Dances With Wolves (20 page)

one

Dances With Wolves stayed in Kicking Bird’s lodge that night. He was exhausted but, as sometimes happens, was too tired to sleep. The day’s events hopped about in his mind like popcorn in a skillet.

When he finally began the drift into unconsciousness, the lieutenant slipped into the twilight of a dream he had not had since he was very young. Surrounded by stars, he was floating through the cold, silent void of space, a weightless little boy alone in a world of silver and black.

But he was not afraid. He was snug and warm and under the covers of a four-poster bed, and to drift like a single seed in all the universe, even if for eternity, was not a hardship. It was a joy.

That was how he fell asleep on his first night in the Comanches’ ancestral summer camp.

two

In the months that followed, Lieutenant Dunbar would fall asleep many times in Ten Bears’s camp.

He returned to Fort Sedgewick often, but the visits were prompted primarily by guilt, not desire. Even while he was there he knew he was maintaining the thinnest of appearances. Yet he felt compelled to do so.

He knew there was no logical reason to stay on. Certain now that the army had abandoned the post and him along with it, he thought of returning to Fort Hays. He had already done his duty. In fact, his devotion to the post and the U.S. Army had been exemplary. He could leave with his head held high.

What held him was the pull of another world, a world he had just begun to explore. He didn’t know exactly when it happened, but it came to him that his dream of being posted on the frontier, a dream that he had concocted to serve the small boundaries of military service, had pointed from the beginning to the limitless adventure in which he was now engaged. Countries and armies and races paled beside it. He had discovered a great thirst and he could no more turn it down than a dying man could refuse water.

He wanted to see what would happen, and because of that, he gave up his idea of returning to the army. But he did not fully give up the idea of the army returning to him. Sooner or later it had to.

So on his visits to the fort he would putter about with trivialities: repairing an occasional tear in the awning, sweeping cobwebs from the corners of the sod hut, making journal entries.

He forced these jobs on himself as a far fetched way of staying in touch with his old life. Deeply involved as he was with the Comanches, he could not find it in himself to jettison everything, and the hollow motions he went through made it possible to hang on to the shreds of his past.

By visiting the fort on a semiregular basis, he preserved discipline where there was no longer a need, and in doing so he also preserved the idea of Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, U.S.A.

The journal entries no longer carried depictions of his days. Most of them were nothing more than an estimate of the date, a short comment on the weather or his health, and a signature. Even had he wanted, it would have been too large a job to essay the new life he was living. Besides, it was a personal thing.

Invariably he would walk down the bluff to the river, usually with Two Socks in tow. The wolf had been his first real contact, and the lieutenant was always glad to see him. Their silent time together was something he cherished.

He would pause for a few minutes at the stream’s edge, watching the water flow. If the light was right, he could see himself with mirrorlike clarity. His hair had grown past his shoulders. The constant beating of sun and wind had darkened his face. He would turn from side to side, like a man of fashion, admiring the breastplate that he now wore like a uniform. With the exception of Cisco, nothing he could call his own exceeded its value.

Sometimes the vision on the water would make him tingle with confusion. He looked so much like one of them now. When that happened he would balance awkwardly on one foot and lift the other high enough for the water to send back a picture of the pants with the yellow stripes and the tall, black riding boots.

Occasionally he would consider discarding them for leggings and moccasins, but the reflection always told him that they belonged. In some way they were a part of the discipline, too. He would wear the pants and boots until they disintegrated. Then he would see.

On certain days, when he felt more Indian than white, he would trudge back over the bluff, and the fort would appear as an ancient place, a ghostly relic of a past so far gone that it was difficult to believe he was ever connected to it.

As time passed, going to Fort Sedgewick became a chore. His visits were fewer and farther between. But he continued making the ride to his old haunt.

three

Ten Bears’s village became the center of his life, but for all the ease with which he settled into it, Lieutenant Dunbar moved as a man apart. His skin and accent and pants and boots marked him as a visitor from another world, and like Stands With A Fist, he quickly became a man who was two people.

His integration into Comanche life was constantly tempered with the vestiges of the world he had left behind, and when Dunbar tried to think of his true place in life, his gaze would suddenly become faraway. A fog, blank and inconclusive, would fill his mind, as if all his normal processes had been suspended. After a few seconds the fog would lift and he would go about his business, not knowing quite what had hit him.

Thankfully, these spells subsided as time went on.

The first six weeks of his time in Ten Bears’s camp revolved around one particular place: the little brush arbor behind Kicking Bird’s lodge.

It was here, in daily morning and afternoon sessions lasting several hours each, that Lieutenant Dunbar first conversed freely with the medicine man.

Stands With A Fist made steady progress toward fluency, and by the end of the first week the three of them were having long-running talks. The lieutenant had thought all along that Kicking Bird was a good person, but when Stands With A Fist began to translate large blocks of his thoughts into English, Dunbar discovered he was dealing with an intelligence that was superior by any standard he knew.

In the beginning there were mostly questions and answers. Lieutenant Dunbar told the story of how he came to be at Fort Sedgewick and of his unexplained isolation. Interesting as the story was, it frustrated Kicking Bird. Dances With Wolves knew almost nothing. He did not even know the army’s mission, much less its specific plans. Of military things there was nothing to learn. He had been a simple soldier.

The white race was a different matter.

“Why are the whites coming into our country?” Kicking Bird would ask.

And Dunbar would reply, “I don’t think they want to come into the country, I think they only want to pass through.”

Kicking Bird would counter, “The Texans are already in our country, chopping down the trees and tearing up the earth. They are killing the buffalo and leaving them in the grass. This is happening now. There are too many of these people already. How many more will be coming?”

