Ghost Dance (9 page)

He handed the pipe back to Running Horse.

"I have smoked your tobacco," said Chance.

"Yes," said Running Horse.

Chance then relit his own pipe and each of the men smoked together, not speaking for some time.

"I am your friend," said Running Horse.

"I am your friend," said Chance.

"Good," said Running Horse.

Chance was startled by the young Indian's next words. "Why are you running from other white men?" asked Running Horse.

For a moment Chance was confused, but then, simply, he remembered that such a question might now be asked, for they were friends, and a friend might ask such a thing.

And so Chance, not hurrying, explained as well as he could who he was, what he had done, and how it was that he had come to the small grove of cottonwoods and discovered the dance of Joseph Running Horse.

He told everything, about Grawson, about Totter, even the duel and Clare Henderson.

Running Horse listened gravely, and at the end he said, "My lodge is your lodge. My fire is your fire."

Chance thought it over. One place Grawson, or the law, or even the army would never look for him would be here, with the people of Running Horse.

He needed a place to stay, to hide, if only for a time, perhaps a few weeks.

"I am grateful to share your lodge," said Chance. "I am happy to share your fire."

"Good," said Running Horse.

He puffed on the long blue-and-white beaded pipe.

"What place is this?" asked Chance.

"Standing Rock," said Running Horse.

"A reservation?" asked Chance.

Running Horse smiled. "Yes," he said.

"There aren't many who come here?" asked Chance.

"No," said Running Horse, "never many." And then he added, "Now almost nobody."

"Why not?" asked Chance.

"They are afraid," said Running Horse.

"Why?" asked Chance.

"It is the time of the Ghosts," said Running Horse simply.

"I don't understand," said Chance.

Running Horse looked at him in puzzlement. Could it be that anyone was so ignorant as not to know of the Ghost Dance and the Ghost Dancers?

"This is the time when the Sioux dance the Ghost Dance," he said.

"Were you dancing the Ghost Dance?" asked Chance.

Running Horse looked at him with offended pride, and straightened his body, sitting cross-legged across the fire from Chance, holding the pipe across his body. "No," said Joseph Running Horse. "I looked at the sun."

Chance said nothing.

Running Horse took another puff on the pipe and then looked at Chance. "Do you wish to know the name of the dance that Joseph Running Horse danced?"

"Yes," said Chance.

He found himself staring in the firelight at the savage wounds on the chest of his companion.

"The Sun Dance," said Joseph Running Horse.

Chance nodded.

Chance stared into the fire and poked it with a stick, watching the sparks fly up, like needles of fire against the darkness in the grove of cottonwoods.

"Why?" asked Chance.

"To learn," said Joseph Running Horse, "if the Ghost Dance is a true dance."

"I don't understand," said Chance.

"Tomorrow," said Joseph Running Horse, "you will understand."

Running Horse put out his pipe, and so did Chance, and Chance pulled off his boots, and the two men tugged their blankets about them and with the dying fire between them lay down.

"Tomorrow," said Joseph Running Horse, speaking in the red darkness, "I will show you the Ghost Dance."

Chance lay still for a while, then spoke. "Is it all right to see the dance?" he asked.

He heard Running Horse speak in the darkness. "You may die," he said.

"Oh," said Chance.

"But I do not think so," said Running Horse.

There was a long time of darkness between them.

"Why not?" asked Chance.

"You have seen the Sun Dance," said Joseph Running Horse. "That is strong medicine. It will protect you."

Chance thought about this for a time. Then he said, "I hope you're right."

"Yes," said Running Horse, after a bit. "It is also my hope."

Chance pulled the blankets up under his chin. The ground seemed hard. The saddle was not the softest of pillows. The sweat in his socks began to feel as though it might freeze, and so he pulled off his socks, rubbing one foot against the other.

So tomorrow he might see the Ghost Dance, and might die, all in one day, he mused.

And Chance laughed in the darkness.

"White men are crazy," said Joseph Running Horse.

