Dances With Wolves

CHAPTER XXX

An inch of early snow fell fortuitously on Ten Bears’s fleeing people, covering their tracks all the way to the winter camp.

Everyone made excellent time, and six days later the splinter groups had reunited on the bottom of the mammoth canyon that would be their home for several months.

The place was steeped in Comanche history and was aptly named The Great Spirit Steps Here. The canyon was miles long, a mile wide in most places, and some of its sheer walls ran half a mile from top to bottom. They had spent the winter here for as long as most people could remember, and it was a perfect spot, providing forage and plenty of water for the people and ponies and ample protection from the blizzards that raged overhead all winter. It was also far from the reach of their enemies.

Other bands passed the winter here, too, and there was great rejoicing as old friends and relatives saw each other again for the first time since spring.

Once they had reassembled, however, Ten Bears’s village settled in to wait, unable to rest easy until the fate of the rescue party was known.

At midmorning on the day after their return a scout thundered into camp with the news that the party was coming down the trail. He said that Dances With Wolves was with them.

Stands With A Fist sprinted up the trail ahead of everyone. She was crying as she ran, and when she caught sight of the horsemen, riding single file high on the trail above, she called his name.

She didn’t stop calling it until she had reached him.

The early snow was the prelude for a fearsome blizzard that struck that afternoon.

People stayed close to their lodges for the next two days.

Dances With Wolves and Stands With A Fist saw almost no one.

Kicking Bird did the best he could for Dances With Wolves’s face, taking down the swelling and trying to speed its recovery with healing herbs. There was nothing to be done with the fragile, shattered cheekbone, however, and it was left to mend on its own.

Dances With Wolves wasn’t concerned with his injury at all. A heavier matter was hard upon him, and in struggling with it, he was not inclined to see anyone.

He talked only to Stands With A Fist, but not much was said. Most of the time he lay in the lodge like a sick man. She lay with him, wondering what was wrong but waiting for him to tell her, as she knew he eventually would.

The blizzard had begun its third day when Dances With Wolves went for a long, solitary walk. When he returned he sat her down and told her of his irreversible decision.

She turned away from him then and sat for almost an hour, her head bowed in silent contemplation.

Finally she said, “This is the way it must be?” Her eyes were glistening with sadness.

Dances With Wolves was sad, too.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

She sighed mournfully, fighting back her tears.

“Then it will be.”

Dances With Wolves asked for a council. He wanted to speak with Ten Bears. He also asked for Kicking Bird, Wind In His Hair, Stone Calf, and anyone else Ten Bears thought should attend.

They met the next night. The blizzard was tailing off and everyone was in good spirits. They ate and smoked their way through a lively set of preliminaries, telling animated stories about the fight at the river and the rescue of Dances With Wolves.

He waited through all this with good humor. He was happy to be with his friends.

But when the conversation finally started to wane he took the first silence and filled it.

“I want to tell you what is on my mind,” he said, and the council officially began.

The men knew that something important was coming and they were at their most attentive. Ten Bears turned his best ear toward the speaker, not wanting to miss a single word.

“I have not been among you for very long, but I feel in my heart that it has been all my life. I’m proud to be a Comanche. I will always be proud to be a Comanche. I love the Comanche way and I love each of you as if we were of the same blood. In my heart and spirit I will always be with you. So you must know that it is hard for me to say that I must leave you.”

The lodge erupted with startled exclamations, each man furious with disbelief. Wind In His Hair jumped to his feet and stomped back and forth, waving his hands in scorn for this foolish idea.

Dances With Wolves sat still through the uproar.

He stared into the fire, his hands folded quietly in his lap.

Ten Bears held up a hand and told the men to stop talking. The lodge became silent again.

Wind In His Hair was still prowling about, however, and Ten Bears barked at him.

“Come and sit down, Wind In His Hair. Our brother is not finished.”

Grudgingly Wind In His Hair complied, and when he was seated, Dances With Wolves continued.

