Conquering Horse

by Frederick Manfred

  They were almost within sight of the curious pyramids of dung, when of a sudden from behind them came a rolling snort and then the furious oncoming beat of horse hooves. No Name jerked viciously on the reins, wheeling his horse around.

  It was the white one, just emerged from a yellow ravine, head held low like a rabid lobo wolf, teeth flashing. He came straight for them.

  No Name grabbed his heavy whip, sat high on his horse. When Dancing Sun’s head came up below him, he lashed down at him with all his force. Dancing Sun took the blow across his ears just as his teeth sank into the skin over No Name’s thigh. Dancing Sun gave a vicious rip and a small slab of flesh came away. No Name was too startled to scream. There was no pain. Only a sudden numbness shot all up and down his leg.

  Dancing Sun reared directly in front of him, looming over him. Holding the bloody tatter of skin and flesh between his teeth, snarling, Dancing Sun shook his head, snapping it back and forth like a dog trying to shred a grass doll to pieces.

  “Friend,” No Name cried, “it is very plain you will breed wakan warhorses. The enemy arrow will never touch them. Friend, you are a great horse. Become my friend. I have said.”

  Dancing Sun still shook his head like a mad dog. He waggled his head so hard back and forth the flap of flesh at last flew out of his mouth and sailed across the dry land, landing in a patch of prickly pear. Then, still rearing, whirling completely around on two dancing legs, Dancing Sun jumped away. He raced across the plains, tail flowing, head up, looking this way and that.

  No Name followed him slowly. He bathed his oozing wound with spring water from the heartskin. He bound it with a piece of rawhide. “Friend,” he said, shooting the words after the white one with a pursing of lips, “friend, at last you have tasted the blood of a Yankton warrior. Do you like it? Well, there is much more. Be careful that a Yankton does not taste your blood. I have said.”

  Dancing Sun flew at his band. With a single loud trumpeting snort, ears laid back, shaking his head vigorously at the old buckskin mare up in the lead and the white sisters on the flanks, he sent them beating across the barrens once more.

  There was no wind. The dust they raised lofted high into the blue-gray haze. No Name rode first on one side of his buttocks, then the other.

  It was Leaf who spooked them when they approached the watering place the next time. She was standing under the cedar tree. The lead buckskin mare got a whiff of her, shied, popped her tail, and before Dancing Sun could stop them the bunch was off and running.

  No Name watched them go, smiling grimly. Yet he could not refrain from scolding Leaf when he rode up to her. “Well, I see now I have a wife who disobeys.”

  Leaf looked meekly down at her hands. She was trembling. “I heard coughing in the night, my husband.”

  “Ai-ye!”

  “Perhaps it was Rough Arm and his killers.”

  No Name was instantly all eyes and ears. He flicked a swift fierce look to all sides. “What was the cough, one that could not be helped? Or one done in warning to say that a stranger approached?”

  “I was sleeping, my husband, and did not hear it clearly. Yet I heard it.”

  No Name looked down at her. He recalled that a woman heavy with young often imagined strange things the last days. He decided to indulge her. “Woman, you were wise to come and tell me. After I have given the horse some water and grass, I will look for sign. Return quietly. If I find they have been here, I will come to help you hide in some other place. Otherwise I will go on. The white one is tiring.”

  “How soon will it be?”

  “I can not tell. It has not been given me when to catch him. Have patience. Great things come slowly and after much bravery. I have said.”

  She saw the bloody bandage on his thigh. “Ai, he has bitten you. He will kill you.” She came up to touch him.

  He kicked the sorrel in the flank, making it shy away from her. “Woman, have I not told you not to touch me? Go back. The white one knows my smell and has become used to it. If I come with yet another smell he will not let me come close. Return to the cave.”

  “It will end sadly,” she said in a low voice. “Already the wild one has taken a bite from my husband.”

  “Return, woman.”

  “The cave is dark, my husband. The place where you sleep is cold. In the night I hear spirit ghosts. The Old Ones who lived in the cave in the old days come and wake me. I am very lonesome.”

