Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)

by James Welch

  That evening he roasted the rabbit on a spit over the coals. It was his first fresh meat in seven sleeps. Although the blizzard had gathered force in the afternoon, he felt in his bones that it would end by morning. He turned the rabbit a quarter turn and sat back against the backrest he had constructed out of willow and sinew, a project that took him all of one day. He was satisfied. He had even managed to twist and wrap his hair.

  He didn’t see the barrel of the rifle as it poked through the thick pine bough covering the entrance. And he didn’t feel the slug that tore through his chest just below the wishbone. The second and third shots were meaningless because his heart had already exploded. The backrest was spattered with blood but otherwise unharmed. The slugs had gone between the willow sticks.

  The big man entered the war lodge tentatively and grimaced at the smell of gunpowder and smoke. He was surprised by the warmth of the small fire. He looked briefly at the warrior, who was lying on his side, a long otter-wrapped braid flung across his open eyes. Then he noticed the rabbit on the spit. He squatted on his heels and pulled the marten cap from his head.

  He didn’t see his son, bent over at the entrance, staring at the hands of the Indian. They lay in a peculiar position, down by the crotch, both palms up, side by side. But there was something even odder about them than their position. The son looked at the back of his father’s head and the scrawny carcass over the fire. He turned and within three long steps he mired in a snowdrift and fell forward, vomiting up the pieces of hardtack he had chewed on while waiting for his father to return.

  22

  MIK-API SAT CLOSE to the fire, a blackhorn robe draped over his thin shoulders. He had been smoking his pipe and watching Red Paint prepare the evening meal. There was a certain effort in the way she stood up or bent over, and she often put her fingers to the small of her back and stretched. Once she looked up and caught his eyes and smiled, but her face was flushed and a little heavier than he remembered. Was she really getting older—so soon?

  In many ways she reminded him of his own wife of long ago: the slender limbs, the way she walked on the balls of her feet, the pensive, almost scowling concentration on the intricacies of her beadwork. But mostly it was her voice, a surprisingly low yet soft voice, that brought the image of his wife into the lodge. As she worked, Red Paint talked about simple things—the thickening of the ice on the river, a lame horse she had seen that afternoon on the ridge above camp, the rough condition of her hands. Mik-api listened, but his thoughts were wandering to another time. She was a Black Paint girl who had been captured when the Pikunis were at war with them. Mik-api had met her at the trading house at Many Houses fort in the days before the Napikwans turned against the Pikunis. She had been a slave then, and Mik-api’s mother was against their courtship. They had only been married two winters when she died, and that was long ago, but Mik-api could remember everything about her. Later, after the Pikunis and Black Paints became friendly, he had gone to their camp on the other side of the Backbone and met her family. Her father had been a many-faces man and had taught Mik-api his ways. The powerful medicine he now used came from the Black Paint People, who were renowned for the effectiveness of their healing ceremonies.

  It had been more than forty winters since his wife died, and Mik-api had never remarried. He concentrated on his medicines, and as word of his success spread, he found himself too busy to think of a wife and family. And he had noticed a strange thing: As his powers increased, men began to talk less and less of their attractive daughters. Young women who, some years before, thought of him as a real catch no longer found excuses to meet him on the path or bring him food or clothes in gratitude for some small favor he had done them (mostly salves, he thought now with a smile, to rub on their faces or bodies). By the time he was thirty-five he knew he would not marry again, that the opportunity would not present itself because the people somehow feared his powers. Perhaps it was because it came from the Black Paints, or perhaps he had changed or had been changed by his gift for healing. Sometimes he regretted his solitary life, and sometimes lately he thought of taking some old woman as a sits-beside-him wife, but more often he enjoyed the quiet of his lodge, surrounded by his medicines, living out the ceremonies in his mind. In truth, he was satisfied with his memories of his Black Paint wife. Those two winters they had shared, even her agonizing death and his helpless rage, would never leave him.

