When the Legends Die (11 page)

Thomas said, “Don’t do that again.”

One of the boys behind him threw another forkful at him, and Luther laughed and said, “Bear’s Sister is getting mad at us!”

Thomas hit Luther in the face with his fist, and the fight was on. He knocked Luther down, and another boy leaped on his back. He caught the boy by the hair and threw him to the floor. Luther came at him again and he bloodied Luther’s nose before the other boy got to his feet.

The fourth boy ran to find Neil Swanson. But before Neil got there Thomas had bloodied the noses of both his tormentors and backed them into a corner, where he was pounding their faces in turn.

Neil caught him by the arm, dragged him away, and ordered the other boys to their rooms. Then he demanded, “Why did you start this fight?”

Thomas faced him, silent and defiant.

“I won’t have such goings-on in my barn! Why did you do it?”

Thomas still refused to answer.

“All right,” Neil said, “I’ll have to teach you a lesson.” He took Thomas Black Bull to the harness room, got a strap and flogged him. Thomas took it tight-lipped and without a sound. When he had finished, Neil said, “Let this be a lesson to you. Do it again and you’ll get another licking. Now go to your room.”

Thomas went to the school building instead of the dormitory He went to the basketry room, and before Dolly Beaverfoot could even ask what was the matter he took his partly finished basket and tore it to shreds. Then he went to the dormitory and to his room and locked the door.

Twenty minutes later Benny Grayback was at the door. “Thomas,” he ordered, “unlock the door. I want to talk to you.

There was no answer.

Benny pounded on the door. He ordered, he pleaded. He got no answer at all.

A little later Rowena Ellis came to the door. She knocked and said, “Thomas, this is Miss Ellis. I want to talk to you, Thomas.”

No answer.

“I want to know what happened. You have done something very bad, Thomas, but I am sure it was not all your fault. You can talk to me and tell me about it, can’t you, Thomas?”

Still no answer.

She pounded on the door. “Thomas!” she shouted. “Open this door at once!”

But the door did not open and there was no sound from inside. She waited ten minutes, then said, “Thomas Black Bull, if you do not open this door at once I will not try to keep them from punishing you severely! Do you hear me, Thomas?”

Silence.

And finally she went away.

He stayed in his room all that night and all the next day. Benny Grayback came to the door again the next evening and ordered, then threatened. Rowena Ellis came again and pleaded, then threatened. He answered neither of them. And the agent said, “ Leave him alone. He’ll starve out in another day or two.”

H
E DIDN’T STARVE OUT.
The next night he took off his shirt and pants, put on his clout, his leggings and his moccasins, took a blanket from his cot, and climbed out the window. He slid down a drain spout to the ground, forced his way into the kitchen and took a butcher knife, a ball of strong cord and the two-pound remnant of a pot roast. Then he started north, eating the meat as he traveled in the darkness.

It was October. The valley cottonwoods had shed their leather leaves and the aspens were in full gold. It was mild autumn on the lowlands of the reservation. But the nights were already frosty in the mountains and there were snow caps on the higher peaks.

He had no trouble finding the way. He had been over it before. And he lived in the old way, striking fire from a piece of flint with the butcher knife, killing spruce grouse with a club, snaring rabbits with the strong cord. He avoided the roads and the traveled trails, and the second day he went around Piedra Town and on up the valley.

He went to Horse Mountain, to the place where Blue Elk had forced him to send the bear away. He looked for bear sign and he sang the bear song. There was no sign, and there was no answer to his song. Then he went on, hurrying because the season was late. But he went to the foot of Granite Peak on the way, and again he searched for bear sign. The only sign he found was of one big grizzly, and he knew the cub would not be there. Not with Grandfather Bear marking the whole area as his territory. He saw the claw marks high on a dozen big pines.

He went on to Bald Mountain. He was going home, back to his own lodge. Perhaps his brother, the cub, would be there. If not, it would return next spring, after hibernation. If he did not find his brother now, he would find him later. Now he must go to his lodge, get things in order, make ready for winter. It was late, but he must do what he could.

