by Win Blevins
This one had a brain. Even when she was sick half to death, she used an expressive word. “All day yesterday and today, depleted?” Richtarsch asked.
“Yes. Don’t seem to have any energy. Completely drained. Did anyone mail the letter to my sister?”
Yes, my dear, you have an infection, a bad one. “The letter has been taken care of. Mrs. Maclean”—he spoke urgently now—“we are approaching a critical time. We must make a decision.” She closed her eyes, and he wondered if she heard him, and if she was capable of making a decision.
“Your infection is serious. As your physician, I believe it threatens your life. I recommend that we remove your leg above the infected place, in other words just below the knee. You will still be able to walk. What do you say?”
He waited, and for a moment didn’t feel sure she’d heard him. When she opened her eyes, though, he saw the pain and grief.
“How long do I have to decide?” Ah—pain, grief, and increased awareness. Good woman.
“I would prefer a decision today. I am prepared to do the procedure this afternoon. Waiting is dangerous. If you insist, we will wait until tomorrow. Given the seriousness of the situation, though, I cannot recommend even that.”
“Please give me the facts as you see them, Doctor.”
She looked more awake, at least. Richtarsch told her truthfully. “The wound on your calf is infected, and the infection has spread systemically. That means through your entire system. You may overcome the infection through your constitution, but I see no signs of that. To wait for that would be to risk your life. I recommend removal of the leg below the knee, as soon as possible. You will be able still to walk, with the help of an artificial limb.” He stopped and waited.
“Does the surgery,” she asked softly, “also put my life at hazard?”
“It is not without risk to life. It can go wrong. The other course, however, is more dangerous.”
She reached and patted his hand lightly, a gesture he found too familiar.
“Perhaps, Doctor, if you would ask Mrs. Wockerley to bring me a cup of coffee to help me stay alert, and give me thirty minutes to think.”
He nodded. Yes, good woman. “Naturally,” said the doctor, with the stress on the second syllable, making it sound like natürlich.
How do you say good-bye to a leg?
Elaine dreamed. Not by mistake, or through drowsiness. Knowing necessity for what it was, she let herself go in a reverie, drifting, floating in and out of time and space. Strangely, and sweetly, in the reverie what she saw and heard and smelled and felt seemed not half-real but ultra-real.
Later she would not be able to remember most of what she spun from the warp of memory and imagination, and the weft of something like vision. He saw herself running behind Dora, just barely behind, on a race to the pond, and wondering if she had a right leg and being unable to see it or to feel its foot striking the earth and knowing it must be there but being eerily sure it wasn’t. She dared not look.
She saw herself standing up beside her husband-to-be in front of the missionary, in her yellow dress and about to be wed, and seeing her right foot planted solid on the floor and feeling glad, absurdly glad that it was there, reaching down to feel it—warm and fleshy it was—and looking up at Adam and laughing like buddies with him because she was feeling her own leg in front of the preacher.
Afterward—or was it an entirely different time?—Adam lifted her up to help her into her sidesaddle and nipped her playfully on the shoulder with his teeth and let her go, and because she had no right leg to hold on to the horns with, she fell out of the saddle and through his reaching arms and past the earth and into the eternal void, falling endlessly.
She woke up after that one with a start. Lying back down, she reminded herself that self-torture wasn’t necessary.
She returned to the scene of her own wedding, and laughing with Adam about feeling her own leg, and the leg turned to squish in her fingers and bled scarlet all over her hands and arms and her wedding dress, and she fainted.
In this reverie, this heightened state, not merely what the whites meant by dream but what the Cheyennes meant, the eight-year-old Elaine did a cartwheel in front of her father, daringly exposing her bloomers to her daddy and her whole family. Elaine, though, noticed only her daddy. And he laughed with delight, the top of his beard trembling, and the second time she cartwheeled he grabbed for her legs and got hold of one ankle but she pulled the other, the right one, back at the knee, because it was, most strangely, at once there and not there. And she grabbed his big head to her breasts (yes, she was grown and had breasts) and held him and said how sorry, how very sorry, she was for the awful, missing leg. And he started to weep with her, but she realized she was holding an emptiness to her breast—her father was not there—and she woke again in a fright.
