Stone Song (23 page)

Chips handed Man-Who-Picks-Up-Stones-While-Running a mirror of polished metal. “If you will breathe on this glass,” said Chips, “I will look at your dream and help you with it.”

Now the hand slashed wildly, fending the mirror off. To control the hand, Hayden stood. “The dreams don’t bother me at all,” he said fiercely. Then, in a calmer voice, “You’re welcome to stay the night in camp.” And he stilted off on his crane legs.

Benoit chuckled. “If you stay,” he said, “you’ll hear Doctor braying and mewling in the middle of the night. All day long he digs up bones. All night long the animals take their revenge by trampling him, over and over and over. In his sleep he rants his protests.”

Chips looked significantly at Curly. “We’ll go,” he said to Benoit. “Thank you.” His tone suggested, “I mean it.” He said aloud, “How do you stand being around them?”

“Strong drink,” said Benoit, chuckling. “I’d better not walk you to the horses—my legs are wobbly.”

Curly was glad to get away from the smell of Benoit’s whiskey. As they were untying the reins, Chips said, “They are pitiful, the
wasicu
. They don’t know enough to make peace with their own dreams. So the dreams torment them.”

Curly wondered whether Chips was hinting.
Yes
, he thought,
my vision would have tormented me, had I not told it. Will torment me, if I don’t live it
.

They got mounted. “How can anyone be afraid of
wasicu
?” asked Chips rhetorically. “I feel sorry for them.”

BETROTHAL

During the Winter When Many Children Died, in the Moon When the Chokecherries Are Ripe, he took Grandmother Plum gently by the elbow and led her to the creek near a small waterfall. They sat on a boulder on the bank.

The village was camped in the Shining Mountains in this, his favorite moon. Father Sun shone almost until night-middle-made in this moon, but they couldn’t see him. All evening he was behind the peaks to the west.

Here the two could be alone, the falling water would keep them from being overheard, and Hawk would be at peace.

“Unci,” he began, “I am a coward. I get ready to live as I saw beyond, and get ready more, and more. I went to the Maka Sica and got this Inyan creature.” He touched the seashell tied behind his ear to indicate which one. “I trapped a red-tailed hawk and made a hat from its skin and feathers, a hat I will wear into war. I made a medicine bundle.” Grandmother Plum had seen him making these preparations. “Ready, ready, ready. But I never go to war.”

Her listless gaze went toward the waist-high waterfall. He wondered what she was thinking. Whether she was thinking.

“It’s like a stutter. I start and I get stopped.
Kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh
and I never get to say ‘coup.’ ”

His foolish mimicry made him dejected. He thought of his other foolishness, talking to an old woman with deaf ears and a blank mind. He looked at her face. She sat patiently, his hand on her elbow, her eyes cast down in the direction of his knees. He had the sense that if she could make any gesture at all, she would slide closer to him, or put an arm around him. Probably more foolishness.

He slipped his arm around her waist and drew her close. “Maybe Power deliberately gets in my way.” He held this awful idea in his mind a moment. “Last summer, after the sun dance, you remember I got hurt with the arrow?” He fingered the scar just below his knee. One of the boys, playing at shooting arrows, had wounded him by accident.

“Red Cloud led some young men against the Psatoka. Young Man-Whose-Enemies-Are-Afraid-of-His-Horses, He Dog, Pretty Fellow’s brother Standing Bear. And because of my vision Red Cloud asked me.”

Because of the paper the tribe had signed promising not to fight the Psatoka, it was the first war party to go out openly in a long time. It made people feel as though the good days were back.

“Because of the accident, though, I didn’t get to go.” If she was hearing him at all, she remembered that he had spent the whole moon after the sun dance on a crutch. His friend Lone Bear had gone in his place.

“I didn’t understand. One part of what I saw beyond seemed true. I could only be hurt by my own people. But the other part? Frustrated.”

He drew a deep breath, in and out. “The next time Red Cloud took young men, he didn’t ask me.” He fretted about it, too. “Maybe his medicine said he shouldn’t.” In fact, Red Cloud hadn’t invited any Hunkpatila, just Bad Face youths.

“I can’t get st-st-started,” he repeated. “I st-st-st-stutter.”

He gave a madcap cackle.

When the villages came together for the sun dance, at the fullness of the same moon, Black Buffalo Woman at first would have nothing to do with him. When he came near, she turned her back or started talking animatedly to a girlfriend or even thought of some reason to disappear into her parents’ lodge.

Then she was shut away in the
isna tipi
. This was essential. The natural power of her flow might be greater than the hundreds of objects made powerful by prayer and conjuring and might destroy their medicine.

