The Holy Road dww-2

by Michael Blake

His face was painted black with red half-circles around his eyes. In the separate world of the dance it was fitting, but here it made her uneasy.

  “You scare me now."

  Smiles A Lot touched his face with a finger. "The paint?"

  "It makes me afraid."

  Smiles A Lot grinned and nodded his head. "Good," he said, "maybe it will make the enemy afraid, too."

  He reached down for the water bowl and she handed it up. Then he sat in front of her and splashed water on his face.

  "Are you tired? " she asked, handing him a cloth.

  "Yes, I feel good."

  While his eyes were covered with a cleaning rag, Smiles A Lot heard her say, "You were the best,"

  "I was just dancing," he said and shrugged.

  For reasons that mystified the new warrior, Hunting For Something seemed suddenly frustrated.

  "I thought you were the best," she said, rising defiantly off the floor. "Good night."

  Helplessly, he watched her step past the bed where Rabbit was sleeping and slip huffily into her own.

  Smiles A Lot wanted to ask what was wrong but she had turned her face away. All he could see was the back of her head. He finished rubbing the paint off his face, slipped out of his clothes, slid under the covers of his own bed, and tried to think of tomorrow.

  But he could not maintain a single line of thought. The girl lying a few steps away kept intruding and he had just begun to think of how he might find the courage to go to her when he heard a rustling of covers.

  A moment later she was standing over him in the half-light of the dying fire, staring down with an odd look on her face.

  "I want to sleep with you," she said emphatically and before Smiles A Lot could respond, she was pulling her dress over her head. In what seemed one motion she dropped the dress and lay down beside him, stretching her long, skinny frame straight out as she nestled against his chest.

  "There," she sighed, snaking an arm under his and pulling herself closer. "This is how it should be."

  He could feel her moist breath as she whispered against his shoulder. He could smell the fragrance of her skin. The pressure of her lithe body was the most wonderful thing he had ever felt.

  "You make me happy," he whispered. "I don't want anybody but Hunting For Something."

  As he said this he pulled her closer and he could feel her lips brush the skin on his shoulder. Her free hand stole softly onto his chest and didn't move, and Smiles A Lot thought briefly that he might levitate off the bed.

  "I want a baby," she murmured.

  One of her legs slipped between his, and Smiles A Lot's mind ceased to function under the barrage of tactile sensations that overwhelmed it. His body lost its tension as it melted into hers and they writhed under the covers as two snakes entwined, groping, twisting, undulating in celebration of instinct. The awkwardness of novices was flung aside as they feverishly searched out one another, and even as she cried out, Hunting For Something urged him on. By then Smiles A Lot was past all need of encouragement, and the perfection of the collision that came soon after left them stupefied.

  After a few minutes he rolled to one side but she did not move. Her glistening eyes stared into space while her shoulders and chest heaved for breath.

  He watched her dreamily, his fingers playing with a thick strand of her shiny, black hair.

  "I think I have it," she whispered blankly.

  "What?"

  "A baby."

  A look of puzzlement appeared on Smiles A Lot's face.

  "How do you know that?"

  "I feel different."

  "Maybe we should do it again."

  She shifted her eyes to his and smiled. "I would like that," she said.

  "I've heard that some people have to do it a lot to get a baby," he said, laughing.

  Hunting For Something turned her face to the shadowy rafters overhead.

  "You have to come back," she commanded.

  Smiles A Lot lay back then, and together the lovers contemplated the nothingness above them.

  "Warriors die sometimes," he said softly.

  "I'll pray to the Mystery every day," she countered. "I'll pray to the Mystery all the time you're gone."

  She talked on a few minutes more before she realized her husband had fallen asleep. Hunting For Something lay as she was, swathed in the fertile, pungent odor of their lovemaking, her sleepy, unfocused eyes staring into the Mystery as she marveled at the incontestable change that had taken place deep in her body.

