn’t come soon, the promise of an abundant summer would be broken by the sound of crying children.

The two men decided that in addition to sending out more scouts, a dance was urgently needed. It should be held within a week’s time.

Kicking Bird would be in charge of the preparations.

It was a strange week, a week in which time was jumbled for the medicine man. When he needed time, the hours would fly by, and when he was intent on time passing, it would crawl, minute by minute. Trying to balance everything out was a struggle.

There were myriad sensitive details to consider in mounting the dance. It was to be an invocation, very sacred, and the whole band would be participating. The planning and delegating of various responsibilities for an event of this importance amounted to a full-time job.

Plus there were the ongoing duties of being a husband to two wives, a father to four children, and a guide to his newly adopted daughter. Added to it all were the routine problems and surprises that cropped up each day: visits to the sick, impromptu councils with drop-in visitors, and the making of his own medicine.

Kicking Bird was the busiest of men.

And there was something else, something that nipped constantly at his concentration. Like a low-grade, persistent headache, Lieutenant Dunbar preyed on his mind. Wrapped up as he was in the present, Loo Ten Nant was the future, and Kicking Bird could not resist its call. The present and the future occupied the same space in the medicine man’s day. It was a crowded time.

Having Stands With A Fist around did not make it easier for him. She was the key to his plan, and Kicking Bird could not look at her without thinking of Loo Ten Nant, an act that inevitably sent him wandering down new trails of speculative thought. But he had to keep an eye on her. It was important to approach the matter at the right time and place. She was healing fast, moving without trouble now, and had picked up the rhythm of life at his lodge. Already a favorite with the children, she worked as long and as hard as anyone in camp. When left to herself, she was withdrawn, but that was understandable. In fact, it had always been her nature.

Sometimes, after watching her a while, Kicking Bird would heave a private sigh of burden. At those times he would pull up at the edge of questions, the main one being whether or not Stands With A Fist truly belonged. But he could not presume an answer, and an answer would not help him anyway. Only two things mattered. She was here and he needed her.

By the day of the dance he still had not found an opportunity to speak to her in the way he wanted. That morning he woke with the realization that he, Kicking Bird, would have to put his plan in motion if he ever wanted it to happen.

He dispatched three young men to Fort Sedgewick. He was too busy to go himself, and while they were gone he would find a way to have a talk with Stands With A Fist.

Kicking Bird was spared the drudgery of manipulation when his entire family set off on an expedition to the river at midmorning, leaving Stands With A Fist behind to dress out a fresh-shot deer. Kicking Bird watched her from inside the lodge. She never looked up as the knife flew along in her hand, peeling away hide with the same ease that tender flesh falls away from the bone. He waited until she paused in her work, taking a few moments to watch a group of children playing tag in front of a lodge across the way.

“Stands With A Fist,” he said softly, bending through the entrance to the lodge.

She looked up at him with her wide eyes but said nothing.

“I would talk with you,” he said, disappearing into the darkness of the lodge.

She followed.

It was tense inside. Kicking Bird was going to say things she probably would not want to hear, and it made him uneasy.

As she stood in front of him, Stands With A Fist felt the kind of foreboding that comes before questioning. She had done nothing wrong, but life had become a day-to-day proposition. She never knew what was going to befall her next, and since the death of her husband, she had not felt up to meeting challenges. She took solace in the man standing before her. He was respected by everyone and he had taken her in as one of his own. If there was anyone she could trust, it was Kicking Bird.

But he seemed nervous.

“Sit,” he said, and they both dropped to the floor. “How is the wound?” he began.

“It is healing,” she replied, her eyes barely meeting his.

“The pain is gone?”

“Yes.”

“You have found strength again.”

“I am stronger now; I am working well.”

She toyed with a patch of dirt at her feet, scraping it into a little pile while Kicking Bird tried to find the words he wanted. He didn’t like rushing, but he didn’t want to be interrupted either, and someone might come by at any time.

She looked up at him suddenly, and Kicking Bird was struck by the sadness of her face.

