Ghost Dance (23 page)

"The fire in my lodge," said Running Horse, "burns low."

"I would shame you," she cried.

"No," said Running Horse. "I am not ashamed."

"That is because you are only a short hair," said the girl, contemptuously.

"I have danced the Sun Dance," said Running Horse.

Winona huddled even closer to the ground, rocking in her misery, her arms folded around her.

"On the other hand," said Running Horse, speaking as he did because he had no male relative to do this in his stead, "you are not very much, and are probably not worth many horses."

Winona looked up. "I am the daughter of a chief," she said.

"That is true," said Running Horse, "but he is old and has only one horse."

"He was a great warrior," said Winona.

"That is true," said Running Horse, "but it is not he who would tend my fire."

Winona looked at him angrily.

"He has a daughter," said Running Horse, "who should feel grateful if a man would look at her."

Winona bit her lip.

"She is a stupid girl," he said, "who does not know how to sew or dress skins, and she cannot bead moccasins or make belts."

"But she is very beautiful," said Winona.

"No," said Running Horse, "she is like a stick, like a she-coyote, not like a buffalo cow, fat and strong."

"A man would be a fool to want such a girl," said Winona.

"Yes," said Running Horse, "I suppose so."

For a long time neither of them spoke, and then Winona laughed.

"I have heard," said Running Horse, "that Running Horse is a fool."

"That is not true," said Winona.

"He is no good," said Running Horse. "He is only a short hair."

Winona looked at him shyly. "I have heard," she said, "that he has danced the Sun Dance."

"Maybe," said Joseph Running Horse, "I do not know."

"A girl," said Winona, "would be honored if such a man might think of her."

"That is true," said Running Horse.

Winona looked down. "Could the heart of such a man be pleased with a girl who is stupid and ugly?"

"Maybe," said Joseph Running Horse, "I do not know."

He looked at her.

"Could the heart of the daughter of a chief be pleased with a fool who is only a short hair?" asked Running Horse.

Winona looked down, not meeting his eyes. "Maybe," she said, "I do not know."

"Well," said Running Horse, getting to his feet, "when you find out, you will let me know."

Winona, too, rose to her feet, and knotted the dress over her left shoulder.

Running Horse began to climb up the bank, slipping a bit, and then he was on the level.

He waited for Winona to climb up after him, not helping her.

"I am going to my lodge," he said.

She stood near him, her head lowered. "Your fire will need tending," she said.

Running Horse tenderly took the blanket from his own shoulders and holding it about himself, opened it to the girl, and she stepped against him, and put her head to his shoulder, and he folded the blanket about her.

"One blanket," he said.

"Yes," said the girl, "one blanket."

 

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

It was December 15, 1890.

On Medicine Ridge, above the camp of Sitting Bull on the Grand River, Drum and Running Horse met. It wasn't long before dawn. Exchanging no sign of greeting or recognition, they sat facing one another, saying nothing.

Between them lay two golden chevrons, which Winona had torn yesterday afternoon from the sleeve of Corporal Jake Totter.

Drum, with his teeth and fingers, carefully, losing not even a raveling, separated the chevrons. He gave one to Running Horse and kept one for himself. Both of the young men put a chevron in their medicine bags.

Kicking Bear now made his way slowly up the side of Medicine Ridge. He was wrapped in his blanket and hunched against the cold. It was barely light in the east now.

The medicine man squatted beside the two young men and drew a small, dead animal from under his blanket. It was a badger, that had been caught in a string noose. It was still warm.

Kicking Bear took out his knife and slit open the animal's belly. With an oval cut, not removing the knife from the animal, he loosened most of its organs and intestines from the furred skin, and then, wiping his knife on his leggings and putting it back in his belt, he took his hands and scooped out the organs and viscera.

The now-hollowed cup of the badger's skin slowly filled with blood, the level rising in the cavity. Kicking Bear then took the heart and liver and kidneys of the animal and squeezed them between his hands, adding what blood and fluids they contained to the cup of fur.

The first clean streak of dawn made the cold prairie glisten like the blade of a steel knife.