Here the lieutenant would twist his mouth and say, “I don’t know.”

“I have heard it said,” the medicine man would continue, “that the whites only want peace in the country. Why do they always come with hair-mouth soldiers? Why do these hair-mouth Texas Rangers come after us when all we want is to be left alone? I have been told of talks the white chiefs have had with my brothers. I have been told these talks are peaceful and that promises are made. But I am told that the promises are always broken. If white chiefs come to see us, how shall we know their true minds? Should we take their presents? Should we sign their papers to show that there will be peace between us? When I was a boy many Comanches went to a house of law in Texas for a big meeting with white chiefs and they were shot dead.”

The lieutenant would try to provide reasoned answers to Kicking Bird’s questions, but they were weak theories at best, and when pressed, he would inevitably end by saying, “I don’t know actually.”

He was being careful, for he could see the deep concern behind Kicking Bird’s queries and could not bring himself to tell what he really thought. If the whites ever came out here in real force, the Indian people, no matter how hard they fought, would be hopelessly overmatched. They would be defeated by armaments alone.

At the same time he could not tell Kicking Bird to disregard his concerns. He needed to be concerned. The lieutenant simply could not tell him the truth. Nor could he tell the medicine man lies. It was a standoff, and finding himself cornered, Dunbar hid behind a wall of ignorance, hoping for the arrival of new, more palatable subjects.

But each day, like a stain that refuses to be washed out, one overriding question always remained.

“How many more are coming?”

four

Gradually Stands With A Fist began to look forward to the hours she spent in the brush arbor.

Now that he had been accepted by the band, Dances With Wolves ceased to be the great problem he had once been. His connection with white society had paled, and while what he represented was still a fearful thing, the soldier himself was not. He didn’t even look like a soldier anymore.

At first the notoriety surrounding activities in the arbor bothered Stands With A Fist. The schooling of Dances With Wolves, his presence in camp, and her key role as go-between were constant topics of conversation around the village. The celebrity of it made her feel uneasy, as though she was being watched. She was especially sensitive to the possibility of criticism for shirking the routine duties expected of every Comanche woman. It was true that Kicking Bird himself had excused her, but she still worried.

After two weeks, however, none of these fears had materialized, and the new respect she enjoyed was having a beneficial effect on her personality. Her smile was quicker and her shoulders were squarer. The importance of her new role charged her step with a sense of authority that everyone could see. Her life was becoming bigger, and inside herself she knew it was a good thing.

Other people knew it, too.

She was gathering wood one evening when a woman friend stooping next to her suddenly said with a touch of pride: “People are talking about you.”

Stands With A Fist straightened, unsure of how to take the remark.

“What are they saying?” she asked flatly.

“They say that you are making medicine. They say that maybe you should change your name.”

“To what?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the friend replied. “Medicine Tongue maybe, something like that. It’s just some talk.”

As they walked together in the twilight Stands With A Fist rolled this around in her head. They were at the edge of camp before she spoke again.

“I like my name,” she said, knowing that word of her wishes would quickly filter through camp. “I will keep it.”

A few nights later she was returning to Kicking Bird’s tipi after relieving herself when she heard someone start to sing in a lodge close by. She paused to listen and was astounded at what she heard.

“The Comanches have a bridge

That passes to another world

The bridge is called Stands With A Fist.”

Too embarrassed to hear more, she hurried along to bed. But as she tucked the covers under her chin, she was not thinking bad thoughts about the song. She was thinking only of the words she had heard, and on reflection, they seemed quite good.

She slept deeply that night. It was already light when she woke the next morning. Scrambling to catch up with the day, she hurried out of the lodge and stopped short.

Dances With Wolves was riding out of camp on the little buckskin horse. It was a sight that made her heart sink a little further than she might have imagined. The thought of him going did not disturb her so much, but the thought of him not coming back deflated her to the extent that it showed on her face.

Stands With A Fist blushed to think that someone might see her like this. She glanced around quickly and turned a brighter shade of red.

Kicking Bird was watching her.

Her heart beat wildly as she struggled to compose herself. The medicine man was coming over.

“There will be no talk today,” he said, studying her with a care that made her insides squirm.

“I see,” she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

But she could see curiosity in his eyes, curiosity that called for an explanation.

“I like to make the talk,” she went on. “I am happy to make the white words.”

“He wants to see the white man’s fort. He will come back at sundown.”

The medicine man gave her another close look and said. “We will make more talk tomorrow.”

five

Her day passed minute by minute.

She watched the sun like a bored office worker watches each tick of the clock. Nothing moves slower than watched time. She had great difficulty concentrating on her duties because of this.

When she wasn’t watching time she was daydreaming.

Now that he had emerged as a real person, there were things in him she found to admire. Some of them might be traced to their mutual whiteness. Some of them were his alone. All of them held her interest.

She felt a mysterious pride when she thought of the deeds he had performed, deeds that were known by all her people.

Remembering his playacting made her laugh. Sometimes he was very funny. Funny but not foolish. In every way he seemed sincere and open and respectful and full of good humor. She was convinced that these qualities were genuine.

The sight of him with the breastplate on had seemed out of place at first, like a Comanche would be out of place in a top hat. But he wore it day after day without paying the least attention to it. And he never took it off. It was obvious that he loved it.

His hair was tangled like hers, not thick and straight like the others. And he hadn’t tried to change it.

He hadn’t changed the boots and pants either but wore them in the same natural way he took to the breastplate.

These musings led her to the conclusion that Dances With Wolves was an honest person. Every human being finds certain characteristics above all others to cherish, and for Stands With A Fist it was honesty.