“You are unhappy here,” he said.

“No.” She shook her head. “I am glad for it.”

She played with the dirt halfheartedly, flicking it with her fingers.

“I am sad without my husband.”

Kicking Bird thought for a moment, and she began to build another pile of dirt.

“He is gone now,” the medicine man said, “but you are not. Time is moving and you are moving with it, even if you go unhappily. Things will be happening.”

“Yes,” she said, pursing her lips, “but I am not much interested in what will happen.”

From his vantage point facing the entrance Kicking Bird saw several shadows pass in front of the lodge flap and then move on.

“The whites are coming,” he said suddenly. “More of them will be coming through our country each year.”

A shiver ran up Stands With A Fist’s spine. It spread across her shoulders. Her eyes hardened and her hands involuntarily rolled themselves into fists.

“I won’t go with them,” she said.

Kicking Bird smiled. “No,” he said, “you won’t go. There is not a warrior among us who would not fight to keep you from going.”

Hearing these words of support, the woman with the dark cherry hair leaned forward slightly, curious now.

“But they will be coming,” he continued. “They are a strange race in their habits and beliefs. It is hard to know what to do. People say they are many, and that troubles me. If they come as a flood, we will have to stop them. Then we will lose many of our good men, men like your husband. There will be many more widows with long faces.”

As Kicking Bird drew closer to the point, Stands With A Fist dropped her head, contemplating the words.

“This white man, the one who brought you home. I have seen him. I have been to his lodge downriver and drunk his coffee and talked with him. He is strange in his ways. But I have watched him and I think his heart is a good one. . . .”

She lifted her head and glanced fleetingly at Kicking Bird.

“This white man is a soldier. He may be a person of influence among the whites. . . .”

Kicking Bird stopped. A common sparrow had found its way through the open flap and fluttered into the lodge. Knowing it had trapped itself, the young bird beat its wings frantically as it bounced off one hide wall after another. Kicking Bird watched as the sparrow climbed closer to the smoke hole and suddenly disappeared to freedom.

He looked now at Stands With A Fist. She had ignored the intrusion and was staring at the hands folded in her lap. The medicine man thought, trying to pick up the thread of his monologue. Before he could start however, he again heard the soft whir of little wings.

Looking overhead, he saw the sparrow, hovering just inside the smoke hole. He followed its flight as it dived deliberately toward the floor, pulled up in a graceful swoop, and lighted quietly on the cherry-colored head. She didn’t move, and the bird began preening, as natural as if it were nesting in the branches of a tall tree. She passed an absent hand over her head, and like a child skipping rope, the sparrow hopped a foot into the air, hovered as the hand swept under its feet, and landed once more. Stands With A Fist sat oblivious as the tiny visitor fluffed its wings, threw out its chest, and took off like a shot, making a beeline for the entrance. It was gone in the blink of an eye.

With time Kicking Bird would have made certain conclusions concerning the import and meaning of the sparrow’s arrival and Stands With A Fist’s role in its performance. There was no time to take a walk and mull it over, but somehow Kicking Bird felt reassured by what he had seen.

Before he could speak again, she was lifting her head.

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

“I want to hear the white soldier’s words, but my ears cannot understand them.”

Now it was done. Stands With A Fist’s face dropped.

“I am afraid of him,” she said.

“A hundred white soldiers coming on a hundred horses with a hundred guns . . . that is something to fear. But he is only one man. We are many and this is our country.”

She knew he was right, but rightness didn’t make her feel any more secure. She shifted uncomfortably.

“I do not remember the white tongue,” she said halfheartedly. “I am Comanche.”

Kicking Bird nodded.

“Yes, you are Comanche. I do not ask for you to become something else. I am asking you to put your fear behind and your people ahead. Meet the white man. Try to find your white tongue with him, and when you do, we three will make a talk that will serve all the people. I have thought on this for a long time.”

He lapsed into silence and the whole lodge became still. She looked around, letting her eyes linger here and there, as if it would be a long time before she saw this place again. She wasn’t going anywhere, but in her mind Stands With A Fist was taking another step toward giving up the life she loved so dearly.

