Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)

by James Welch

  White Man’s Dog crept around the willows and saw a large dark shape in the white snow. Behind it the spring gurgled out of the earth’s breast. The wolverine lifted his head, and his eyes looked darkly at the young man.

  “So you see how it is,” said Raven. “He has been trapped for four days, and now he is too weak to cry out. You may release him.”

  “He will not bite me?”

  Raven laughed, the harsh caw! caw! echoing around the white field. “You are his enemy for sure, but even Skunk Bear has a little common sense.”

  White Man’s Dog approached the animal from the rear. The big spring trap had bitten the left hind leg. The reddish-brown hair was caked with blood, and White Man’s Dog could see gnawed bone where the wolverine had tried to chew his leg off. He must have been too weak, for the bone was still in one piece. White Man’s Dog placed the trap on the tops of his thighs and pushed down with all his strength on the springy steel on either side of the jaws. The jaws gaped open and the leg came free. With a hiss the animal tried to scramble away but he only dug into the snow. He showed his teeth but the head drooped and finally rested on his forelegs.

  “Throw him some of your real-meat, for it has strength in it to fix up this beast. I brought him some pine cones but he is not equipped to dig out the seeds. In four days he has eaten only one mouse who got too curious.” Raven hopped over to the trap and looked at it. “You see, this animal has a weakness too—he is a glutton and cannot live long without food.”

  White Man’s Dog watched the wolverine chew off bits of the meat and swallow them. He marveled at the animal’s long thick fur with the dirty yellow stripes along the flanks. The claws that held the meat were as long as his own fingers.

  “And now you must get down the mountain. I have medicine that will fix up this glutton’s leg. I would guide you down but my wives are irritable with lack of sleep. If they had their way they would pluck out this creature’s eyeballs at the first opportunity. You may leave a little of that meat for them. This time of year the pickings are lean.”

  White Man’s Dog thanked Raven and as he turned to leave, he glanced at the wolverine. The animal was watching him with a weak ferocity.

  “By the way,” called Raven, “when you enter your close-to-the-ground house tonight, lie on your left side, away from the entrance. Dream of all that has happened here today. Of all the two-leggeds, you alone will possess the magic of Skunk Bear. You will fear nothing, and you will have many horses and wives. But you must not abuse this power, and you must listen to Mik-api, for I speak through him, that good many-faces man who shares his smoke.”

  7

  IT WAS LATE WINTER, that time when the willows turn color and begin to bud. All along the Two Medicine River the red and yellow spears lit up the days and made people think of the first-thunder moon and of breaking winter camp to follow the blackhorn herds. Men walked about and smoked and talked of their spring visit to the white trader’s house on the Bear River. The hunting had been good, and within the lodges lay piles of soft-tanned robes. Some of the hunters would acquire the long-coveted repeating rifles. It was a time of anticipation and rest for the hunters, of feasts and games for all.

  It was also a time of restlessness, and when the three young riders approached the village from the south, they could feel the intensity of the watchers’ eyes. They drove twelve horses before them, and all the horses were big and strong. Even from a distance one could see that they were the kind the Napikwans used to pull their wagons.

  Fast Horse recognized Owl Child’s white horse with the red thunderbirds on each shoulder. Owl Child rode nonchalantly until they were close to the village. Then he dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and galloped over. He carried across his lap a many-shots gun in a beaded and fringed scabbard. He also had a short-gun tucked in his belt. Many in the camp were afraid of him, for he had killed Bear Head, a great warrior, the previous summer in an argument over a Cutthroat scalp. Owl Child was a member of the Many Chiefs band led by Mountain Chief, one of the most powerful leaders of the Pikunis. Even at that Owl Child was something of an outcast, feared and hated by many bands of his own people. Fast Horse looked upon him with awe, for of all the Pikunis, Owl Child had made the Napikwans cry the most.

  “Haiya!” Owl Child rode slowly through camp. “How is it you Lone Eaters stay in camp when the others are out hunting and raiding our enemies? Small wonder you Lone Eaters are so poor!” He rode up to the lodge of Three Bears, who had just emerged and stood wrapped in a three-point blanket. “Ah, Three Bears—we have just returned from the south. We come with horses we found on the other side of Pile-of-rocks River. We are on our way to the Many Chiefs camp on the Bear. But now we are hungry, for we have ridden far and fast.”

  “Did those horses belong to someone else?” said Three Bears.

  “They were wandering by themselves and we thought to take care of them before they got lost and starved to death.”

  “Do those horses have the white man mark on them?”

  Owl Child laughed. “We didn’t notice any brand on them. Perhaps they are wild horses.”

  “Who is with you?” Three Bears’ eyes were not good for distance.

  “The brave warriors Black Weasel and Bear Chief.”

  “Then they are stolen from the Napikwans.”

  “What difference does that make?” said Fast Horse, who had walked over from his father’s lodge. “The white ones steal our land, they give us trinkets, then they steal more. If Owl Child has taken a few of their horses, then he is to be honored.”

  “It is so, Fast Horse.” Owl Child laughed. His eyes glittered. “It is the Napikwans who bring it on themselves. If they have their way they will push us into the Backbone and take all the ground and the blackhorns for themselves.”