  “You are a long way away, Mik-api.”

  “I have been thinking....” He came back. “There is something different about you.”

  “Go on.” She smiled. But her face grew red.

  “I am an old man but I am not blind.” Mik-api rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “What is it, now?”

  “It is the fire—it makes me hot.” She dropped some belly fat in the pot, and it hissed as she stirred it to coat the bottom. She had six large chunks of bighorn meat on a flat stone beside her. She grimaced and leaned back against her heels, her fingers kneading the small of her back.

  Mik-api saw then what it was, what he almost suspected. The round tummy was barely noticeable in the loose folds of her dress, but he saw it. I am getting stupid in my old age, he thought, not to have known. And his mind flashed briefly to the image of his own wife as she lay naked on the robe, the runny red eruptions on her swollen belly. She didn’t even have a medicine man—he had died already of the white-scabs disease.

  “Then you are with child,” he said.

  Red Paint laughed. Was it that obvious, even in her loose skin dress, or was Mik-api that perceptive? “It’s a secret,” she said. “You are not supposed to know.”

  “But why?”

  She suddenly frowned. “He—he was not to know. It was to have been a surprise.”

  “Fools Crow?” Mik-api was genuinely surprised.

  Red Paint placed the pieces of meat into the pot and stirred them with the wooden paddle. Then she sat back and looked at Mik-api. “My father. We were going to have him name the child.” She lowered her eyes to the browning meat. Why had he left? Why had he deserted his family, her mother and brothers? But these were not the real questions that had been troubling her, that had been making her feel increasingly guilty. Why had she not told Yellow Kidney that she was expecting a child? He would have stayed for that. And why had the Above Ones made her life one of happiness and contentment and his one of misery and despair? Did they not see the injustice in that?

  “My father has been gone for sixteen sleeps,” she said quietly.

  Mik-api looked into the fire. He didn’t say anything about the dream he had been having the last three nights. As happened to him often now, the dream was not complete. His dreaming power had begun to fail him, but he saw the fleeting images of the war lodge, the elk herd that moved past in the twilight and the horses that waited in the draw. Yellow Kidney had not appeared in the dreams but he seemed to be a part of them. Perhaps tonight Nitsokan, the dream helper, would reveal Yellow Kidney. Mik-api was afraid of this revelation. He had a bad feeling.

  “He will be found,” he said, and almost said more, but a flurry of cold air carried away his thoughts.

  Fools Crow stood just inside the lodge, his robe almost white from the blowing snow. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  “Ah, Mik-api, you honor our lodge.”

  “It has been too long,” said Mik-api. He looked at Red Paint and smiled. “Much has happened with you since we last talked. We haven’t had a good visit since we doctored up Fast Horse. How is he?”

  Fools Crow frowned. “His wound has healed; he is all right that way.” He sat down and held his hands over the fire. “Why do you ask?”

  “I heard a rumor,” said Mik-api. “I had a visitor, and he told me you had gone off to find Fast Horse.”

  “No one was to know that. Boss Ribs wanted it kept a secret. Who was this visitor?”

  “One who flies far and sees many things. He says he is a friend of yours.” Mik-api chuckled at Fools Crow’s startled expression. “He says yo
u always leave part of your kill for him. But tell me, did you find Fast Horse?”

  “He wouldn’t return with me.” Fools Crow figured that Raven had told Mik-api that too. “He is happy with his life of making the Napikwans cry. It is in his blood, the blood you kept from leaking out of him.”

  Mik-api sighed. It was not the first time he had healed up a foolish man.

  “Now there is news in camp that some Napikwans were killed —some hunters—and Three Bears is worried that the whites will take revenge, perhaps try to strike us and drive off our horses.”

  “Do they say it is Pikunis for sure?”

  “It is always Pikunis with them. Three Bears thinks it is Owl Child and his bunch.”

