Conquering Horse

by Frederick Manfred

  “You have not told me much of your vision, my husband. Is there more?”

  “What can a woman know of a man’s vision?”

  “I have seen you think about your father. Do you not remember your mother?”

  He watched her narrowly. He wasn’t sure if it was the shadow of a sinking flame passing over her moon-round face or a brief knowing smile. He said shortly, “A son always remembers his mother.”

  She looked down in love at her suckling son. “Does he think of her when he is being very brave?”

  “When he is brave he remembers how his father stood up to the enemy and overcame him.”

  “Does he ever think of his mother’s brother?”

  “I think mostly of my father. Moon Dreamer is sometimes my preceptor but my father is my father.”

  She sat very still. A complete awareness of his troubles seemed to emanate from her stolid silence.

  “Ae,” he said then, sighing, “sometimes it is difficult to know when a memory is not a vision.”

  “My husband, what has your vision to do with your father?” Upon her question, the baby quit suckling. It gradually let her nipple slip from its lips. Slowly, after a moment, a white drop of milk formed over the dark nipple and then ran down the underside of her rose-brown breast.

  “Woman, the question you ask is as dark as its answer.”

  She threw a brief look up at the leather case containing his warclub. “I have seen your warclub. On one side I see painted a white mare and the Butte of Thunders and a Yankton capturing a white stallion. On the other side I see painted a white stud colt and a young warrior returning to his father’s lodge and the figure of an old one rising in the sky.”

  He held himself severely erect. “You see well, woman.”

  “Why should the father have to die?”

  “Woman, the answer to your question is a thing that sometimes does not let me sleep at night.”

  “Tell me the full vision, my husband. Perhaps a wife can help her husband understand it.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, in the briefest of words, he told her all that had been revealed to him in the sun dance.

  Her eyes showed rings of white by the time he finished. Then slowly her eyes fell and she looked down at her baby. She shivered. “Let us hope our son will never be tormented by so terrible a vision.”

  “Aii,” No Name cried. “Yet I would never deny it him. It is not a good thing to deny the vision. Worse misfortune always befalls those who do.”

  “What will you do?”

  “My helper will tell me.”

  “How can a son destroy his father?”

  “My helper will tell me what to do when the time comes.”

  “It is a terrible thing when a son is asked to do such a thing to his father.”

  “A man must obey the voice within.”

  There was a long pause, then she asked, as she gazed in sad love upon her smiling baby, “When will you make the divination for our return?”

  “Tomorrow, after the sun sets. I will then offer sacrifices and seek instruction from those of the other world.”

  “It will be a good thing to show our son to my mother and father. Yet I shall be sad on our return. I have come to love your father.”

  The next day at dusk he made the divination. He went to a lonely place beside the river and built a small stick fire. He sprinkled a handful of tobacco in the flames as a token offering to the sun. He hung some dried meat in the brush for the fourleggeds to eat so they might tell those of the other world that his heart was good. He threw a few kernels of precious corn upon the grass so the wingeds would tell Wakantanka that his hand was always open.

  Last he poured some badger blood over a buffalo chip and stirred the two together with a stick. When he had mixed them sufficiently, so that the wisdom-giving power of those who live underground had become one with the truth-telling power of those who live above the ground, he peered into the blood-and- dung pie long and anxiously. Gradually, as the evening light faded, lines and swirls began to form into a picture. Only when it was almost dark did he see it clearly: a man on a sorrel horse leading the way, with a woman following on a dun mare, a baby and some household goods riding in a basket on two travois poles, while around them a white colt galloped, making a circle like a burning corona around a sun.

  “Thank you, thank you. Now I fear only what must be done to my father. I love my father dearly and do not wish to kill him.”

  2

  First the ears of a sorrel horse showed over the low rise, then the tufts of a wolf-cap, then the bronze face of a man. Slowly the whole of the man and the horse came to view. It was late in the afternoon and the sinking sun hit the high cheeks of the man and the bluff chest of the horse full on. The man was stripped for action: quiver bristling with arrows, bow strung, knife ready in the belt, warclub dangling from the wrist.

