The Holy Road

Chapter VI

His reputation as a dreamer had endured since his long, hazy days with the pony herd, and while it suited him perfectly, it had divided people as to his worth. Many regarded him as lackadaisical and shiftless. Just as many tolerated his slow development and defended his unique skills with horses as indispensable in tribal life. But as he entered his twenty-first summer, Smiles A Lot was finding it more and more difficult to follow the poorly defined path he had taken. He daydreamed about taking his place as a warrior and sometimes imagined himself sitting in the Hard Shield circle. But the chance of his ever winning membership in the elite society was a remote possibility.

Smiles A Lot would be the first to admit that he was far behind. Boys four and five years younger had already been on many dangerous raids, and a number of them had even won honors. He had been on only one major raid, the doomed incursion into Mexico, and the only honor he had won for that was his own survival. There was as much to be ashamed of as there was to take pride in, and every action he had taken seemed to have mixed results.

It was true that he had single-handedly stolen twelve excellent horses from under the noses of heavily armed ranch guards. But it was also true that he had been confused about the precise rendezvous point because he had not listened carefully to Wind In His Hair's instructions. As a result he had waited in the wrong place with the horses while the main body of warriors, most of them on foot, had to fight their way out of a Mexican trap. The whole skirmish could have been avoided had he been in the right place at the right time, and Smiles A Lot shuddered at the thought of what might have happened to his standing if the warriors had not escaped the Mexican net.

Wind In His Hair had said it all when he gave the young man a public scolding.

"What good would a hundred horses be if there were no warriors to ride them? You think more about horses than you do about people! You are useless to me!"

To feel the wrath of Wind In His Hair beat down on him was humiliation enough, but to have his friend Dances With Wolves, the man who had sponsored him, witness the upbraiding was devastating. The man he had once called Loo-ten-tant, the man who had been so kind to him, was forced to stand by passively as he was tongue-lashed by the most respected warrior in the band. There was nothing Dances With Wolves could say or do for his young friend because Wind In His Hair was right. He had endangered everyone.

Smiles A Lot thought about his failings constantly in the weeks it took them to get back to the village. How could he restore his standing? What could he do? Where could he begin? His eyes had welled and overflowed as he stood a half mile away holding the worn-out reserve horses, as his brothers in arms risked their lives in the attack on the white man's house where Wind In His Hair took the woman's scalp.

Now, two moons later, Smiles A Lot hardly thought about the red-haired scalp or the looming threat of white people coming into the country. There were too many personal problems pressing him, problems that a part of him felt were unfair.

Hadn't he been encouraged in his gift for managing horses? Hadn't he given his youth in service to the people and their animals? He was the one everyone else turned to when a mare was foaling, when a favored buffalo runner went lame, when there was trading to be done. Hadn't they depended on him to locate good pasture and the right breeding stock? Hadn't he enriched all of his people?

It was as if none of that mattered. He had alienated himself from Wind In His Hair. His own parents wondered aloud how long he planned to live in their lodge. His mother kept asking if he had his eye on anyone, and his father kept pronouncing that he would never be able to take a wife if he didn't elevate his status to that of his peers.

Though the warriors were kind enough not to make him a pariah, in the many stories they told and retold about the awful raid into Mexico, they did not include the exploits of Smiles A Lot. He had been omitted. It was as if he had not gone.

Even the bitterness inside him was not enough to effect any wholesale change. He was still the genial Smiles A Lot who provided reliable, good-humored company in any setting, the boy who was not going forward and not going back. To all who dwelled in Ten Bears' village, Smiles A Lot was just Smiles A Lot.

Among legendary horsemen he stood out, but what good was it really? The wonderful things he could do on the back of a horse were regarded as mere novelty. He had no family to hunt for, and while others his own ager were out risking their lives for the good of all, Smiles A Lot was back in camp, applying poultices or delivering foals.

That he was such an easy young man did not help him, either. Apart from his devotion to horses, he had never demonstrated the passion expected of youth. That, of course, did not mean he was devoid of feeling. If anything, youth's hopes and desires ran deeper in Smiles A Lot than in most, but it was not in his nature to express them openly.

The tall, good-looking young man had kept his feelings hidden from view all his life. But as the village twisted in mute turmoil over the issue of the whites, Smiles A Lot writhed in a personal agony, a dilemma he shared with no one. It took a big effort to keep his torment secret, for was like a sickness. He had suddenly and inexplicably fallen in love.

