Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 03 (2 page)

“What does it mean?”

“I am not sure. But I know that these are names, names that I can use, names that I can give to others. This is strong medicine, these names are
wakan,
holy names, and I must use them carefully.”

“There are four of us,” Gray Horse said. “Maybe each of us should have one of the four names.”

“I don’t think so,” Returns Again said. “I think that if
Wakantanka
had meant that, all of us would have understood the buffalo. But I know that the first name is the most important, and I will keep it for myself. I will have to wait until I know more, until I can see more clearly, before I know what to do with the remaining three names.”

That had been many winters ago, but he could still see that bull, gilded by the flames, just as clearly as if it were standing there in the tipi with him now. And looking at Jumping Badger in the cradleboard, the tiny arms waving, he wondered whether one of those names had been meant for his son. But everything took time, and he would have to wait. For now, Jumping Badger would be good enough for the boy. If he were meant to have one of the
wakan
names, time would tell.

Missouri River Valley
1833

T
HE CRADLEBOARD WAS BEHIND
him now, and Jumping Badger’s world was beginning to expand. His legs were sturdy and his curiosity insatiable. At first it was just the tipi. While Her Holy Door tended to beadwork, she let her infant son have the run of the lodge. Everything seemed to fascinate him. Sometimes he would sit by her side for hours on end while she worked with porcupine quills, decorating a dress, or holed soft leather with an elkhorn awl to make a pair of moccasins. Then he seemed still to be a part of her, no more detached than her shadow, his hands mimicking every move of her own.

Other times, she would hear him behind her, rummaging in the baskets stored against the walls of the tipi. Then she knew she would have no peace, because he would toddle to her, hand outstretched, with a piece of cloth, a scrap of buckskin, a fistful of
beads gotten in trade from the Cheyenne, who had gotten them from the Flatheads, who had gotten them from the Nez Percé.

Those times required patience, which fortunately Her Holy Door had in abundance. She would take the cloth or beads, sometimes having to unclench the tiny fingers forcibly, and explain what it was, what it was used for, and where it had come from. Sometimes she thought maybe she was telling him too much, giving him more information than he needed. But there were times when the dark eyes would stare into hers, and she would think that he understood more than she was telling him.

Just starting to talk, he asked many questions, stumbling sometimes, reaching for words just beyond his command. In frustration, he resorted to stabbing fingers, jumping up and down, and bellowing, while she tried one thing after another, trying to guess what he wanted explained. But there was never a doubt in her mind that he wanted explanations. He seemed to need to understand things in a way other children did not.

Her other child, Good Feather, was six years older, so dealing with a child’s inquisitive forays was nothing new. But Jumping Badger wanted to know more, and sooner, than any child she had ever seen. At night, lying next to Sitting Bull, she would think about her son, asleep at last, his insatiable thirst for knowledge finally quiet for a few hours. It seemed to her then that he was not ordinary, that he was meant for something she could not see or know.

Sitting Bull got his share of questions, too, and as the boy started to wander around the camp, poking his nose into other lodges, watching the women work with the buffalo hides, or the warriors make arrows, bows, or lances, Sitting Bull wondered whether his son might be just like him. Part of him was glad when he thought this, and part of him hurt a little for the boy. Knowing was not easy, understanding harder still, and knowing what to do with the knowledge was the hardest part of all.

The world was so vast and so complicated, just making sense of it could give you an aching head. But Sitting Bull understood that knowing was important, that it might make a difference for his people one day, and that most of all it could not be denied. If your mind craved knowledge, it would have it at any cost.

He remembered when Jumping Badger had walked for the first time, his short legs barely able to support his weight. Every step seemed like agony, and took an eternity. Barefoot on the buffalo robes in the lodge, tiny toes curled, a leg would tremble, the whole body above it tilting because the boy did not yet know to let his knee flex, and finally it rose an inch or so and darted forward another inch to slam down again into the soft fur of the robe.

