Dances With Wolves (12 page)

one

A few hours after Lieutenant Dunbar’s first visit to the village, Kicking Bird and Ten Bears held a high level talk. It was short and to the point.

Ten Bears liked Lieutenant Dunbar. He liked the look in his eyes, and Ten Bears put great stock in what he saw in a person’s eyes. He also liked the lieutenant’s manners. He was humble and courteous, and Ten Bears placed considerable value on these traits. The matter of the cigarette was amusing. How someone could make smoke out of something with so little substance defied logic, but he didn’t hold it against Lieutenant Dunbar and agreed with Kicking Bird that, as an intelligence-gathering source, the white man was worth knowing.

The old chief tacitly approved Kicking Bird’s idea for breaking the language barrier. But there were conditions. Kicking Bird would have to orchestrate his moves unofficially. Loo Ten Nant would be his responsibility, and only his. Already there was talk that the white man might be responsible in some way for the scarcity of game. No one knew how people would take to the white soldier if he made repeated visits to the village. The people might turn against him. It was entirely possible that someone would kill him.

Kicking Bird accepted the conditions, assuring Ten Bears that he would do everything in his power to conduct the plan in a quiet way.

This settled, they took up a more important subject.

The buffalo were way overdue.

Scouts had been ranging far and wide for days, but so far they had seen only one buffalo. That was an aging, solitary bull being torn apart by a large pack of wolves. His carcass had hardly been worth picking over.

The band’s morale was sinking along with its meager food reserves, and it would not be many days before the shortage would become critical. They’d been living on the meat of local deer, but this source was playing out fast. If the buffalo didn’t come soon, the promise of an abundant summer would be broken by the sound of crying children.

The two men decided that in addition to sending out more scouts, a dance was urgently needed. It should be held within a week’s time.

Kicking Bird would be in charge of the preparations.

two

It was a strange week, a week in which time was jumbled for the medicine man. When he needed time, the hours would fly by, and when he was intent on time passing, it would crawl, minute by minute. Trying to balance everything out was a struggle.

There were myriad sensitive details to consider in mounting the dance. It was to be an invocation, very sacred, and the whole band would be participating. The planning and delegating of various responsibilities for an event of this importance amounted to a full-time job.

Plus there were the ongoing duties of being a husband to two wives, a father to four children, and a guide to his newly adopted daughter. Added to it all were the routine problems and surprises that cropped up each day: visits to the sick, impromptu councils with drop-in visitors, and the making of his own medicine.

Kicking Bird was the busiest of men.

And there was something else, something that nipped constantly at his concentration. Like a low-grade, persistent headache, Lieutenant Dunbar preyed on his mind. Wrapped up as he was in the present, Loo Ten Nant was the future, and Kicking Bird could not resist its call. The present and the future occupied the same space in the medicine man’s day. It was a crowded time.

Having Stands With A Fist around did not make it easier for him. She was the key to his plan, and Kicking Bird could not look at her without thinking of Loo Ten Nant, an act that inevitably sent him wandering down new trails of speculative thought. But he had to keep an eye on her. It was important to approach the matter at the right time and place. She was healing fast, moving without trouble now, and had picked up the rhythm of life at his lodge. Already a favorite with the children, she worked as long and as hard as anyone in camp. When left to herself, she was withdrawn, but that was understandable. In fact, it had always been her nature.

Sometimes, after watching her a while, Kicking Bird would heave a private sigh of burden. At those times he would pull up at the edge of questions, the main one being whether or not Stands With A Fist truly belonged. But he could not presume an answer, and an answer would not help him anyway. Only two things mattered. She was here and he needed her.

By the day of the dance he still had not found an opportunity to speak to her in the way he wanted. That morning he woke with the realization that he, Kicking Bird, would have to put his plan in motion if he ever wanted it to happen.

He dispatched three young men to Fort Sedgewick. He was too busy to go himself, and while they were gone he would find a way to have a talk with Stands With A Fist.