After the sun dance she came to him immediately and led him to the willows. Her manner didn’t allow any choice on his part, any hesitation, even any talk. She wanted to be loved in the bushes now, in silence and in a kind of fury. In her urgency he felt somehow an edge of tears.

When she was worn out, she lay spooned along his front side naked, resting, soft, peaceful. He felt like he had tamed her spirit as his father tamed the wildness of the moose birds. But like them, she could not be grabbed and held, and she might fly off at any moment.

She even slept a little. Curly couldn’t sleep—he was much too excited. He and Black Buffalo Woman together like this, it was his most vivid dream, almost like his vision. It felt like a place and time not of the everyday world. He wanted to be aware of every instant of it, aware in the heightened way he wanted in battle.

She woke and lay sweetly in his arms for a while. Then she turned toward him and looked into his eyes mischievously. Finally she got up and put on her chastity belt and slipped her dress on.

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she held something out, a thong that must have lain inside the bodice of her dress. On the thong hung the ring he had made for her, with Hawk carved on the top.

Holding his eyes, she took it from the thong and slipped it onto the middle finger of her right hand, where it fit best. She held it up into the late-afternoon sun, and they both looked at the way Sun, Wi, glinted off its polished surfaces. He waited.

“I will wear your ring,” she said.

Then she flew off.

By nightfall it was the talk of the Oglala villages. Everyone knew that Black Buffalo Woman was wearing a ring made for her by Curly. A Sahiyela ring maker had helped him with it, they said, and he had offered it as the young Sahiyela men did, as a promise of marriage.

The Oglala women babbled and cackled about this. Their people had no long engagements to be married. Once marriage was agreed on by the families, the nuptials were done within a day. But they did have love matches. Curly’s uncle, his mothers’ brother, Spotted Tail, himself had made a love match. They all remembered that. Love matches didn’t necessarily make the best marriages—they put the tumultuous urges of the young above the wisdom of the families. But everyone was charmed by the idea of a love match and hoped it would work.

They knew about the ring Black Buffalo Woman gave Curly, too. He refused to wear her ring, people said—he claimed his vision prohibited it. “Well, well,” they babbled, and speculated about other reasons he might refuse.

Curly felt embarrassed about this. Did Black Buffalo Woman have to tell everything? Yet he was proud. She had made her commitment.

“We’ll test these young couples, naturally,” the families said. “They won’t be allowed to marry for a long time.”

“As long as his vision keeps him from wearing her ring,” her father and brother agreed, “it keeps him from marrying, too.”

“That’s good,” the women said. “Black Buffalo Woman will have to let other young men come courting, too. A love match has to prove itself. If their commitment won’t stand up to years of waiting, it isn’t enough.”

“Then our wisdom will prevail,” said her father and brother.

Curly felt all the eyes on him but he said nothing to anyone, not even to Hump. He hung around the lodge of Black Buffalo Woman’s family, hoping to see her, hoping especially to see his ring on her finger in front of everyone.

She didn’t come out. The family wouldn’t let the two of them be together right now, certainly not together alone. A certain cooling down was required. Curly watched the faces of her father and her mother and brother and thought they were not displeased. Maybe they were on the verge of smiling. At the least they would wait and see. That was enough.

He didn’t care if they saw what was on his face. For once he didn’t keep it neutral. He was happy. He was delirious. He had what meant most to him.

Which was something more than her promise of marriage. It was Black Buffalo Woman’s other statement. In her way this creature of his, impulsive, over-intense, ready to fly, was saying as clearly as she was capable of saying, was saying by wearing his ring, one treasured word,
iyotancila
. “I love you.”

If he could be alone with her now, he would look directly into her eyes and say the same word.

Yet something niggled at the back of his mind. Could he have Black Buffalo Woman
and
follow his vision?

“They have good horses,” said Buffalo Hump mischievously to his
hunka
. He was making a joke of trying to tempt Curly to come along on a raid he was leading the next morning. He knew very well no tempting was necessary. “They live in grass lodges, so they’ll fight like women.”

Curly gave Hump a dirty look. With that scowl and his hair, light as a
wakan
buffalo and chopped short on one side, Curly could probably scare these strange people to death, Hump thought.

The
hunka
turned over to pretend to sleep in their brush lodge. Hump hoped he had a good report of these people. Relatives of the Snakes, they were said to be, just not speaking the same language. Not tipi Indians, so maybe more ready to flee than fight. Why, then, did they have good horses? Would they really be poor fighters? Hump wriggled in his blankets. That was why you fought, to find out.

