Beauty for Ashes

by Win Blevins

  Coy sat up on his haunches and raised his head to the night sky. “Ow-o-o-o-o-o!” he howled. “Ow-o-o-o-o-o!”

  Dogs all over camp set up a howl. Angry exclamations came out of tipis.

  Sam and Meadowlark looked into each other’s eyes, giggling.

  “When the Seven Sisters rise at dawn,” Sam added, “that’s in the spring, they’re telling us it’s time to plant the crops.”

  Then he had to explain what crops were, more than a little tobacco planted along the river, and how white people grew their food instead of hunting it.

  Meadowlark said, “White people are full of wonders.”

  Awkward pause. Sam knew she meant her words and was also trying to be nice.

  “I couldn’t live white ways myself. They’re too strange.”

  The two lovers broke into giggles. Gray Hawk coughed loudly in the lodge, Meadowlark’s signal to go inside for the night.

  She squeezed his hands and disappeared.

  He and Meadowlark were not lovers, of course. As Sam neared his lodge, he felt grumpy. Here came another night of listening to the amorous adventures of his buddies. Gideon, Beckwourth, and even the Pawnee Third Wing apparently had no trouble getting mates regularly for little trips to the willows, and they enjoyed torturing Sam with endless recountings while the center fire died down, night after night.

  It was clear that the Crows saw no particular virtue in chastity. Men chased whatever woman they had a yearning for, and that was regarded as natural, what a male of any species does. Women were less obvious about their adventures, but the beaver men soon learned that various married women had boyfriends. Their husbands disdained to notice, as jealousy was supposed to be beneath their dignity. And even more women would take a lover for an hour, especially if enticed with a string of beads.

  Sam ducked through the lodge door and discovered, to his relief, that his lodgemates were all asleep. He stripped and crawled beneath his own blankets and on top of two buffalo robes. Coy was already curled where Sam put his bare feet.

  The next morning, though, Gideon, Beckwourth, and Third Wing made their stories ricochet around the lodge again. While Sam built the morning fire to take the chill off, they lay in their blankets and traded stories of adventures among the willows. The way Third Wing told it, he pleasured a young woman named Muskrat every evening. Sam pretended not to hear.

  “Hand me the charqui,” Gideon said. He made it sound like a mock order.

  Ignoring his tone, Sam picked up the parfleche box of dried meat and handed it to Gideon.

  “Me too,” said Third Wing.

  “Me too,” said Beckwourth.

  Sam gave all of them a look, but handed the box from bedroll to bedroll. When Coy mewled, Sam gave him some meat too.

  Third Wing took out a dried stick and held it stuck out from his groin. “Oh, Muskrat, Muskrat,” he cooed.

  Beckwourth did the same, crying “Oh, Sweetheart, oh, Sweetheart.”

  Suddenly Gideon stopped the laughter with a loud, “Sam needs a woman.”

  “That’s right,” said Third Wing.

  “Damn right,” said Beckwourth.

  “Enough!” Sam growled.

  “No, I mean it,” Gideon went on. “You need to take a woman to the willows. If you don’t, the Crows are going to think you’re a weakling.”

  Sam ducked out of the lodge and came back with an armload of aspen for the fire.

  “You need to think on this,” said Beckwourth.

  “Think on getting jollied in the willows,” said Gideon.

  “You’re afraid it would make Meadowlark mad,” Third Wing said.

  “Actually, it would make her respect you,” Gideon said.

  “When in Rome,” said Beckwourth.

  “Half of the men are married to two women,” Third Wing said.

  “Makes you more of a man.”

  “Shut up,” said Sam. The truth was, he’d made a resolution not to touch any woman until he got Meadowlark. Why, he couldn’t have said. But he wanted it that way.

  Scratch-scra-a-a-tch!

  The beaver men looked at each other. They couldn’t remember when anyone had scratched at their lodge flap, which was the Crow way of knocking on the door.

  Sam called, “Come in.”

  A shadow darkened the entrance. Then the big form of Red Roan loomed, and Sam saw he was smiling.

  “You want to learn the bow and arrow?” These words in Crow were aimed at Sam.

  “Sure.”