  Behind the man came a woman on a dun mare. The woman sat with her legs straddled over the thin ends of travois poles. Behind her on the travois, on top of a basket of goods, rode a baby nodding in its cradle. Farther behind ran a white colt, sometimes skimming over the grass, sometimes stumbling in buck brush.

  The man held up his hand. They stopped. Leaning forward, eyes glittering, the man searched the horizon ahead.

  The woman looked back and smiled tiredly at the sleeping baby and the gamboling colt.

  The man sat as high as he could on his horse and looked once more along the entire length of the horizon before them. At last the man said, “They are not in their accustomed place beside Falling Water.”

  “Perhaps they have not returned from the Place of the Pipestone.”

  “It is now the Moon of Ripe Corn, woman. It is already long past the time for the making of the pipe.”

  The woman waited patiently.

  The man said, “Perhaps they have removed to a new place along the river.”

  “Perhaps the buffalo did not come to the valley this summer and they have gone for a summer hunt from which they have not yet returned.”

  “Woman, you have forgotten the power of Moon Dreamer’s buffalo medicine. When he dances and sings for the buffalo to come, they come. His dancing and their coming is one and the same. His medicine has never failed the Yanktons.”

  The woman waited patiently.

  Again the man rose to his full height on the horse. Finally, staring intently at the wide valley ahead, he made out what looked like a circle of sharp wolf teeth.

  “Do you see them, my husband?”

  “It is as I have said. They have removed to a new place. I see the Yankton tepees on the east side of the river. It is where the grass is deep for the horses.”

  “Ahh, the new encampment will have a sweet smell.”

  As the man watched, a puff of smoke rose off the bluffs above the camp, white against a yellow sunset. “They have seen us,” he cried. “They ask what is the news.”

  Quickly he put his horses through a series of zigzag maneuvers, telling the guards on the bluffs that he brought much that was good. He watched until he saw small specks run down toward camp, then said, “Let us rest the horses. I wish to prepare for the welcome home.”

  He slid to the ground and settled to one side in the green grass. From a small leather case he dug out some black paint, the symbol of joy, and smeared a wide band across his face from nose to ear. He next decorated the sorrel, painting white circles on its flanks and hanging brilliant red feathers in its tail. He also caught the white colt and hung a beautiful necklace of red quills around its neck. And last he fastened the scalp of the Pawnee, as well as a portion of Dancing Sun’s scarlet mane, on the necklace, in such a way that they dangled noticeably every time the colt moved.

  The woman waited until he had finished, then, asked, “Will my husband carry his warclub?”

  He caught what she meant. He looked down at the figures he had painted on it. “Perhaps my father Redbird will not see them if I swing the warclub swiftly about to show my joy.”

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sp; “You will forget and he will see.” She sighed. “It is a sad thing.”

  He remounted the sorrel. “Woman, the gods have decided what is to be done. Let us not speak of it any more.”

  They rode in dignity toward the camp. The white stud colt gamboled around them, its necklace gingling on each leap.

  When they were yet some distance away, the people began to stream out toward them, first the children, then the young maidens, then the stalking guards. The old men, smoking on the nearby red rocks, slowly got to their feet, while the old women, looking wonderingly, gathered in the doorways of their tepees.

  No Name held his head high, looking from side to side in triumph. The golden sunset struck his high cheekbones a warm glancing blow. Leaf rode demurely behind him, with an occasional flash of eye to either side to see if the people properly appreciated their miraculous return.

  The maidens and the guards laughed and cried. They sang songs. They danced. They cried out the names of No Name and Leaf again and again. The children raced around the two walking horses and the pacing white colt like swift swallows. There was a great tumult of shouting and rejoicing and a rising of thick red dust. All held out their hands to No Name and Leaf. Yet no one touched them. The people were full of marveling and, in awe, kept a proper distance.