He went to Bald Mountain. He drank at the stream where he had drunk many times, washed in the pool where so many mornings he had sung the song to a new day. He started up the path his own moccasins had helped to make. It was no longer a clear path. The bushes already were beginning to overgrow it.

He watched for the jay, thought he saw it. He called to it, but it sat silent in a tall aspen, watching him, them screamed and flew away. He watched for the squirrels and the chipmunks, called to them. The chipmunks chattered at him and ran and hid among the rocks. The squirrels scurried up the pines, peered at him from the high branches, scolded at his intrusion.

He came to the last turn in the path, the place where he could see the lodge. He stopped and put a hand to his mouth to stop the cry of pain. There was no lodge. Where the lodge had been was a charred place, a circle of ashes. Not a post or a beam remained. Nothing.

He went to the charred circle and poked among the ashes. He found nothing there, not even a knife blade. And then he knew. It was no accident, no hidden coal that flared into hungry flame soon after he went away with Blue Elk that morning. Someone had come and taken everything, even the worn-down knife, even the battered cooking pot, and burned the lodge.

He stood among the ashes and whispered his sorrow chant, not even saying it aloud. For small griefs you shout, but for big griefs you whisper or say nothing. The big griefs must be borne alone, inside.

When he had finished he looked up the mountainside, thinking of his father and his mother. He did not climb to the cave among the rocks, for his father and his mother were not there. They had gone on the long journey many days, many moons ago. He looked up the mountainside for a long time. Then he went back down the overgrown path to the stream and made his camp there. He killed a spruce grouse and made a fire and ate. And that afternoon he sang his bear song. He sang it as loudly as he could sing. There was no answer. At dusk he sang it again. There was no answer.

That night he thought of his footsteps in the path, which would be completely wiped out soon, when the snow came. He thought of the lodge, now a circle of leaching ashes. He thought of the jay that had sat silent when he called to it. He thought of the chipmunks that hid among the rocks and of the squirrels that fled and scolded. He thought of his brother, the bear.

It was as though he had never been here.

He was very tired. He put out his fire and slept.

The next morning the clouds hung low over the mountain and the valley was filled with mist as cold as sleet. He bathed at the pool, but he sang no song for a new day. He did not even whisper the sorrow song. There was no song in him. Only a numbness, a nothing.

He ate the rest of the grouse from the night before and he put out his fire and scattered the ashes, removed all trace of his presence there. Then he folded the blanket and drew it around his shoulders and started back down the valley. There were spits of snow in the mist and the dead leaves in the oak brush whispered of winter.

H
E MET THEM AT
the foot of Horse Mountain. There were only two of them, Benny Grayback and an old man called Fish. Fish was known as a tracker because he sometimes found lost horses by following their footprints, especially after a rain when the ground was muddy. The agent had said the boy probably would go to Horse Mountain, so that is where they went to look for him.

They were just starting to circle Horse Mountain when the boy came down the valley and saw them. He stopped and waited, and they saw him, and Benny said, “There he is!” Fish said, “I have found him, as I said I would.”

The boy came up to them and Benny said, “We came after you, Thomas Black Bull, to take you back to the reservation.”

Thomas shrugged. “I will go back,” he said, in English.

They had a pack horse. Benny told Fish to divide the pack, put part of it on their saddle horses, so the boy could ride on the pack horse. “I should make you walk,” he said to Thomas, “but you would walk slow and I am in a hurry to get back. Shall I tie you on the horse, or will you promise not to try to run away?”

“I will go back,” the boy said again.

Fish helped him up onto the pack horse and they went back down the valley. To Piedra Town, and the agency, and the school. They were two days going back, and the boy did not try once to run away.

The next day after he returned to the school, Thomas Black Bull went to the barber and had his braids cut off. The next morning he put on his shoes instead of his moccasins. And not once after he returned did he speak Ute. He spoke to no one except when he was spoken to, but when he did speak it was in English. Within a month Miss Ellis told him that if he kept on as well as he was doing he would speak English as well as any boy in the school by next spring.