  He pretended not to hear her. He looked at the fresh provisions hanging in the cedar. He noticed she had hung up a new shirt beside them. “Woman,” he cried angrily, “have I not told you I cannot even change clothes or he will take fright at the new smell and run away to some other range? I do not wish to begin the circling all over again. Take it with you.”

  She hid her face. Then she began to cry. Turning heavily, she pulled the new shirt from the tree and started for their cave.

  He watched her walk down the face of the bluff, going with heavy falling step, her back stiff, her small buttocks taut, her swollen belly swinging from side to side in front.

  Dark face stern, he turned his back on her. He moved the fresh provisions to his own parfleche and heartskin, then rode down to the river to refresh his horse and wash his wound.

  He found Dancing Sun just before dusk. The white one and what was left of his bunch, some thirty head, plus the gravid light-gray mare, had given up grazing and instead were slowly dozing along. Only the stallion still showed grace in his carriage.

  The sky hazed over. The haze became so thick the sun vanished before it set. At last a bad thing was on the way. Rain.

  Then, just after dark, he saw it, a low line of smoldering lights all along the northwest horizon. It resembled an advancing enemy carrying torches. He stopped his horse and watched it with narrowed eyes.

  Finally he made it out. Fire. Prairie fire. Ai-ye! so that was what the sun hawk had tried to warn him about. Leaf was perhaps right that Rough Arm had been skulking along their river. Rough Arm, to get revenge, had fired the prairie grass. Rough Arm hoped to spoil his vision of catching the great white stallion. Luckily there was but little wind. It would be a while yet before it overran them.

  Dancing Sun also spotted the prairie fire. With a single snort he rounded up the remnant of his band and bunched them into a tight waiting knot, then ran a short distance toward the advancing line of flames, nostrils fluttering loudly, trying to get scent of it. He ran close to where No Name sat on his horse, for the moment ignoring his man enemy.

  The fire came on. As it advanced it also slowly spread toward the north.

  “Rough Arm has fired the grass all along the River of Little Ducks. He has cut off our retreat. He knows there is no water at all to the south.”

  As No Name and Dancing Sun watched, a puff of wind, hot and dry, hit them. Then another wafted past, stronger, drier. Again, another. Finally a gale of hot wind began to blow past them.

  “Now an evil god is helping Rough Arm. He has sent him a strong wind. The grass is short and thin. Yet it burns as if it were tall and thick. Even the earth is burning.”

  Dancing Sun abruptly wheeled. He bugled piercingly. He gave a certain vigorous waggling motion of his head and faced his bunch around into the fierce wind.

  Then No Name saw a thing that made him marvel. The stallion whistled again and all his mares and colts began to trot straight for the advancing ring of fire. Hehan! What a great chief the stallion was. Such control of the spirit souls of others was of the gods, was wakan.

  Yet even so the mares, especially the gravid light-gray one, showed reluctance to buck the fire. They held their heads sideways as they advanced. Some tried to shy off to the left, others tried to dodge around to the right, but Dancing Sun was always there with his fierce teeth, his blunt chest, his striking flashing forefeet, to force them back into place. And as always, swift feet flickering, he glided smoothly along.

  “Will he never tire, my helper?”

  But Dancing Sun had not reckoned wit
h other wild creatures. Suddenly the barrens were full of streaking fourleggeds, yowling wolves and coyotes, bounding deer and jackrabbits; of flying wingeds, numbed meadowlarks and owls, dumbfounded ducks and quail. Dancing Sun screamed, and wheeled, trying desperately to keep his mares and colts from being stampeded by the terrorized creatures. But finally another band of wild horses, led by a roan stallion, came pounding by, tails and manes whipping like the flames of the prairie fire itself, and he lost control. What had been dead-tired dozing laggards were now suddenly breakneck racers.

  Dancing Sun shook his great mane with a final shrug of despair, and let them all go. But one. That one was his favorite, Twinkling Feet. He ran along beside the light-gray gravid mare neighing winningly, commandingly. She wanted desperately to fly along with the rest, but he kept bearing in on her, turned her each time she dodged, nipping her, biting her, bumping her first on one side, then on the other. And finally she gave in. Nose down, she turned and headed into the advancing fire with him.