  “Fast Horse rides with them once more,” said Mik-api. He sighed again as though he realized the effort of doctoring Fast Horse had been wasted. But it was more than that. “I have a feeling it will go hard on us when the winter breaks. I think even before the many-drums moon we will see the seizers again.”

  Red Paint poured the dried crushed chokecherries and water in with the browned meat. Her hand trembled but her face did not change. She did not want her husband to see her fear. He had been back for six sleeps since his confrontation with Fast Horse and he had said little about it, but now she knew just how bad things were. Owl Child and Fast Horse were still killing Napikwans, and now the Napikwans would come after the Lone Eaters before the many-drums moon. Only a few moments ago she had been thinking of her life as one of happiness and contentment. Only her father’s suffering seemed a reality. Now all that was changed for her, and for the first time she feared for the future of her family and her people, of Fools Crow and herself. But mostly she was afraid for Butterfly. He was to be born in the moon of many drums. Would he live to be born? Would it be better to be born and killed or killed inside of her?

  “What is it, Red Paint?” Fools Crow took the paddle from her hand.

  She looked down and saw that the kettle had tipped. The stones were wet and steaming where the stew had spilled. She looked at her hand and it was red. “I felt our infant move,” she said. “Butterfly is with us.”

  Fools Crow laughed and hugged her tightly to him, but Red Paint was looking at Mik-api. He was smiling, but his eyes were dark and troubled.

  Three days after the blizzard ended, the scout, Joe Kipp, sat on his horse overlooking the camp of the Lone Eaters. It was one of those still, clear, cold days, but the sun was brilliant and faintly warm on his back. Because the temperature hadn’t really changed, the snow was light and powdery, and from where he sat, high up on the bluff, he could look back and see the slightly undulating tracks of his horse in the white landscape. No other animals had yet moved on the plain, preferring to stay in the shelters of the trees and valleys. He looked toward the mountains, which began their ascent less than half a day’s ride from where he sat. He had killed a bear in a stand of timber along the Two Medicine River when he was a youngster, the small black kind the Pikunis called sticky-mouth. From here he could see that patch of pines and firs. He smiled wistfully. Life was less complicated in those days. In fact, he had hunted with some of these very Lone Eaters and they had respected him. Not anymore, especially not after today.

  Kipp looked down at the camp, and it looked much the same as it did back in those days—almost the same number of lodges arranged in the same way, people walking back and forth to the river, children and dogs chasing each other. These people have not changed, thought Kipp, but the world they live in has. You could look at it one of two ways: either their world is shrinking or that other world, the one the white man brought with him, is expanding. Either way, the Pikuni loses. And Kipp—well, Joe Kipp is somewhere in the middle—and has a job to do. He slipped a big gold Ingersoll from his waistcoat pocket and sprung the lid. One o’clock. He could deliver his message to the Lone Eaters and make the Hard Topknots’ camp by nightfall. He looked upriver to the big horse herds, the reds, blacks, grays, the painted ponies. These Blackfeet, he thought, are some horse-takers. He started down the bluff. A group of children stood at the edge of camp, watching him.

  That night, the members of the Braves, All Crazy Dogs, Raven Carriers, and Dogs and Tails societies met in the big lodge to discuss this latest proposal from the seizer chiefs. None of the young men’s societies were present, and Rides-at-the-door breathed a sigh of relief, for they would surely have put up a fight out of pride and stubbornness.

  Although Kipp had only hinted at it that afternoon, Rides-at-the-door knew that the proposed meeting had to do with Owl Child’s depredations and probably the number of stolen horses in the camps, Napikwan horses. The seizer chiefs wanted to meet with the Pikuni chiefs, and little good would come out of it.

  And so the warriors discussed the proposal. This time there were no shrill arguments, no accusations, no bluffs, no conclusions. The men seemed bewildered, almost fearful, and by the time they smoked a final pipe, the only thing they had decided was to send a rider to the other camps to learn how they were handling Kipp’s message.