The awakened, alert, adult Elaine Cummings Maclean made a grimace for a smile and got hold of herself. She drank her coffee, which was cold. And she saw Dr. Richtarsch coming up the walk. A soldier followed him bearing what appeared to be a tool kit.
When Dr. Richtarsch opened the door and looked questioningly at her, she said only, “Yes.” He nodded curtly at the soldier.
Dr. Richtarsch went inside to get Dr. Wockerley. The soldier started unpacking the tools, several scalpels, silk thread, needles, scissors, a small saw, and some sort of burner she’d never seen. The soldier set it up, calling it a Bunsen burner. She smelled gas as he touched a match to its top, and it made a steady, blue flame.
Elaine felt a great wrenching heave through her insides, like violent nausea, but she didn’t throw up.
Dr. Richtarsch picked up the saw and looked at it for a moment. Dr. Wockerley stepped forward with a folded linen cloth, and the familiar smell of chloroform came over her. As she lost consciousness, the saw rose in her mind’s eye, tidily gnawing at her leg bone.
Chapter 5
Sings Wolf sat his horse and waited for Smith to decide. He was well mounted now—all three of them were, riding the dead scouts’ big American horses and their light McClellan saddles, with the rest of their gear, U.S. Army issue, packed on Hindy’s draft animals. They looked down on a baker’s dozen horses in a fenced pasture, and the ranch building beyond.
“The people need them,” Sings Wolf said simply, without emphasis.
Yes, but … Smith was wanted for kidnapping a white girl, maybe for killing her father, for killing three scouts of the U.S. Army, and stealing army horses and equipment. Fortunately, they could execute him only once.
And fat chance they would mistake his identity. Nothing more common around here than six-and-a-half-foot Indians who speak English like a Dartmouth graduate and are trained in medicine, is there, Doctor?
He wondered whether Elaine would suffer on his account. Would they persecute her somehow for being his wife? Would they mock her for being married to a murderer? Would they hold her to guarantee his surrender?
His wife seemed to him an infinity away. He thought of her in his bedroll at dawn and dusk, when he got a little nap. He hoped she healed rapidly. He hoped she would go to Fort Robinson and wait for him. He feared she would go home, and become a Massachusetts schoolmarm, and eventually make a respectable marriage. Whatever she decided, it was beyond his reach. He had moved into a world with its own gravitational pull, which he could not overcome.
So why didn’t he want to steal this ranchers horses? Why not, indeed?
Smith knew he would do it. It was right for Sings Wolf. Sings Wolf looked and sounded marvelously martial. He was full of his own virility. After six decades as a woman, he glowed manhood.
Smith chuckled. He said to himself, Maybe you can store up your virility. But wasn’t the whole idea to spend it? And have a good time spending it?
He nodded once at Sings Wolf. The old warrior told Hindy to wait for them in the ravine north of the ranch buildings, a couple of miles from here. They would come immediately after dark, which was only an hour away. The girl walked her big horse off
. Ever since the rape, she’d been pliable and listless, acting half-dead. Smith was worried about her.
The old man sat down to paint his face like a veteran of a thousand raids.
As soon as she felt able, the third day after her surgery, Elaine dictated a telegram to her mother and sister:
I HAVE SURVIVED STOP RIGHT LEG AMPUTATED BELOW THE KNEE STOP LONG REHABILITATION MAY MEAN VISIT HOME STOP SAD BUT BEARING UP STOP YOUR LOVING DAUGHTER ELAINE
Sings Wolf gazed into the small fire. The dawn light made it nearly invisible. He was uneasy. Not tired, just uneasy.
Since he had claimed his manhood, Sings Wolf felt strong. His body was no longer seventy winters worn, but new. So he had been able to push the stolen horses hard all night with Vekifs and the white child, not sleeping at all. Sings Wolf thought this push unnecessary. They had made off with the horses at night and had seen and heard nothing of the white ranch people. He thought maybe the people were gone into town because of the Indian scare. Or else they hadn’t been watchful.