  Then she, too, fell into a leaden sleep, which passed uninterrupted until first light, when she woke to find Rabbit's bright, inquisitive eyes gazing at her. Sometime during the night the boy had wedged himself between them.

  "What are you doing here, little brother?" she asked drowsily.

  "I got lonely. Is this how we will sleep from now on?"

  "Where's your brother? "

  "He's here."

  Rabbit turned impulsively and began to shake his sleeping brother.

  "Smiles A Lot, wake up. . Smiles A Lot!"

  While Hunting For Something packed his food and accoutrements, Smiles A Lot chose three excellent ponies from his herd and set to work in front of the lodge painting crow symbols on the tough little dapple-gray that had carried him to the Medicine Bluff and back.

  At mid-morning, Dances With Wolves appeared with his dejected children to ask Hunting For Something if she would look after them in his absence. Her heart opened to the gloomy children being left behind and she promised to take good care of them.

  Smiles A Lot had been selected, along with Dances With Wolves and a few other seasoned warriors, to scout the advance for the main column, and they disappeared to make final arrangements with their compatriots.

  In the time they were gone, Snake In Hands and Always Walking sat as listlessly as the condemned, a demeanor they maintained through the riotous, village-wide send-off for the more than one hundred cherished warriors who rode onto the plains a few hours later.

  This time a score of warriors, among them several Hard Shields, had been left behind. The village was secure, and Hunting For Something was happy when Rabbit, Snake In Hands, and Always Walking went on an egg-hunting expedition, leaving her free to daydream about Smiles A Lot through the afternoon.

  But she began to worry when there was no sign of the children at sunset and her heart jumped with fear when Rabbit came in alone just after dark.

  "'Where are Snake In Hands and Always Walking?”

  "They're gone," the boy answered impassively.

  "Gone? Where?"

  "They went after Dances With Wolves."

  "What?" cried Hunting For Something, her voice rising. “When did they go?"

  "Oh, a long time ago."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "They made me promise not to tell anyone till after dark.”

  Hunting For Something's hand had gone over her mouth and she was staring wide-eyed at nothing as her mind ran with all manner of tragic possibilities.

  "Were they on foot?" she asked, suddenly hopeful.

  "No, no, they took ponies. . and food, too."

  Rabbit's attention was momentarily diverted to a kettle hanging over the fire.

  "Can I have something to eat?"

  But there was no answer and when he turned to see why, all he caught was a glimpse of Hunting For Something's backside as she ducked out of the lodge.

  Chapter XXIV

  Because his mother was a Kiowa, he had visited the Medicine Bluff country often as a boy and knew it almost as well as his own homeland.

  Kicking Bird was thinking of his mother as he passed by the great bluff. He could not remember much of her now; but her cheerful nature came to mind, and suddenly he could see her doubled over in laughter at the telling of a funny story.

  She had been killed, along with many others, in his eighth summer, when the Pawnee overran the village they were visiting, a site easily visible from the top of the bluff he was passing just then. Much
of the village had gone out to cull buffalo from the first big herd of the season, but his mother had stayed behind to care for a dying aunt. The Pawnee killed them all, chopping off their heads, which they stuck in cooking pots.

  These they lined up in front of the village, a macabre greeting for the hunters when they returned home. The attack was avenged, just as brutally, two years later, but Kicking Bird remembered that it had done little to assuage his loss.

  Strangely, the bitter recollection of his good-natured mother's death spawned a host of other, more pleasant memories. At the top of the bluff above him he had first drawn a girl into his blanket, a girl whom he subsequently lost to a worthless man she later divorced. A stand of oak at the spot where the creek turned just ahead had yielded his first deer. A mile or two to the south he had won a hotly contested horse race, riding against the finest ponies on the plains. And a few miles ahead, eerily near his destination, Kicking Bird had first slain an enemy.

