The Holy Road dww-2

by Michael Blake

  Having no idea what the ritual might mean, Kicking Bird's curiosity gave way to astonishment as the white man's mouth suddenly admitted the stick and a violent scouring commenced inside.

  The best Kicking Bird could deduce was that, though it lacked any hint of elegance or sanctity, Lawrie Tatum must be performing some kind of purification ceremony. Perhaps there was some evil entity residing in his mouth.

  After repeating the action several more times, the stick was withdrawn and shaken. Lawrie Tatum lifted the canteen to his lips, sloshed the water around in his mouth, and, bending forward, spat all of it onto the ground. Then he turned as casually as if he had just urinated and disappeared into the lodge.

  Any chance Kicking Bird might have had for sleep was doomed by what he had witnessed. Seeing such inexplicable conduct reinforced and sharpened all that was different between Indian and white, and as he continued to sit in the shadow of the moon, contemplating Lawrie Tatum's bizarre behavior he felt the cloud of euphoria he had been riding all afternoon slowly dissipate.

  Exchanges of information and negotiation that might determine how the two peoples could coexist were nothing when compared to the gulf in ways of being that existed between the races, and it was with that mindful realization that Kicking Bird finally went back to his bed.

  What little rest he at last achieved was more akin to intermittent catnapping than it was to real sleep: His hopes had sobered but not died, and he floated through a queer twilight of consciousness in which he reminded himself that even if it would be prudent to go slower the prospect of more interplay with Lawrie Tatum the following day was an exciting one.

  It never occurred to him that he would not see Lawrie Tatum the following day. Nor did it occur to him that one of the men who had gone hunting with Dances With Wolves would be standing at his lodge door in the predawn chill.

  The weary voice calling for him to come out belonged to Lone Young Man, and when the Comanche statesman looked into his face he knew something terrible had happened.

  The lodges of the Kicking Bird delegation had been struck, their horses gathered and loaded, and the entire party had already ridden clear of Touch The Clouds' camp when Lawrie Tatum stepped timidly out of his guest quarters half an hour after sunup.

  At first he was disoriented, because he was certain that the man called Kicking Bird had been living in a spot that was now bare. As soon as he saw Touch The Clouds, the Quaker agent tried to clear up the confusion, and after a few minutes of fitful signs and words and playacting, the suspicion was confirmed. The Comanche Lawrie Tatum thought of as intelligent and levelheaded had simply picked up and left, presumably for home, without saying good-bye and without any agreement to meet again.

  It wasn't as if Lawrie Tatum hadn't been warned. Anyone who had ever dealt with Indians had told him they could not be trusted — that understanding the Indian mind was about as easy as figuring out the meaning of life, that depending on an Indian to do what he said he would do was like a dry farmer depending on rain in a drought.

  Lawrie Tatum remembered these admonitions when he glanced again at the vacant ground lately occupied by Kicking Bird's lodge. He still liked the Comanche and it was not in his constitution to give up — whether it be on a patch of skimpy corn back home or the ambitious peace policy the government was hoping he and scores of other Quakers would find a way to implement.

  And yet there was bristling in a remote corner of his mind. As he stared at the ring where Kicking Bird's lodge had lately been, Lawrie Tatum couldn't help feeling that in some way he had been played for a fool.

  Chapter XIX

  It was a typical cavalry unit: heavy with men who had not served long, a few savvy veterans with the tenacity to forge a career in the army and a commander who only needed to shave every third or fourth day.

  At the beginning, reports of a Comanche war party had roused the troops with the prospect of relief from the drudgery of work detail and the incessant nitpicking of certain officers who treated the dreary garrison as their personal fiefdom. All but the most chronic goldbricks had jostled for a place in the unit that was formed to take the field, and despite the lack of fanfare that signaled their departure for the wilderness, spirits were high when they rode out.

  It was not long, however, before a host of deficiencies began to glare in the bright light of action. Their fuzz-faced commander little more than an earnest boy from a decent family, was operating under a purposely vague directive: to drive the marauders away from the property of citizens without actively engaging them unless fired upon. The lack of potency in his orders immediately created hesitancy and doubt in the young lieutenant, which soon spread virus-like to each member of his command.

  To make matters worse, an individual who was far better suited to the role of confidence man than scout had been delegated by the post commander to guide the lieutenant across country, break trail, and advise him on matters pertaining to modes of Comanche warfare.

  The scout looked the part. He wore buckskin pants, a flannel shirt, a plumed campaign hat, moccasins, and a band of silver rings on his wrist. But in truth, most of his getup, like the arsenal of weapons he carried, was plunder from his past career as one of numerous ex-Confederate soldiers who had mined opportunities for mischief and crime up and down the Texas frontier in the years following the War Between the States.

  None of this came out when he offered his services to the post commander, speaking in a slow, deliberate drawl. At strategic intervals in his fabricated personal history he directed a stream of tobacco juice into a nearby spittoon with uncanny accuracy, a feat which in the eyes of the post commander lent credibility to all he said. The presence of two scruffy Tonkawas standing silently against the back wall also seemed to underline the scout's veracity, and although he demanded an unusually high fee for his services, the post commander was unwilling to let such a valuable man slip away for want of a few dollars.