Step by step, arms outstretched, a look of wonder on his face, the fledgling toddler had made his way from mother to father. And when he had started back, squirming at first in Sitting Bull’s hands as he tried to assert his independence, then breaking
free, he had veered off toward the fire pit, lost his balance, and tumbled on his face. Excited, he had not cried, but started to crawl like a turtle until he reached the pit. Her Holy Door rushed to him, reaching to pick him up, but Sitting Bull had stopped her with a quiet word.

The boy reached for the orange flames, tinged with blue, that danced above the embers. The tiny fists had clapped through the fire for an instant, then were drawn back. Jumping Badger looked at his hands for a long moment, then at his father and, when no explanation had been forthcoming, at his mother.

Only then did he start to cry. Good Feather rushed to pick up her brother, collapsing on her rump with the boy in her lap. Gently, she uncurled his fingers, saw the slight reddening, and knew that he had not been badly burned. The girl looked at her parents, a smile on her face. “He’s all right,” she said. Then she continued, “But it takes him so long to do everything. He doesn’t eat food without looking at it. He turns a berry over in his hand to see every side of it before he eats it. He plays with beads, moving them one at a time, sometimes all day long. I think maybe Jumping Badger is not a good name for him.”

Sitting Bull laughed. “What would you call your brother, then?”

Good Feather shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know. Everything he does is slow. He was even slow to cry when he burned his hands. Maybe that’s what we should call him. Slow.”

Her Holy Door wouldn’t hear of it. “Jumping
Badger is a perfectly good name. I don’t see why we should change it.”

Good Feather would not surrender easily. “Did you see how long it took him to cry when he burned his fingers? That was slow, wasn’t it?”

“He didn’t understand what had happened,” Her Holy Door argued.

“But he
was
slow, wasn’t he, Mother?”

And so the name stuck. By the time he was three, more people knew him as Slow than as Jumping Badger. And he continued his explorations at the same solemn and studied pace. On walks with his father, he would wander off to examine a flower. If a bee paid a visit to the blossom, then darted off in search of another, Slow would follow it, his own route as jagged and indirect as that of the bee.

On his own, he would walk up the hill behind the village to watch the prairie dogs popping in and out of their dens. Sometimes the older boys rigged snares, arranging a rawhide loop around the mouth of a den and then lying patiently, waiting for the hapless inhabitant to pop up, then jerking the rawhide noose to catch the plump rodents. As soon as he had mastered the tying of the loop, he began to catch prairie dogs himself.

Already he was running fast enough to belie the name Good Feather had given him, and he loved to race with the older boys, always keeping up with them, but not yet long-legged enough to win.

By the time he was four, he had discovered the wonders of the riverbank. He would sit for an hour at a time, watching fish dart toward the edge of the
river, hang placidly in the current, and break the surface to make a meal of an unwary skimmer or mayfly. He especially liked the young fry, swarms of them like waterborne gnats. He would dangle his bare feet from a flat rock and feel the tickle of the tiny fish as they nibbled at his toes and ankles.

But tadpoles were the best of all. In the sluggish pools, clogged with weeds and water lilies, he watched them wiggle their way among the roots. Once Sitting Bull had explained to him the connection between tadpoles and frogs, he grew even more fascinated, spending whole days in late spring and early summer hoping to see one change into the other.

There were times when his patience was exhausted and he was convinced his father had been teasing him. Not once had he seen a tadpole become a frog. How could it be true? But Sitting Bull had never lied to him, and what he said was always so. This could not be an exception. He just needed more patience.

Late in the day, lying on his stomach with his arms folded under his chin, staring through the glaze of sunlight on the surface, he would sometimes fall asleep. When Good Feather came to fetch him, he would grow irritable, throwing pebbles at her to try and chase her off. But she always prevailed.

One thing never changed. There was always something new to learn, and he couldn’t get enough information about the ways of nature. More and more, when Sitting Bull was not out hunting or on the warpath, father and son would go off into
the hills. Instead of planning lessons, Sitting Bull waited to see what the day would bring. If they stumbled across a deer, they would watch it for a while, tracking it, studying its ways, Sitting Bull pointing out how to tell when the deer knows it’s being watched, how to follow it, and how to tell the difference between the hoofprints of the deer and the elk and the pronghorn.