  “Come at midday, over by the big yellow boulders.” He motioned to the southwest. Sam knew the place.

  “Good.”

  SAM AND COY walked toward the big yellow boulders in good spirits. A week or two ago, when Red Roan first mentioned working on bow and arrow, Sam gave Blue Horse a butchering knife to make him a good bow. Though Blue Horse was only twenty-two winters, everyone agreed he had a knack for making bows. At the same time Sam made a dozen arrows in the slow, meticulous way Blue Horse taught him last winter. He had to throw away several, but the dozen left were good. When he showed Blue Horse the arrows, Sam asked why Red Roan would help him with his archery. “He’s a good man,” Blue Horse said, “and he must teach his sisters’ sons to shoot the bow and arrow.”

  Sam was sorry Blue Horse, who’d gone hunting, wouldn’t get to see this new bow shoot.

  On a flat area in front of the big yellow boulders, Red Roan, Blue Horse’s younger brother, Flat Dog, and five twelve-or fourteen-year-old boys were shooting arrows at a target of grasses tied together with rawhide. They stopped immediately. “Time for our game,” said Red Roan.

  “Who wants the white man?” teased the biggest kid. “He won’t be able to hit anything.”

  Sam gave the kid a look and got nothing but impudence back.

  “This one is called Stripe,” said Red Roan. “He has no manners.” Red Roan gave Sam the names of the others. Sam knew Little Bull, the youngest brother of Meadowlark and Blue Horse, but he felt frozen in his brain and couldn’t remember the others’ names.

  “We’re going to play a game, rolling the buffalo chip,” said Red Roan. He picked up a chip off the ground, an ancient one, very dry. A hole about the size of a boy’s fist had been punched in it and in a stack of others nearby. “It’s a simple game. I roll the chip across in front, and you boys shoot at the hole.”

  “The hole,” Sam muttered in English. He also found it odd, at twenty, to be included as one of the boys.

  Red Roan rolled a chip as a demonstration. Stripe pantomimed taking a shot at it.

  Coy pranced forward and grabbed the chip in his mouth.

  “Coy, no,” called Sam in English. The pup looked back, chip poking out of his mouth.

  “Coy, come.”

  The pup did.

  Sam took the chip and handed it to Red Roan.

  “Sit,” he said.

  The pup did.

  “Stay put,” Sam said.

  “What did you say to him?” asked Flat Dog in Crow.

  “I said no, uh, come, sit, and stay there.”

  “In your language?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would dogs do that?”

  Flat Dog had a face that looked put together out of mismatched pieces and a half smile that said everything in life is funny.

  “Yeah.”

  “If you told them in Crow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What if you told the coyote in Crow?”

  “No, he learned in English.”

  “The game,” Red Roan interrupted. “If you miss, you let your arrow lie. If you hit the chip, you get your arrow back, but you don’t get anyone else’s arrows. If you put an arrow through the hole, you get to pick up all the arrows on the ground.”

  Sam nodded that he understood. “I probably can’t hit a moving chip,” he said.

  The boys all looked at each other and nodded, like “We know.”

  “First we divide into teams.”

  Uh-oh, Sam thought, bad news.
>
  “The game’s over when one team gets all the arrows.”

  “And they keep them?” asked Sam.

  “Sure,” said Stripe, like “What do you think?”

  “So Stripe and Little Bull, you choose sides,” said Red Roan.

  “I don’t play,” said Flat Dog softly to Sam. “Too old.”

  “Stripe, go first,” said Red Roan.

  “Beaver,” said Stripe. A youngster as wide as he was short went to stand by Stripe.

  “Straight Arm,” said Little Bull immediately. He was a skinny kid with an angry face.

  Stripe looked lingeringly over the faces of the two players remaining. He had a superior smile. I’m going to be the last one chosen, Sam told himself, and it made his gut ache. “I choose Spotted Rabbit.” This was the youngest-looking kid, with a big smile and baby fat still in his face.

  “You belong to the other team,” Stripe told Sam. He flashed a giant smile that made Sam sick. “White man.”

  “My name is Sam,” he said.

  Coy whimpered.

