Ghost Dance (21 page)

Kicking Bear then went to Sitting Bull and placed both weapons in the dust before the chief.

Then Kicking Bear went to the side of the fire away from Sitting Bull, and stood to Chances' left and to Drum's right, and stood there, it seemed for minutes, not moving.

Chance looked across the fire, to his antagonist.

Drum, painted, standing very straight, was watching him, his arms still folded, his face for most purposes inscrutable, only his eyes betraying him, revealing suppressed eagerness, the intention to kill.

The hair on the back of Chance's neck lifted.

He swallowed, hard.

He recalled the words of Running Horse, you must be very fast.

He would try.

With ceremonial solemnity, Kicking Bear, looking neither to the right nor left, removed the two steel butcher knives from his belt, and then he held them, one in each hand, high over his head.

Thus he stood for perhaps a minute.

Suddenly with a cry Kicking Bear flung the two knives into the dirt, one on each side of the fire.

Drum snatched the knife at his feet and leaped across the wide fire. His other hand swooped down and jerked the second knife out of the dirt.

Chance saw Drum standing opposite him, the fire at his back, lifting the two knives in triumph.

Drum's body, the fire bright at his back, was black, a demonic silhouette edged with flames, in each fist a steel claw nine inches long, that caught and flashed the firelight. And then Drum, exultant, began to chant and back dancing away from Chance around the fire, and Chance could see him, his young, strong body ugly and wild with the grotesque paint of war, red, white and black, and Drum seemed to be studying the ground, and dancing, as if looking for a sign, the spoor, the ashes, the traces of an enemy.

Chance had been too slow.

The other knife had been his.

Now Drum straightened and pointed to the ground.

He began to chant again, "I have found him. I have found my enemy. Now I will kill him."

Come ahead, you bastard, thought Chance.

Drum looked across the fire at Chance.

Uttering a wild cry, the war cry of the Hunkpapa, Drum charged through the fire, hurtling himself toward Chance.

For an instant the sudden cry had so startled Chance that he could not move and stood as though tied to a stake, numb, as the twin knives of the young Indian struck down at him, but at the last instant he managed to twist to one side, and Drum, in the fierce momentum of his charge, plunged past him.

Chance, off balance, twisting, struggling to get rightly on his feet, not taking his eyes off Drum, stumbled blindly backwards through the fire, kicking its kindling to the left and right.

Then, hunched over, but ready, on the other side of the broken stars of the fire, in the half-darkness, Chance waited for Drum.

This time the young Indian would approach slowly.

Chance crouched down and picked up a flaming brand from the scattered fire.

Drum came about the right edge of the scattered fire now, both knives held low, below his belt, blades up.

It would be a visceral stroke, difficult to block, not the foolish overhand blow that he had first struck.

Chance wanted to get the fire of the brand in Drum's hair, heavy with grease.

Suddenly Drum's moccasined foot swept through the ashes of the fire lifting a curtain of ash and sparks toward Chance, to blind him, but Chance, as soon as Drum's foot had moved, had himself charged and came through the hot veil of ash with its tiny, drifting points of fire, his eyes shut for the instant against the hot ash, the sparks stinging his face, and then was through it, blinking away the hot ash that clung about his eyes, swinging the limb of kindling like a flaming club and struck Drum across the forehead and the wood, hall burned, broke and Drum's head snapped back and before he could react Chance had leaped on him, pinning his arms to his sides, knocking him over backwards, but it was like trying to hold a puma and Drum's half-naked body, slick with sweat and glistening with paint and grease began to slip from him, and Chance desperately caught his wrists, each of Drum's hands still with its knife, and together they rolled in the dust in the circle, sometimes to the very knees of the Indians, watching and smoking, sometimes into the charred embers of the fire itself, first Chance on top, then Drum.

Drum bit the side of Chance's face and then sank his teeth deep into Chance's arm, again and again, biting as innocently and viciously as any wild animal, but Chance could not release him, dared not, and he, Chance, the gentleman, tried to inch the young Indian's hair, glistening thick with its ceremonial grease, against one of the glowing scraps of kindling in the circle.