Kicking Bird was spared the drudgery of manipulation when his entire family set off on an expedition to the river at midmorning, leaving Stands With A Fist behind to dress out a fresh-shot deer. Kicking Bird watched her from inside the lodge. She never looked up as the knife flew along in her hand, peeling away hide with the same ease that tender flesh falls away from the bone. He waited until she paused in her work, taking a few moments to watch a group of children playing tag in front of a lodge across the way.

“Stands With A Fist,” he said softly, bending through the entrance to the lodge.

She looked up at him with her wide eyes but said nothing.

“I would talk with you,” he said, disappearing into the darkness of the lodge.

She followed.

three

It was tense inside. Kicking Bird was going to say things she probably would not want to hear, and it made him uneasy.

As she stood in front of him, Stands With A Fist felt the kind of foreboding that comes before questioning. She had done nothing wrong, but life had become a day-to-day proposition. She never knew what was going to befall her next, and since the death of her husband, she had not felt up to meeting challenges. She took solace in the man standing before her. He was respected by everyone and he had taken her in as one of his own. If there was anyone she could trust, it was Kicking Bird.

But he seemed nervous.

“Sit,” he said, and they both dropped to the floor. “How is the wound?” he began.

“It is healing,” she replied, her eyes barely meeting his.

“The pain is gone?”

“Yes.”

“You have found strength again.”

“I am stronger now; I am working well.”

She toyed with a patch of dirt at her feet, scraping it into a little pile while Kicking Bird tried to find the words he wanted. He didn’t like rushing, but he didn’t want to be interrupted either, and someone might come by at any time.

She looked up at him suddenly, and Kicking Bird was struck by the sadness of her face.

“You are unhappy here,” he said.

“No.” She shook her head. “I am glad for it.”

She played with the dirt halfheartedly, flicking it with her fingers.

“I am sad without my husband.”

Kicking Bird thought for a moment, and she began to build another pile of dirt.

“He is gone now,” the medicine man said, “but you are not. Time is moving and you are moving with it, even if you go unhappily. Things will be happening.”

“Yes,” she said, pursing her lips, “but I am not much interested in what will happen.”

From his vantage point facing the entrance Kicking Bird saw several shadows pass in front of the lodge flap and then move on.

“The whites are coming,” he said suddenly. “More of them will be coming through our country each year.”

A shiver ran up Stands With A Fist’s spine. It spread across her shoulders. Her eyes hardened and her hands involuntarily rolled themselves into fists.

“I won’t go with them,” she said.

Kicking Bird smiled. “No,” he said, “you won’t go. There is not a warrior among us who would not fight to keep you from going.”

Hearing these words of support, the woman with the dark cherry hair leaned forward slightly, curious now.

“But they will be coming,” he continued. “They are a strange race in their habits and beliefs. It is hard to know what to do. People say they are many, and that troubles me. If they come as a flood, we will have to stop them. Then we will lose many of our good men, men like your husband. There will be many more widows with long faces.”

As Kicking Bird drew closer to the point, Stands With A Fist dropped her head, contemplating the words.

“This white man, the one who brought you home. I have seen him. I have been to his lodge downriver and drunk his coffee and talked with him. He is strange in his ways. But I have watched him and I think his heart is a good one. . . .”

She lifted her head and glanced fleetingly at Kicking Bird.

“This white man is a soldier. He may be a person of influence among the whites. . . .”

Kicking Bird stopped. A common sparrow had found its way through the open flap and fluttered into the lodge. Knowing it had trapped itself, the young bird beat its wings frantically as it bounced off one hide wall after another. Kicking Bird watched as the sparrow climbed closer to the smoke hole and suddenly disappeared to freedom.

He looked now at Stands With A Fist. She had ignored the intrusion and was staring at the hands folded in her lap. The medicine man thought, trying to pick up the thread of his monologue. Before he could start however, he again heard the soft whir of little wings.

