by Judd Cole
“You speak this way to me,” she said, “and call yourself a warrior? I am the daughter of the great Chief Yellow Bear. I will not be threatened like this! You already went too far when you cut my braid. Do not forget that a Cheyenne woman too can petition the Star Chamber for a divorce.”
But she had pushed Black Elk too far with these words. A moment later she cried out in shock when the powerful brave brought the side of his fist against her face hard, knocking her down.
“Place my words in your pockets,” he told her in a cold, dangerously low voice. “I swear I will kill you and him before I let that false Cheyenne mount you! Do you have ears for this?”
But Honey Eater was beyond words now. She held her already swelling face, great sobs hitching in her chest.
“Prepare my clothing and war bonnet for the Medicine Arrows ceremony,” he said. “And pray that your tall buck does not cross me, or I swear I will turn him into worm fodder!”
Chapter Thirteen
The buffalo herd on their left flank provided a natural defense against any Kiowa-Comanche attack launched from that direction. Likewise, the Red River protected the northern approach, and a series of deep redrock canyons the southern approach.
The only vulnerable spot was their right flank, and Black Elk had already ordered a strong guard to protect it. The hunt would go on as planned tomorrow. But the hunters would be in constant communication with the sentries by way of signals flashed with fragments of mirrors. At the first sign of attack, they would rush back toward the camp and head it off before it reached the women and children and elders.
Touch the Sky belonged to no clan. But Arrow Keeper, as always, had instructed the women of his Owl Clan to erect the young braves tipi. The youth was crossing the central clearing, heading toward his tipi to prepare for the Medicine Arrows ceremony, when he spotted Honey Eater.
She carried her curved skinning knife, blood pail, and other equipment. He knew she was probably on her way to join the other women in her clan, making preparations for the skinning and butchering tomorrow after the kill. Fires had been kept to a minimum, and he couldn’t tell if Black Elk was lurking nearby. Playing it safe, he started to veer wide around the girl.
A moment later, however, she passed close to the small fire under the cooking tripod outside Arrow Keeper’s tipi. Though she turned her face hastily away, Touch the Sky spotted the nasty, swollen bruise covering nearly half of one side of her face.
Black Elk’s handiwork! The jealous, hotheaded warrior had beaten her.
Touch the Sky’s anger was sudden and deep. For a moment he almost ran after her to catch her and question her. But he decided against this— there was no question as to what had happened.
The only question now, he told himself, is what am I going to do about it?
He had warned Black Elk before to keep his hands off her. Warnings had clearly had no effect. Now it was time to give up on words and do as Black Elk himself often preached—let deeds speak for words.
He went to Black Elk’s tipi and found the war leader seated before the entrance flap, sharpening his knife on a whetstone.
Keeping all emotion out of his voice, Touch the Sky said, “Black Elk, I would speak with you.”
Black Elk glanced up at him, immediately wary. “I have nothing to say to you, make-believe Cheyenne.”
“No,” Touch the Sky agreed, “I have something to say to you.”
“Whatever it may be, I have no ears for it.”
“If you value life itself, you will find ears for it.”
Black Elk scowled. “Do you threaten me?”
“I have had done with threats. Now, I swear by Maiyun, you will listen! You and your worthless cousin call me a white man’s dog until I am weary of hearing it. Then so it is. This white man’s dog did learn some tricks from the hair faces, Black Elk. Let me teach you one of them.”
Without another word, Touch the Sky reached down and plucked the warrior s bone-handle knife from his hand and threw it into the surrounding bushes.
For a long moment Black Elk’s face looked as surprised as it had when Honey Eater called him a coward. Then, suddenly, he was on his feet.
“Clearly,” he said, “you are looking for your own grave.”
“Not at all,” Touch the Sky said. “I am here to show you what I learned from the palefaces. See, now you stand without a weapon to hand. Let me show you a trick.”
