Dances With Wolves (28 page)

It was a winter for staying under the robes. Except for an occasional hunting party the Comanches rarely ventured out of their lodges. The people spent so much time around their fires that the season came to be known as the Winter of Many Smokes.

By spring everyone was anxious to move, and at the first breaking of the ice they were on the trail again.

A new camp was set up that year, far from the old one near Fort Sedgewick. It was a good spot with plenty of water and grass for the ponies. The buffalo came again by the thousands and the hunting was good, with very few men getting hurt. Late that summer many babies were born, more than most people could remember.

They stayed far from the traveled trails, seeing no white men and only a few Mexican traders. It made the people happy to have so little bother. But a human tide, one that they could neither see nor hear, was rising in the east. It would be upon them soon. The good times of that summer were the last they would have. Their time was running out and would soon be gone forever.

Michael Blake is the author of numerous novels and screenplays, many of which highlight the history of the Native American. After writing Dances With Wolves as both a novel and a screenplay, he received numerous awards and accolades for his work—including the Academy Award, The Writers Guild Award, and the Golden Globe. Despite these great honors, he considers his greatest achievement the receipt of the Cancervive Award for battling—and beating—Hodgkin’s Disease. Michael Blake currently writes at Wolfhouse, his ranch in Arizona.

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