Looking overhead, he saw the sparrow, hovering just inside the smoke hole. He followed its flight as it dived deliberately toward the floor, pulled up in a graceful swoop, and lighted quietly on the cherry-colored head. She didn’t move, and the bird began preening, as natural as if it were nesting in the branches of a tall tree. She passed an absent hand over her head, and like a child skipping rope, the sparrow hopped a foot into the air, hovered as the hand swept under its feet, and landed once more. Stands With A Fist sat oblivious as the tiny visitor fluffed its wings, threw out its chest, and took off like a shot, making a beeline for the entrance. It was gone in the blink of an eye.

With time Kicking Bird would have made certain conclusions concerning the import and meaning of the sparrow’s arrival and Stands With A Fist’s role in its performance. There was no time to take a walk and mull it over, but somehow Kicking Bird felt reassured by what he had seen.

Before he could speak again, she was lifting her head.

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

“I want to hear the white soldier’s words, but my ears cannot understand them.”

Now it was done. Stands With A Fist’s face dropped.

“I am afraid of him,” she said.

“A hundred white soldiers coming on a hundred horses with a hundred guns . . . that is something to fear. But he is only one man. We are many and this is our country.”

She knew he was right, but rightness didn’t make her feel any more secure. She shifted uncomfortably.

“I do not remember the white tongue,” she said halfheartedly. “I am Comanche.”

Kicking Bird nodded.

“Yes, you are Comanche. I do not ask for you to become something else. I am asking you to put your fear behind and your people ahead. Meet the white man. Try to find your white tongue with him, and when you do, we three will make a talk that will serve all the people. I have thought on this for a long time.”

He lapsed into silence and the whole lodge became still. She looked around, letting her eyes linger here and there, as if it would be a long time before she saw this place again. She wasn’t going anywhere, but in her mind Stands With A Fist was taking another step toward giving up the life she loved so dearly.

“When will I see him?” she asked.

Stillness filled the lodge again.

Kicking Bird got to his feet.

“Go to a quiet place,” he instructed, “away from our camp. Sit for a time and try to think back the words of your old tongue.”

Her chin was tilted at her chest as Kicking Bird walked her to the entrance.

“Put your fear behind and it will be a good thing,” he said as she ducked out of the lodge.

He didn’t know if she heard this last bit of advice. She hadn’t turned back to him, and now she was walking away.

four

Stands With A Fist did as she was asked.

With an empty water jug resting on her hip, she made her way down the main track to the river. It was close to noon, and the morning traffic, water haulers and horses and washers and beaming children, had thinned out. She walked slowly, eyeing each side of the trail for a seldom-traveled rut that would take her to a place of solitude. Her heart quickened as she spotted an overgrown path that cut away from the main trail and ran through the breaks a hundred yards from the river.

No one was about, but she listened carefully for anyone who might be coming. Hearing nothing, she hid the cumbersome jug under a choke-cherry bush and slipped into the heavy cover of the old path just as voices started up near the water’s edge.

She hurried through the tangle hanging over the path and was relieved when, after only a few yards, the footpath swelled into a full-fledged trail. Now she was moving with ease, and the voices along the main trail soon died out.

The morning was beautiful. Light breezes bent the willows into swaying dancers, the patches of sky overhead were a brilliant blue, and the only sounds were those of an occasional rabbit or lizard, startled by her step. It was a day for rejoicing, but there was no joy in Stands With A Fist’s heart. It was marbled with long veins of bitterness, and as she slowed her pace, the white girl of the Comanches gave in to hate.

Some of it was directed at the white soldier. She hated him for coming to their country, for being a soldier, for being born. She hated Kicking Bird for asking her to do this and for knowing that she could not refuse him. And she hated the Great Spirit for being so cruel. The Great Spirit had wrecked her heart. But it wasn’t enough to kill someone’s heart.

Why do you keep hurting me? she asked. I am already dead.

Gradually her head began to cool. But her bitterness didn’t diminish; it hardened into something cold and brittle.