A heartbeat later he delivered a powerful upper-cut to the point of Black Elk’s chin. It was a smashing right fist, exactly like the blow which Hiram Steele’s wrangler Boone Wilson had given Touch the Sky when the Cheyenne was caught with Steele’s daughter Kristen.
Black Elk staggered back hard, almost falling. Touch the Sky waded in quickly before the brave could recover his balance.
“See, Black Elk? This is how white dogs are taught to fight—with their paws curled into fists. Here is some more.”
He brought a hard right to Black Elk’s stomach, a left jab to the war leader’s face. The blows were powerful, backed by hard muscle and deep wrath. Black Elk, like most Indians, knew little of boxing. Without a weapon, all he knew to do was wrestle. But the quick flurry of blows had left him stunned.
“How do you like it, Panther Clan? Now you know what it is like for Honey Eater when you strike her.”
A final hard right to the jaw dropped Black Elk where he stood.
“Now you will have ears for my words,” Touch the Sky said.
He removed his own knife from its beaded sheath and suddenly slashed his own inner left arm, drawing a scarlet ribbon of blood to trail into the ground at Black Elk’s feet.
“Now I make this blood vow, Black Elk. The next time I see or learn of you hurting her, I swear by the sun and the earth that I live on you will die a hard death! I will send you under and sully the Sacred Arrows. I do not care if it means my banishment. I am alone anyway, thanks to you and your cousin.”
Black Elk was too stunned to get back up immediately. But as Touch the Sky started to walk away, he called out.
“You might as well sing the death song now, White Man’s Shoes! Everyone in the tribe knows that you long to put on the old moccasin.” To a Cheyenne, “putting on the old moccasin” was a reference to a single man who wanted to marry a one-time married woman. “But you will have to kill me first!”
Touch the Sky turned back around.
“All in good time, Dead Ear. I have glanced the other way when you tried to murder me. When you played the white-livered coward and sent your cousin and Swift Canoe to kill me at Medicine Lake. When you fired at an ‘elk’ that turned out to be me instead. I am done trying to make peace with low-crawling cowards who speak in a wolf bark and beat women.
“I say it again, and you had best place these words next to your heart. Hurt Honey Eater one more time and this white man’s dog will feed your liver to the carrion birds.”
~*~
While Touch the Sky was setting Black Elk on the ground, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was up to his own tricks.
The young warrior was extremely ambitious and harbored secret dreams of someday leading the Cheyenne Nation in a war of extermination against the whites. Like most Indians, he had no actual concept of their numbers. But his hatred for white men had festered inside him like a poisonous canker ever since he had stood by, horrified, when blue-bloused soldiers turned his father into stew meat with a double charge of canister shot. And this Touch the Sky, had he not lived among the paleface devils so long that he permanently carried their stink?
He was also a serious obstacle to his plans. Clearly, old Arrow Keeper, perhaps the most respected elder among all the Shayiena people, favored the pretend Cheyenne. Selecting him to train as a shaman was a great honor. A tribal medicine man, in his own way, could wield as much power and influence as a chief—even more, since the Cheyenne faith in the supernatural was strong.
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was no fool. He had seen how strong his people’s faith in visions and medicine dr
eams was. And he also knew that this Touch the Sky supposedly possessed the gift of visions. He was not sure how much he himself believed in visions, but he was certain that Touch the Sky was a liar. Clearly, the white man’s dog was cleverly pretending to walk the Spirit Path. He knew full well that Arrow Keeper, who had begun to dote and drool in his frosted years, and some of the others would be impressed.
So now it was time to trap the fox in his own den.
With Swift Canoe at his side, he was paying a secret visit to an old squaw named Calf Woman of the Root Eaters Clan. Calf Woman had at least seventy winters behind her and was generally considered to be a soft-brain. However, it was common knowledge that visions were often received by the sick, dying, and mentally infirm. And Calf Woman had a certain reputation for pronouncing visions which had come true.