If the ranchers followed the horses’ trail, thought Sings Wolf, they had not started until the next morning, and so would be too far behind to catch up before the animals were part of the herd of three hundred Tsistsistas-Suhtaio. The people’s trail was fresh now—Sings Wolf, Vekifs, and Hindy would catch up with the people tomorrow.
And they would ride to a descant of evil. Sings Wolf was beginning to feel that evil now, no more visible than the wind but just as real. He felt it in the turning of hairs on his arms, in the small turbulence in his chest, in his oppressing sense of blight here, in his held-back despair.
He realized that his two companions did not notice it, not Hindy napping there across the fire, not Vekifs standing watch on the horses. To him it was remarkable that they could look about and see nothing but the usual arid, rolling plains of the country between the Platte and the Arkansas. They did not sense the hints here, and they would not hear the awful melody, thrummed loudly by all the living things, at the hill where the blood ran deep. Sings Wolf shrugged and stood up.
“Let’s go,” he said, not loudly.
Hindy sat up immediately, rubbing her eyes. A willing girl, that one—she will make a good woman of the Tsistsistas-Suhtaio, he thought. A little food, a little nap, and she is ready to ride all day.
Vekifs came to get his saddle. He picked up a saddle in each hand, his and Hindy’s, and headed back toward the rope corral. His strength was wonderful.
But if some of his blood was not white, he would feel what was here. He did not, so Sings Wolf would have to tell him. Last evening the sky had even sifted down a thin snow for a few minutes, the first sign of winter, and a sign that it was time to tell stories.
Sings Wolf gave it a moment’s thought. He had best tell his tale here, before they got to the hill where the whites had done most of the killing three years ago. There the spirits acted out the slaughter perpetually. And all the malignity, the darkness of human beings and of the universe—it was still there, a palpable evil. If the spirits heard Sings Wolf speak of the evil, they would be ill-disposed toward him and his companions.
But if Vekifs was to be truly Cheyenne, he must hear, feel, know, understand. So when Vekifs started to take down the rope corral, Sings Wolf stayed his hand.
“Grandson,” began Sings Wolf, “you do not know what happened a little below here, down the Sappa River.” Smith had gathered from the hints, the silences, the turns away from some conversational directions that the Human Beings didn’t want to talk about it. They avoided speaking the names of the dead, and they didn’t talk about what was too sad for tears. So people died here, doubtless lots of people. If Sings Wolf was about to ignore the taboo and tell him what happened, it was important.
Sings Wolf told it simply, without emphasis, without elaboration, without pause. Except for the quaver in his voice and the grief in his face, his telling might have seemed matter-of-fact.
Some soldiers and volunteers (those bastards again) chased a band of Human Beings in this direction from Fort Reno because Black Horse refused to go to jail. He broke away and fled with the Tsistsistas-Suhtaio. They fled rapidly to the north, back to Powder River country, just like now. Many people on this trip were at Sappa Creek, including Sings Wolf
Somehow the whites got the Cheyennes pinned down in a difficult place. The women had to dig holes for themselves and the children, and the men shot from rifle pits. But the Human Beings had only a few guns and not much ammunition, and they were finally overwhelmed. It was one of the few times the whites were willing to fight all the way, and the people couldn’t hold them off.
Some people escaped, slipping off to the rear. But lots of warriors were killed. Sings Wolf mentioned slaughtered warriors without using their names—the oldest son of Two Feathers, the brother of Blue Knife, the father of Singing Crane. It was too long a recitation. Smith knew many of the warriors and had fought with some of them.
When the warriors were dead, and the soldiers and volunteers came up, many women and children were still hiding in their pits.
Sings Wolf hesitated now, and went on with audible resolve. The whites clubbed the women and children, even the infants, with the butts of their guns. Sings Wolf listed the dead women and children without naming them. He did it evenly, but his eyes gave him away—he had left the present and was in the past, a past that was nearly unspeakable.
Then the whites burned the people’s belongings—tipi covers, poles, buffalo robes, everything. And they threw the bodies of the Indians on the fires, some still alive.
Sings Wolf looked Smith flush in the eyes. His wordless gaze said, Do you see? Do you understand? Then the old man untied the rope and let the horses out.