The young men watched Kicking Bear, who was intent on the blood in the animal's hollowed belly. He would not look on the blood directly, but only from the side. This medicine he made for others, not for himself.

The death smell of the badger was keen in the nostrils of the two, silent young men. They must wait to see if the badger would speak to them.

Kicking Bear had told them he knew how to do this thing, and he had prayed, and he had had no difficulty in snaring an animal. The signs were good. The badger had come promptly to the snare. Both Drum and Running Horse were grateful to the badger.

"He is ready," said Kicking Bear.

Running Horse went to the badger and looked deeply into the shallow cup of blood.

He looked for a long time at his face, mirrored in the blood. His reflection stared up at him, and it seemed to Running Horse that it was gray and solemn.

Running Horse straightened and looked at Kicking Bear and Drum. "I have seen myself old," he said.

Kicking Bear grunted with satisfaction.

Drum looked into the bowl of blood, into that tiny mirror, seeking for his image, and suddenly he had found it and his face jerked at what he saw and his lip trembled for an instant, and then he looked again, for a long time, into the blood, as though there must be no mistake in the sign he read.

"What do you see?" demanded Kicking Bear.

But Drum did not respond to him. It seemed he could not tear his eyes from the small image in the red mirror, that small image, red and terrible staring up at him from the secret of the badger's blood.

"What do you see?" repeated Kicking Bear.

Drum, at last, lifted his head, and looked at both of the men, at Kicking Bear, prophet of the Ghost Dance, and at Running Horse, like himself a brave of the Hunkpapa.

"I will die as the son of Kills-His-Horse," said Drum.

Once more Kicking Bear grunted, but this time his response was not of satisfaction, nor of fear, nor of commiseration, rather a noise that betokened only the acknowledgement of Drum's words, and that he had not been surprised.

Drum was shaken, but he did not seem frightened. He sat back, cross-legged, breathed deeply.

"The medicine has been made," said Kicking Bear. "It is over."

Kicking Bear slowly poured the blood from the badger out onto the ground and with his hands and fingernails scooped a small hole in the scarlet mud, into which he placed the organs and viscera of the animal. Then he scooped dirt over the place and put some stones on it. The carcass of the animal itself he thrust in his belt.

Running Horse hesitantly put forth his hand and touched Drum's arm.

Drum looked into his eyes.

"I will not forget again," said Drum, "that we are both of the Hunkpapa."

"I am glad," said Running Horse.

Kicking Bear now stood up, his blanket wrapped about his waist, and raised his arms to the east, where the rim of the sun now burned over the prairie.

"Wakan-Tonka!" cried Kicking Bear. "Drum, the son of Kills-His-Horse, has made medicine. His death will be the death of a brave of the Hunkpapa. Until his death he will be strong, fortunate and victorious! There will be no medicine that can prevail against him!"

Kicking Bear lowered his arms and turned to Drum. "Let your heart be strong," he said. "You cannot escape death, so live without fear."

Drum rose to his feet, and Running Horse, too, got up.

Kicking Bear came to Drum and placed his hands on his shoulders. "What is there now to fear?" asked Kicking Bear.

Drum looked at him for a long time. Then he said, slowly, forming the words carefully, "Nothing. There is nothing left to fear."

"The fearing is done," said Kicking Bear. "It is finished!"

"Yes," said Drum, slowly, "it is finished." He looked at Running Horse. "I feel strong," he said. "Strong."

"I am glad," said Running Horse.

Drum did not take his eyes from Running Horse. "So you will grow old, Little Warrior?" he said. "And you will have children and grandchildren?"

Running Horse looked down.

"Tell them of Drum," said the young Indian.

A dog began to bark in the distance, down in the camp of Sitting Bull.

"Look!" cried Kicking Bear, pointing to the camp.

Drum and Running Bear stood numb for that second with astonishment, for filing into the camp, on horseback, was a contingent of blue-coated Indian police, about thirty of them. They were coming in quietly, purposefully.

They reined up outside the cabin of Sitting Bull.

