Ghost Dance (34 page)

The angle of the sign pointed to the Bad Lands.

"All right," said Chance, gathering himself together, trying to regulate his breathing. "Let's get the horses."

Running Horse put his hand gently on his arm. "If you want your woman," he said, "you must not rush to the camp. You must not try to fight. They are ready to kill anyone. If you try to take her away from them, you will be killed, maybe her too."

"I'm going to get her out," said Chance.

"There are braves, maybe twenty," said Running Horse. "You do not even have your gun."

Chance remembered he had dropped the Colt at Grawson's command and Grawson had kicked it away. The Hotchkiss guns had opened up on the camp about that time and he and Running Horse had fled. He hadn't had time to pick up the weapon. Between them they had one carbine, which belonged to Running Horse, and a handful of bullets, also belonging to Running Horse. Chance's bullets, contained in the tiny loops on his gun belt, were useless unless he could find a .45 caliber pistol.

"I do not think they will kill her," said Running Horse, "at least not until after the Scalp Dance."

"Scalp Dance?" asked Chance.

"Tonight," said Running Horse.

"I've got to get her out," said Chance.

"You must be wise as well as brave, my Brother," said Running Horse.

Chance nodded. There was no question of bravery. Indeed, he was ready to act like a damn fool, do anything. It would be hard though, to be wise, even to be patient, even to wait an hour.

Chance shook himself, looking at the soddy. There was work to be done here. The Scalp Dance, whatever that was, would not take place until tonight. There was time. Chance would force himself to wait. And there was work, there was work to be done here.

Chance found an ax and a shovel, and kicked the snow away from a small area about the size of the wagon box. Then he began to chop and cut at the frozen ground. Winona and Running Horse carried the bodies from the soddy and laid them in the snow. Soon Chance had cut and scooped out a shallow grave. He put the four bodies in the grave, composing their limbs as well as he could, and covered them, laying chunks of frozen earth on by hand.

"The spring rains," said Running Horse, "will make the dirt soft."

Chance went back into the soddy and took the back of a broken, burned chair. He carved: "Samuel Carter, Wife and Two Sons. Died Maybe New Year's Day, 1891." He didn't know the names of the woman and the two boys. Someone probably knew. Someone would come sometime, and they could do things better. Chance, using the ax, sharpened the side slats of the chair and then, tapping with the ax head, drove his simple marker into the soil.

Finished, he stood up.

Running Horse and Winona, who had stood by not speaking, regarded him.

"I suppose I ought to say something," said Chance.

Neither of the Indians spoke.

"I can't say anything," said Chance.

Running Horse shrugged.

Chance looked up into the blue, cold sky, watched a white cloud move past, some thousands of feet above, moved by the wind, the pressures and volumes of the air. Then the cloud was gone and the sky seemed empty to Chance, very beautiful, but not much concerned, and empty.

He looked down at the chopped clods of frozen soil, brown, black chunks; at the snow muddied by his boots; at the shovel he had dropped to one side; at the bit of a piece of chair that he had pounded into the hard soil at the head of the grave.

"I don't think the coyotes will get them," said Chance.

"No," said Running Horse.

Together the three of them, the two men and the woman, went to their horses, mounted and rode slowly through the snow toward the looming Bad Lands, leaving behind them the burned soddy and the turned soil nearby, a patch about the size of a wagon box.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Nineteen

 

"God," said Jake Totter, steadying his horse near the Carter soddy. "I thought you said the Injuns was scared." His eyes took in the desolate, calm scene, ending on the simple grave.

His horse shied, backing away, stamping the snow.

"What's wrong with your horse?" asked Grawson.

"He don't like the smell of killing," said Totter. "I don't either, leastways around here."

Grawson pointed to the marker on the grave. "A white man did that," he said. "Chance came this way."

Grawson dismounted and went to some tracks in the snow. "Three horses," he said, "two unshod, one shod." He crouched down, looking at the sides of the prints, their relative sharpness. "Not over three hours old," said Grawson. He stood up. "We got him," he said.

Totter looked off where the tracks led. "I ain't riding into the Bad Lands," he said.