“When will I see him?” she asked.

Stillness filled the lodge again.

Kicking Bird got to his feet.

“Go to a quiet place,” he instructed, “away from our camp. Sit for a time and try to think back the words of your old tongue.”

Her chin was tilted at her chest as Kicking Bird walked her to the entrance.

“Put your fear behind and it will be a good thing,” he said as she ducked out of the lodge.

He didn’t know if she heard this last bit of advice. She hadn’t turned back to him, and now she was walking away.

Stands With A Fist did as she was asked.

With an empty water jug resting on her hip, she made her way down the main track to the river. It was close to noon, and the morning traffic, water haulers and horses and washers and beaming children, had thinned out. She walked slowly, eyeing each side of the trail for a seldom-traveled rut that would take her to a place of solitude. Her heart quickened as she spotted an overgrown path that cut away from the main trail and ran through the breaks a hundred yards from the river.

No one was about, but she listened carefully for anyone who might be coming. Hearing nothing, she hid the cumbersome jug under a choke-cherry bush and slipped into the heavy cover of the old path just as voices started up near the water’s edge.

She hurried through the tangle hanging over the path and was relieved when, after only a few yards, the footpath swelled into a full-fledged trail. Now she was moving with ease, and the voices along the main trail soon died out.

The morning was beautiful. Light breezes bent the willows into swaying dancers, the patches of sky overhead were a brilliant blue, and the only sounds were those of an occasional rabbit or lizard, startled by her step. It was a day for rejoicing, but there was no joy in Stands With A Fist’s heart. It was marbled with long veins of bitterness, and as she slowed her pace, the white girl of the Comanches gave in to hate.

Some of it was directed at the white soldier. She hated him for coming to their country, for being a soldier, for being born. She hated Kicking Bird for asking her to do this and for knowing that she could not refuse him. And she hated the Great Spirit for being so cruel. The Great Spirit had wrecked her heart. But it wasn’t enough to kill someone’s heart.

Why do you keep hurting me? she asked. I am already dead.

Gradually her head began to cool. But her bitterness didn’t diminish; it hardened into something cold and brittle.

Find your white tongue. Find your white tongue.

It came to her that she was tired of being a victim, and it made her angry.

You want my white tongue, she thought in Comanche. You see some worth in me for that? I will find it then. And if I am to become no one for doing that, I will be the greatest of all the no ones. I will be a no one to remember.

As her moccasins scraped softly over the grass-tufted path, she began to cast herself back, trying to find a place at which to start, a place where she could begin to remember the words.

But everything was blank. No matter how much she concentrated, nothing came to mind, and for several minutes she suffered the terrible frustration of having a whole language on the tip of her tongue. Instead of lifting, the mist of her past had closed in like fog.

She was worn out by the time she came to a small clearing that opened into the river a mile upstream from the village. It was a spot of rare beauty, a grassy porch shaded by a sparkling cottonwood tree and surrounded on three sides by natural screens. The river was wide and shallow and dotted with sandbars crowned with reeds. On days past she would have delighted in finding such a place. Stands With A Fist had always been keen for beauty.

But today she barely noticed. Wanting only to rest, she sat heavily in front of the cottonwood and leaned back against its trunk. She crossed her legs in the Indian way and hiked her shift to let the cool air from the river play around her thighs. Finally she closed her eyes and resolved herself to remembering.

But still she could remember nothing. Stands With A Fist gritted her teeth. She raised her hands and ground the palms into her tired eyes.

It was while she rubbed her eyes that the image came.

It struck her like a bright splash of color.

Images had come to her the preceding summer, when it was discovered that white soldiers were in the vicinity. One morning while she lay in bed, her doll had appeared on the wall. In the middle of a dance she had seen her mother. But both images were opaque.

The ones she was seeing now were alive and moving as if in a dream. There was white-man talk all the way through. And she understood every word.

