Dances With Wolves (14 page)

Their leader argued against this. It was unlikely that the people at the earth house, so far from any other whites, would be found right away. They would be well out of the country by then. The band had only two captives now, both Mexicans, and captives were always of value. If this one died on the long trip home, they would leave her by the trail and no one would be the wiser. If she survived, she would be useful as a worker or as something to bargain with if the need arose.

And the leader reminded the others that there was a tradition of captives becoming good Comanches, and there was always a need for more good Comanches.

The matter was settled quick enough. Those who were for killing her on the spot might have had the better argument, but the man who was for keeping her was a fast-rising young warrior with a future, and no one was eager to go against him.

eight

She survived all the hardships, largely through the benevolence of the young warrior with a future whose name she eventually learned was Kicking Bird.

In time she came to understand that these people were her people and that they were vastly different from those who had murdered her family and friends. The Comanches became her world and she loved them as much as she hated the Pawnee. But while the hate of the killers remained, memories of her family sank steadily, like something trapped in quicksand. In the end, the memories had sunk completely from sight.

Until this day, the day she had unearthed her past.

As vivid as the recollection had been, Stands With A Fist was not thinking of it as she got up from her spot in front of the cottonwood and waded into the river. When she squatted in the water and splashed some on her face, she was not thinking of her mother and father. They were long gone, and the remembrance of them was nothing she could use.

As her eyes scanned the opposite bank, she was thinking only of the Pawnee, wondering if they would be raiding into Comanche territory this summer.

Secretly, she hoped they would. She wanted another opportunity for revenge.

There had been an opportunity several summers before, and she had made the most of that one. It came in the form of an arrogant warrior who had been taken alive for the purpose of ransom.

Stands With A Fist and a delegation of women had met the men bringing him in at the edge of camp. She herself had led the ferocious charge that the returning war party had been powerless to turn back. They’d pulled him from his horse and cut him to pieces on the spot. Stands With A Fist had been first to drive in her knife, and she’d stayed until only shreds remained. Striking back at last had been deeply satisfying, but not so satisfying that she didn’t dream regularly of another chance.

The visit with her past was a tonic, and she felt more Comanche than ever as she walked back on the little-used path. Her head was high and her heart was very strong.

The white soldier seemed a trifling thing now. She resolved that if she talked to him at all, it would only be as much as pleased Stands With A Fist.

one

The appearance of three strange young men on ponies was a surprise. Shy and respectful, they carried the appearance of messengers, but Lieutenant Dunbar was very much on his guard. He had not yet learned to tell tribal differences, and to his unpracticed eye they could have been anybody.

With the rifle tipped over his shoulder, he walked a hundred yards behind the supply house to meet them. When one of the young men made the sign of greeting used by the quiet one, Dunbar answered with his usual short bow.

The hand talk was short and simple. They asked him to come with them to the village, and the lieutenant agreed. They stood by as he bridled Cisco, talking in low tones about the little buckskin horse, but Lieutenant Dunbar paid them little mind.

He was anxious to find out what was up and was glad when they left the fort at a gallop.

two

It was the same woman, and though she was sitting away from them, toward the back of the lodge, the lieutenant’s eyes kept roving in her direction. The deerskin dress was drawn over her knees and he couldn’t tell if she had recovered from the bad leg wound.

Physically she looked fine, but he could read no clues in her expression. It was a shade sullen but mainly blank. His eyes kept going to her because he was sure now that she was the reason for his being summoned to the village. He wished they could get on with it, but his limited experience with the Indians had already taught him to be patient.

So he waited as the medicine man meticulously packed his pipe. The lieutenant glanced again at Stands With A Fist. For a split second her eyes linked with his and he was reminded of how pale they were compared to the deep brown eyes of the others. Then he remembered her saying “Don’t” that day on the prairie. The cherry-colored hair suddenly sprang at him with new meaning, and a tingling started at the base of his neck.

Oh my God, he thought, that woman is white.

Dunbar could tell that Kicking Bird was more than casually aware of the woman in the shadows. When, for the first time, he offered the pipe to his special visitor, he did it with a sidelong glance in her direction.

Lieutenant Dunbar needed help with the smoking, and Kicking Bird politely obliged, positioning his hands on the long, smooth stem and adjusting the angle. The tobacco was as harsh as it smelled, but he found it to be full of aroma. A good smoke. The pipe itself was fascinating. Heavy to pick up, it felt extraordinarily light once he began to smoke, as if it might float away if he eased his grip.

They puffed it back and forth for a few minutes. Then Kicking Bird laid the pipe carefully at his side. He looked squarely at Stands With A Fist and made a little flick of his wrist, motioning her forward.

She hesitated for a moment, then planted a hand on the ground and started to her feet. Lieutenant Dunbar, ever the gentleman, instantly jumped up and, in so doing, ignited a wild ruckus.