  Three Bears turned to Fast Horse. “We do not want trouble with the whites. Now that the great war in that place where Sun Chief rises is over, the blue-coated seizers come out to our country. Their chiefs have warned us more than once that if we make life tough for their people, they will ride against us.” He pointed his pipe in the direction of Owl Child. “If these foolish young men continue their raiding and killing of the Napikwans, we will all suffer. The seizers will kill us, and the Pikuni people will be as the shadows on the land. This must not happen.”

  “Then you will not invite us to feast with you?” Owl Child’s face had turned hard with disappointment. “Mountain Chief has great respect for you, Three Bears. He is not used to such slights.”

  “It is not him I slight, Owl Child.” He called into his lodge for his women to make up a packet of meat. “He is a wise man and he will know the truth of my words. If the Pikunis are to survive we must learn to treat with the whites. There are too many of them for your kind of actions.”

  “Someday, old man, a Napikwan will be standing right where you are and all around him will be grazing thousands of the whitehorns. You will be only a part of the dust they kick up. If I have my way I will kill that white man and all his whitehorns before this happens.” He looked at Fast Horse, his eyes the gray of winter clouds. “It is the young who will lead the Pikunis to drive these devils from our land.”

  Three Bears handed up the packet of boiled meat to Owl Child. “It is done,” he said, and turned and entered his lodge.

  Owl Child laughed, a brittle laugh in the early afternoon silence, and urged his horse into a trot. “Come visit, Fast Horse,” he called back. “We will show you what real Pikunis do to these sonofabitch whites.” Then he was galloping to rejoin his comrades, who had continued to push the horses east toward the camp of Mountain Chief on the Bear River.

  White Man’s Dog sat with Mik-api outside the old man’s lodge. They had been enjoying the warm sun and talking about the properties of horses, how the long-ago people acquired them from the Snakes and how the Indian ponies differed from those of the whites.

  White Man’s Dog stirred the pot of berry soup he had brought his old friend. It was beginning to ste
am. “Our horses have smaller shoulders and their asses aren’t so big. It’s true they do not have the endurance of those big old elk-dogs that the white man runs.” He laughed at his usage of the long-ago term for horses. Then he sneaked a look at Mik-api. The many-faces man was slumped against his willow backrest, his mouth open, his snores almost sighs in the warm air. White Man’s Dog brushed a fly away from his friend’s hair and then thought, The first fly of spring, winter is truly over. Like the others, he was anxious to go to the trading fort on the Bear River. He and his father and brother had almost a hundred robes to trade, most of them un-scarred prime cows. He had his mind on a many-shots, like the one Yellow Kidney carried on the raid.

  He stopped stirring the soup. On the raid he had come to know Yellow Kidney, and it didn’t seem possible that he was no longer among his people. Although the raid was successful—even now he could look out downriver and see his horses grazing among others—he felt that the loss outweighed any number of Crow horses. Something bad had happened on that raid, something White Man’s Dog could not get out of his mind. But he didn’t know what it was that had happened, and he didn’t know how far-reaching the effects could be. Yellow Kidney was dead or captive or wandering. Fast Horse had not come near White Man’s Dog since the morning of their talk. It was bad to lose trust in a friend like Fast Horse, but when young men got together and talked of raids, of war parties to gain honor, the name of Fast Horse never came up. The others had come to feel, like White Man’s Dog, that Fast Horse had somehow been responsible for Yellow Kidney’s fate.

  But lately another concern had begun to agitate White Man’s Dog—the Crow youth he had killed. When the news of this deed had gotten around camp, many of the men had honored him with scalp songs. His father had given him a war club he had taken from the Crows. And his brother and the other young men looked at him with respect. But White Man’s Dog could not get out of his mind the look of fear on the youth’s face as he rode down on him. He could not forget the feeling in his arm as his scalping knife struck bone in the youth’s back. He should have stopped the attack then, but the youth would have warned the village. He had no choice but to kill....

  Then there was the dream. When he told the dream of the white-faced girls to Mik-api, the old man had grown silent. He smoked a long time. He smoked far into the night. Sometimes he dozed, other times he hummed, but always he would return to his smoking. Finally he tapped the pipe out and told White Man’s Dog to go home and sleep, then prepare the sweat lodge in the morning.

  After their purifying sweat, Mik-api led White Man’s Dog into his lodge. He made the youth lie down and pretend to sleep. He took a root of tastes-dry and dropped it into the boiling water over the fire. After a while he dipped a bowlful and passed it under the nose of White Man’s Dog, making his patient inhale the sharp steam. Mik-api then pounded some alum leaves and sticky-root in a wooden bowl. All the while he chanted and sang purifying songs. When the mixture had been pounded into a paste, he dipped his fingers into the pot of boiling water, then scooped the paste onto his fingertips and placed them on White Man’s Dog’s body. The young man flinched, but the steady pressure of Mik-api’s hands against his chest made him relax. Four times Mik-api applied the compound. Then White Man’s Dog slept, and while he was sleeping, Mik-api pulled an eagle wing from his medicine parfleche. He made motions of the eagle flying with his hands; then he struck the young man several times all over the body with the wing. As he burned some sweet grass and passed it over the body, he sang the purifying song, the gentle hooting, of the ears-far-apart. Finally he blew several shrill notes over his patient with his medicine whistle, and a yellow paint dripped from the end of it onto the forehead of White Man’s Dog. Mik-api fell back on his haunches and said, “It is done.”