What appeared first had startled her with its clarity. It was the torn hem of a blue gingham dress. A hand was on the hem, playing about the fringe. As she watched through closed eyes, the image grew larger. The hand belonged to a young girl. She was standing in a rough earthen room, furnished only with a small, hard-looking bed, a framed spray of flowers mounted next to the only window, and a sideboard over which hung a mirror with a large chip at one edge.

The girl was facing away, her unseen face bent toward the hand that held the hem as she inspected the tear.

In making the inspection, the dress had been lifted high enough to expose the girl’s short, skinny legs.

A woman’s voice suddenly called from outside the room.

“Christine . . .”

The girl’s head turned, and in a rush of realization, Stands With A Fist recognized her old self. Her old face listened, and then the old mouth made the words: “Coming, Mother.”

Stands With A Fist opened her eyes then. She was frightened by what she had seen, but like a listener at the feet of a storyteller, she wanted more.

She closed her eyes again, and from the limb of an old oak tree a scene opened through a mass of rustling leaves. A long-fronted sod house, shaded by a pair of cottonwoods, was built against the bank of a draw. A crude table thrown together with planking sat in front of the house. And seated at the table were four grown-up people, two men and two women. The four were talking, and Stands With A Fist could understand every word.

Three children were playing blindman’s bluff farther out in the yard, and the women kept an eye on them as they chatted about a fever one of the children had recently conquered.

The men were smoking pipes. On the table in front of them were scattered the remains of a late afternoon Sunday lunch: a bowl of boiled potatoes, several dishes of greens, a pile of cornless cobs, a turkey skeleton, and a half-full pitcher of milk. The men were talking about the likelihood of rain.

She recognized one of them. He was tall and stringy. His cheeks were hollow and high-boned. His hair was pushed straight back over his head. A short, wispy beard clung to his jaw. It was her father.

Up above she could make out the forms of two people lying in the buffalo grass growing out of the roof. At first she didn’t know who they were, but suddenly she was closer and could see them clearly.

She was with a boy about her age. His name was Willy. He was raw and skinny and pale. They were side by side on their backs, holding hands as they watched a line of high clouds spreading across the spectacular sky.

They were talking about the day they would be married.

“I would rather there was nobody,” Christine said dreamily. “I would rather you came to the window one night and took me away.”

She squeezed his hand, but Willy didn’t squeeze back. He was watching the clouds intently.

“I don’t know about that part,” he said.

“What don’t you know?”

“We could get in trouble.”

“From who?” she asked impatiently.

“From our parents.”

Christine turned her face to his and smiled at the concern she saw.

“But we’d be married. Our business would be our own, not someone else’s.”

“I suppose,” he said, his brow still knitted.

He didn’t offer anything more, and Christine went back to watching the sky with him.

At length the boy sighed. He looked at her from the corner of his eye, and she at him.

“I guess I don’t care what kind of fuss there is . . . so long as we get married.”

“I don’t either,” she said.

Without embracing, their faces were suddenly moving toward one another, their lips making ready for a kiss. Christine changed her mind at the last moment.

“We can’t,” she whispered.

Hurt passed across his eyes.

“They’ll see us,” she whispered again. “Let’s scoot down.”

Willy was smiling as he watched her slide a little farther down the back side of the roof. Before he went after her he threw a backward glance at the people in the yard below.

Indians were coming in from the prairie. There were a dozen of them, all on horseback. Their hair was roached and their faces were painted black.

“Christine.” he hushed, grabbing her.

They squirmed forward on their bellies, edging close for the best possible view. Willy pulled up his squirrel gun as they craned their necks.

The women and children must have gone inside already, for her father and his friend were alone in the yard. Three Indians had come all the way up. The others were waiting at a respectful distance.

Christine’s father began to talk in signs to one of the three emissaries, a big Pawnee with a scowl on his face. She could see right away the talk was not good. The Indian kept motioning toward the house, making the sign for drinking. Christine’s father kept shaking his head in denial.

Indians had come before, and Christine’s father had always shared what he had on hand. These Pawnee wanted something he didn’t have . . . or something he wouldn’t part with.