It all happened in a violent flash. Dunbar didn’t see the knife until she’d covered half the distance between them. The next thing he knew, Kicking Bird’s forearm slammed into his chest and he was falling backward. As he went down he saw the woman coming in a crouch, punctuating the words she was hissing with wicked stabbing motions.

Kicking Bird was on her just as quickly, twisting the knife away with one hand while he shoved her to the ground with the other. As the lieutenant sat up, Kicking Bird was turning on him. There was a fearsome glare on the medicine man’s face.

Desperate to defuse this awful situation, Dunbar hopped to his feet. He waved his hands back and forth as he said “No” several times. Then he made one of the little bows he used as a greeting when Indians came to Fort Sedgewick. He pointed to the woman on the floor and bowed again.

Kicking Bird understood then. The white man was only trying to be polite. He had meant no harm. He spoke a few words to Stands With A Fist and she came to her feet again. She kept her eyes on the floor, avoiding any contact with the white soldier.

For a moment each member of the trio in the lodge stood motionless.

Lieutenant Dunbar waited and watched as Kicking Bird slowly stroked the side of his nose with a long, dark finger, thinking things over. Then he muttered softly to Stands With A Fist and the woman raised her eyes. They seemed paler than before. And blanker. Now they were staring straight into Dunbar’s.

With signs Kicking Bird asked the lieutenant to resume his seat. They sat as they had before, facing each other. More soft words were directed at Stands With A Fist and she came forward, settling light as a feather a foot or two from Dunbar.

Kicking Bird looked at both of them expectantly. He placed his fingers on his lips, prodding the lieutenant with this sign until Dunbar understood that he was being asked to speak, to say something to the woman sitting next to him.

The lieutenant dipped his head in her direction, waiting until he caught a little slice of her eye.

“Hello,” he said.

She blinked.

“Hello,” he said again.

Stands With A Fist remembered the word. But her white tongue was as rusty as an old hinge. She was afraid of what might come out, and her subconscious was still resisting the very idea of this talk. She made several soundless attempts before it came out.

“Hulo,” she answered, quickly dropping her chin.

Kicking Bird’s delight was such that he uncharacteristically slapped the side of his leg. He reached over and patted the back of Dunbar’s hand, urging him on.

“Speak?” the lieutenant asked, mixing his words with the sign Kicking Bird had used. “Speak English?”

Stands With A Fist tapped the side of her temple and nodded, trying to tell him the words were in her head. She placed a pair of fingers against her lips and shook her head, trying to tell him of the trouble with her tongue.

The lieutenant didn’t fully understand. Her expression was still blankly hostile, but there was an ease in her movements now that gave him the feeling she was willing to communicate.

“I am . . .” he started, poking a finger at his tunic. “I am John. I am John.”

Her flat eyes were trained on his mouth.

“I am John.”

Stands With A Fist moved her lips silently, practicing the word. When she finally said it out loud the word rang with perfect clarity. It shocked her. It shocked Lieutenant Dunbar.

She said, “Willie.”

Kicking Bird knew there had been a misfire when he saw the stunned expression on the lieutenant’s face. He watched helplessly as Stands With A Fist went through a series of muddled gyrations. She covered her eyes and rubbed her face. She covered her nose as if she were trying to stifle a smell and shook her head wildly. Finally she placed her hands palm down on the ground and sighed deeply, again forming silent words with her little mouth. At that moment, Kicking Bird’s heart sagged. Perhaps he had asked too much in mounting this experiment.

Lieutenant Dunbar didn’t know what to make of her, either. He thought it possible that the poor girl’s long captivity had made her a lunatic.

But Kicking Bird’s experiment, though terribly difficult, was not too much. And Stands With A Fist was not a lunatic. The white soldier’s words and her memories and the confusion of her tongue were all jumbled together. Sorting through the tangle was like trying to draw with her eyes closed. She was struggling to get hold of it as she stared into space.

Kicking Bird started to say something, but she cut him off sharply with a flurry of Comanche.

Her eyes remained closed a few seconds longer. When they opened again she looked through her tangled hair at Lieutenant Dunbar and he could see that they had softened. With a calm beckoning of her hand she asked him in Comanche to speak again.

Dunbar cleared his throat.

“I am John,” he said, and pronounced the word carefully. “John . . . John.”

Once more her lips worked at the word, and once more she tried to speak it.

“Jun.”

“Yes.” Dunbar nodded ecstatically. “John.”

“Jun,” she said again.

Lieutenant Dunbar tilted his head back. It was a sweet sound to him, the sound of his own name. He had not heard it for months.

Stands With A Fist smiled in spite of herself. Her recent life had been so filled with frowns. It was good to have something, no matter how small, to smile about.

Simultaneously, they glanced at Kicking Bird.

