Ghost Dance (11 page)

"I would like that," said Chance.

The chief turned and gathering his blanket about his waist, and holding the pipe, led the way into the cabin, Chance and Running Horse following him.

 

* * *

 

At the sound of the gunshot, when Chance had wounded Kicking Bear, Winona, the first and only daughter of the subchief Old Bear, had run with many other Indians to the cabin of Sitting Bull.

There she had stood in the midst of the Indians who had watched Running Horse and Drum struggle, and had seen the hatchet of Drum inadvertently reveal the wounds of the Sun Dance on the chest of Joseph Running Horse.

Now the Indians had returned to watch the dance, and Chance, Running Horse and Sitting Bull having gone into the cabin, Winona and Drum stood before the cabin.

She looked at him, her large, dark eyes questioning. Why had he attacked Running Horse? Had he seen the wounds of the Sun Dance? What did it mean? Were they not both of the Hunkpapa?

"Pick up my hatchet," said Drum.

Winona obediently knelt down to the dust and picked up the fallen hatchet, handing it to Drum so he would not have to stoop.

"Running Horse thinks to shame me," said Drum. "But he will not do so."

"He has danced the Sun Dance," whispered Winona, looking toward the closed door of the cabin.

"It means nothing," said Drum.

Drum slipped the hatchet back in his belt.

"You would have killed him," she said.

Drum looked at her closely.

Winona dropped her eyes. "He is of the Hunkpapa," she said, confused.

"No," said Drum, "he is only a Short Hair, doing what the white men want."

"No," said Winona, lifting her head. "He is Hunkpapa." And she added, "And he has danced the Sun Dance."

"Do you care for him?" asked Drum.

"No," said Winona, dropping her head.

Drum grunted his satisfaction.

"I am lonely in the lodge of my father," said Winona, not raising her head.

"I will bring him horses," said Drum.

"What if he does not take your horses?" she asked.

"Then," said Drum, "I will take you to the Bad Lands and we will live in the old way, and later when he is ready to take my horses I will bring you back."

"When will you bring horses to the lodge of my father?" asked Winona.

"When my honor is strong," said Drum.

Winona looked at him, puzzled.

"By dancing the Sun Dance, Running Horse has sought to shame me," he said, "but instead I shall shame him."

"Please," said Winona, "do not think of Running Horse." Hesitantly she put her hand to the buckskin sleeve of Drum's shirt, daring to touch him. "Think of the girl," she said, "whose name is Winona."

A scowl from Drum made her withdraw her hand.

"They will laugh at us if they see you do that," he said. Then he added, bitterly, "You show your love where people can see. You must have pride. You are too much like a white woman."

Tears crowded Winona's dark eyes, and she dropped her head before this rebuke.

Drum contemptuously fingered the calico of her blue dress.

"Like a white woman," he said, scornfully.

Winona trembled. "I have very little," she said.

"Why should I bring horses for such a woman?" asked Drum. "I, the son of Kills-His-Horse?"

Winona could not answer his question, nor did she dare to try. It was incomprehensible to her that a brave such as Drum, the son of the great Kills-His-Horse, might want her. Often enough had her father lamented her lack of flesh, the want of skills that a woman should know, her diligence with the words and ways of the white man.

"I am unworthy of Drum, the son of Kills-His-Horse," she said.

"I will come for you," said Drum, "when I have made my honor strong."

Winona flushed with happiness.

Lifting her eyes to his, unconsciously her arms, the fists closed, crossed themselves over her breast, as might have a woman's who kept a man's lodge in greeting him as he returned from the hunt or war.

This time Drum did not scowl.

"Good," he said.

"What must you do to make your honor strong?" asked Winona.

"Shame Running Horse," said Drum.

"But how?" asked the girl, the blue calico blowing about her ankles.

"I will wait," said Drum, "and when the white man who is the friend of Running Horse leaves the Hunkpapa, I will kill him."

Winona was startled.

"He has watched the Ghost Dance," said Drum, "and I said that I would kill him."

"He is not important," said Winona.