Willy whispered in her ear.

“They look sore. . . . Maybe they want whiskey.”

That might be it, she thought. Her father didn’t approve of strong drink in any form, and as she watched, she could see he was losing patience. And patience was one of his hallmarks.

He waved them off, but they didn’t move. Then he threw his hands into the air, and the ponies tossed their heads. Still the Indians did not move, and now all three were scowling,

Christine’s father said something to the white friend standing by his side and showing their backs, they turned for the house.

There was no time for anyone to yell a warning. The big Pawnee’s hatchet was on a downward arc before Christine’s father had fully turned away. It struck deep under his shoulder, driving the length of the blade. He grunted as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him and hopped sideways across the yard. Before he’d gone even a few steps, the big Pawnee was on his back, hacking furiously as he drove him to ground.

The other white man tried to run, but singing arrows knocked him down halfway to the door of the sod house.

Terrible sounds flooded Christine’s ears. Screams of despair were coming from inside the house, and the Indians who had held back were whooping madly as they dashed forward at a gallop. Someone was roaring in her face. It was Willy.

“Run, Christine . . . run!”

Willy planted one of his boots on her behind and sent the girl rolling down to the spot where the roof ended and the prairie began. She looked back and saw the raw, skinny boy standing on the edge of the roof, his squirrel gun pointed down at the yard. It fired, and for a moment Willy stood motionless. Then he turned the rifle around, held it like a club, jumped quietly into space, and disappeared.

She ran then, wild with fear, her skinny seven-year-old legs churning up the draw behind the house like the wheels of a machine.

The sun was slanting into her eyes and she fell several times, scraping the skin off her knees. But she was up in a wink each time, the fear of dying pushing her past pain. If a brick wall had suddenly sprung up in the draw, she would have run right into it.

She knew she couldn’t keep this pace, and even if she could, they would be coming on horseback, so as the draw began to curve and its banks grew steeper, she looked for a place to hide.

Her frantic search had yielded nothing and the pain in her lungs was starting to stab when she spotted a dark opening partially obscured by a thick growth of bunchgrass halfway up the slope on her left.

Grunting and crying, she scrambled up the rock-strewn embankment and, like a mouse diving for cover, threw herself into the hole. Her head went in, but her shoulders didn’t. It was too small. She rocked back onto her knees and banged at the sides of the hole with her fists. The earth was soft. It began to fall away. Christine dug deliriously, and after a few moments there was enough room to wriggle inside.

It was a very tight fit. She was curled in a fetal ball and, almost at once, had the sickening feeling that she had somehow stuffed herself into a jar. Her right eye could see over the lip of the hole’s entrance for several hundred yards down the draw. No one was coming. But black smoke was rising from the direction of the house. Her hands were drawn up against her throat and one of them discovered the miniature crucifix she’d worn ever since she could remember. She held it tight and waited.

When the sun began to sink behind her, the young girl’s hopes rose. She was afraid one of them had seen her run away, but with each passing hour her chances got better. She prayed for night to come. It would be all but impossible for them to find her then.

An hour after sundown she held her breath as horses passed by down the draw. The night was moonless and she couldn’t make out any forms. She thought she heard a child crying. The hoofbeats slowly died away and didn’t return.

Her mouth was so dry that it hurt to swallow, and the throbbing of her knees seemed to be spreading over the whole of her body. She would have given anything to stretch. But she couldn’t move more than an inch or two in any direction. She couldn’t turn over, and her left side, the side she was lying on, had gone numb.

As the young girl’s longest night ground slowly on, her discomfort would build and break like a fever and she would have to steel herself against sudden rushes of panic. She might have died of shock had she given in, but each time Christine found a way to beat back these swells of hysteria. If there was a saving grace, it was that she thought little of what had happened to her family and friends. Now and again she would hear her father’s death grunt, the one he made when the Pawnee hatchet sliced through his back. But each time she heard the grunt she managed to stop there, shutting the rest of it out of her mind. She’d always been known as a tough little girl, and toughness was what saved her.

