Dances With Wolves (5 page)

one

The next few days went smoothly.

Lieutenant Dunbar’s hands came back and the awning went up. Twenty minutes after he had raised it, when he was relaxing beneath the sprawling shade, bent over a barrel, rolling a smoke, the breeze kicked up and the awning collapsed.

Feeling ridiculous, he pawed his way out from under, studied the failure for a few minutes, and hit on the idea of guy wires as a solution. He used rope for wire, and before the sun went down, Dunbar was back in the shade, with his eyes closed, puffing on another handmade cigarette while he listened to the pleasant sound of canvas flapping gently overhead.

Using a bayonet, he sawed out a wide window in the sod hut and draped a scrap of canvas over it.

He worked long and hard on the supply house, but except for clearing away a large part of the sagging wall, he made little progress. A gaping hole was the final result. The original sod crumbled each time he tried to build it up, so Lieutenant Dunbar covered the hole with yet another sheet of canvas and washed his hands of the rest. From the start the supply house had been a losing business.

Lying on his bunk in the late afternoons, Dunbar returned over and over to the problem of the supply house, but as the days passed, he thought of it less. The weather had been beautiful, with none of the violence of spring. The temperatures couldn’t be more perfect, the air was feathery and the breeze, which made the canvas window curtain billow above his head on these late afternoons, was sweet.

The day’s little problems seemed easier to solve as time went by, and when his work was finished the lieutenant would lie back on the bunk with his cigarette and marvel at the peace he felt. Invariably his eyes would grow heavy, and he fell into the habit of napping for half an hour before supper.

Two Socks became a habit, too. He appeared at his customary spot on the bluff each afternoon, and after two or three days, Lieutenant Dunbar began to take his silent visitor’s comings and goings for granted. Occasionally he would notice the wolf trotting into view, but more often than not, the lieutenant would glance up from some little task and there he would be, sitting on his haunches, staring across the river with that curious but unmistakable look of longing.

One evening, while Two Socks was watching, he laid a fist-sized chunk of bacon rind on his own side of the river. The morning after, there was no trace of the bacon, and though he had no proof, Dunbar felt certain that Two Socks had taken it.

two

Lieutenant Dunbar missed some things. He missed the company of people. He missed the pleasure of a stiff drink. Most of all, he missed women, or rather a woman. Sex hardly entered his mind. But sharing did. The more settled he became in the free and easy pattern of life at Fort Sedgewick, the more he wanted to share it with someone, and when the lieutenant thought of this missing element, he would drop his chin and stare morosely at nothing.

Fortunately, these lapses of spirit passed away quickly. What he might have lacked was pale in light of what he had. His mind was free. There was no work and there was no play. Everything was one. It didn’t matter whether he was hauling water up from the stream or tying into a hearty dinner. Everything was the same, and he found it not at all boring. He thought of himself as a single current in a deep river. He was separate and he was whole, all at the same time. It was a wonderful feeling.

He loved the daily reconnaissance rides on Cisco’s bare back. Each day they rode out in a different direction, sometimes as far as five or six miles from the fort. He saw no buffalo and no Indians. But this disappointment was not great. The prairie was glorious, ablaze with wildflowers and overrun with game. The buffalo grass was the best, alive as an ocean, waving in the wind for as far as his eyes could see. It was a sight he knew he would never grow tired of.

On the afternoon before the day Lieutenant Dunbar did his laundry, he and Cisco had ridden less than a mile from the post when, by chance, he looked over his shoulder and there was Two Socks, coming along in his easy trot a couple of hundred yards back.

Lieutenant Dunbar pulled up and the wolf slowed.

But he didn’t stop.

He veered wide, picking up his trot again. When he was abreast of them the old wolf halted in the high grass, fifty yards to the lieutenant’s left, and settled on his haunches, waiting as if for a signal to begin again.