"Drum, the son of Kills-His-Horse, has said that he will kill him," said Drum, "and Drum, the son of Kills-His-Horse, does not lie."

Winona shook her head. "Let him go," she said. "He is not worthy to count coup upon."

Drum seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he said, "Then I shall not count coup on him, but shall only kill him."

"Let him go," said Winona.

"Do you care for Running Horse?" asked Drum, sharply.

"No," said Winona.

"When you see the scalp of the white man hanging from the poles of my lodge," said Drum, "you will know that my honor is strong again."

Winona looked away.

In her thinking there was little of the old way that was not dead. She did not like the white men nor the reservation but she knew, though only a woman, more of the meaning of guns and numbers and supplies than he, a warrior, who thought with his bravery and his medicine to turn the bullets of foes and would think nothing of pitting himself, his rifle and a paint pony against whatever odds he might find arrayed against him.

Drum was not wise, thought Winona to herself, but he was brave, and in her eyes he was beautiful.

For herself Winona did not want killing, for there had been enough of that, and in the end she knew it would be the Indians, her people, who would suffer most, for this was the true, undeniable meaning of the arithmetic of guns and horse and soldiers and wagons of ammunition–and too she did not want the white woman who taught in the school to die, for the woman had been kind to her, nor did she want the strange white man with Joseph Running Horse to die, for he had done nothing to hurt her or her people, and he was the friend of Joseph Running Horse, who was of the Hunkpapa, and had once drawn a circle on a blackboard which had enclosed his name with hers.

But she knew that Drum would do as he wanted, for he always did.

The thought crossed her mind that she might be able to save the white man, if she could warn him, and he could run away, before Drum came to kill him.

But Drum must never find out.

"I must go," said Drum.

Awkwardly it seemed that he would reach out to touch her arm, but he did not do so, but turned and saying nothing more left Winona standing outside the cabin.

How fine is Drum, she thought, and how fortunate am I that he would think of bringing horses to the lodge of my father.

She could hear the Ghost Dance, the stamping of the feet, the rise and fall of the wailing chant.

But Joseph Running Horse, she thought to herself, he has danced the Sun Dance.

He has not ridden his pony in the high grass and painted his face. He has not stolen horses nor taken a scalp, nor counted coup nor burned the lodges of his enemies, nor led their women bound behind his pony, but he has done more than all these things–more than all–he has been alone, and he has danced the Sun Dance.

 

* * *

 

Kicking Bear gingerly fished a piece of beef from the kettle with his left hand and began, his head thrown back, to feed it into his mouth.

Chance, with his knife, pinned a piece of beef to the bottom of the kettle and then pulled it out.

Sitting Bull, having satisfied himself, was smoking his pipe.

Running Horse, who had eaten rapidly and heavily, sat to one side. He did not speak much, as befitted a young man in the presence of older men.

In another part of the room Sitting Bull's wives and children ate from another kettle, one long since removed from the fire.

The kettle before Chance rested on a platform of rocks, and bubbled over a small fire, set in a hole in the middle of the dirt floor. Chance's eyes stung from the smoke. Not enough smoke, from Chance's point of view, found its way out the smoke hole in the roof.

Chance looked at Kicking Bear.

"I would like to learn about the Ghost Dance," said Chance to Kicking Bear.

Kicking Bear dropped the last of the beef down his throat and swallowed it.

Kicking Bear seemed to hold no particular grudge against Chance for the wound of his hand, about which there was wrapped a long strip of scarlet flannel.

Chance had offered to treat the wound but Kicking Bear had assured him loftily that he himself, Kicking Bear, was a great medicine man and would handle the matter, so Chance had not insisted, and then Kicking Bear had let him look at the hand anyway.

After he had done what he thought he should, Chance carefully bandaged the hand, and told Kicking Bear that he would not be likely to close the first and second fingers of his right hand from that time on.