  The scout had counted on the naivete of the military and, upon meeting the young lieutenant he was to serve, felt his confidence soar. Neither he nor his Tonkawa assistants had ever been in Comanche country, but the lieutenant had never been anywhere, having only lately arrived in Texas. Duping the post commander had been easy enough and pulling the wool over the shavetail's trusting eyes was about as hard as robbing a church.

  Still, the scout's charade might have been exposed. A veteran sergeant had suspected fraud from the outset and he mentioned his misgivings to the lieutenant. But the young officer didn't act on the sergeant's hunch because the scout and his Tonkawas, once they picked up the trail, had been tracking the big Comanche war party with pronounced ease.

  The success of the so-called scouts was not due to their expertise, however. It was wholly attributable to Wind In His Hair's clever, timeless strategy of luring the enemy to his doom. The column of horse soldiers had been watched from the moment they took the field, and on several occasions when the hair-mouths hesitated in their trek, warriors were dispatched to show themselves in order to keep the pursuers on course.

  The line of march was designed by Wind In His Hair to take the white men through the roughest country possible in hope that they would break down. At the end of the first day, the soldiers found themselves at a stream whose water was so alkaline that horses refused to drink and the troops, even after straining it repeatedly, swallowed the muddy liquid only with great difficulty.

  At the conclusion of the second day's march through an arid, treeless country, the troops were on hands and knees in a dry streambed, throwing up great loads of sand to get at a few handfuls of silty, brackish water.

  The lieutenant felt compelled to question his guide and was assured that they would hit a clear stream around noon of the following day. This was received as gospel though wholly untrue — the scout had no idea where water might be found.

  While the lieutenant was eating supper alone in his tent, the unit's ranking sergeant came to warn him that the men were becoming dispirited and that many of their h
orses would soon be rendered useless without water and feed. The lieutenant, who was also becoming irascible, reminded the sergeant that he was neither deaf nor blind and did not need to be told how badly things were going.

  The sergeant, long used to tongue-lashings from officers, took no offense from the lieutenant's rejoinder and, asking permission to speak openly, got to the real business of his visit.

  "Those Comanches, sir. . I think they're leading us. Begging pardon, sir, but far as I can tell, all these scouts know how to do is drink whiskey."

  "Sergeant," the lieutenant countered, irritably, "these people were engaged by the post commander. Are you trying to tell me that your post commander doesn't know what he's doing?"

  "Not at all, no sir," the sergeant said patiently, "but, pardon my language, sir, that fella that calls himself scout is full of shit as a Christmas pie. I don't think he even knows where we are."

  The lieutenant glared up from his camp table. "That will be enough, Sergeant."

  "Yes sir."

  After the sergeant left his tent, the lieutenant considered his misgivings but quickly banished the reservations gnawing in the back of his mind. Preferring to trust the overall wisdom of the army he served, he went to bed early, confident that they would strike water the following day.

  The scout and his Tonkawa partners were still up after most of the bivouac had fallen asleep, agreeing, over their last bottle of whiskey, that their options were shrinking and that if conditions grew worse, they had best be ready to cut and run. They had hoped the Comanche war party would melt away, as they usually did, and that a return to the post would be ordered after a day or two of fruitless pursuit. But the trail was too clear and too hot to give up.

  As the Tonkawas struggled to stay awake, the scout, undecided as to when would be the best time to make a break, told them to be ready to leave that night. They had already been paid and there was nothing to keep them. He fell asleep with the idea that he would nap for a couple of hours, then slip out of the wretched camp unnoticed.

  None of the Comanches slept that night. They counciled not far from the streambed and decided that the enemy was sufficiently exhausted for an attack. Wind In His Hair sent two of his best warriors down to look the camp over, and when they returned with word that all was quiet and that five of the six men guarding the horses had fallen asleep, Wind In His Hair told everyone to prepare for a night assault.

  An hour before dawn, nearly twenty warriors with Wind In His Hair at their head swept through the soldier camp, waving blankets, firing rifles, and splitting the still night air with ear-shattering screams that plunged everything before them into chaos.

  They had not come to fight the soldiers but made straight for the army horses, which panicked as the commotion bore down on them. They reared and pitched and twisted in the air, ripping out the heavy metal picket pins that had held them anchored to the ground. The frantic animals galloped in all directions, some tearing back through the tents that had been pitched in the streambed. The anchor pins bounced wildly at the end of their lead lines, wreaking havoc on the canvas shelters and severely injuring several soldiers.

  Wind In His Hair and his men succeeded in driving a large number of the terrified horses in the direction of a dozen more warriors, who by prearrangement were waiting downstream to receive them.

  The whole operation began and ended in less than a minute. No Comanche suffered more than a scratch, and the enemy was instantly deprived of almost half his horses. Chances that all the hair-mouths could be destroyed were suddenly much better and Wind In His Hair nearly succumbed to the temptation to try to overwhelm the camp before it could come to its senses. But in a running council he convinced his exuberant warriors to wait one more sleep, to wait until the hair-mouths were dreaming of death. Then it would be much easier to kill them.