This lovesickness was easily the most monumental thing that had ever happened to him. In sunlight he often had to shake his head to clear out the thought of her while he was trying to concentrate on something else. At night it was much worse. He rolled back and forth under his covers, trying to fend off a constant bombardment of images that denied him sleep.

There were times when these visions would force him from bed. Wrapped in a blanket, he would stumble out of his parents' lodge and make his way through the pitch to the horses. In the grass he could writhe without anyone seeing, talk to himself, moan when he felt like it, stare dreary-eyed at a canopy of stars until he was so exhausted by her that he was able to lose consciousness for a few hours.

How he had tumbled into this inescapable captivity was a mystery to Smiles A Lot. He had known her all his life but had felt nothing special until a fateful afternoon when he stopped by Ten Bears, lodge to discuss a few trivial matters about the condition of the old man's horses. From

the time of his boyhood, Ten Bears had kept the shy young man who knew so much about horses under his wing, and on quiet days, the two passed a few minutes together. It was on such a day that Hunting For Something had come in with a bowl of pemmican for her grandfather.

Greeting Ten Bears, she dropped to her knees on the opposite side of the fire and with a single look that lasted no more than a second or two, turned Smiles A Lot's world upside down. It was nothing more than a shy glance, delivered under lidded eyes. But it was directed squarely at Smiles A Lot and carried the power of a mortal brow. In that instant she changed from a skinny girl of barely fifteen summers to a woman of profound mystery whose spell was paralyzing.

From then on she was never far from his thoughts, and Smiles A Lot, without any experience as a suitor pursued her. Whenever possible he watched Ten Bears' lodge, hoping to see her go inside so he could make an entrance of his own. He made it a point to look in on the old man each day, and every time he came to the lodge flap it was with a heart that threatened to jump out of his chest.

Her family lived on the other side of the village from his own, and he conjured any excuse he could to travel that way, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. He loitered along the path to water, joining other young men with crushes on various girls. And suddenly he was in attendance at any communal gathering that might include her.

But he had no success. Every time he went to Ten Bears, lodge it was as if all the forces of earth and sky were conspiring against him. She was never there. He had seen her only once as she disappeared into the traffic of camp. The fleeting view of the glistening black hair trailing below

her waist, the long dress, and the moccasined feet had held him transfixed as he wondered about her feet and arms and legs, the smell of her skin, the touch of her finger, the sound of her voice.

His surveillance of the trail to water yielded only two sightings. Each time she was with her mother, and when he saw them he immediately turned away, too nervous to rook in their direction. As he stared at the ground, or into the branch of a tree, he thought of himself as foolish beyond words. She was passing so near. It was the opportunity he had sought to the exclusion of all else, yet he could not act. He could only subject himself to torture. And if he found the courage to cast his eyes about in time to see the fading form of mother and daughter, that was worse. All he could see then was the impossibility of his vain dream.

It was just as bad at a dance or ceremony which brought everyone together. A public setting made any contact out of the question, and all he could do was peer through the fire and into the faceless crowd of girls steeped in shadow on the other side.

At times Smiles A Lot wished fervently that she had never looked at him because all the difficulties of his life were nothing compared to the fix he was in now.

And what if she looked at him again? What if they talked? What if they touched? The obstacles that lay beyond were insurmountable. Her father, Horned Antelope, was the son of Ten Bears and a Hard Shield. Smiles A Lot's father was a craftsman, a master of bow-making, but nothing else. Matches like that were not made.

It was terrible to be stuck. It seemed to take all the power he possessed to get up each day, to walk and talk and sleep. He was a fluttering piece of chaff whose every motion was under the absolute control of a momentary meeting with the eyes of a girl.

Yet there was a strength coming out of it, a hardening in Smiles A Lot he had never felt before. He possessed the heart of a dreamer and the sanctity of dreaming was something to be protected. At his darkest moment, the lonely, desperate heart that beat inside him grew suddenly large and powerful at the thought of defending his dream. In a strange way it didn't matter if they never spoke or touched. She was already in him. A dream of blinding, beautiful purity was buried in his heart. No one could take it away. He didn't care about Wind In His Hair's scalp or the coming of the whites. He didn't care if the earth yawned one morning and swallowed the whole village, for he knew that as he drifted down,

spiraling head over heels into the void, he would be encased in the cocoon of her being. . of the girl called Hunting For Something.