Because of the trouble over the basket, they did not send him back to Dolly Beaverfoot’s class. Instead, Ed Porter took him back into the cobbler’s shop, but now that he knew about the boy’s skill with his fingers he gave him rawhide and horsehair and started him plaiting quirts and fancy bridles. As he had expected, the boy was almost as skillful at this as he had been at basketry. He even made up his own designs for the horsehair work.

He still made no friends, however. Several of the girls admired him and would have liked to be friends, but he was, as they said, “always somewhere else.” He seemed unaware of their existence. The boys who had taunted him now left him alone. They knew what a beating he had given Luther Spotted Dog and that other boy in the horse barn. Besides, he often carried one of the rawhide quirts he made in the leather shop.

So the winter passed, and when he got the periodic reports about Thomas the agent said, “That boy has settled down. We’ll make a farmer out of him yet. Or something.”

The winter passed and late March came. There were catkins on the willows and tassels on the aspens. Spring was coming to the lowlands and the snow was beginning to melt in the mountain valleys. Bears would soon be coming out of hibernation. It was the time for the Bear Dance, the traditional ceremony at which the Utes used to gather and dance and visit after the winter’s isolation. In the old days it was a time for courtship among the young folk as well as for singing the old songs to the bears. But now only the old people remembered the Bear Dance in late March. It interrupted spring work on the farms, so the agency people had persuaded the young folk to change the old ways and wait for May, after the corn was planted, to hold the Bear Dance.

Thomas Black Bull, seeing the tassels on the aspens and the spears of new grass and the change in the days, sunrise to sunset, knew what time it was in the year. He knew the bears would soon be leaving their winter dens, to travel, to claim their old ranges, to challenge intruders and fight their fearful battles among themselves. He felt these things in his blood.

Then a moonlit night came and he sat in his room and knew what was going to happen. He hoped it would happen, and he wished it would not happen. He waited, and the cattle bawled in their pens. The horses snorted and raced about their corrals. He opened his window, and in the moonlight he saw the bear beside the horse-breaking pen. It stood there nosing the air, then shuffled its feet like a great shaggy dog and nosed the air again. It whined softly.

Other windows opened. Someone shouted an alarm.

Thomas picked up a heavy quirt and hurried from his room. He went down the hallway, down the stairs and out into the moonlight. He ran toward the corral, and he began singing the bear song.

The bear came to meet him.

He stopped singing and shouted warning words, then angry words. The bear stopped and growled, then came on, whining again. The boy screamed at the bear in Ute. It stopped again and the boy went up to it, swished the quirt in its face and shouted, “Go away! Go back home, to the mountains!”

The bear rose on its hind legs and spread its forepaws as though to tear the boy to pieces. Its teeth were white in the moonlight. It was a two-year-old now and stood taller than the boy. The boy lashed it across the face with the quirt, again and again, screaming, “Go! Go! Go!”

The bear dropped to all fours, whimpering. It nosed the boy’s hands, and it cried like a child. And the boy dropped the quirt, put an arm around its neck, buried his face in its fur and wept. He wept until the bear drew away and licked his face and whimpered and licked his face again.

The boy backed away. “I do not know you!” he cried. “You are no longer my brother. I have no brother! I have no friends!” Then he said, “I had a brother. But when I went to find him and sang my song to my brother he would not listen. Now there is nobody.”

He stood silent in die moonlight, his head bowed, and the bear swayed from side to side, from foot to foot, moaning.

“Go away,” the boy said. “Go, or they will kill you. They do not need guns to kill. They kill without guns. Listen! I speak truth. They will kill you. Go away!”

The bear still stood swaying, moaning.

He put a hand in the fur on the bear’s neck and he said, “Come. I will go a little way with you.” And they slowly walked away from the horse-breaking pen, the boy and the bear in the moonlight. They walked across the grounds toward the aspens with catkins like chipmunk tails. They walked among the trees and into the shadows, and after a little while there was the sound of the sorrow song. It was a song so desolate that the coyotes answered it from the gullies beyond. But the coyote cries were not so full of wailing as that song. The coyotes have brothers.