There was no smile on his mouth. But in his eyes, though it was ever faint, was a happy light.

three

The going was slow that first afternoon in Kicking Bird’s lodge. The time was eaten up by Stands With A Fist’s painstaking attempts to repeat Lieutenant Dunbar’s simple words and phrases. Sometimes it took a dozen or more repetitions, all of them excruciatingly tedious, to pronounce a single one-syllable word. And even then the pronunciation was far from perfect. It was not what would be called talking.

But Kicking Bird was greatly encouraged. Stands With A Fist had told him that she remembered the white words well. She was only having difficulty with her tongue. The medicine man knew that practice would bring the rusty tongue around, and his mind galloped with the happy prospects of the time when conversation between them would be free and full of information.

He felt a twinge of irritation when one of his assistants arrived with the news that he would shortly be needed to oversee final preparations for the dance that evening.

But Kicking Bird smiled as he took the white man’s hand and bid him good-bye with hair-mouth words.

“Hulo, Jun.”

four

It was tough to figure. The meeting had ended so abruptly. And so far as he knew, it had been going well. Something must have taken priority.

Dunbar stood outside Kicking Bird’s lodge and looked down the wild avenue. People seemed to be congregating in an open space at the end of the street near the tipi that carried the mark of the bear. He wanted to stay, to see what was going to happen.

But the quiet one had already disappeared into the steadily growing crowd. He spotted the woman, so small among the already smallish Indians, walking between two women. She didn’t look back at him, but as the lieutenant’s eyes followed her receding form, he could see the two people in her carriage: white and Indian.

Cisco was coming toward him, and Dunbar was surprised to see that the boy with the constant smile was riding his horse. The youngster pulled up, rolled off, patted Cisco’s neck, and chattered something that Lieutenant Dunbar correctly interpreted as praise for his horse’s virtues.

People were streaming into the clearing now and they were taking little notice of the man in uniform. The lieutenant thought again of staying, but much as he wanted to, he knew that without a formal invitation he would not be welcome. There had been no invitation.

The sun was beginning to sink and his stomach was starting to growl. If he was going to get home before dark and thus avoid a lot of fumbling just to get dinner together, he would have to make quick time. He swung up, turned Cisco around, and started out of the village at an easy canter.

As he passed the last of the lodges he chanced upon a strange assembly. Perhaps a dozen men were gathered behind one of the last lodges. They were all draped in all kinds of finery and their bodies were painted with loud designs. Each man’s head was covered with the head of a buffalo, complete with curly hair and horns. Only the dark eyes and prominent noses were visible beneath the strange helmets.

Dunbar held up a hand as he cantered past. Some of them glanced in his direction, but none of them returned the wave, and the lieutenant rode on.

five

Two Sock’s visits were no longer limited to late afternoon or early morning. He was likely to pop up anytime now, and when he did, the old wolf made himself at home, roaming the little confines of Lieutenant Dunbar’s world as if he were a camp dog. The distance he once kept had shrunk as his familiarity grew. More often than not he was no more than twenty or thirty feet away as the solitary lieutenant went about his little tasks. When he made journal entries Two Socks would usually stretch out and lie down, his yellow eyes blinking curiously as he watched the lieutenant scratch on the pages.

The ride back had been a lonely one. The untimely end of his meeting with the woman who was two people and the mysterious excitement in the village (of which he was not a part) saddled Dunbar with his old nemesis, the morose feeling of being left out. All his life he’d been hungry to participate, and as with every other human, loneliness was something that constantly had to be handled. In the lieutenant’s case loneliness had become the dominant feature of his life, so it was reassuring to see the tawny form of Two Socks rise up under the awning when he rode in at twilight.

The wolf trotted out into the yard and sat down to watch as the lieutenant slipped off Cisco’s back.

Dunbar noticed immediately that something else was under the awning. It was a large prairie chicken, lying dead on the ground, and when he stooped to examine it, he found the bird fresh-killed. The blood on its neck was still sticky. But aside from the punctures about its throat, the guinea fowl was undisturbed. Hardly a feather was out of place. It was a puzzle for which there was only one solution, and the lieutenant looked pointedly at Two Socks.

“Is this yours?” he said out loud.

The wold raised his eyes and blinked as Lieutenant Dunbar studied the bird a moment longer.

“Well, then”—he shrugged—”I guess it’s ours.”

six

Two Socks stood by, his narrow eyes following Dunbar as the bird was plucked, gutted, and roasted over the open fire. While it was on the spit he trailed the lieutenant to the corral and waited patiently as Cisco’s grain ration was doled out. Then back to the fire to await the feast.

It was a good bird, tender and full of meat. The lieutenant ate slowly, carving off the plump flesh a strip at a time and tossing a piece out to Two Socks every now and then. When he’d eaten his fill he lobbed the carcass into the yard and the old wolf carried it off into the night.