  That so much of his own life had been played out in the area he was now passing through had meaning for him personally, but to the Kiowa nation the importance of the great Medicine Bluff and its environs was far greater. It was the beating heart in the body of a country they had dominated through all living memory. For the whites to have taken root in this of all places was practically inconceivable. That he, Kicking Bird, a Comanche warrior, was actually going to call on a white representative living within sight of the shrine-like bluff was so outlandish as to be hard to believe, even when the odd-looking box made of wood that the whites called a "house" came into view.

  It was situated at the top of a rise, and to Kicking Bird's eyes it looked like a very square, very white rock. Surrounding it was a white fence made of stitched-together wood with tips shaped like arrowheads. He could see vegetation growing in a large plot behind the house. Nestled in several neat rows among the green mass he recognized a commodity called corn, which the Comanches sometimes traded for with tribes who lived far to the west.

  The house was fronted by a long, shady porch. A group of white men, some of them wearing soldier coats, their faces sunk in the overhang's shadow, stood expectantly, and as he started up the hill, Kicking Bird saw the diminutive figure of Lawrie Tatum raise an arm in greeting.

  The gesture, however, did little to reassure Kicking Bird. A group of armed soldiers were hanging around some wagons a few paces from Lawrie Tatum's house, and the presence of so many white men, including those clustered on the porch, had the effect of shrinking the Quaker down to nothing.

  At the same time, Kicking Bird's sense of being Comanche expanded, and as they pulled up in front of the bright white box, the distinctiveness of the two races, and the gulf dividing them, seemed too enormous to ever be bridged.

  Had he been alone, Kicking Bird would likely have been unable to come this far, and though he could not know their minds at this unprecedented moment, he took courage from the company of strong, wise warriors who surrounded him: Touch The Clouds and Little Mountain and Eagle Head and Pacer of the Kiowa, Sitting In The Saddle and Shield and Big Bow and Gap In The Woods of the Comanche.

  In the face of the most perplexing situation they had ever encountered, the confederation of warriors approached the porch as a solemn, single body, and when the little Quaker with the ecstatic smile stuck out his hand, Kicking Bird took it.

  Introductions were made all around, and despite not knowing who the hodgepodge of military and civilian hair-mouths were, or what their standing might be, Kicking Bird and his fellow peace-seekers took each white hand that was offered before being ushered off the porch and guided down the hill to an expansive tent that had been pitched in a shady spot to receive them.

  Ever astute, Kicking Bird's mind worked furiously as they walked to the meeting place, rapidly sorting the bits of information that were flying into his head, but by the time they had begun to seat themselves in the big soldier tent, he realized it was useless to strain for enlightenment as to what role the strange men he was meeting with would play.

  As he lit his pipe and passed it to Touch The Clouds, his deceptively impassive eyes trolled for any flicker of behavior in the whites that might throw light on what sort of men they were. The first thing he noticed, a thing so obvious that it was evident to all, was the configuration of the whites. The man who knew the Indian words was sitting off to one side while the rest placed themselves in two rows: a large grouping in the second row but only two men, a soldier and a civilian, in the first.

  Lawrie Tatum was insinuated in the back row of hair-mouths and, seeing him there, Kicking Bird realized at once that the genial Quaker did not possess the power of the two men sitting at the forefront.

  A heavy, gray-flecked beard covered the whole of the civilian's face. It circled his lips, accenting the dark, moist cave of his mouth. His skin — what little could be seen of it — had an unhealthy-looking, reddish hue, his eyes were small, and it was impossible to ignore the pitted, corpulent nose that seemed less a part of his countenance than it did an attachment. His belly filled his shirt to bursting, his fingers had the appearance of fatty stubs, and he wheezed audibly with each breath, as if something were stuck in his throat.

  The other white man, the soldier, had a smooth, unblemished face. His soldier clothes were as trim as his body and the buttons and bars clinging to his coat gleamed golden even in the murky summer light filling the tent. He had dark, shiny hair that covered his head like a cap, and his light-blue eyes were partially crossed and seemed not to move. Exceedingly thin lips were drawn neatly over hidden teeth, and his nose, in sharp contrast to that of his counterpart, was long and sharp as a fox's.