Tasunke Witko had been here recently, counseling Curly. Hump hoped the father wasn’t trying to make the son cautious as an old man. Yes, Curly would be anxious about proving himself. Fine. That’s how young men got to be warriors. And Hump would keep an eye on his
hunka
to keep him from acting crazy. But Hump knew his
hunka
needed to burst free.

Curly felt his stutter again against the people of the strange tongue. They turned out to be good fighters. Well out from their camp the enemy warriors opened fire on the young Lakota. They had a good position on a hill, with plenty of rocks to hide behind and a gully to slip into. Plenty of guns, too, more than the Lakota.

Maybe today would be another day when Curly was stuck and Hawk wouldn’t soar. Before the fighting started, he unbraided his hair on the left side and let it flow long, the traditional sign of willingness to take risks, even desperate risks. He owned a pistol now, a weapon useful only at close range.

“Under the necks of our horses!” shouted Hump. They circled the strangers fast, shooting from beneath the necks of their running mounts, but it didn’t work. When you shot under your pony’s neck, it was hard to be accurate. The enemies had good cover. Since the Lakota offered elusive targets, they hardly fired back. The Lakota lost a couple of horses.

“We’ll crawl up there!” boomed Hump. Curly almost smiled at the looks of dismay on the faces of He Dog and Black Elk at the idea of creeping uphill on foot under fire. He Dog was the only Bad Face along, and he was still living mostly with Curly’s band. Curly and Hump felt better when the resentful Pretty Fellow and the imperious twins were not around.

Everyone dismounted and tried to get within bow range on foot, but the cover was too thin and the gunfire uncomfortably close. They backed off.

As they were riding in a circle again, Curly’s pony went down hard. Curly catapulted across the ground like a log going end over end and sat hard. He was dizzy and disoriented. After a moment he realized he was unprotected against fire. His pony was down to stay.

Suddenly he felt it. Hawk turned into the wind and rose. Without using his hands he could feel the emblematic hawk hat still pinned into his hair. He looked around and saw a loose enemy horse. Yes, it suited.

When Curly was mounted, the horse took its own head and charged up the hill, going home. Curly’s heart quailed for an instant. Then he realized,
This is what I do in my vision
.

Straight at the enemy they galloped. Gunfire made a wind past his naked arms. It kicked up gravel. It ricocheted off rocks. But it left his flesh untouched.

A warrior rose out of the gully ahead, his rifle lifted. Curly leaned around the pony’s neck and drove an arrow into him.

Curly’s horse jumped the fallen man, nearly landed on another, shied sideways, and skittered down the hill.

The young Lakota whooped.

I did it. I rode into fire invulnerable
.

Hawk was soaring up the sky of his heart.

Hump rode out to meet Curly, but the youth felt it strong in his soul now. He turned the pony and kicked it back uphill hard.

He saw a warrior lower down the gully ready to shoot. He guided the pony straight at the man, fierce in his courage. Curly sat up high, ignored the enemy’s shot, raised his pistol, and killed the man.

The air was more exhilarating, his body more alive, and music sang in his spirit. Light Curly Hair knew he was in his native home.

Giddy with joy, he jumped off the horse and ran to the fallen stranger. He seized the topknot, made two quick arcs with his knife, jerked, and held the scalp high.

His comrades roared.

He cared nothing for the enemy fire, so he did the same to the first man he had slain. And just as he finished, he felt the lightning strike his leg.

He stopped. Thoughtless, he dropped the reins, and the pony ran off.

Suddenly he knew, and his heart fell.

He had taken something for himself, these scalps. He looked at them in his hand.

He had violated his vision. Now he was vulnerable. He was lucky this bullet hadn’t killed him. He wanted to vomit his guts onto the earth.

Curly ran in a funny hop, bounding from rock to rock, bush to bush, while his comrades fired to keep the strangers’ heads down. His skin puckered and itched. He had no power. Anything might shed his blood.

Hump ran to Curly and clapped his shoulders proudly, exclaiming something.

Curly looked at the scalps in his hand. Disgusted with himself, he threw them on the ground.

In respect the other warriors kept a little distance.

Hump checked the wound, a hole in the flesh. He looked his
hunka
oddly in the eye, walked away, cut a piece of moist skin from a dead horse, and tied it tightly over the wound.

Curly said nothing at all. He couldn’t feel Hawk at all. His heart felt dead.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Hump. The leader had a big grin. From his point of view, Curly realized, they had done well: no one hurt seriously, a couple of horses dead, new ones captured, four enemies killed, eight first coups, some scalps, and a great show of medicine.

Curly’s guts wrenched.