  At the first howls of the warriors the scout and his Tonkawa cohorts put their plan into action and, by the time the Comanches had passed through, heading east after the horses, the three dubious guides had grabbed up their own animals and fled west.

  During the upheaval, none of the soldiers realized that the guides abandoning them, and in the confusion of trying to put the camp together while simultaneously mounting a defense, no one bothered to count heads. It was long after sunup before anyone realized that the three individuals to whom they had entrusted their lives would not be coming back. Only the clique of veterans bothered to imagine what they would do to the cowards if they ever happened on them again.

  Though the departure of the scouts had gone undetected by their employers, it did not escape the notice of the three warriors whom Wind In His Hair had posted west of the field camp to observe any man or animal fleeing in that direction.

  Anxious to put distance between themselves and the fighting, the three deserters pushed their horses blindly into darkness, thinking that at the coming of light they would make a wide swing back to the east and safety.

  But their plan was disrupted shortly after the first rosy hues of dawn appeared in the east, when one of the Tonkawas glanced over his shoulder and saw the silhouettes of three hatless horsemen cresting a rise a quarter-mile behind them. Alarmed, they paused momentarily in their flight and had barely begun to discuss whether to make a stand or run for it when they heard the curious, rushing whir of an arrow in flight. An instant later the shaft buried itself in the midsection of one of the Tonkawas. With a low groan he slumped forward, then tumbled helplessly from his horse.

  The scout and his remaining assistant spun their horses and saw a young Comanche a few yards in front of them. As his horse danced under him, the Comanche drew a second arrow from his quiver.

  Now they heard whoops and, turning once more, saw their three Comanche stalkers coming at a gallop. The remaining Tonkawa put heels to his horse. The scout slid his rifle from its case but as he raised it to take aim at the young Comanche he realized to his horror that he was too late. The boy's bow was drawn. The scout heard the bowstring sing and saw the arrow take flight. His hands flew to his throat as the shaft tore through his windpipe and sent him spilling over the rump of his horse. The scout lived long enough for a single look at the face of his killer, who stood over him with a look of wondrous shock.

  Smiles A Lot had never expected to run into a white man and two Tonkawas at dawn on the open prairie. He had stopped following Wind In His Hair when night fell but when he woke in the dark, hearing gunfire, he had jumped on his pony and sprinted toward the sound. Luckily, he had seen the white man and the Tonkawas before they had seen him and, guided by instinct he did not know he possessed, had strung an arrow and shot. From that moment all he remembered were images; the white man's rifle, the Tonkawa goading his horse, the battle cries of his friends, his pony squirming under him, his second arrow seeking its mark with a slowness that made him think he was dreaming.

  Hears The Sunrise glanced at the two bodies in the grass, then stared at Smiles A Lot. That the boy who was good with horses had killed two of the enemy was indisputable, yet Hears The Sunrise still could not believe it.

  "Where did you come from?" he asked gruffly, as he could not question what he had seen with his own eyes.

  "I've been following you," Smiles A Lot replied.

  A sharp yell drew their attention, and in the distance they saw Iron Jacket and Hawk Flying celebrating the death of their enemy. Their knives flashed in the early morning light as the figures slashed and hacked at the body of the hated Tonkawa.

  "Where is Wind In His Hair?" Smiles A Lot said dully.

  Hears The Sunrise tossed his head curdy over a shoulder. “Back there."

  "I need to see him."

  "I'll take you," Hears The Sunrise grunted, stepping over to the dead Tonkawa. He slipped a hand ax from his belt and spat on the body.

  Then he struck the corpse, slicing deep into its side with the blade of his ax.

  Smiles A Lot gazed down at the dead white man. He looked the body up and down, and, guided by the same impulse that
had brought death to the scout, he drew his skinning knife from its scabbard.

  Deep into the afternoon the lieutenant and his troops waited behind the breastworks they had dug in the dry streambed for an attack that never came. They were sure the Indians would come back, but in the baking heat and dead air nothing moved or made a sound for hours, and at three o'clock the lieutenant assembled a scouting party of a dozen men on the best remaining horses and sent them out. An hour later they returned to report they had seen and heard nothing. The Indians had disappeared.

  The lieutenant decided, quite rightly, that he should form up his command and get them back to the post before they died of thirst. With half the bedraggled, demoralized command on foot they started the long, hot march home. Two men were dead, one more would die on the way, and the lieutenant, though he tried mightily, could think of nothing to include in his report that might reflect well on his actions.

  What rankled him most, however, was something similar to what had irritated Lawrie Tatum. The lieutenant had ridden out to chastise and scatter a band of ignorant, primitive aborigines led by a wild man with one eye. It should have been no contest, but they had toyed with him. They had killed his men and stolen his horses and then slunk back into the wilderness, leaving him with nothing to report to his superiors but failure.

  Chapter XX

  Dances With Wolves was as surprised as anyone when the girl Hunting For Something and the boy Rabbit rode into his camp. They had come out of a night storm, drenched and exhausted, like castaways washed miraculously ashore, and the tale of survival they had to tell easily fulfilled the promise of their dramatic entrance.