  The triumphant procession had hardly passed in through the horns of the camp, when the maiden named Pretty Walker came weeping around the side of a tepee. She had seen both Leaf and the baby and knew what their coming meant. She cried out at No Name in a piercing voice, “I have waited! Let me hear your new song!”

  No Name’s eyes slowly hardened over.

  “I have waited,” Pretty Walker cried again. “Where is he who said he would come?”

  No Name guided his horse over to where she stood. He looked down at her sternly. “Are you angry that a Yankton woman who was once lost is now found? Also, the day will soon come when I shall become known as a great chief and a lucky hunter. My lodge shall be known as one belonging to a generous feastmaker, who has mercy on the hungry and the helpless. I shall have need of more than one wife. Therefore, woman, wait as before. I shall come. Do not always act as one who resembles a hurt puppy.”

  Pretty Walker hid her face in her hands. Then with a quick, almost violent motion, she whirled around and disappeared into her mother’s tepee.

  When No Name looked back, he caught Leaf looking at him with angry flashing eyes. He stiffened, almost haughtily, and said, “Woman, put away your jealousy. I spoke to Pretty Walker the day I left, when it was thought by all that you were dead.”

  The people continued to rejoice and dance around them, singing, calling out their names. Some of the young men came running with a belly drum and began to beat out impromptu songs.

  The loud drumming frightened the colt. It ran close against Leaf and the dun mare, stepping high and quick, its blue eyes dilated, its little red plume of a tail lifted.

  Out of a further tepee popped first an old woman, then an old man. Both looked as if awakened from a long sleep. Their eyes fell upon the triumphant figure of No Name, then upon Leaf behind him, then upon the baby in its cradle on the travois. Slowly their eyes widened to large white circles. Then both clapped hand to mouth.

  Leaf saw them. “My father, my mother,” she cried, “look, I return!” Then Leaf’s face broke and her eyes closed over. Her lips twisted.

  Owl Above and Full Kettle came running on old knees. They touched the hem of their daughter’s tunic, weeping, laughing.

  Between gasps, Leaf cried, “See my son, see my husband!”

  “We see them, our daughter, we see them,” they cried, and fell against her leg.

  No Name held himself in check. It was not a good thing for a son-in-law to look too closely upon the faces of his in-laws.

  Then Circling Hawk stepped out of the soldiers’ lodge in the middle of the camp. He came stalking toward No Name, a large hearty smile on his rough face. “Ho, I see you return with a blackened face, friend.”

  “Ho, and I see that you have kept camp well, brother. There is not a face missing.”

  “Have you a song for us to sing?” the maidens around them cried.

  No Name smiled. “I will sing it at the proper time.”

  “Give it to us now. We wish to sing.”

  No Name smiled again. “I have not thought much upon it.”

  “Sing us a song,” they cried. “Have you not done a great thing?”

  Still smiling, he reined in some and sang in step with his horse. He began each stanza on a high note and slowly let the melody drift down.

  “Friends, behold my horse.

  It is a seed colt,

  Son of a great white one.

  There is much to say.

  “Friends, behold my wife.

  She is a brave one.

  The Pawnees could not destroy her.

  There is much to say.

  “Friends, behold us.

  I went away one,

  I return five and one.

  There is much to say.”

  The young singers at the belly drum, holding a hand to the side of the mouth, repeated it after him loud and full. The young braves bounded, the maidens hop-danced, the children swirled underfoot, the old men shuffled stiffly beside the red rocks, and the old women sang in falling quavering accents. Again the rising dust of wild tumult filled the center of the village.

  No Name looked ahead to Moon Dreamer’s lodge. The door was lashed shut. No Name’s face fell. The closed door meant that his uncle was not going to rejoice on his safe return until after all of the vision had been fulfilled.