If they found a bird’s nest, Sitting Bull would climb the tree, Slow on his back, and together they would examine the nest and, if there were any, the eggs.

Once, Sitting Bull brought Slow along when he needed eagle feathers for a new warbonnet. Finding a suitable hollow in the ground, one that would hold them both, Sitting Bull wove a blanket of grass and brush large enough to cover the hole and sturdy enough to hold the weight of the eagle. Then he trapped a rabbit in a snare, tied its legs with a rawhide thong, and fed the loose end of the rawhide through the grass thatch. After directing Slow to crawl into the hollow, Sitting Bull followed him inside, then made a hole in the thatch just large enough for his hand to fit through.

“What do we do now?” Slow wanted to know.

“Now we wait. If you want an eagle feather, it is better not to kill the eagle. But you can’t go to him, you have to let him come to you.”

“How?”

“Wait and you will see. You must be quiet now, Slow.” Sitting Bull covered his lips with a finger. Slow stared up at the thatching. Now and then he
caught a glimpse of the terrified rabbit. Once or twice it tried to hop away, but the rawhide held it securely.

It seemed to take forever. It was hot under the grass roof, but Sitting Bull sat patiently. Slow was learning how to control himself and tried to sit on his haunches without speaking. Eventually, the flutter of wings could be heard and a huge shadow passed over the hole in the roof. The rabbit squealed and tried again to pull itself free, but it was too late. The shadow reappeared and the flutter of wings grew loud in the hollow. As the eagle sank its talons into the rabbit, Sitting Bull reached through the hole in the thatching and grabbed the great bird by the ankles.

Standing up, he reached around the edge of the grass mat and plucked several feathers from the eagle’s tail, taking care not to come within reach of the razor-sharp beak. The eagle beat its wings, trying to pull free, and gave a terrible cry. Sitting Bull was almost done. After plucking one more feather, he let go of the bird, and it took off with several frantic beats of its broad wings.

Slow watched as the bird rose into the air with an angry squawk. “Isn’t it easier to shoot the eagle?” he asked.

Sitting Bull laughed. “Yes, it is. But if you shoot all the eagles, where will we get the eagle feathers when the birds are all gone?”

“I never thought of that.”

“You should think of such things,” Sitting Bull cautioned. “Take only what you need, and leave more for another time.”

The eagle was circling overhead, watching them, one eye on the wounded rabbit.

Sitting Bull handed the feathers to his son and bent to set the rabbit free. It dashed off, its terror more than making up for its weakened state. The eagle dropped like a stone and once more sank its talons into the rabbit. After a baleful glare at Sitting Bull, it started to tear strips of fur and flesh from its now-lifeless prey.

“Why did you do that?” Slow asked. “Why did you let the eagle have the rabbit?”

Sitting Bull laughed and explained, “The eagle has given us some fine feathers. We promised him a rabbit and he should have one.”

“I still think it is easier to shoot the eagle—as long as you don’t shoot them all!”

Sitting Bull nodded. “When you are old enough to gather eagle feathers, you get them the way you want to. This is the way I learned from my father. It was good enough for him and it is good enough for me.”

“Sometimes things change,” Slow argued. “Sometimes there is a better way.”

The boy was right. Sitting Bull just nodded. “As long as you know when something is better, not just new,” he said.

Platte River Valley
1839

S
LOW WATCHED AS THE
buffalo robes were tied in bundles and bound to travois. He stood quietly, trying to stay out of the way yet close enough to hear the men talk. What he heard confused him.

“Are you sure,” his father was asking, “that they want buffalo robes at the white man’s fort?”

Four Horns nodded. “I have heard this many times. I know that many tribes travel to the worn-out fences and bring furs. In exchange, they get tobacco and metal knives and looking glasses, coffee and sugar—white man things.”

“I am not so sure we need such things,” Sitting Bull said. “We have always managed without them. I don’t know why we should change now. We will just make ourselves need the white man, and will forget how to live without him.”