“Killing those soldiers at the river was a good thing. It made me free and my heart was filled with joy to see my brothers coming to help me.

“I did not mind killing those men at all. I was glad to do it.

“But you do not know the white mind as I do. The soldiers think I’m one of them who has gone bad. They think I have betrayed them. In their eyes I’m a traitor because I have chosen to live among you. I do not care if they are right or wrong, but I tell you truly that this is what they believe.

“White men will hunt a traitor long after they have given up on other men. To them a traitor is the worst thing a soldier can be. So they will hunt me until they find me. They will not give up.

“When they find me they will find you. They will want to hang me and they will want the same kind of punishment for you. Maybe they will punish you even if I’m gone. I don’t know.

“If it was just ourselves, I might stay, but it is more than just us men. It is your wives and your children and those of your friends. It is all the people who will be hurt.

“They cannot find me among you. That is all. That is why I must go. I have told Stands With A Fist about this and we will go together.”

No one stirred for many seconds. They all knew he was right, but no one knew what to say.

“Where will you go?” Kicking Bird finally asked.

“I don’t know. Far away. Far from this country.”

Again there was silence. It was at its most unbearable when Ten Bears coughed lightly.

“You have spoken well, Dances With Wolves. Your name will be alive in the hearts of our people for as long as there are Comanches. We will see that it is kept alive. When will you go?”

“When the snow breaks,” Dances With Wolves said softly.

“The snow will break tomorrow,” Ten Bears said. “We should go to sleep now.”

Ten Bears was an extraordinary man.

He had beaten the odds against longevity on the plains, and with each succeeding season of his life the old man had built a remarkable store of knowledge. This knowledge had grown until at last it collapsed inward upon itself, and in the dusk of his life Ten Bears had reached a pinnacle. . . . He had become a man of wisdom.

The old eyes were failing, but in the dimness they saw with a clarity that no one, not even Kicking Bird, could match. His hearing was muted, but somehow the sounds that mattered never failed to reach his ears. And lately, a most extraordinary thing had begun to happen. Without relying on the senses that were now beginning to play out, Ten Bears had actually begun to feel the life of his people. From boyhood he had been vested with a special shrewdness, but this was much more. This was seeing with his whole self, and instead of feeling old and used up, Ten Bears was invigorated by the strange and mysterious power that had come to him.

But the power that was so long in coming and seemed so infallible had broken. For two full days after the council with Dances With Wolves the headman sat in his lodge and smoked, wondering what had gone wrong.

“The snow will break tomorrow.”

The words had not been measured. They had come to him without forethought, appearing on his tongue as if placed there by the Great Spirit Himself.

But the snow had not stopped. The storm had gained strength. At the end of two days the drifts were high against the hide walls of all the tipis. They were getting higher by the hour. Ten Bears could feel them inching up the walls of his own lodge.

His appetite vanished and the old man ignored everything but his pipe and fire. He spent every waking minute staring into the flames that waved in the center of his home. He beseeched the Great Spirit to take pity on an old man and grant one last bit of understanding, but it was all to no avail.

At last Ten Bears began to think of his miscalculation as a sign. He began to think it was a call to end his life. It was only when he was fully resigned to the idea and had begun to rehearse his death song that something fantastic happened.

The old woman who had been his wife all through the years saw him rise suddenly from the fire, drape himself with a robe, and start out of the lodge. She asked where he was going, but Ten Bears made no reply. In fact, he had not heard her. He was listening to a voice that had come into his head. The voice uttered a single sentence and Ten Bears was obeying its command.

The voice said, “Go to the lodge of Dances With Wolves.”

Oblivious to his effort, Ten Bears struggled through the drifting snow. When he reached the lodge at the edge of camp he hesitated before knocking.