  No Name next looked ahead to his father’s tepee. His heart leaped up. His father and mother were waiting at the door. No Name’s face slowly became grave with duty. And forgetting, he let his warclub dangle from his wrist in full view of his father.

  His father looked at him, then at Leaf, then at the two horses, finally at the skittish white colt.

  No Name saw that his father had aged greatly. The nipples of his chest hung slack, his arms hung crooked, and a wrinkled gathering of old skin puffed out at the elbows.

  No Name reined in his horse and stepped down. Before he could defend himself, his old mother Star That Does Not Move rushed up and, crying, ran her fingers over his face as one who was blind. Tears coursed down her old smoked cheeks.

  No Name suffered her. He stood very still.

  At last his mother broke off, and still crying, without saying anything, she took the reins from his hand and led his sorrel away.

  Loves Roots next stepped out of the tepee. Loves Roots looked at No Name, choked back a cry, made a move as if to touch him, then went to help Leaf with the baby and the dun mare and the white colt.

  Left alone, father and son looked at each other with eyes full of delicate questioning. Then, just as their dark faces were about to break, they fell upon each other’s shoulder in love and embraced each other.

  No Name was the first to withdraw. He held his father fondly by the elbows a moment, then let him go and stepped into the tepee.

  Son and father sat by the fire, the son in the place of the guest of honor, the father against his willow back-rest. Both began to pick up tiny twigs and one by one to throw them into the fire. The flames brightened, and lighted their faces clearly, the son’s blackened one and the father’s gray-tinged one.

  Star bustled in. She took off No Name’s moccasins, rubbed the soles of his feet, then slipped on a new pair of moccasins. She set a pot of meat and dried plums to warm near the fire. A moment later Leaf and the baby and Loves Roots came in. The two women made themselves busy on the woman’s side.

  Presently the food was warm enough and Star filled two wooden bowls and handed them to father and son. Redbird waited politely until his son was almost finished before he began.

  After the bowls were removed, Redbird prepared some tobacco on his cutting board. He filled his red pipe in quiet ceremony. After he had it going properly, and had held
it out to the great directions, he handed the pipe across to No Name. Calmly, wordless, the two men took turns puffing. Star and Loves Roots and Leaf rustled in the shadows behind them. The women waited.

  Redbird puffed the pipe a last time, then clapped out the ball of dead ashes in the palm of his hand and threw it in the fire. Looking No Name clearly in the eye, he said, “My son, I see you have returned with a blackened face.”

  No Name could not quite hold up to his father. “My father, I have been to a great distance. I have worn out many moccasins.”

  “Tell me, at what place have you stood and seen the good?”

  “In all the places you told me of before I left. Beside the River That Sinks. Beside the River of Little Ducks. Also, I saw the sacred stones. They were two and they were painted red.”

  “Ai,” his father cried, starting back, “did they show you the true path?”

  “Ae, they did. I was very happy.”

  No Name then told of his long journey in detail. His father listened with parted mouth, lips moving as if he already knew the words before No Name spoke them.

  As he talked, No Name was keenly aware of Leaf listening behind him with the other two women. Leaf would be wondering if he would again withhold from his father the last part of the vision. Well, now that he was home again, sitting before his father face to face, he found he still loved his father too much to hurt him in his old age. So yet again he would withhold it.

  When No Name finished the telling, there was a long silence, broken only by the sighs of Star and Loves Roots.

  No Name dropped another little stick into the fire. After a moment the heat of the fire caught hold of the stick and it burst into flame. He watched the new flame for a time, then threw a quick look at his father to see how he had taken it.

  His father sat impassive, also musing at the new flame. There was no hint, neither in the expression around his eyes nor on his wide lips, that he did not accept the recital as the full truth.

  No Name just barely managed to keep the trembles out of his fingers.

  The door flap parted and an old man known as Shakes His Spear pushed in, his brown wrinkled face covered with a fawning smile. Shakes His Spear shuffled up to No Name, nudged him, and in a low whisper urged him to let him announce his deed of valor to the village.