Around midnight she dropped off to sleep only to wake minutes later in a claustrophobic frenzy. Like the slipknot on a rope, the more she struggled, the tighter she wedged herself.

Her pitiful screams rang up and down the draw.

At last she could scream no more and settled down to a long, cleansing cry. When that, too, was spent, she was calm, weak with the exhaustion an animal feels after hours in the trap.

Forsaking escape from the hole, she concentrated on a series of tiny activities to make herself more comfortable. She moved her feet back and forth, counting off each toe only when she could wiggle it separate from the rest. Her hands were relatively free and she pressed her fingertips together until she had run through every combination she could think of. She counted her teeth. She recited the Lord’s prayer, spelling each word. She composed a long song about being in the hole. Then she sang it.

When first light came she began to cry again, knowing she could not possibly make it through the coming day. She’d had enough. And when she heard horses in the draw the prospect of dying at someone’s hand seemed much better than dying in the hole.

“Help,” she cried. “Help me.”

She heard the hoofbeats come to an abrupt halt. People were coming up the slope, scuffling over the rocks. The scuffling stopped and an Indian face loomed in front of the hole. She couldn’t bear to look at him, but it was impossible to turn her head away. She closed her eyes to the puzzled Comanche.

“Please . . . get me out,” she murmured.

Before she knew it strong hands were pulling her into the sunshine. She couldn’t stand at first, and as she sat on the ground, stretching out her swollen legs an inch at a time, the Indians conferred amongst themselves.

They were split. The majority could see no value in taking her. They said she was skinny and small and weak. And if they took this little bundle of misery they might be blamed for what the Pawnee had done to the white people in the earth house.

Their leader argued against this. It was unlikely that the people at the earth house, so far from any other whites, would be found right away. They would be well out of the country by then. The band had only two captives now, both Mexicans, and captives were always of value. If this one died on the long trip home, they would leave her by the trail and no one would be the wiser. If she survived, she would be useful as a worker or as something to bargain with if the need arose.

And the leader reminded the others that there was a tradition of captives becoming good Comanches, and there was always a need for more good Comanches.

The matter was settled quick enough. Those who were for killing her on the spot might have had the better argument, but the man who was for keeping her was a fast-rising young warrior with a future, and no one was eager to go against him.

She survived all the hardships, largely through the benevolence of the young warrior with a future whose name she eventually learned was Kicking Bird.

In time she came to understand that these people were her people and that they were vastly different from those who had murdered her family and friends. The Comanches became her world and she loved them as much as she hated the Pawnee. But while the hate of the killers remained, memories of her family sank steadily, like something trapped in quicksand. In the end, the memories had sunk completely from sight.

Until this day, the day she had unearthed her past.

As vivid as the recollection had been, Stands With A Fist was not thinking of it as she got up from her spot in front of the cottonwood and waded into the river. When she squatted in the water and splashed some on her face, she was not thinking of her mother and father. They were long gone, and the remembrance of them was nothing she could use.

As her eyes scanned the opposite bank, she was thinking only of the Pawnee, wondering if they would be raiding into Comanche territory this summer.

Secretly, she hoped they would. She wanted another opportunity for revenge.

There had been an opportunity several summers before, and she had made the most of that one. It came in the form of an arrogant warrior who had been taken alive for the purpose of ransom.

Stands With A Fist and a delegation of women had met the men bringing him in at the edge of camp. She herself had led the ferocious charge that the returning war party had been powerless to turn back. They’d pulled him from his horse and cut him to pieces on the spot. Stands With A Fist had been first to drive in her knife, and she’d stayed until only shreds remained. Striking back at last had been deeply satisfying, but not so satisfying that she didn’t dream regularly of another chance.

The visit with her past was a tonic, and she felt more Comanche than ever as she walked back on the little-used path. Her head was high and her heart was very strong.

The white soldier seemed a trifling thing now. She resolved that if she talked to him at all, it would only be as much as pleased Stands With A Fist.