Grawson mounted, loosening the carbine in his saddle boot. "A month's liquor is a lot of liquor," he said.

"Not if you ain't alive to drink it," said Totter.

Grawson drew the carbine from the boot. "There's only three of them now," he said.

"Where they're going," said Totter, "there may be fifty of 'em. I ain't going into the Bad Lands."

Grawson checked his weapon, released the safety. "You're on special orders to me, Corporal," he said.

"I ain't going there," said Totter.

The carbine rested across the saddle, casual. "Yes, you are," said Grawson.

"Not me," said Totter.

"I guess you don't understand, Corporal," said Grawson, "that's one of those special orders."

"Go to hell," said Totter. "I ain't going."

Totter saw he was looking down the barrel of Grawson's carbine. When Grawson pulled the trigger it would hit him about two inches over the belt buckle.

"If you ain't going, Corporal," said Grawson, "I'm going to leave you right here."

"You can't go shooting a white man," said Totter, his voice stumbling, his eyes not leaving the penny-sized hole at the end of the carbine.

"I wouldn't," said Grawson, "but Indians might–right here."

"I'm coming," said Totter.

"Ride ahead, Corporal," said Grawson.

Cursing under his breath, Totter turned his mount toward the Bad Lands.

"You're crazy, Mister," he said over his shoulder.

Totter heard the hammer snap back on the carbine, as though it was jerked, the way Grawson's face moved sometimes. The hair lifted on the back of Totter's neck. Then no bullet came and he rode on, his hands shaking on the reins.

As the two men rode from the Carter soddy they passed, not noticing it, a sign drawn in the snow, two circles connected with short lines, and an angle pointing toward the white ridges in the distance.

In about a half hour Totter and Grawson were making their way through the first arroyos of the Bad Lands. They had ridden a few minutes, down the bottom of one arroyo, when Totter stopped.

"I thought I heard something," he said.

"Keep going," said Grawson.

Totter kept going.

Then in about a minute he stopped again. "There it is again," he said. He looked around. Everything seemed still. "Snow," said Totter, "snow slipping into the arroyo."

"The wind pushed it off," said Grawson.

Totter looked at him, and at the carbine which had not been returned to the saddle boot.

"Let's go, Corporal," said Grawson.

"There ain't no wind," said Totter.

Grawson gestured with the barrel of the carbine.

Totter, his face white, trembling, watching, moved his horse slowly ahead.

 

* * *

 

It was dusk in the Bad Lands when Chance, Winona and Running Horse reached the camp.

For the past few minutes they had heard the light tap of a tom-tom, getting louder as they approached it.

"It'll give their position away," Chance had said.

"No one will hear," Running Horse had responded.

Chance realized then that the young Indian was right. There were no soldiers within miles. The Carters, even if they might have heard, were dead.

A woman's scream carried over the snow, through the cold air.

"Lucia!" said Chance, kicking his horse forward.

Running Horse turned his pony into Chance's path and the two animals struck shoulders, snorting. "No!" said Running Horse, sternly. "No!"

Chance's face contorted with agony.

"No," said Running Horse gently, putting his hand on Chance's arm.

Together then he, with Winona, following Running Horse, continued down the arroyo, following the sound of the tom-tom. At last, turning a final bend, they passed two grim Hunkpapa guards, and came to the camp.

It was in a small canyon, something like a box canyon except that at the far end there was a cut, giving access to another arroyo beyond. The walls of the tiny canyon were pretty steep, and the place, like the arroyos, was sheltered from the wind. Finding such a retreat in the Bad Lands, had Chance and Running Horse not known where it was, might have taken days.

In the canyon the snow had been trampled down over a space about twenty-five yards wide, circling out from the leeward wall of the canyon. That wall was fringed with makeshift shelters, mostly contrived from blankets, sticks and brush.

Toward the center of the canyon was a large fire, lighting the walls of the canyon. It had already melted the snow back in a wide, damp circle. It was muddy near the fire. It was too large a fire for the uses of the camp. Chance judged, correctly, that it was a council or ceremonial fire, and the wood it fed on might have been carried, some of it, from as far as the Carter soddy.