"All men are crazy," said Chance.

"Maybe," said Joseph Running Horse, and turned over to go to sleep.

Later, after he could no longer see the black of the cottonwoods against the black of the sky, and had counted more than a thousand stars in that glistening, frosty October night on the Dakota prairie, Edward Chance, physician from New York City, spoke again.

"Running Horse," he said.

The young Indian, to Chance's surprise, was not asleep.

"Yes," he said.

"When you danced to Sun Dance," asked Chance, "–did you learn what you wanted?"

"Yes," said Running Horse. His voice was sad in the darkness.

"Is the Ghost Dance a true dance?" asked Chance.

"No," said Joseph Running Horse.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Six

 

Chance ached, each muscle stiff, each bone not wanting to bend at the joints.

He was wet through, from a few minutes of rain shortly before dawn, that and the dew that covered the grass with cold, glistening drops.

He wished he had slept naked.

He sat up in the wet blankets and shivered. He stretched his legs and arms, painfully. Everything was gray, and quiet and wet.

A snap of twigs to his left startled him.

A tiny flame, the size of a hand, was biting its hot, bright way through some shavings Running Horse had cut the night before and wrapped in leather.

Running Horse was kneeling before the tiny fire, snapping his fingers over it, as if by this sound to encourage it to grow.

The world seemed less gray then, warmed by that spark of fire and the crouching body of Joseph Running Horse, who was his friend.

Running Horse looked at Chance, and drew his knife.

"I dreamed," said Running Horse.

Chance had not.

Running Horse lifted the knife and approached Chance, who watched him, but did not move.

Running Horse held the knife poised.

"Be my Brother," said Running Horse.

The young Indian took Chance's arm, pulling the sleeve back.

Chance felt the warm sting of the blade enter his arm.

"I am proud to be your Brother," said Chance.

Chance took the knife and slowly, with a surgeon's firmness, drew its blade across the forearm of Running Horse.

The two men then held their cuts together, that the blood might mingle and be the same, as the blood of brothers.

"It was so in my dream," said Running Horse.

"I am glad," said Chance.

"Now," said Running Horse, "I will take you to see the Ghost Dance."

 

* * *

 

About noon Chance and Running Horse kicked the flanks of their horses, moving them through the leisurely eddies of the Grand River, and climbed the low, wet sloping bank on the other side to the buffalo grass of the rolling prairie above.

Across the river the men dismounted and shared some strips of dried beef which Running Horse extracted from a beaded, leather bag he had tied in the mane of his pony.

Mounting again the men continued their journey.

By now the sun and the wind had dried the broad patches of prairie grass from the early morning's rain, and the hoofs of their horses, Chance's shod, raised dust with each print, which clung in the tangled, matted hair of the fetlocks, wet from the crossing of the river.

For a long time they rode, following the slow run of the bending river, making their way through clusters of cottonwoods where they occurred, and by now the sun was behind them and it was late afternoon.

Once they passed four horses grazing.

Pintos, said Chance to himself, Indian ponies.

But they saw no one.

Running Horse, pulling on the nose rope of his pony, stopped and lifted his hand.

Chance drew back on the reins, checking his mount.

They listened, and as Chance listened, a shiver struck like a snake the length of his backbone, and lifted the hair on the back of his head.

Carried on the wind from perhaps half a mile away was the sound of the Ghost Dance.

It was not in itself a frightening sound, but it could frighten people, and it did, white people, those who understood it and those who sensed what it might mean. Chance was one of those who sensed it.

The song itself was not frightening.

It was rather slow, rather monotonous, mournful perhaps, sad, but not frightening.

Unless one knew what it meant, or sensed it.

The sound came to Chance in fitful puffs, brought on the wind. Hearing it was like seeing something through fog, where you see it and then it disappears, and then it is seen again.

Looking ahead in the direction of the sound Chance could see a hazy pool of dust in the sky, a lake of floating dryness marking the place beneath which the moccasins of hundreds of human beings pounded the earth in a ritual alien to anything he knew, performing the prayer of the Ghost Dance.