He had then watched Kicking Bear, with his teeth and left hand, carefully undo the bandage he had placed on the wound, take something from his own medicine bag, which contained among other things, a small, dead bird, place this something–Chance saw now it was a leaf–on the wound, drop the white bandage in the bag, and then, patiently, with difficulty, rewrap the wound with the original strip of red flannel.

"Why?" asked Chance.

"Make it get well," had said Kicking Bear.

Chance thought maybe that was supposed to explain the leaf. Then he pointed to the flannel wrapping.

"Why this?" he asked. "Why not the white bandage?"

"More pretty," had said Kicking Bear.

Chance had begun to explain the theory of infection, but Kicking Bear would have no nonsense of this sort, and so he had desisted.

Yet from this time Kicking Bear had tended to regard Chance as a practitioner in his own trade, and worthy of respect in that regard, if not in any other.

It was well known that white men, though evil and untrustworthy, were shrewd and cunning, and knew many secrets.

It was undeniable their medicine had great power.

In particular Kicking Bear had been impressed with the stinging, brownish liquid Chance had poured on the wound from the tiny glass vial in his mysterious black leather bag, for the liquid had burned horribly and that had convinced Kicking Bear that it must be extremely efficacious.

For that liquid, in fact, Kicking Bear, not to be outdone, had given Chance in return two small leaves, from a plant Chance did not recognize, and six narrow bark-peelings, each about three inches long, from what was probably an aspen. These Chance had gravely wrapped in paper and put in his bag.

It was thus, all this done, that Chance felt it might now, following the meal, be permissible to question Kicking Bear on the theological complexities of the Ghost Dance.

"So tell me about the Ghost Dance," said Chance.

Kicking Bear looked at him, glaring, but not a glare of anger, rather one of righteous impatience with Chance's obvious lack of information.

"You can read it in your own Holy Books," said Kicking Bear.

"I don't understand," said Chance.

"Many, many years ago," said Kicking Bear, wiping his mouth with the flannel cloth wrapped about his wounded hand, "the Great Spirit so loved the white men that He sent His only Son to live among them and teach them the good trails and the true medicine, but the white men were white men, and they took the Son of the Great Spirit and foolishly nailed Him to a big wooden cross and killed Him."

"This is true," said Running Horse. "The woman who lives with the teacher at the school has told us these things, and so have many others, like the men in the black dresses."

"But," Kicking Bear went on, "the Great Spirit did not like this, which is easy to understand, and He is not so easily shamed by the white men, not Him, and He has appointed a time for the ending of the world and the great judgment. At this time the Son of the Great Spirit, the same One who was nailed to a cross and would not stay dead for the white man, will come to judge the white men and destroy them."

"Yes," said Chance, "I have read these things, or at least something like them."

"Well," said Kicking Bear, "the time of the judgment is spring. When the grass comes again and the trees are fresh with leaves, the Messiah is coming–the Second Coming, it is called–but this time He is coming to the Indians."

"I see," said Chance.

"The Indians," said Kicking Bear, "will not take the Son of the Great Spirit and nail Him to a tree. They will be happy to have the Son of the Great Spirit come and live among them, and teach them the good trails and the true medicine. They will give Him a fine buffalo-skin lodge, and good wives and good horses. They will treat Him as a chief."

"Where are the white men all this time?" inquired Chance innocently.

"Dead," said Kicking Bear. "In the spring the Messiah will come and the earth will roll up and cover the white men and their railroads and soldiers and big brick buildings. But the Indians who dance the Ghost Dance, only those, will dance on the top of the rolling earth and by the mystery of their dance be saved, and when the earth has covered the white men and their stone cities the earth will once more be new and beautiful. On the prairies the grass will grow waist high, and be green, and the streams will be swift and clear, and the antelope and the buffalo will come back to their country and with them will come all the dead Indians, and their horses and dogs, and there will be much singing and the making of medicine and much feasting and talking and hunting and being friends, and no white men."

Chance was prepared to suppose that there might be more between heaven and earth than was dreamed of in his philosophy, but he was reasonably sure that most of these things were not among them.

"Do you really believe that?" asked Chance.

Kicking Bear looked at him. "Yes," he said.