Drum's face, a grimace of sweat and paint, was inches from Chance's, unshaven, the muscles in the jaw taut.

There was a long, lateral welt across Drum's forehead, black from the soot of the wood that Chance had used to strike him, smearing the paint.

The side of Chance's face bled from the marks of Drum's teeth.

The only sound was the breathing of the men, the scuffling of dirt, the tiny crack of the flames in the scattered embers of the fire.

Then as Drum tried to move his left hand away and Chance seemed to resist, Chance suddenly released Drum's left wrist, freeing his own right hand, and Drum's hand, with its knife, of its own muscular tension flew wildly to the side and at the same time Chance's hand, with all the power of a suddenly released spring, simultaneously doubled into a fist and flew toward Drum's head, catching him on the side of the jaw with a blow that might have broken a board but only staggered Drum for a moment, did not cause him to lose consciousness.

Chance had not supposed he could knock Drum out. As a physician he knew enough physiology to understand that when men fight for their lives consciousness is not easily surrendered. It is many times easier to knock a man out when life is not at stake than when it is. To cause Drum to lose consciousness he might have had to hit him with an ax handle, or a dozen times with the blow he had, but he had not counted on knocking Drum out, but only stunning him for the moment he needed.

Chance, in the instant when Drum tried to shake the pain and exploding light from his head, let his hands go and grabbed Drum by the hair dragging him and moving him with his boot in the midst of a pile of brands from the council fire and then with the flat of his hand shoved his head back into the embers, and shuddered at Drum's cry as his long black hair, thick with its grease, took the fire.

Drum leaped up twisting away from Chance screaming and, suddenly, hair flaming, charged again, unwarily, and Chance's boot caught him in the solar plexus and Drum, grunting, scarcely able to move, hurled the two knives high and away over the circle of Indians, and they flew over the heads of the watching squaws and children and disappeared in the darkness.

And then he threw himself on the ground rolling and knelt down to scoop dust over his head.

Now there were no weapons. Drum had seen to that, knowing he could not fight, knowing he must prevent Chance from getting a knife, knowing he must put out the fire that tore at his head.

Chance stood back, breathing heavily, not knowing if the fight were over or not.

He knew that warriors did not fight with their hands, but with weapons. It was not seemly to be unarmed. Yet in such a situation, having only one's hands, feet and teeth, Chance supposed, they might still fight. He didn't know.

Chance looked at Running Horse, but Running Horse said nothing. Chance didn't know, now, what was to be done. Was the fight over? Or was he to try and finish Drum, strangle him?

Drum was on his feet now, sucking in the air in gouts, covered with dust, the paint smeared, his hair loose and thick with grease and dirt.

His eyes regarded Chance with hatred, with the inflamed savagery of a mad wolf, not a human being.

He snatched his hatchet, the long-handled hatchet, from the dust before Sitting Bull.

Chance stepped back. He was more afraid of the hatchet than the knives. He could lose an arm even blocking a blow, and bleed to death in minutes.

But Drum, struggling with himself, threw down the hatchet, angrily into the dust before his chief.

It was not permitted him.

Then, unarmed, with a cry, he rushed at Chance and Chance met him and they grappled, grunting in the circle.

"Stop," said Sitting Bull.

Drum and Chance disengaged themselves and stepped back, breathing heavily, looking at the chief.

"It is enough," said Sitting Bull.

Old Bear, by his side, grunted his approval.

"You are Hunkpapa," said Sitting Bull. "Do not fight like drunken white men."

"Give us weapons," said Drum.

"Where are your weapons?" asked Sitting Bull.

Drum was silent.

"It is enough," said Sitting Bull.

Drum looked at Chance. "There is enmity between us," he said.

"All right," said Chance, relieved that the business was over, at least for the time.

He knew that Drum had not fared as well in this battle as he had intended, when he began it, with his paint and proud dancing, when he had intended to kill Chance swiftly and skillfully.