  “Sam,” Stripe repeated softly, almost laughing. He gestured for Sam to stand by Little Bull.

  Sam looked at Flat Dog, hideously embarrassed. He was willing to bet any of these boys could outshoot him. And he was older even than Flat Dog.

  The two teams faced each other.

  “Sorry you were last,” said Flat Dog quietly.

  Sam tried to shrug nonchalantly.

  “The truth is,” Flat Dog said, “no one wants to lose his arrows.”

  Sam was beginning to catch on, and he didn’t like the setup one bit.

  Red Roan put a stop to their talking with, “Who wants to go first?”

  Stripe said, “Go ahead, show us what you can do, white man.”

  Sam ignored the gibe and took a shooting stance. About twenty steps away, very carefully, Red Roan rolled the chip across his front, giving it a good thrust so it wouldn’t curl off one way of the other.

  Sam let the arrow go, and his heart jumped up.

  No, a miss. The arrow slipped by just behind. He felt good at coming so close.

  Beaver shot first for the other team and put the arrow right through the hole. The chip spun a little on the arrow and stood up, pinned. Beaver collected Sam’s arrow, and his own, without even a glance at Sam.

  “That’s all right, white man,” said Stripe, “you have plenty of arrows to lose.”

  Then Sam noticed that the other players had only six or eight arrows each. “My name’s Sam,” he said.

  Stripe flipped him an indolent smile and walked off without a word.

  “Nephew,” said Red Roan, “treat our guest respectfully.” But the two grinned at each other.

  “Should we have everyone start with the same number of arrows?” Little Bull asked.

  “No,” said Stripe, “the white man will need all he’s got.”

  Straight Arm shot and ticked the edge of the chip, knocking it over. Red Roan tossed his arrow back.

  Spotted Rabbit shot, a clean miss.

  Little Bull hit the chip and knocked it into fragments. He collected his arrow.

  “Are you ready, Stripe?”

  Stripe nodded his head yes. Red Roan hurled a chip fast across the flat ground. Stripe nailed it with a perfect shot. He strode forward in a silky way to get his arrow and Spotted Rabbit’s, no swagger but lots of feline arrogance.

  Stripe hurled the arrow of Sam’s captured by Beaver into the ground point first. “First round finished, your side loses one arrow,” he said. “Come on, fellows, we have to get their arrows quicker than that.”

  Red Roan said, “Get us started again, white man.”

  “My name is Sam.”

  But he got into position to shoot. This time his arrow sailed a little sideways, but it knocked the chip down. When Red Roan flipped him the arrow, Sam breathed a sigh of relief.

  Altogether in the second round, no one lost any arrows, and no one gained any.

  The third round, though, was a disaster. The first five players missed, and Stripe hit, winning all five arrows. “Lucky for you we’re on the same side,” he said to his teammates. “Go to it, white man.”

  “My name’s Sam,” said Sam.

  “What is a ‘sam’ in your language?” said Flat Dog.

  Red Roan looked at Sam curiously.

  Sam saw his chance. “He was a hero. His name means ‘chosen of….’ Sam had to hesitate. His mother had said “chosen of God.” In the Crow way of seeing things, the Creator was Old Man Coyote; but the supreme deity seemed to be Sun. Sam let it go. “Chosen of Sun.”

  “What did Sam do?” Spotted Rabbit was really interested.

  “Sun revealed to him who should be chief of the Israelites, a man named Saul, so Sam anointed Saul as chief. Later, even though Sam was dead, he came back and charged Saul with failing to follow holy law.”

  “After he was dead?”

  Sam nodded yes.

  Spotted Rabbit’s eyes grew very round. Little Bull looked impressed, too.

  Sam said, “My culture has traditional and fanciful hero stories, just like yours does.”

  “Very good,” said Stripe, and then he deliberately added, “May we win some more of your arrows now? White man?”

  Later, when the last arrow was painfully extracted, Stripe said casually, “Thanks for the game, No Arrows.”

  Sam understood how complete his humiliation was when, in front of Meadowlark’s tipi that night, Red Roan left with the words, “Good night, No Arrows.”

  Sam took his place next to Meadowlark and started to tell her about the game.

  “Everyone has heard your new name,” she said stiffly.