She also had a reputation for her love of white man’s coffee and sugar. And in his legging sash Wolf Who Hunts Smiling carried a little of both. He and Swift Canoe had obtained these at the trading post in Red Shale in exchange for pelts and furs.
Fortunately, it was dark around her tipi and no one would see them paying this visit. The two youths found the old woman sitting before the raised entrance flap, sipping yarrow tea from a buffalo-horn cup.
“Good evening, Grandmother,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling greeted her respectfully.
She peered up curiously at the two new arrivals, trying to make out their faces in the grainy twilight.
“Is that you, Half Bear?”
Swift Canoe dug an elbow into Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s ribs. Half Bear was the old woman’s son, but he had died many winters ago during the battle with the Pawnee at Beaver Creek.
“Brother,” Swift Canoe whispered, “this old hag has been struck by lightning. Best to leave it alone.”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling shook him off and said patiently, “No, Grandmother. It is Wolf Who Hunts Smiling of the Panther Clan and Swift Canoe of the Wolverine Clan. We have come to see how you are getting along.”
The old woman vaguely recognized the clan names and their faces. But both names were unknown to her addled brain. Still, it was a fine thing for such young men to come visit an old woman like this. She smiled her toothless smile and bade them sit down beside her.
“Here, Grandmother,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said, “let me put some sugar in your tea.”
“Sugar?”
“Yes, Grandmother, not honey. Fine white man s sugar.”
The old woman gripped her cup eagerly with both hands and drank the tea down quickly. She smacked her lips together appreciatively, glancing with longing at the drawstring pouch in the boy s hand. Purposely, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling dangled it as he spoke.
“I have heard a thing, Grandmother. I have heard that you are blessed with visions.”
She nodded, still watching the pouch. “Sometimes Maiyun opens the hidden eye for me, yes.”
“What sorts of things do you then see, old one?”
At a sign from Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, Swift Canoe stirred up the dying embers of the old woman’s fire. Now they could see the deep lines and crags of her face, the scrawny shoulders hunched under her red blanket.
Swift Canoe dumped the last of the tea out of her baked-clay kettle and added more water from the bladder bag nearby. He threw a little coffee in to boil. Despite her advanced age, Calf Woman smelled it instantly.
“Is that coffee?” she asked eagerly.
“Yes, indeed,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said. “Fine white man’s coffee, not the bitter brew which our Southern kin acquire from the Mexicans. It will be very tasty with sugar in it.”
“May I have some?”
“Have some? Grandmother, we are preparing it for you.”
She smiled happily. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling repeated his question. “What do you see in your visions, Grandmother?”
“I see many things, child. I have seen revelations, and I have seen curses. When War Bonnet was killed by Pawnees, I saw it happen while he still lay sleeping in his tipi. When Sun Road lost the sacred Medicine Hat, a vision told me where to find it.”
The coffee was boiling now, the deep, rich aroma wafting into the old woman’s nostrils.
“These are fine things indeed,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said. He handed the horn cup to Swift Canoe, who poured some coffee into it. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling added a few generous pinches of sugar and handed it to Calf Woman.
She sipped at it. “Ipewa,” she said in Cheyenne. “Good.”
“Tell me, Grandmother,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said. “Have you never had a vision concerning this Touch the Sky?”
She glanced up from the cup. “Touch the Sky?”
“The tall youth who arrived in our camp four winters ago dressed in white man’s clothing?”
She shook her head. “I think not.”
“Are you sure, Grandmother?” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling added another pinch of sugar to her coffee. His furtive eyes never left the old woman. “Perhaps if you could recall a vision about him, there would be more coffee and sugar in it for you.”
“More coffee and sugar?”
“All of this,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling assured the confused old woman, proffering the packets.
The old woman stared at them covetously. Coffee and sugar were fine things indeed. And truly, she had had many visions in her time.
“Perhaps,” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling suggested, reading the look on her face, “you have simply forgotten it?”
“Perhaps,” she agreed.
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling shared a victorious glance with Swift Canoe.
