Stone Song (7 page)

Curly stood rigid in the sunshine, waiting for the words he was afraid of. Such as, “You can hold the horses,” meaning wait while the others fought. Or, “You can go for water,” meaning sneak to the creek at night to fetch drink for the real warriors.

The words didn’t come. So the invitation was to fight for the first time. This was his mothers’ brother offering, the man who traditionally helped teach you shooting and tracking and hunting and war. He was one of the men you called
leksi
, a mother’s brother. Now his uncle was saying, “Come show us you are a warrior.” Curly was barely able to murmur, “Yes.”

Curly ran fast to his lodge to tell Tasunke Witko and his mothers that he was going raiding against the Omaha. When he got inside, he looked at them and couldn’t say it. He sat down. He shared a little food with them, and his parents talked idly. Hawk was restless on her perch. They said they were going in to Laramie to see about the rations.

Finally Curly said softly, “My mothers’ brother has asked me to go with him to fight the Two Circle People.”

The three parents looked at each other. Curly supposed they were happy but also afraid for him. They didn’t understand.

He stood up. “I think Hump and I will stay with my uncle the rest of the summer,” he said softly. He pushed the lodge flap open and walked into the sunlight. He felt set free.

They went to war this Middle Moon in the spirit of a lark. Spotted Tail and Little Thunder took their wives with them, as though to say, “These Pani and these Two Circle People,” whom the
wasicu
called the Pawnee and the Omaha, “they’re nothing. There’s so little threat in fighting them, we’ll even take our women along.” Buffalo Hump went, too, and Young Man-Whose-Enemies, Lone Bear, Black Elk, and from the Bad Face band He Dog.

Spotted Tail was a genial man, strong, stocky, with a slow, wide, easy smile. He loved to play practical jokes on his brothers-in-law and his nephews. He seemed to think everything in the world was an occasion for fun.

He seemed so big, so burly in the upper body, so friendly, so protective that Curly always felt small and taken care of around him. Curly saw his father’s brothers constantly, the ones he called
ate
, “father,” in the Lakota way, Long Face, Spotted Crow, Bull Head, and Ashes. Of his mothers’ brothers, he saw Spotted Tail most often. Curly’s other favorites, the Mniconjou brothers of his blood mother, Rattling Blanket Woman, Lone Horn and Touch-the-Sky, usually camped far to the north. But the Hunkpatila were often with Spotted Tail’s band. The first time Curly rode among the buffalo, he had felt sure that if a herd father, a big bull, fell on him, Spotted Tail would simply lift it off, chuckling at his own strength.

Sometimes Curly had trouble realizing that this man was not only one of the main war leaders of the Sicangu, but a shirt wearer as well, one of the four men not yet Big Bellies but responsible for the welfare of all the people. It was a hard job, putting the whole tribe before your family, even before yourself. Spotted Tail seemed too much interested in having fun for all that.

When the party got near the Loup River, Little Thunder and some others said they wanted to ride to the Pani earth lodges to steal some horses. The Sicangu thought the Pani truly a vile people. What marked them irredeemably as savages was their taste for capturing girls of the Lakota and Sahiyela and sacrificing their lives to Morning Star.

But Spotted Tail looked at Curly and his Hunkpatila comrades. Everyone was holding horses or getting mounted. Spotted Tail grinned, seeming to ponder the fun of committing mayhem here against the fun of committing mayhem there. “Let’s not overwhelm the poor Pani with numbers this time,” he said. He jerked his head sideways and smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Let’s go against the Two Circle People.” He seemed to have something delicious in mind.

They found the camp easily enough—the Two Circle People were away from their river cornfields to hunt—and Spotted Tail said they’d try stealing a few Two Circle mounts, just for fun. “This time we’ll ride Two Circle horses, next time Two Circle women,” he joked.

Curly got his wish: Spotted Tail chose him to help sneak up on the herd, his first warlike deed. In the middle of the night he and his uncle slipped quietly toward the pony herd. They sat still in moon shadows. Curly used his eyes silently. And his ears—he took in all the sounds of the night birds, the wind, the thumpings and snufflings among the ponies. Before long he knew where the two guards were, knew that one was motionless but alert, the other still and asleep.

