Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction) (5 page)
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Authors: James Welch
BOOK: Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)
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Yellow Kidney, Fast Horse and Eagle Ribs squatted in a spear-leaf grove. They were well hidden by the wild rose that grew up around the trunks. It had begun to snow, and Yellow Kidney felt his heart rise up at this promising sign. They had scouted the camp for a long time, watching the fires burn down, listening to the various activities gradually ceasing. Once they had been nearly surprised by a pair of lovers who had decided to use the grove to declare their need for each other. After much giggling, rustling and panting, the pair had left, but not before Eagle Ribs had taken two eagle feathers from a roach the young man had put aside. Now, except for a drum group somewhere in the center of camp, things were quiet. It is time, thought Yellow Kidney. He tapped Fast Horse, then pointed to a small group of lodges on the perimeter of the camp. Then he touched Eagle Ribs and pointed to an area of darkened lodges. They had discussed their strategy beforehand, so there was no need for words. Each would go his separate way, steal a buffalo-runner, then meet at Woman Don’t Walk Butte. Yellow Kidney had no more doubts about their success. The signs were right and Fast Horse seemed settled down. And now the snow.
As he watched the others move away from him, skirting the camp right and left, he prayed for the safety of the young horse-takers. There had been no disturbance in the camp, no scurrying, no yelling, no drumming hoofbeats. If White Man’s Dog did as instructed, the young men would have gotten the horses and left by now. Those four would be safe.
Yellow Kidney stood and stepped from the grove. A hundred paces of open field lay between him and the edge of camp. He pulled his robe up close around his face. As he walked toward the tipis, he felt the power of fear sharpen his eye, quicken his blood, make him bold. He had burned the braided sweet grass and passed the smoke over his body; he had called to the Above Ones to give him strength, to take pity on him, to make him successful. He had rubbed his body all over with sagebrush to make the horses calm. And now, deep within the folds of the robe, he sang his death song.
5
THE YOUNG MEN HUDDLED around the small fire inside the makeshift war lodge beneath Woman Don’t Walk Butte. They laughed and told stories of the raid, each one recounting his part, his acts of boldness, until the others mocked him and called him a near-woman. As they escalated their stories and responses, they all felt the thrill of their new wealth and the beginnings of their manhood.
Outside, over one hundred and fifty horses grazed under the watchful eye of White Man’s Dog. They pawed easily through the flaky snow to reach the thick grass at the base of the butte. It seemed odd to White Man’s Dog that two sleeps ago these horses were content to belong to the Crows. Now they were Pikuni horses and seemed equally content. There was something about this easy changing of allegiance that made him almost envy the horses. As long as they weren’t harmed, as long as the grass was long on both sides, they would live in peace. As he sat wrapped in his robe astride the big buckskin he had selected, he thought again of his dream, which had come back last night. Again he saw the white-faced girl raise her robe to him and again he started forward, only to awaken listening to the wind drive the snow against the lodge. This morning he had sat in the lodge and thought about this dream, scarcely listening to the others, who were by turns joyous and somber. They had stolen the largest herd of horses any of them had seen or heard about, but Yellow Kidney and Fast Horse had not yet appeared. Eagle Ribs had caught up with them as they forded the Elk River, but he had no news of the other two. He had last seen them enter the quiet camp, but he had gotten his horse quickly and had gotten out quickly. Now, White Man’s Dog looked at the big spotted-rump horse Eagle Ribs had captured. It grazed apart from the others but just as contentedly. Never had White Man’s Dog seen such a fine horse. In spite of his dream, in spite of the absence of Yellow Kidney and Fast Horse, he felt a tingle of joy as he wondered how Yellow Kidney would divide up the horses when he came.
Inside the lodge the young men were roasting chunks of real-meat from a blackhorn yearling that White Man’s Dog had killed. It was the first real-meat that they’d had since starting their journey over twenty sleeps ago. Already they were slicing pieces off the big chunks.
Eagle Ribs sat back against the backrest he had made of sticks and pine boughs. One of the young men handed him some meat. It was hot and juicy, and the odor quickened his appetite. But when he chewed the meat he felt his throat tighten. The hollow spot in his stomach seemed already to contain a lump. He laid the rest of the meat on a bough beside him and sat up. The time had come to tell them what troubled him.
“Haiya! Young men, listen to me. We have been in this place for a night and a day waiting for Yellow Kidney and Fast Horse. The snow and wind that Cold Maker sends is our friend and also our enemy. We have made a clean escape, the snow covers our tracks, the cold keeps the Crows in their camp. For this we must thank Cold Maker. But it is possible he keeps Yellow Kidney and Fast Horse from us. The weather is good to us now, but you saw last night how the wind howled and piled up the snow. I think we will have to endure another storm this night. Already the wind is picking up. I will tell you this: It is likely that Yellow Kidney and Fast Horse are holed up as we are, waiting out the storm.”