“Let us see,” the youth said, tucking the coffee and sugar into her sash, “if we can refresh your memory.”
Chapter Fourteen
Soon after Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Swift Canoe visited old Calf Woman, the Renewal of the Medicine Arrows ceremony was held. Once again Touch the Sky would serve as assistant to Arrow Keeper.
The entire tribe began to gather in the middle of their temporary camp, although this time only the warriors would actually participate in leaving gifts for the Arrows. The Renewal was held annually, and before battle, and after some serious crime such as murder had sullied the entire people.
The Kiowa and Comanche had no taboo against attacking by night. So all the warriors had their battle rigs ready and to hand. Women and older children had all armed themselves with knives, clubs, and spiked tomahawks. Sentries had been posted, and would be relieved later to make their sacrifices to the Arrows.
Touch the Sky donned his mountain lion skin, again wondering for a moment—had its big medicine protected him from bullets and arrows during the attack on the hunt camp, or had he just been fortunate? He braided his long, loose locks and then wrapped them with strips of red-painted buckskin.
Two Twists and the other junior warriors were especially proud. As recognition of their bravery during the attack, they would be participating in the Renewal for the first time. Tomorrow, during the hunt, they would serve as the all-important guard on the tribe’s vulnerable east flank—in the direction of the rising sun, out of which the Kiowa and Comanche often chose to attack.
For a moment, before he left his tipi and joined the gathering clans, Touch the Sky stared off into the darkness which surrounded the camp.
He heard nothing to cause fear: only the occasional bellowing of a buffalo bull in the nearby valley, or the staccato barking of coyotes. But although the sentries had not raised the wolf howl of alarm, he sensed the presence of their enemy nearby.
Nor were all his enemies outside the clan circles. Again he heard Little Horse’s warning: Keep your back to a tree.
His beating of Black Elk earlier had marked a new stage in their mutual hatred. For the first time he had gone on the offensive and whipped his enemy into temporary submission. But he knew Black Elk would never brook such treatment. And Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had been convinced, after the Bull Whips flogged him during the hunt, that Touch the Sky would again be clearly marked as an outsider. He had been se
ething ever since his enemy’s rescue of the non-combatants had again restored Touch the Sky to a position of some respect in the eyes of the others.
However, there was no time now to dwell on such thoughts. He heard the rhythmic drumming start as young women began the dance beat, pounding on hollow logs and shaking gourds filled with pebbles.
Many had gathered by the time he joined Arrow Keeper in front of a Cottonwood stump. A huge ceremonial fire illuminated the clearing and the coyote-fur pouch atop the stump, which held the four sacred Medicine Arrows that symbolized the fate of the tribe.
Touch the Sky spotted Black Elk in his best war bonnet, coup feathers trailing the ground behind him. Many stared curiously at the dark bruises discoloring his face, knowing full well how he must have gotten them.
But when Honey Eater stepped into the firelight, Touch the Sky had eyes for no one else. Indeed, everyone in the tribe stared in awe.
She had never looked this beautiful. She wore her finest doeskin dress with a tasseled belt of buffalo hair. The dress was adorned with dyed elk teeth, gold coins, brightly dyed feathers. She had donned new quilled moccasins and her finest bone choker. No attempt had been made to disguise her mutilated hair. It was as if she wore Black Elks unjust punishment as a badge of honor.
Touch the Sky also spotted Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Swift Canoe when they exchanged conspiratorial glances. Some new trouble was in the wind, and Touch the Sky expected it to blow his way.
Arrow Keeper opened the ceremony with a prayer of praise and thanks to Maiyun, the Great Medicine Man. Then, one after another, the painted warriors began dancing around the fire, kicking their knees high and shouting “Hi-ya, hi-ya!” over and over in time to the pounding rhythms. Since a possible battle loomed, they would fast from now until the danger was over. Although this sometimes weakened them, it also created the lightheaded trance which encouraged brave deeds—and immunity to pain—in battle.