They rode deeper into the prairie and Two Socks went with them. Dunbar’s curiosity led him to perform a series of stops and starts along the way. Two Socks, his yellow eyes always vigilant, followed suit each time.

Even when Dunbar changed course, zigzagging here and there, he kept up, always maintaining his fifty yards of distance.

When he put Cisco into an easy canter, the lieutenant was astounded to see Two Socks ease into a lope of his own.

When they stopped, he looked out at his faithful follower and tried to conjure up an explanation. Surely this animal had known man somewhere along the line. Perhaps he was half-dog. But when the lieutenant’s eyes swept the wilderness all about him, running unbroken toward every horizon, he could not imagine Two Socks as anything but a wolf.

“Okay,” the lieutenant called out.

Two Socks picked up his ears.

“Let’s go.”

The three of them covered another mile before startling a small herd of antelope. The lieutenant watched the white-rumped pronghorns bound over the prairie until they were almost out of sight.

When he turned to check Two Socks’s reaction, he could no longer see him.

The wolf was gone.

Clouds were building in the west, towering thunderheads filled with lightning. As he and Cisco started back, Dunbar kept an eye on the storm front. It was moving toward them, and the prospect of rain made the lieutenant’s face look sour.

He really had to do his laundry.

The blankets had started to smell like dirty socks.

one

Lieutenant Dunbar was right in step with the time-honored tradition of predicting weather.

He was wrong.

The spectacular storm slipped through during the night without loosing a single drop of rain on Fort Sedgewick, and the day that broke the next morning was the purest pastel blue, air that was like something for drinking, and merciful sun that toasted everything it touched without searing a single blade of grass.

Over coffee, the lieutenant reread his official reports of days past and concluded he had done a pretty fair job of putting down facts. He debated the subjective items for a time. More than once he took up his pen to cross out a line, but in the end he changed nothing.

He was pouring a second cup when he noticed the curious cloud far to the west. It was brown, a dusky brown cloud, lying low and flat at the base of the sky.

It was too hazy to be a cloud. It looked like smoke from a fire. The lightning from the night before must have struck something. Perhaps the prairie had been set afire. He made a mental note to keep an eye on the smoky cloud and to make his afternoon ride in that direction if it persisted. He had heard that prairie fires could be huge and fast-moving.

two

They had come in the day before, close to twilight, and unlike Lieutenant Dunbar, they had been rained on.

But their spirits were not dampened in the least. The last leg of the long trek from a winter camp far to the south was finished. That, and the coming of spring, made for the happiest of times. Their ponies were growing fatter and stronger with each succeeding day, the march had toned everyone after months of relative inactivity, and preparations would begin at once for the summer hunts. That made them happier still, happy in the pit of each and every belly. The buffalo were coming. Feasting was right around the corner.

And because this had been a summer camp for generations; a strong spirit of homecoming lightened the hearts of everyone, all 172 men, women, and children.

The winter had been mild and the band had come through it in excellent shape. Today, on the first morning home, it was a camp of smiles. Youngsters frolicked in the pony herd, warriors swapped stories, and the women mowed through the chores of breakfast with more gaiety than usual.

They were Comanche.

The smoke cloud Lieutenant Dunbar thought was a prairie fire had risen from their cooking fires.

They were camped on the same stream, eight miles west of Fort Sedgewick.

three

Dunbar grabbed up everything he could find that needed washing and stuffed it in a rucksack. Then he draped the foul blankets over his shoulders, searched out a chunk of soap, and headed down the river.

As he squatted by the stream, pulling laundry out of the sack, he thought, Sure would like to wash what I got on.

But there would be nothing left to wear while everything dried.

There was the overcoat.

But how stupid, he said to himself. With a little laugh he said out loud, “It’s just me and the prairie.”

It was a good feeling to be naked. He even laid his officer’s hat aside in the spirit of the thing.

When he bent toward the water with an armful of clothes, he saw a reflection of himself in the glassy surface, the first he’d seen in more than two weeks. It gave him pause.