The men had quit chewing. They had turned their backs to the fire to listen to Eagle Ribs.
“I have had a bad dream and it troubles me. It came and went so fast, I could make little of it. In my dream I saw a small white horse wandering in the snow. Its hooves were split and it had sores all over. It was wearing a bridle and the reins trailed after it. But it was the eyes. I looked into the eyes and they were white and unseeing. As I drew closer I saw across its back fingers of blood.”
Rattler drew in his breath. He had heard of such a horse from his grandfather.
“Yes, it was a death horse, but that is not all. I saw in the sky behind it a face, but I could not see clearly because the face turned away. That’s when I saw the hair and the two owl feathers.”
“Yellow Kidney!” cried Rattler. “He has been murdered by the Crows! Oh, my uncle! Even now his shadow wanders, begging for pity in that strange country. We must go kill all those murderous Crows!”
The younger men covered their faces and began to cry, rocking back and forth in their robes.
“Why is it you cry, near-women? If Yellow Kidney is dead, he went to the Sand Hills covered with glory, for he has made the Crows to suffer. His shadow, if it be that now, will join his long-ago people there and they will welcome him as the brave man he was.”
“Then let us go back and torture the Crows,” said Talks Different. He was the older brother of Rattler. “We will make them pay.”
“There will be time for that.”
“What about Fast Horse?” Medicine Stab still had a chunk of meat on his knife point.
“I don’t know. Perhaps I have not seen my dream in the right way. Perhaps Yellow Kidney will join us yet. And Fast Horse.”
There was something in the way Eagle Ribs said Fast Horse’s name, disdain or scorn, that startled Medicine Stab and the others. Eagle Ribs had never spoken before in that tone.
“Talks Different, go relieve White Man’s Dog. I must talk with him.”
That night as the fire died down, White Man’s Dog listened to the wail of a coyote. He could barely make it out, and he thought that it had crept close to the war lodge in search of food. It cried again and the wind carried its voice away. He snuggled down in his robe and listened but he did not hear the little bigmouth again, only the wind blowing through the lodge. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but there was something about the voice that disturbed him. He sat up and pulled the robe over his shoulders. Then he crept to the entrance. As he pushed the brush aside, he saw first a knee-high drift of sculpted snow. He waited for his eyes to see in the dark and then he saw the horse and the figure wrapped in a white robe.
“Who are you? Speak!” he shouted. And he heard the thin voice without words. The robe shifted and fell away from the figure’s bent head, and White Man’s Dog saw, in the snowy light, the topknot, the quill roach and eagle feathers. “It is Fast Horse!” he cried, and rushed out to help the figure off the dark horse.
Soon they had the fire built up and Fast Horse covered with their own robes. They rubbed his hands and feet and fed him bits of roasted meat and hot broth from snow melted in a bladder sack.
When Fast Horse had recovered enough to sit up, White Man’s Dog asked him if he had seen Yellow Kidney.
Fast Horse did not answer right away. He studied his fingers as though they would give him the words these men wanted.
“Where is Yellow Kidney?” The sharpness of the voice made the others look at Eagle Ribs. He had hung back but now he moved forward.
Fast Horse did not look at him. “The last time I saw him, Yellow Kidney was walking through the middle of the Crow camp sizing up the buffalo horses. He walked boldly as though they could not see him. I myself saw him disappear. I had already cut loose that horse out there and so I thought to catch up with you, but he slipped fording the Elk River and I lost my weapons and my sack of pemmican. I retrieved my robe, but as you saw, it became white with ice. I traveled all night and half the next day until I spied a little bigmouth den along the trail. I thought I would warm myself, so I crawled inside to wait for Yellow Kidney, and for you, Eagle Ribs, for I thought you were behind me.”
Fast Horse closed his eyes. The young men glanced at Eagle Ribs but his face had become impassive. There was no warmth, no anger in it.
Fast Horse rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, there was an intensity that belied his lack of strength. “It was then that Cold Maker joined me in that den. He said, ‘You foolish one, you mean to forget the vow you made to Cold Maker. For this, I punish not only the Crows but you as well.’ I begged him to have pity for I was nearly frozen to death. I told him that we had tried to find the sacred ice spring, but he said we should not have gone on, that we offended him by continuing our journey without moving the rock that covered his favorite drinking hole. Oh, he was angry! He took my hand in his fingers made of icicles and we flew north for many sleeps; we flew over the lodges of the Lone Eaters, over the Medicine Line and the Backbone of the World, until we came to his home in Always Winter Land. He took me inside his ice house and said, ‘See my daughters there before you.’