He had been, in effect, disarmed, and he himself, to save his life, had thrown the weapons from the circle.

He had been forced to grovel in the dirt to end the flames that had burned in his hair.

It would not be soon that Drum would forget the encounter of the night.

The night had not been worthy of Drum, and there would have to be, Chance understood, another meeting.

There was only one thing to be grateful for, as Chance saw it. They had met as warriors of the Hunkpapa, and that meant that Drum would no longer kill him as he might a white man, or a Crow, silently, without warning, from ambush, for that would have been

Kicking Bear had come to Drum and placed his blanket about his shoulders.

Without another look at Chance, or at anyone, Drum straightened and left the circle, followed by Kicking Bear and one of the two braves who had accompanied him.

The other brave stopped to retrieve Drum's hatchet from the dust before Sitting Bull.

When he had the hatchet he said something to Sitting Bull, angrily, about using the fists in fighting, as well as Chance could make it out. He began to expostulate with the chief, shamed that his companion had not been victorious.

Indians might wrestle, particularly boys, for sport, but the folding of the hand into a fist and using it as a striking weapon was something that never seemed natural, or acceptable, to them.

The doubled fist, Chance then realized for the first time, is undoubtedly a learned use of the body, like swimming. It is undoubtedly relative to a culture, as unusual to those unaccustomed to it as the oriental practice he had once heard a sailor speak of in a bar, that of using the side of the hand to strike a blow.

At any rate the young Indian was protesting, seemingly on the grounds of Chance having used an unfair method of combat.

Nothing was said about Drum's biting or his attempt to blind Chance, or for that matter about Chance's kicking Drum in the stomach.

Chance decided he would like a smoke.

At last Sitting Bull, after listening patiently, shrugged under his blanket and grunted, meaning nothing, and the young Indian, dismissed, gave the matter up and, with a last look at Chance, and holding Drum's hatchet, left the circle.

Running Horse picked up Chance's revolver and handed it to him. Chance wiped the weapon as well as he could with his sleeve. He would take it apart, clean and oil it before morning. He slipped it in his belt rather than in the holster. There would be time to put it in the holster when the weapon was clean.

Chance noted that now, lighted by a twig from the fire, which the squaws had now built up again, a single pipe was being passed about the circle of men.

It was the council pipe.

"I'd better go," said Chance to Running Horse.

"No," said Running Horse. "Stay, and take council with us."

And so Chance sat down between Running Horse and Old Bear, near Sitting Bull, and when the pipe came to him, smoked, and passed it to his left, to Running Horse. The full ceremony of the pipe was performed only by Sitting Bull, Old Bear and certain of the older men in the circle. Chance did what he saw most of the others do, simply take a puff or two, acknowledging the council and their role in it, and passing the pipe on.

The smoking and the waiting took time, and Chance saw that few decisions would be likely to be reached in a state of anger or emotion. One had time to think, to settle oneself, to consider matters at some length before beginning to speak of them.

But before the talk began, an Indian, only a boy, came to the side of Old Bear. He said to him, very softly. "Come to your lodge."

"There is council," said Old Bear, angrily. Had the young no understanding, no manners in these days?

"Come to your lodge," repeated the boy.

Grunting, Old Bear stood up and made his way back through the hunched figures of the Indians sitting in their blankets about the fire.

Vaguely Chance wondered what the matter was. He saw Running Horse apprehensively look after Old Bear.

The council, at last, the first smoking done, began, and Chance, with his sparse knowledge of Sioux, struggled to follow the proceedings.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twelve

 

Chance and Running Horse, after the council, made their way in silence back toward Running Horse's cabin.

There had been anger at the rations not having been distributed, and some of the Indians had feared that this meant the soldiers would soon attack, to fill them, an inference which Sitting Bull, with his remarkable and unruffled common sense, tried to discourage. He could not, of course, foresee the events of the following morning.

The Indians themselves, on the whole, though they stood ready to fight if necessary, defending themselves, their chief and their families, were not yet inclined, to Chance's relief, to put the matter of the rations on rifle muzzle terms.