  That night she cut their conversation very short.

  THE NEXT TWO weeks Sam simmered. A number of Crows—far too many—called him by the name No Arrows. All he could do was ignore them. He spent all his physical energy on training the medicine hat, and all his emotional energy yearning for the moment Bell Rock would give him a new name. Nothing less would end the humiliation.

  Every night he stood outside Meadowlark’s lodge while she and Red Roan courted. When the chief’s son walked away, Sam turned his back and refused to notice him. It was a piddling gesture, but all he could do. Once he heard Red Roan chuckle as he walked away.

  Meadowlark seemed to cut their evening talks shorter and shorter.

  Sam waited as a burning, spewing fuse waits.

  Every day, all day, he trained the mare. He taught her to accept the improvised rope bridle easily, hand-feeding her sweet cottonwood bark each time she cooperated. And slowly he taught her to neck rein.

  This was the crucial step. Feel the left rein on your neck, turn right. Feel the right rein on your neck, turn left. Part of it was also leg pressure. He moved his right leg forward and let her feel the pressure when she turned left, the opposite when she turned right. Eventually, she would respond to the pressure of the knees alone, leaving both of his hands free. Then she would be a buffalo horse.

  He got to know her. He learned the feel of her back. He got to know when she was about to shy, or crow-hop, or do anything unexpected. He learned when she was tense and when relaxed. He got to where he knew her moods through her flesh.

  One afternoon when Sam was cooling the mare down, Blue Horse asked, “Why are you in such a hurry with this horse?”

  “I’m going to hunt my buffalo from her.”

  “You could use your other mare,” said Bell Rock.

  Sam said stiffly, “I’m going to hunt buffalo on this mare. I’m going to get a cow and give the meat and the hide to old people who need them.” He looked hard at Bell Rock. This was the task the medicine man had assigned him.

  “Then you’ll earn a new name,” Bell Rock said.

  After she was neck-reining reasonably well, Sam tried her at different gaits. A cluck and a heel boosted her up to a trot, another cluck and heel to a lope, and yet another to a gallop. Sam found the rocking balance for her lope, and the forward b
alance for the gallop.

  She learned to respond quickly to the feel of the bridle bringing her head back, slowing down, stopping.

  After two weeks Sam showed Gideon. The mare responded quickly to all instructions from Sam’s hands and legs. “She’s a nice saddle horse,” said Gideon.

  “Not finished out,” said Sam.

  “A long way from a buffalo horse,” said Bell Rock.

  Sam knew that.

  “Let’s see what speed she has,” said Blue Horse.

  Sam, Blue Horse, and Flat Dog rode upstream to a nice, big flat. There they raced the three mounts all out. Flat Dog edged out Blue Horse, and Sam was a horse length behind.

  “Let me ride her,” said Flat Dog. He showed the funny, half-smile his face always wore.

  Sam hesitated. No rider but him had ever been on her back. Then he swung down and held the reins while Flat Dog mounted.

  The three raced back the other way along the flat. The medicine hat won by a horse’s length.

  “You need a little better balance when she’s running all out,” said Flat Dog.

  “It will come,” said Blue Horse.

  Sam reminded himself that they had ridden even as children, and he’d essentially started a year and a half ago.

  That evening the scouts brought in a report. A small herd of buffalo was ten miles down the valley.

  Chapter Ten

  THE NEXT MORNING the Wind River valley was a swamp of fog, the cottonwoods along the river hazy, dark lines, the peaks on both sides lost in the gray swirl.

  Sam woke up irritable. First he’d sat up listening to four medicine men sing for the success of the hunt. Then he had to watch while they chose Red Roan as the leader of the hunt. One man of medicine had seen the herd in a dream and told the scouts where to look. That medicine man picked Red Roan as the leader—he’d been successful in the past.

  After the singing, Sam lay sleepless in the lodge, or had wild, chaotic dreams when he did drift off. But he forced himself—got the medicine hat saddled, pulled her picket pin, and led her to where the hunters and their women were assembling. After the men killed, the women would butcher.

  When he appeared, some hunters suppressed mocking smiles. Others threw worried glances at the medicine hat.