“At first I was blinded by all the dancing ice and I couldn’t open my eyes. But soon I was able to see a little and I looked upon his daughters and they were blue, as blue as the stone treasured by the Many Bracelets People. They were dressed in white grouse skins and they shivered and their eyes”—Fast Horse shuddered violently—“they had no eyes, only holes like small ice caves where their eyes should have been. ‘Now you see my daughters and how they suffer because you and your people do not keep their vows to Cold Maker.’ I could not look at his pitiful daughters any longer. I fell to my knees and cried, for I was sure he had taken me to that land forever. Then he said, ‘I will give you one more chance. I will let you rejoin your friends, but you must promise me this: When the helping-to-eat moon is full in the sky, you must not only bring my daughters two prime robes but red coals for their eyes. As you see, they are sightless and they beg me to give them eyes but I have no fire here.’ I vowed to bring him these things, and so I say it to you so that you may bear witness.”
“He said nothing about Yellow Kidney?”
Fast Horse looked sharply at White Man’s Dog. “He said nothing.”
Eight sleeps later the men dismounted in a coulee not far from the camp of the Lone Eaters on the Two Medicine River. They put on their paints, their war medicine; then they painted the horses they chose to ride. White Man’s Dog drew yellow jagged stripes down his gray horse’s forelegs and yellow circles on each side of the horse’s rump. He had been thinking about these signs; from now on they would be part of his medicine.
Eagle Ribs had divided the horses up earlier that day. Yellow Kidney or his widow would get the most, Eagle Ribs a few less. White Man’s Dog and Fast Horse got twenty each; the rest were divided equally among the younger men.
White Man’s Dog had painted a white slash across the left shoulder of his horses. Now as he watched them mingle with the other animals he felt that his change of fortune was complete. Mik-api’s prayers in the sweat lodge for him had been answered. The yellow painted signs were strong, and he had been strong enough in his endeavor. He had not taken a buffalo-runner but he was satisfied. He would give Mik-api five of his horses.
At a signal from Eagle Ribs, the men started the herd.
“Oh, you are a no-good one! You run off with these other bad ones, you sneak off at night, you don’t tell your own mother, you would let her die with grief—” Double Strike Woman could not go on. She had been scolding her son for so long she had run out of words. “Oh!” she said, and sat down with a thud on a folded-up robe.
White Man’s Dog took a chance and lifted his head enough to look at his father. Rides-at-the-door had said very little since his son had returned. He leaned forward and pushed a stick into the fire. Without looking at White Man’s Dog he said, “Tell me about Yellow Kidney.”
And so White Man’s Dog told him what he knew about Yellow Kidney, that he had gone into the main camp and hadn’t been seen since.
“Was he a good leader?”
White Man’s Dog told him about the march south, the night walking, the signs, and finally the raid. He told his father how Yellow Kidney had instructed him in the horse-taking.
“You were successful. He must have instructed you well.”
“Everything worked out as he planned it.”
“And you led the horse-taking.”
“I was the oldest. I wanted to go into camp for a buffalo-runner but Yellow Kidney wanted me to lead the horse-taking.”
Rides-at-the-door sat back and looked at his son. “Tell me, is Yellow Kidney dead?”
White Man’s Dog was surprised at the directness of the question. He frowned. “Eagle Ribs saw him in his dream. He was on his way to the Sand Hills to join our long-ago people. I do not question this dream.”
Double Strike Woman leaned forward to push a kettle of water closer to the flame. “Oh, his poor wife,” she said. Her eyes filled with tears. “Poor, poor Heavy Shield Woman.”
White Man’s Dog felt the weight of that dreadful moment at the welcoming scene. Amid the confusion, the hugging and scolding, he had watched Eagle Ribs walk to the lodge of Heavy Shield Woman, who stood expectantly by the entrance with her two sons and daughter. She was Yellow Kidney’s only wife. As Eagle Ribs talked, she began to wail and cry, and then she fell to the earth and wouldn’t let her sons pick her up. He had watched his mother and three other women hurry over and finally manage to carry her into her lodge. Any feeling of triumph he might have had left him in that moment.
He looked at his father. “I do not question Eagle Rib’s dream —but I do not believe Yellow Kidney is dead.”
This time it was Rides-at-the-door who was surprised. He smiled. “I think you are right, my son. Although Yellow Kidney is younger, he and I have done much together. He is cunning and his medicine is powerful. I think he will return someday.” Rides-at-the-door pulled a twig from the fire and held it before him. He was considering what kind of man would return.
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