  Rides-at-the-door walked Three Bears back to the old chiefs lodge. Night Red Light was almost full in the clear black sky, and the stars danced around her.

  “I do not wish to make such a journey down to the agency. I see no good in it.” Three Bears sounded tired, and he watched his breath go away from him. “These Napikwans think that we can control our young men. It is not right. I know there are many Napikwan horses in our herds—I myself am against such foolishness—but what can we do? As for Owl Child, what can any of us do? He is slippery like the underwater swimmers. Besides, Mountain Chief would never allow us to hand Owl Child over to the Napikwans. That’s what they want, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps the seizer chiefs will understand that our power is limited. Joe Kipp says their head chief is a good man and is aware of our predicament.”

  “And you trust Joe Kipp?”

  “No,” admitted Rides-at-the-door, but he felt a small sorrow in his heart because he once had. Joe Kipp’s mother was of the Dirt Lodge People to the east and Joe Kipp had grown up at his father’s trading post, where his only friends were Pikunis. He had changed horses.

  “I’m afraid he represents the Napikwan interests,” said Three Bears. “But what do you think, my friend, about this council?”

  “I fear these seizer chiefs’ motives. It seems simple enough—to meet with the Pikunis, to council, to come to an agreement. But I think it might be a plan to gather our chiefs in one place and kill them or hold them hostage. The agency is on the edge of our territory. It would be easy to sneak enough of the seizers in to capture our chiefs.”

  “Those are my thoughts.” Three Bears stopped and laughed. “Listen to you, Rides-at-the-door! You, who have always counseled peace with the Napikwans. I think you sound more like one of Owl Child’s gang. Next you would have us capture this Napikwan chief so our young men could practice their scalping on him.”

  “It was in my mind.” The other laughed. “It would not displease me to have this seizer’s hair hanging from my lodgepole.”

  “That is why I lean on you for advice, my friend—you have the blood of a warrior flowing through a peace-talker’s body. Now, what do you advise?”

  “Wait. Until the other bands have received Joe Kipp’s message. It is important to know what Mountain Chief and Heavy Runner think. As you know, they are as different as the real-bear and the prairie chicken. Mountain Chief wishes to deal harshly with the Napikwan, while Heavy Runner would seek to clean their long-shoes. The other chiefs fall in the middle and could perhaps be persuaded one way or the other.”

  They had reached Three Bears’ lodge. They listened a moment to a woman singing. “My youngest daughter. She is the only one left to marry off, but she is getting older and has the withered leg. It will not be easy.” Three Bears bent to enter the lodge; then he stood and turned. “If this council at the agency takes place, can I count on you to speak for the Lone Eaters? I have no heart for this matter.”


  “It would be an honor—but I would speak only those words that came from Three Bears himself.” Rides-at-the-door laughed with little humor. “But I have it in my mind that the Pikunis are invited only to listen. We are being squeezed, Three Bears. I’m afraid this is the latest trick, perhaps the last, to gain our lands without fighting. The seizer chief will certainly demand the impossible. I think he will try to divide the Pikunis between those who would follow Mountain Chief and those who would line up behind Heavy Runner. Already, they attempt to solidify their friendship with Heavy Runner.”

  “You do not agree with his—”

  “Desire to please the Napikwans? No. Heavy Runner would have us give away everything for a few blankets and a tin of the white man’s grease.”

  “He thinks they would take care of us, that we should put our fate in their hands,” said Three Bears.

  “And Mountain Chief would like us to fight. Either way, we will lose.” Rides-at-the-door looked up at the night sky. He felt old suddenly and envied the stars their distance. “We will lose our grandchildren, Three Bears. They will be wiped out or they will turn into Napikwans. Already some of our children attend their school at the agency. Our men wear trousers and the women prefer the trade-cloth to skins. We wear their blankets, cook in their kettles and kill the blackhorns with their bullets. Soon our young women will marry them, like the Liars and the Cutthroats.”