Spotted Tail and Curly crept toward the herd very slowly, easing from shadow to shadow, blending in with the wrinkles in the landscape when
they moved, sitting still as boulders when they waited. At each pause they sat still until the birds stirred again, and until the herd stopped stirring.

Curly breathed slowly, fully aware of himself, his body, its motion, of everything around him. He could walk with perfect certainty, knowing he would not make noise. He was sure he could sit still while a sentry looked right at him and go unseen. He was a tree, a bush, perhaps a coyote, but not an enemy.

They did it the hard way but good way. They took the time to approach a dozen of the hobbled horses without disturbing them. These would be the most valued mounts. Silently, one by careful one, they cut the restraints. Just before first light they mounted swiftly, yelling and waving their blankets. As they hightailed it out of there, Spotted Tail laughed and whooped like a maniac.

For the first time Curly felt himself a warrior.

Then Spotted Tail got serious. He and the youths drove the horses hard half the night, left them in a gully with a watch, and rode fast back to the Two Circle camp. At dawn, hidden, they watched to see how many warriors were in camp. Spotted Tail gave a big smile of satisfaction. “Goddamn few,” he said to Curly. When he wanted to act silly, Spotted Tail would say his favorite
wasicu
word:
goddamn
. The Two Circle men were mostly gone after the stolen ponies.

Curly, Hump, and Young Man-Whose-Enemies lined up in a flank next to Spotted Tail. When the leader nodded, the warriors charged as furiously as dust devils, whooping and yelling and kicking up dust and creating every kind of havoc.

That was when Curly felt it, the lifting of Hawk from her perch in his heart, the rise toward an attitude of flight.

He toppled the ear-flap poles of one tipi and threw his spear through the hide of another. He vented the cry of the red-tailed hawk, KEE-ur, KEE-ur, fierce and primordial, a yawp of predation. Now he felt it, the leading edge of her wing catching the wind.

He saw Hump touch an armed older man on the head with his coup stick and yelp out his victory. Spotted Tail knocked down a tripod holding a medicine bundle. Excited, Curly trampled the bundle with his pony’s hooves. He saw a fat woman fleeing with a duck waddle. He chased her on his pony. When she heard the clap of hooves, she waddled twice as fast. He laughed and circled his pony so hard they both almost fell.

KEE-ur, KEE-ur. His heart’s cry, not a musical sound like some birds’, but raw and bloody.

Two Circles ran like spooked prairie hens. Some of the youths and older men got into some brush along the creek and started a defensive fire, arrows and a little lead.

Curly heard the whu-up-up of lead near his ear, too near.

KEE-ur, KEE-ur.

Whoa. Death is here. A warrior must watch himself or catch a little of it
.

He held up his pony. The thought of Rider’s invulnerability against enemy fire skittered across his mind. He felt for it in his heart. He couldn’t find it.

Uncertain, he decided to rest a moment at the far end of the village. Most of the fire was in the center. Spotted Tail was riding around like a dervish, screaming. Curly saw him push a running man down with his coup stick and whoop with laughter. The Sicangu shot at no one.

Then Curly saw it. Yes, movement. Buckskin. A warrior in the brush not forty yards away, creeping close enough to shoot an arrow.

KEE-ur, KEE-ur.

Riding close enough for the hand coup crossed his mind, but Curly realized he was far from that size of spirit yet, and unprotected against enemy fire.

He slipped off his horse. He wanted to make sure of his aim, not show off with a wild shot from horseback. He waited.

Motion again. The left arm of the figure raised.

Quickly Curly aimed just below the arm and squeezed the trigger. The warrior half-rose and pitched forward.

“
Hu ikhpeya wicayapo!
” Curly bellowed, calling bloodthirstily for the complete defeat of the enemy and then humiliation heaped on the dead body.

He left his horse and dashed to the body, scalping knife in hand, and touched it, his first coup.

Noticed uneasily that the hair was brown, like his sister’s, and in braids, like a woman’s.

Jerked the head back to take the scalp. Saw he had killed a woman.

His mind and heart were fluttered with wing beats.

Take the scalp!
his head shouted at him.

Some of the people would judge a woman’s scalp more of a trophy than a man’s, a greater blow to the pride of the enemy.

Don’t touch it
, his heart said.
Like Rider, take nothing for yourself
.