  Taken together, these visual details conveyed a sense of quiet command, but for Kicking Bird and his friends one salient feature of the soldier's appearance outstripped all others combined. Three fingers of his left hand were no longer fingers but uneven stumps which peeked out angrily from the sleeve of his coat.

  Even more intriguing was the fact that the ruined fingers made sounds. At irregular times during the talk that afternoon, at the prompt-ing of some hidden cue in the soldier's heart, they were rubbed together to produce an odd, clicking noise. Where this sound came from, whether from skin or mangled joints, one couldn't say. The quirk impressed the Indian delegation for it deepened the mystery of the delicate, cross-eyed soldier, and though he remained Mackenzie to the whites, from that day forward the aboriginal people of the plains knew him as Bad Hand.

  When the smoking, which every white man respectfully took part in, was finished, the white civilian whose name was Hatton rose to make a talk, which, owing to the labor of translation, took most of an hour. Hatton explained that he had been sent by the Great Father in Washington to seek peace with Indian people and outlined in general terms what the Kiowa and Comanche could expect from concord with the whites.

  He then laid out the key elements of the offer. The initial inducement was a promise of presents by the wagonload. Among the incredible array of items offered was tobacco, clothing, cooking utensils, weapons, mirrors, trade cloth, farming implements, sugar, coffee, building materials, candy,for children, hats for men, combs for women. Hatton told them there was more but that the list of goods that would flow unceasingly from the cornucopia of white civilization was too long to recite.

  Washington was also offering to set aside a vast tract of land called a reservation that would constitute a permanent sanctuary for the Kiowa and Comanche. In this place they and their families could peacefully prepare to take the white man's road, a road which was open to all the red children of God.

  Education would be open to everyone, especially children. The standing of headmen would be preserved. Food would be provided in the form of rations, including the fresh meat of cattle. People could camp together in traditional bands. Soldiers would be garrisoned nearby with the twin tasks of keeping order among Indian residents and protecting them against white incursion. Interpreters, agents, merchants, and many others working for the welfare of Indian
people as they assimilated were already being mobilized to support the effort.

  By a single action, all these things could be made available to peace-loving people. Those who touched the pen to a thing called “enrollment" would find themselves free to pursue a new life in which no one would go hungry and no one would be attacked by enemies.

  The Kiowa and Comanche had listened to all this with mute attention and the abject silence continued for a few moments after Hatton had finished, Then Touch The Clouds rose, his nearly seven-foot frame requiring the white emissaries to gaze upward at an uncomfortable, neck-bending angle.

  "I have heard this talk," he began. "It is good to hear and makes me glad I have taken your hands."

  When this was translated, the white emissaries, sensing acceptance, smiled at one another in congratulation. But as Touch The Clouds continued, their smiles gradually faded with the realization that their feelings of satisfaction were premature.

  "Touch The Clouds is only one man," he said. "I have but one voice, but I think we do not need what you want to give us. I love my country. The bones of my ancestors are everywhere in it. It has everything we need. Kiowa people are happy to walk on it. Why should we give up something we love so much? I can see no good reason for me or my people to throw away happiness."

  The faces of the whites turned blank. Some of them had become restless and there was a persistent shifting in the two rows of listeners.

  When Touch The Clouds sat down, Kicking Bird rose, and in his imagination he felt his upward motion carrying him into the sky and beyond. The well-being he had felt when he got off his pony in front of Lawrie Tatum's house had been growing all afternoon. Now, as he paused to look over the crowd of whites he was about to address, Kicking Bird's psyche expanded and rose until it was floating over the heads of the hair-mouths, and his natural curiosity was displaced by a stone-hard resolve to speak exactly what lay in his Comanche heart.

  "Touch The Clouds has spoken as I would speak. His words are good and it makes my heart glad to hear them. I love my country as a child loves its mother. I love my people in the same way a father loves his son. I was born out on the plains and that is where I want to die."