About thirty-five Indians, few of them women and children, were gathered about the fire. The men were sitting on brush and blankets. The women and children stood behind them.

Most of the women wore the signs of mourning. They had cut their hair; their faces were smeared with dirt and their clothing had been torn. Some had cut open their cheeks and arms, and heavy blood clots marked the wounds that would become scars.

The children, Chance noticed, did not run about as Indian children normally did, busying themselves here and there, getting into whatever trouble they might find. Instead they stood by the women, clinging to them, afraid to let go.

He did not see Lucia; but he had heard her cry; she was somewhere here.

He must wait.

Chance hoped that more of the Indians might find their way across the prairie to this retreat, or others like it; he did not understand at that time how few Indians had escaped Wounded Knee.

At least there would be food in the camp, meat; Chance remembered that the Carter livestock had not been in evidence, what there had been of it.

Lucia was nowhere to be seen, but he had heard her cry; she was somewhere here.

He did not like to look at the eyes of the children.

He must wait.

Old Bear sat a little forward of most of the warriors, his eyes staring into the fire, not really seeing it.

Chance noted that Drum, too, was not present, nor any of the young warriors who habitually followed him.

Perhaps Lucia was with Drum, and his men.

Chance's fists clenched.

Then he saw, suddenly, revoltingly, in a clear place near the fire, scalps, hair and skin, heaped on the ground. Lucia had screamed. It was a dark, loose pile, grisly, matted, stained with brownish reds, some of the hair stiff, the whole pile rather damp from the mud and snow, droplets glistening here and there on it, lying in the mud near the fire. Many scalps. More, Chance noted, than those of the Carters alone. Lucia. She had screamed. I heard her. No. None of the scalps blond. None blond. None. Not blond. And Chance took a deep breath, and let it out very slowly, his hands trembling. Lucia, he told himself, is still alive.

Old Bear stood to welcome Winona.

She went to him, standing before him, and Chance could see that the old man was happy beyond happiness, though hardly did his expression change. "Huh!" he said to her. Winona inclined her head to him, gently. "Huh!" said Old Bear again, and motioned for her to go and stand with the other women, and the children, which she did.

Running Horse took his seat as a warrior, a bit behind Old Bear. The young Indian motioned for Chance to sit beside him. None of the braves objected to Chance taking that place. Drum was gone, and his young men, and the rest of the Hunkpapa, or most of them, had long ago come to accept Chance as a part of their camp; he was Medicine Gun; even the Minneconjou who were there did not protest his presence, remembering him from before, from the camp before the march, from the march, from Wounded Knee. Indeed, though Chance did not understand it at the time, the fact that he had been at Wounded Knee, with them, was important to these people. They would say to one another, in years afterward, when a child might ask, or a stranger, "Yes, Medicine Gun, he was with us at Wounded Knee."

"Welcome, Medicine Gun," said Old Bear.

Chance nodded, sitting cross-legged near the chief. "Where is Drum?" he asked, as casually as he could manage.

"You were followed by two men," said Old Bear. "Drum has gone to get them." The old man had spoken simply, as though what he had said had been a matter of course.

"Drum didn't pass us," said Chance.

"He passed you," said Old Bear.

Chance looked at Running Horse. The young Indian smiled. "Yes, my Brother," he said, "it is true."

"We led someone into a trap?" asked Chance.

"Yes," said Old Bear.

There was little doubt in Chance's mind who the two men who had followed would be.

The beat of the tom-tom, incessant, seemed to throb in his bones and flesh.

He felt a strange mixture of swift, unclear, irresistible emotions, pleasure, cruelty, pity, relief, apprehension, confusion, difficulty.

Somehow, in a moment, perhaps paradoxically, he found himself hoping that Totter and Grawson might escape; he knew they would not.

Chance did not envy a man the death which the Sioux might contrive.

Suddenly the tom-tom stopped.

The silence, save for the noise of the fire, startled Chance.

He followed the eyes of the Hunkpapa and Minneconjou to the opening of a blanket shelter stretched between sticks at the foot of the rock wall to his right.