  By that time the wind was howling around No Name and his sorrel. Smoke wafted toward them in enormous streams of gray. No Name coughed. One Who Follows coughed. So did Dancing Sun and his mate immediately up front. The whole sky ahead and the earth beneath raged with mounting manes of fire. No Name found it difficult to make out Dancing Sun and his mare against the flames. They seemed to have become orange flames themselves, dancing, snapping, rushing. In the weird snapping hellish light, No Name’s face glowed a stone red, while the sorrel’s coat glowed a clay yellow. Heat surged toward them in jumps. The air became so searing hot No Name had to cover his mouth to breathe.

  A burning rabbit bounded toward them. With every leap it started up a new little fire. It ran crazed. It screamed. It ran veering from right to left to right. Finally, blind, it circled back into the oncoming fire, and, squeaking, fell dead.

  It seemed inconceivable to No Name that so little grass could cause such a raging fire. It could only be that, besides the powerful wind, the earth itself, truly, was burning up.

  Head to one side, looking past his hand, coughing, No Name saw the fire dance toward them but a couple of dozen jumps away. The grass immediately ahead of it seemed to ignite of itself, here, then there, then everywhere. Then before the ignited little spots could themselves become racing prairie fires, the main line of the flames was upon them, engulfing them.

  A slow-moving badger, running desperately, and yet for all its desperation waddling along hardly faster than a turtle, came straight for them. The sorrel shied, almost unseating No Name. Then, not a dozen yards away, the badger burst into a single searing yellow flame, its fat body exploding with a snap like the crack of a buckskin popper.

  Dancing Sun shrilled. Then he bit his heavy stumbling mate one last time, and charged. He leaped high over the line of fire. His leap seemed miraculously high to No Name. And he cleared it. A split second later the mare went up and over too, for all her weight lifting high and graceful. Then with the white one she vanished into the wall of exploding smoke.

  No Name was next. He whipped his sorrel, hard, across the flanks. Head to one side, coughing heavily, One Who Follows understood what was wanted of him. At precisely the right moment, just as a bunching of grass underfoot burst into flames, he leaped, high, soaring aloft. The main fire raced under them. It stung the soles of No Name’s feet. Instantly a great blast of hot wind hit them, almost doubling them up. Then they landed, hard, stumbling on the other side in smoking darkness.

  “Hi-ye!” No Name cried. In a frenzy he whipped his horse, viciously. They galloped. They raced through popping plumes of pink smoke. No Name held his breath. They pounded. At last the smoke cleared some. Then, up ahead, in the weak light reflecting from the fire behind them, he saw Dancing Sun, noble head still up, scarlet tail glowing like a swamp ghost, phosphorescent, pacing gracefully beside his favorite mare.

  “He is of the spirit of fire itself, truly,” No Name whispered. “Fire can not touch him. He knows this. He will make a great warhorse for the Yanktons.”

  They walked through a waste of black. Thin columns of smoke twisted off still burning horseballs and thick whorls of grass and seared cactus. Underfoot a half-fried meadowlark craked mournfully. A seared lobo, looking very skinny without its hair, sighed a last rasping breath out of a gaping mouth. A baked rabbit stroked its feet spasmodically, kicking up black soot. The smells of the burning waste shut the nose.

  They moved on.

  The wind let up, at last died out altogether. Behind them raced the fire, rushing south across the farther prairies, gradually sinking out of sight beyond the curve of the earth.

  The heavy mare lagged. The white one lagged with her. Gradually the sorrel caught up with them. Soon they were as one band, the stallion and the mare and the sorrel with the man enemy aboard walking side by side. They headed north, going straight for the watering place.

  On the morning of the fourth day, the sun came up a gold ball out of a black horizon. It rose into an orange sky. Ocher smoke and gray haze drifted low in the farther reaches.

  No Name touched the piece of horse chestnut in his braid. “Were it not for my helper we would now be in the other world.”