But Curly hadn’t intended to kill a woman. Shame ran in him like bile. If he had identified her as a woman and deliberately attacked her in front of her man as an insult to him, that would have been fine, but…

He dropped the lifeless head.

Mounted. Trotted off. Wing beats pounding furiously against his ribs. Hawk’s agitation.

Should he have trusted in the protection against enemy fire? Should he have done this, should he have done that?

He heard Young Man-Whose-Enemies whoop as he took the woman’s scalp.

Suddenly Curly didn’t want to be in the fight but simply to take it in with his senses. He trotted his pony off to a little knoll.

The fracas was ending. The other warriors joined him, no one hurt, four scalps in hand.

Curly saw Spotted Tail look back at the village keenly, bowing his horse’s head back that way. The Two Circle men were set and ready now. The village was dangerous.

Spotted Tail jumped his horse forward. Curly had the impression of a fury of energy, like a huge boulder bounding down a hill.

Spotted Tail raised no weapon. He charged straight at the firing Two Circles.

He rode untouched through the barrage. He turned his horse and rode parallel to their line, lead and arrows flying all around him. Untouched.

Rider
, Curly thought. His blood surged.

From behind them on a bluff Spotted Tail’s wife Spoon made the trilling sound, rejoicing in her man’s medicine.

Spotted Tail kicked his horse hard back toward the Lakota on the knoll. His warriors shouted their exultation. Curly yelled, for once full of words.

Spotted Tail whirled and looked back at the village. Curly felt his muscles arch with eagerness.

Again! The shirt wearer bounded horseback toward the village. The Two Circle men fired frantically. Spotted Tail seemed to ride in triumphant pulse to a grand, measured, heroic music.

Curly felt not a quiver of fear for his uncle.

Spotted Tail was invulnerable.

Oddly, now, in the midst of Curly’s uncle’s whirlwind, it came back.

That sense of himself as possibility, riding the wind, in the fury of the whirl of life, yet at the same time above it, observant and serene.

In this high awareness, Curly smelled again the blood and excrement of man and beast flowing. The acrid dust dried his nostrils. The sounds of the battle streamed through his consciousness, separate and distinct. He saw his uncle’s charge and the previous fight not as a tumble of distinct impressions, but as a slow parade, all events simultaneous, prolonged, suspended in time.

This must be the way Hawk sees the world
, he thought. He heard the trilling of Spoon on the bluff behind as a kind of martial flute music. He felt at home.

Spotted Tail let his nephew maneuver the two of them off by themselves. They sat cross-legged chewing on pemmican, a dried, sausage-like meat. Spotted Tail saw that the boy was distressed. For Light Curly Hair the hardest thing seemed to be asking other people for things, anything.

At last Curly began, “Where does that power come from?” The boy forced himself not to mumble the second sentence: “You couldn’t be touched by enemy fire.”

“A gift,” Spotted Tail said. He looked his nephew in the eye.

“From …?”

Spotted Tail shrugged. He was not a philosopher, did not trust words for the big things everyone knew. He waited.

Curly seemed to turn the words over and over and look at them carefully. “You saw beyond?”

Spotted Tail shook his head. “No. I didn’t. I seldom do.”

The boy’s face spoke a thousand words. Always so serious. “But how do you know you’re safe?”

Spotted Tail looked within himself. He didn’t want to give a facile answer. He wanted to look at the reality and describe it simply and accurately. At last he spoke. “You are prepared. You listen to your spirit helper. You feel … everything. The sun, the wind, everything. Sometimes you feel something rise in you, and you know.”

He waited. “When you are truly thirsty, drink deep. When you truly feel the drum, dance.” He said it this way even though he knew his nephew didn’t dance. “When you feel the power, swim in it, feel it like a big river in spring flood.” Spotted Tail smiled a big smile at his nephew. “That’s all.”

He hoped Curly had the simplicity and the truth within him to accept this explanation, to feel its surfaces, to suck on it, to hold it in his heart. For there was nothing more to say, really.

Curly sat. Words lit his face and went away. He struggled not to fidget. He stared off into space. Finally, he got to his feet, murmured, “Thank you,” and left.

Yes
, thought Spotted Tail.
It’s hard to be young
.