His hair was longer. His face looked leaner, even with the beard that had sprouted. He’d definitely lost some weight. But the lieutenant thought he looked good. His eyes were as keen as he’d ever seen them, and as though he were acknowledging his affection for someone, he smiled boyishly at the reflection.

The longer he looked at the beard, the less he liked it. He ran back for his razor.

The lieutenant didn’t think about his skin while he shaved. His skin had always been the same. White men come in many shades. Some are white as snow.

Lieutenant Dunbar was white enough to put your eyes out.

four

Kicking Bird had left camp before dawn. He knew his leaving would not be questioned. He never had to answer for his movements, and rarely for his actions. Not unless they were poorly taken actions. Poorly taken actions could lead to catastrophe. But though he was new, though he had been a full-fledged medicine man for only a year, none of his actions had led to catastrophe.

In fact, he had performed well. Twice he had worked minor miracles. He felt good about the miracles, but he felt just as good about the bread and butter of his job, seeing to the day-to-day welfare of the band. He performed myriad administrative duties, attended to squabbles of wide-ranging import, practiced a fair amount of medicine, and sat in on the endless councils that took place daily. All this in addition to providing for two wives and four children. And all of it done with one ear and one eye cocked to the Great Spirit; always listening, always watching for the slightest sound or sign.

Kicking Bird shouldered his many duties honorably, and everyone knew it. They knew it because they knew the man. Kicking Bird did not have a self-serving bone in his body, and wherever he rode, he rode with the weight of great respect.

Some of the other early risers might have wondered where he was going on that first morning, but they never dreamed of asking.

Kicking Bird was not on a special mission. He had ridden onto the prairie to clear his head. He disliked the big movements: winter to summer, summer to winter. The tremendous clang of it all distracted him. It distracted the ear and eye he tried to keep cocked at the Great Spirit, and on this first morning after the long march, he knew the din of setting up camp would be more than he could manage.

So he had taken his best pony, a broad-backed chestnut, and ridden off toward the river, following it several miles until he came to a knobby rise he had known since boyhood.

There he waited for the prairie to reveal itself, and when it did, Kicking Bird was pleased. It had never looked so good to him. All the signs were right for an abundant summer. There would be enemies, of course, but the band was very strong now. Kicking Bird couldn’t suppress a smile. He was sure it would be a prosperous season.

After an hour his exhilaration had not diminished. Kicking Bird said to himself, I will make a walk in this beautiful country, and he kicked his pony into the still-rising sun.

five

He had sunk both blankets into the water before he remembered that laundry must be pounded. There wasn’t a single rock in sight.

Clutching the dripping blankets and the rest of the clothes against his chest, Lieutenant Dunbar, the laundry novice, wandered downstream, stepping lightly on his bare feet.

A quarter mile later he found an outcropping that made for a nice bench. He worked up a good lather and, as a novice will do, rubbed the soap rather tentatively into one of the blankets.

By and by he got the hang of it. With each article the routine of soaping, beating, and rinsing became more assured, and toward the end Dunbar was flying through his work with the single-mindedness, if not the precision, of a seasoned laundress.

In only two weeks out here he had cultivated a new appreciation for detail and, knowing the first pieces had been botched, he redid them.

A scrubby oak was growing partway up the slope and he hung his laundry there. It was a good spot, full of sun and not too breezy. Still, it would take a while for everything to dry, and he’d forgotten his tobacco fixings.

The naked lieutenant decided not to wait.

He started back for the fort.

six

Kicking Bird had heard disconcerting stories about their numbers. On more than one occasion he had heard people say they were as plentiful as birds, and this gave the shaman an uneasy feeling in the back of his mind.

And yet, on the basis of what he had actually seen, the hair mouths inspired only pity.

They seemed to be a sad race.