  They came across occasional, smoldering half-burnt bodies of gophers. They skirted fire-blackened coils of rattlesnakes. They rode past a prairie dog town where surviving inhabitants sat beside their blackened honeycomb of holes discussing the past night’s disaster. They turned aside to avoid the burnt gaunt body of a colt from the roan stallion’s wild bunch. The smell of fried flesh and burnt hair was nauseating.

  Then his helper spoke to him, clearly. “Let the white one drink. Also the mare if she wishes.”

  “But, helper, the white one still seems fresh. See, he walks with his head high. A drink now and he will be again as he once was.”

  “He is brave. He is a warrior. He is very tired and sleepy yet he hides his inner torment from the watching eye. Let him drink. He is so thirsty, so crazy for water, he will drink too much. A sudden heavy drink will stiffen his legs and shorten his wind. It will founder him. While he is in the river prepare to meet him on the trail halfway up between the third and second bluff. Have both your loops ready.”

  “Will he attack?”

  “Perhaps. But this time it will be given you to capture him.”

  “Yelo.”

  Against the black earth and in the orange sunlight, the whiteness of the white stallion seemed more dazzling than ever. No Name had to shield his eyes to look at him. Dancing Sun seemed to scatter a whiteness like floating snowflakes on the air.

  The valley of the River of Little Ducks at last appeared. Except for the taller cottonwoods and the deeper green meadows, everything south of the river was burned off. Only the north side remained strangely green.

  No Name reined in his sorrel. He let the stallion and the mare go on by themselves. The white one did not stop to investigate from the height of the middle bluff as he usually did, but walked quietly, stolidly, down the trail into the ravine. The mare followed him. Despite her gravid state, there were wide hunger hollows between her hipbones and her belly. She stumbled along, almost as one blind. Looking at her closely No Name saw that her dugs were waxy and had dropped.

  While the two drank below, No Name slipped to the ground and let the sorrel have the last few swallows of spring water in his heartskin. The small amount would not founder the sorrel; if anything would freshen him greatly for the struggle ahead. Having drunk, the sorrel lowered his head and snuffed at the ashen grass on the fire-shaven earth. Every spear of growth had been seared off at the roots. No Name petted the sorrel. For the first time he saw how gaunt his faithful mount had become. He considered taking the sorrel across the river for a few bites of grass. Instead he went over and plucked a handful of green leaves from a dying cottonwood sapling in the ravine. The sorrel ate the dryish green leaves with relish.

  No Name looked down at the white stallion below in the river. “Truly, he is wakan. He went without water f
or four days and yet has remained a lusty one.”

  He watched Dancing Sun stalk out of the river and enter a small patch of green grass on the north side. Dancing Sun was so ravenously hungry, ate with such fury, that he tore up the grass, roots and all, even chunks of earth, as he grazed along.

  No Name glanced west toward the cliff. To his surprise he saw that the fallen cottonwood still showed green where it lay across the opening to their cave. The prairie fire had missed it. “Ho, Leaf still lies hidden in our underground lodge.”

  No Name rode halfway down the ravine. He got off his horse and spread the loop of his longest and toughest lariat across the narrow part of the trail. He did not bother to hide it. Dancing Sun was now familiar with his smell. He tied the end of the lariat to the sorrel’s belly band. He also readied the loop of his second lariat.

  While the sorrel chewed the last of the dry cottonwood leaves, No Name sat on his heels in the black dust. In mimicry, a boy again with a small stick-horse and two buckskin thongs, he pretended to be catching a stallion. To his satisfaction, the white one was roped and thrown and tamed.

  He looked down at where Dancing Sun still tore angrily at the grass. He sang in a low private voice. “Friend, you are strong. Friend, you are fierce. But a certain Yankton brave has come to get you. Get ready. Something you will see.” He looked up at the strange orange morning sun. “Thank you for coming. Thank you. I can do anything when you are shining. I seem to have more power when you my father shine on me.” He turned to the southwest where the moon hung almost obscured by a thick haze. “Thank you. I see that it will all happen as the white mare promised. Soon I will tell this to your friend, Moon Dreamer.”

  His bitten thigh began to throb under the rawhide bandage. He set his face against it. It was not a good thing to look at. It might weaken him for the struggle.