  When White Man’s Dog awoke, he felt that he had been to another world and had returned. He propped himself up on his elbows and he felt light and free. He had dreamed of eagles and felt almost as though he had flown with them. He felt vaguely disappointed to be in this lodge lying on this robe. A voice nearby entered his ears.

  “I have driven the bad spirit that caused your dream from your body. You will not be troubled anymore.”

  White Man’s Dog looked across the fire and saw the dark eyes of the many-faces man. It was night.

  “But I could not kill it. I could not see the dream clearly enough. I know it was a dream of death, but more than that I cannot say. I fear that the spirit is out there, floating, waiting to attach itself to another one of our people.”

  Now White Man’s Dog stirred the berry soup and thought of that night many sleeps ago. He was relieved to be rid of the dream, the burden of it, but the fact that the spirit was still free troubled him. And, too, he felt that he had let Mik-api down in not telling the dream completely or correctly enough. He had not given enough to allow the many-faces man to work his magic.

  He shook the memory out of his head and leaned forward to taste the soup. As he did so, he glanced between two lodges to the home of Yellow Kidney’s family. The two boys were playing with a small animal, a gopher perhaps. Red Paint was on her knees, moving her arms and upper body back and forth. White Man’s Dog could just see white hair on the edges of a skin. Red Paint was rubbing brains and grease into a deerskin to make it soft. As he watched her body arch back and forth over the skin, he forgot about the berry soup. He felt his penis begin to stiffen and he cast a quick glance in the direction of Mik-api, but the old man snored on. Red Paint was now back on her heels, wiping her hands on a calico rag. She was slender but the top of her loose buckskin dress had some shape. Her tight black braids just brushed the tips of her breasts as she worked the greasy mixture from her hands.

  “She’s getting to be a real woman,” said Mik-api.

  White Man’s Dog grabbed the spoon and stirred the soup quickly. “Ah, you’re awake. Good. It is time to eat this.”

  “It’s a pity that one so young and handsome can find no one to hunt for her. What is she now, sixteen, seventeen? Her winters ride well on her. You can see how she has filled out.”

  White Man’s Dog looked at her as though he had just noticed it.

  “Yes, she is a woman and of the marrying age,” continued Mik-api. “I suspect one of our fine young men will see that she gets everything she needs. Most of our young women this year are ugly. It seems to go in cycles. Some years all the young women are as beautiful as the doe. Other years they look like old magpies. Such a one as Red Paint would stand out in either case.”

  White Man’s Dog looked at Mik-api, but the old man was looking into the distance, to the greening hills. He dished up two bowls of the hot soup and the men sipped it, watching a pair of white-headed eagles circling in the blue sky. They made White Man’s Dog think of the dream in which he had joined them.

  “How did you become a many-faces man, Mik-api?”

  Mik-api didn’t speak right away, but White Man’s Dog had become used to waiting. He poured himself another bowl of soup, then sat back to watch the eagles.

  “I am now of seventy-four winters but I wasn’t always old. Once when I was a young man, not much older than you, I had my heart set on becoming a great warrior and a rich man. I learned the ways of the war trail and once went with a group into the country of the Parted Hairs. We were just out to enjoy ourselves, to look at new country and to take a few horses. We took two horses and then we fought all the way back to see who got to keep them.”

  Mik-api laughed softly. “There were fewer horses in those days. Each one was a precious possession. Some things were harder then, some things easier. There were very few of the Napikwans—it was when I was a youth that the first white men appeared in this country. They came up the Two Medicine River not far from here, and first they tried to treat with our people, then they tried to kill us. We grew frightened of their sticks-that-speak-from-afar and ran away, and then they ran away. I never saw these particular creatures, but you can imagine how different they looked to those who did. Our bro
thers, the Siksikas, had already seen these white people north of the Medicine Line. They were a little different and spoke a different tongue.

  “Some winters later, more of these Napikwans came into our country, but they stayed in the mountains and they trapped the fine-furred animals—wood—biters, mink and otters. I remember seeing them sometimes, but they remained in the mountains and didn’t bother us. Many of them were as furry as the animals they trapped. They always stunk like mink and so we avoided them. But a few of our less-fortunate girls went to live with them, and we didn’t see much of the girls after that. I think these men hated each other, for you never saw two of them together, and our women who went with them became little more than slaves. I don’t know what the trouble was, but you never saw children around their dwellings. At first we thought these Napikwans were animals and incapable of reproducing with human beings. But they were intelligent like human beings and they piled up many furs. Gradually they left the mountains and went away. They were not like these Napikwans today who live on the plains and raise their whitehorns. We could live with those first ones.” Mik-api sipped his soup, lost in thought. Two yellow dogs walked tentatively up to the soup pot and sniffed. White Man’s Dog shooed them away.