With a cry of rage Drum scrambled down the side of Medicine Ridge, half falling, half stumbling, running headlong toward the camp. Running Horse raced behind him, shouting at the top of his voice, trying to rouse the camp.

 

* * *

 

The Indian policeman, burly, with his short hair, in his ill-fitting blue uniform, guts cold, hands trembling, with his white man's orders, hesitated before the calm wood of the door to Sitting Bull's cabin.

Then he drew his pistol from the cavalry holster at his belt.

This was the cabin of the troublemaker, the hated Sitting Bull, who would not smoke with him, and his kind, and who as long as he lived would not do so, Sitting Bull who stood in the hearts of the people as a symbol of the old life that had gone with the departing buffalo, who as long as he lived would remind the people of the pipes of stone, the days of many horses and the feathers of eagles.

The Indians who were wise would understand that these were the days of the white man, and would be good Indians, and live as the holy teachers of the white men cautioned them, being meek, and bearing their crosses and loving all men, even Crows. And when the Indians were good they would receive gifts from the Great White Father, and maybe even a badge and a gun, and a blue suit that would make them more than a chief, almost as much as a white man himself.

The Indian policeman had no great love for the white man, but he knew that the wars were over, and he knew who had won them. Sitting Bull did not know that. Sitting Bull would not smoke with him. Sitting Bull called him a short hair.

The policeman threw his weight against the cabin door bursting it open.

He stumbled into the cabin, followed by several of his men, clutching their weapons.

Sitting Bull, on one side of his lodge, sat up, wrapped in his blankets. "What do you want?" he asked.

The Indian policeman pointed his pistol at the chief. "Come with me," he said. His voice was loud, like a white man who talks to an Indian. Then he remembered the formula given to him by the white men. "You are under arrest," he said.

Sitting Bull sat quiet for a minute. Then he said, "Very well, I will go with you."

The Indian policeman gestured with his pistol, impatiently, for the chief to rise and dress.

Already there were four or five dogs barking outside and he could hear the noises of the camp.

Outside, two of the Indian police were fumbling to put the high wooden saddle of Spanish design on Sitting Bull's white horse.

Some of the Indians of the camp, now roused by the clamor of the dogs, stumbled out of their cabins and tepees, forming a puzzled, hostile ring about the Indian policemen outside the entrance to Sitting Bull's cabin.

The police pointed their weapons at the Indians and ordered them to draw back.

Several of the police looked anxiously in the direction from which they had come.

Old Bear, standing in the door of his cabin, observed this and he too looked down their backtrail. He could see nothing, but his war sense told him that there would be soldiers, white soldiers, not far distant. Indian police for diplomatic reasons, not soldiers, had been sent to the cabin of Sitting Bull, presumably to seize him and take him away to the iron and stone houses.

But there would be soldiers.

The white man would not trust this thing altogether to short hairs.

There would be soldiers.

Old Bear went back into his cabin and removed his rifle from a cracked, beaded, buckskin sheath.

Edward Chance was awakened by the barking of dogs. He was in Running Horse's cabin.

Winona, who had accompanied Running Horse back to the cabin the night before, and who had accepted and given love in the very room in which Chance had pretended to sleep, breathing heavily, wrapped in his blankets, smiling, facing the wall, was already up.

The fire was started.

Chance sat upright, blinking the grit of sleep out of his eyes, puzzled, wondering about the dogs.

He looked at the girl. She now wore moccasins and a fringed, deerskin dress, having visited Old Bear's cabin last night to gather her belongings. Her face had been washed and her hair, cut short to the back of her neck, had been combed. She was piling articles in the cabin which might be of use in a journey, particularly food, clothing and ammunition, into the center of a striped cotton blanket on the dirt floor.

Outside Chance could now hear cries, angry shouts.

"What's wrong?" he asked Winona.

Winona stopped for a moment to face him. Her face was ashen. "A bad thing," she said, "a bad thing, Brother of my Husband."

"Where is my brother?" asked Chance.

"I do not know," said the girl.

She turned to her work.