This is a holy place and a sacred time, said Chance to himself. I do not belong here.

But when Running Horse kicked his pony ahead, Chance followed.

There didn't seem to be any place to go back to.

They had not ridden fifty yards when a single rifle shot whined over their heads.

They hauled their mounts up short.

"Wait here," said Running Horse, and, lifting his right hand high with the palm open, kicked his pony ahead, toward the direction from which the rifle shot had come.

By the time Chance had loosened the Colt in his holster and dried his hands on his shirt, for about the fifth time, he saw Running Horse, about two hundred yards away, waving him ahead.

Chance rode to join the young Indian, riding upright in the saddle, not bothering to look right or left. He knew he was now well within the range of the unseen rifleman and that the order of the moment might as well be the appearance of confidence, if not the reality.

He joined Running Horse at the top of a small rise, where they both dismounted.

Chance had not seen the rifleman who had fired at him, and this made him nervous.

He glanced around and finally spotted the man, two men actually, separated by about forty yards, each dug in. both a bit below the crest of the hill, behind rocks, under the tangled roots of a large sage.

Neither of them were looking at him now.

"Look," said Running Horse, pointing downward from the rise.

Below them, in a dusty trampled area about as large as a square city block in Charleston, Chance saw the Ghost Dance.

From a distance, in the dust, it looked like a giant wheel, with no hub, only a rim, turning slowly to the left, on an invisible axis, wailing and crying as it turned.

There was no sound but the chant and the soft drum of moccasins in the dust.

Chance saw that the dancers were alternately men and women, which surprised him. The dance, he knew, for the Plains Indian was a proud masculine discipline, for warriors, and the squaws could only stand in the background, stamping their feet, keeping time, but here the squaws danced with their men.

This is the dance of a nation, thought Chance to himself. For the first time the Sioux nation, as a nation, dances.

Chance and Running Horse made their way downward, walking their horses.

To his surprise Chance was scarcely noticed.

The dancers did not seem to see him at all, and other Indians, mostly resting from the dance, or watching, paid him no attention.

Most of the dancers danced with their eyes half closed, their bodies lost in the monotonous, hypnotic rhythm of the turning wheel, moving always to the left, the leather of their moccasins pounding in the dust.

"See the Ghost Shirts," said Running Horse, pointing to the shirts worn by the dancers, some of which were white, some scarlet. There was a sun, a rising sun, on the chest of these shirts, a representation of a buffalo on the back.

Chance nodded, wondering what it all meant, not wanting to ask Running Horse at the time, expecting him to tell him when he wished.

Suddenly Chance's hair rose on the back of his neck.

There was a weird, shrill scream and an incredibly old woman, buckskin skirt flapping about her brown sticks of legs, stumbled backward from the circle, her white braids flying, and took two or three steps backwards and then fell unconscious into the dust.

Her place in the circle immediately closed, and the wheel continued to turn implacably, at the same slow pace as before, to the same unbroken, repetitious chant. Not the beat of a moccasin in the dust was lost nor a single note of that wailing litany.

Chance made as though to go to the side of the old woman.

Running Horse held his arm. "No," he said.

Chance saw three Indians approaching the old woman. Each of them carried a small flag, one blue, one yellow, and one white.

Their leader, a tall robust man with large, fierce eyes, squatted down beside the old white-haired squaw who lay unconscious in the dust. He thrust his yellow flag in his belt and leaned over the old woman.

"It is Kicking Bear," said Running Horse, and his tone of voice suggested that Chance would of course know the name. Chance didn't.

"See," said Running Horse. "He carries the yellow flag. That is the color of the light of the spirit world. White is the color of the light of earth. Blue is the color of the sky world."

Chance was watching Kicking Bear.

Suddenly with a shriek Kicking Bear had sprung to his feet, leaving the old woman lying in the dust. Over his head he clutched a huge chunk of fresh, steaming meat.