So. My grandfather has spoken the simple truth, and will say no more about it.
Sings Wolf handed Smith the reins of his mount. Smith was too affected to move yet.
Smith was thinking that to him, it was an evil inflicted on the people three years ago. To Sings Wolf it was more, much more. It was a continuing expression of the malign forces in the universe. As such, it was still happening. Sings Wolf gazed upon the present and the past simultaneously. As he rode into the scene today, what happened there would be happening again. It would always be happening, murder after murder, implacably.
And for Smith to put the event back to three years ago, to push it away, made no difference. He was stunned, dumbfounded.
Sings Wolf was mounted. He yelled at the horses and moved them down the trail. Smith had to get going.
The day after she sent her telegram, Elaine got a wire back:
BUCK UP STOP OF COURSE YOU SURVIVED STOP YOU ARE A CUMMINCS STOP YOU CAN DO ANYTHINC STOP WE LOVE YOU STOP MOTHER AND DORA
Dr. Richtarsch instructed Fran Wockerley to read it to Elaine as soon as she was alert, and to give her the hundred dollars that came with it. Elaine wasn’t alert enough until the next day.
Chapter 6
Smith, Sings Wolf, and Hindy caught up with the main band of Human Beings about noon and were received warmly by Lisette and Rain. The people went into camp early in the afternoon—they would rest a day or two to let their weak horses recuperate. Sings Wolf immediately gave the stolen horses away, a genuine boon.
The women quickly fixed Smith, Sings Wolf, and Hindy something to eat. They accepted Hindy into the family without question.
The news was good and not so good. Yes, the Tsistsistas-Suhtaio had whipped Colonel Lewis back at the forks of Punished Woman Creek. They would have whipped him worse, but some young warrior had gotten excited and shot too soon and spoiled the ambush. And they hadn’t been bothered by soldiers since that day.
But the people were low in spirit. Their horses were exhausted, and some died every day, or the people killed them for food. And the tribe had limped past the hill on the Sappa River where so many relatives died not long ago. Lisette said no more. Smith knew she implied that the badness of the place, the spirit of evil there, brought everyone low.
S
o Smith wandered through the camp and found out what was happening in the strangest of ways: Little Finger Nail was drawing in his canvas-covered account book.
Smith had come to like Finger Nail. The young warrior spoke seldom, seemed game for any sort of adventure, and smiled appealingly, the sweet smile of an easygoing, congenial youth. And he was beautiful. His face was striking in a way that was still boyish, his clothes hung on him becomingly, he moved gracefully, and somehow he just looked like a picture, a romantic version in soft contours of a plains warrior. He wore a bird in his hair, which he thought lent him his sweetness of voice. The way he’d tied the feathers onto his lance was somehow just right, the painting on his shield was handsome, the way he sat in his saddle dramatic. All the while with that boyish smile. Smith supposed that the eye of the artist shaped all his life.
Finger Nail was depicting yesterday’s coups. Some young men had gone after horses. When they saw the white rancher had his horses carefully guarded, they knew the word was out. Finger Nail had crept up on a corral, killed the guard with his knife, scalped him, and chased the horses out. Then he had ridden back against the pursuers and struck one with his war club, a fine coup indeed, facing rifles to strike a blow by hand.
The fresh scalp hanging from a cottonwood branch told the rest of the story. Auburn, the scalp was.
Finger Nail talked a little in his soft, youthful voice while he drew. The young men raided because the Human Beings needed horses—the people could not walk to Powder River and carry all their belongings on their backs. While the warriors raided, they took life and they took hair. “We remember,” he said simply.
Finger Nail looked up from his work when he said those words. His eyes were large and soft, pretty, but Smith knew that he was among the most daring of the young men. “We spoke among ourselves of killing nineteen whites here.” That was the number of Human Beings killed here three years ago. “We are not finished yet.”
Smith left him to his work and talked to others. Before long he understood: Little Wolf no longer had any control of his warriors. Morning Star sought no control. Everyone felt the same way. Stealing horses was necessary for reasons of practicality. Taking scalps was mandatory for reasons of the spirit. The policy of walking softly through the white-man country was dead. It brought no mercy from the white man anyway.