Those poor soldiers at the fort, so rich in goods, so poor in everything else. They shot their guns poorly, they rode their big, slow horses poorly. They were supposed to be the white man’s warriors, but they weren’t alert. And they frightened so easily. Taking their horses had been laughable, like plucking berries from a bush.

They were a great mystery to Kicking Bird, these white people. He could not think of them without getting his mind baffled.

The soldiers at the fort, for instance. They lived without families. And they lived without their greatest chiefs. With the Great Spirit in evidence everywhere, for all to see, they worshipped things written down on paper. And they were so dirty. They didn’t even keep themselves clean.

Kicking Bird could not imagine how these hair mouths could sustain themselves for even a year. And yet they were said to flourish. He did not understand it.

He had begun this line of thinking when he thought of the fort, when he thought of going near it. He expected them to be gone, but he thought he would see anyway. And now, as he sat on his pony, looking across the prairie, he could see at first glance that the place had been improved. The white man’s fort was clean. A great hide was rolling in the wind. A little horse, a good-looking one, was standing in the corral. There was no movement. Not even a sound. The place should have been dead. But someone had kept it alive.

Kicking Bird urged his pony to a walk.

He had to have a closer look.

seven

Lieutenant Dunbar dallied as he made his way back along the stream. There was so much to see.

In a strangely ironic way he felt much less conspicuous without his clothes. Perhaps that was so. Every tiny plant, every buzzing insect, seemed to attract his attention. Everything was remarkably alive.

A red-tailed hawk with a ground squirrel dangling from its talons flew right in front of him, not a dozen feet overhead.

Halfway back he paused in the shade of a cottonwood to watch a badger dig out his burrow a few feet above the waterline. Every now and then the badger would glance back at the naked lieutenant, but he kept right on digging.

Close to the fort Dunbar stopped to watch the entanglement of two lovers. A pair of black water snakes were twisting ecstatically in the shallows of the stream, and like all lovers, they were oblivious, even when the lieutenant’s shadow fell across the water.

He trudged up the slope enraptured, feeling as strong as anything out here, feeling like a true citizen of the prairie.

As his head cleared the rise, he saw the chestnut pony.

In the same instant he saw the silhouette, creeping in the shade under the awning. A split second later the figure stepped into the sun and Dunbar ducked down, settling into a cleft just below the bluff’s lip.

He squatted on jellied legs, his ears as big as dishes, listening with a concentration that made hearing seem the only sense he possessed.

His mind raced. Fantastic images danced across the lieutenant’s closed eyes. Fringed pants. Beaded moccasins. A hatchet with hair hanging from it. A breastplate of gleaming bone. The heavy, shining hair spilling halfway down his back. The black, deep-set eyes. The great nose. Skin the color of clay. The feather bobbing in the breeze at the back of his head.

He knew it was an Indian, but he had never expected anything so wild, and the shock of it had stunned him as surely as a blow to the head.

Dunbar stayed crouched below the bluff, his buttocks grazing the ground, beads of cold sweat coating his forehead. He could not grasp what he had seen. He was afraid to look again.

He heard a horse nicker and, sucking up his courage, peeked slowly over the bluff.

The Indian was in the corral. He was walking up to Cisco, a looped length of rope in his hand.

When Lieutenant Dunbar saw this, his paralysis evaporated. He stopped thinking altogether, leaped to his feet, and scrambled over the top of the bluff. He shouted out, his bellow cracking the stillness like a shot.

“You there!”

eight

Kicking Bird jumped straight into the air.

When he whirled to meet the voice that had startled him out of his skin, the Comanche medicine man came face-to-face with the strangest sight he had ever seen.

A naked man. A naked man marching straight across the yard with his fists balled, with his jaw set, and with skin so white that it hurt the eyes.

Kicking Bird stumbled backward in horror, righted himself, and instead of jumping the corral fence, he tore right through it. He raced across the yard, vaulted onto his pony, and galloped off as if the devil were on his tail.

Not once did he look back.