There was no one about. The snow was falling in large flakes, wet and heavy. As he waited Ten Bears thought he could hear the snow, thought he could hear each flake as it fell to earth. The sound was heavenly, and standing in the chill, Ten Bears felt his head begin to spin. For a few moments he thought he had passed into the beyond.

A hawk screamed, and when he looked for the bird, he saw lively smoke curling out of the hole in Dances With Wolves’s lodge. He blinked the snow from his eyes and scratched at the flap.

When it opened, a great wall of warmth rushed to meet him. It wrapped itself around the old man, sucked him past Dances With Wolves, and ushered him into the lodge like a living being. He stood in the center of the home and felt his head begin to spin again. Now it was spinning with relief, for in the time it took to go from the outside to the inside, Ten Bears had solved the mystery of his mistake.

The mistake was not his. It had been made by another and had slipped past without his seeing it. Ten Bears had merely compounded the mistake when he said, “The snow will break tomorrow.”

The snow was right. He should have listened to the snow in the first place. Ten Bears smiled and gave his head a toss. How simple it was. How could he have missed it? I still have some things to learn, he thought.

The man who made the error was standing next to him now, but Ten Bears felt no anger toward Dances With Wolves. He only smiled at the puzzlement he saw on the young man’s face.

Dances With Wolves found enough of his tongue to say, “Please . . . sit at my fire.”

When Ten Bears settled himself he gave the lodge a brief inspection, and it confirmed what his spinning head had told him. It was a happy, well-ordered home. He spread his robe, letting more of the fire’s heat inside.

“This is a nice fire,” he said genially. “At my age a good fire is better than anything.”

Stands With A Fist placed a bowl of food next to each man, then retreated to her bedside at the back of the lodge. There she picked up some sewing. But she kept an ear turned to the conversation that was sure to come.

The men ate in silence for a few minutes, Ten Bears chewing his food carefully. Finally he pushed his bowl to one side and coughed lightly.

“I’ve been thinking since you spoke at my lodge. I wondered how your bad heart was doing and thought I would see for myself.”

He scanned the lodge. Then he looked squarely at Dances With Wolves.

“This place doesn’t seem so bad-hearted.”

“Uhhh, no,” Dances With Wolves stammered. “Yes, we are happy here.”

Ten Bears smiled and nodded his head. “That’s how I thought it would be.”

A silence came between the men. Ten Bears stared into the flames, his eyes closing gradually. Dances With Wolves waited politely, not knowing what to do. Perhaps he should ask if the old man wanted to lie down. He had been walking in the snow. But now it looked too late to say that. His important guest seemed to be dozing already.

Ten Bears shifted and spoke, saying the words in a way that made it seem like he was talking in his sleep.

“I have been thinking about what you said . . . what you said about your reasons for going away.”

Suddenly his eyes flew open and Dances With Wolves was startled by their brightness. They were glittering like stars.

“You can go away from us anytime you like . . . but not for those reasons. Those reasons are wrong. All the hair-mouth soldiers in the world could search our camp and none would find the person they are looking for, the one like them who calls himself Loo Ten Nant.”

Ten Bears spread his hands slightly and his voice shook with glee. “The one called Loo Ten Nant is not here. In this lodge they will only find a Comanche warrior, a good Comanche warrior and his wife.”

Dances With Wolves let the words sink in. He peeked over his shoulder at Stands With A Fist. He could see a smile on her face; but she was not looking his way. There was nothing he could say.

When he looked back he found Ten Bears staring down at a nearly finished pipe that was poking out of its case. The old man pointed a bony finger at the object of his interest.

“You are making a pipe, Dances With Wolves?”

“Yes,”

Ten Bears held out his hands and Dances With Wolves placed the pipe in them. The old man brought it close to his face, running his eyes up and down its length.

“This might be a pretty good pipe. . . . How does it smoke?”

“I don’t know,” Dances With Wolves replied. “I haven’t tried it yet.”

“Let’s smoke it a while,” Ten Bears said, handing the pipe back. “It’s good to pass the time this way.”