Buffalo Medicine

by Don Coldsmith

  “The cover will not be ready for a while,” she admitted, “but we will set the poles. This will save a good spot for your lodge.”

  Owl realized that his mother-in-law wished to keep her daughter nearby as long as possible.

  The men helped to lift the heavy lodge skin into place, and soon White Hawk’s lodge was established in the new camp. Owl could still barely comprehend that the skeleton of new-cut poles in the adjacent spot would soon be the lodge of his, Owl’s own family.

  Two suns later, the Eastern band arrived. Again, there was much laughter and renewal of old friendships and acquaintances, much visiting of relatives, and increased quantities of confusion and barking of dogs. An incident also occurred which to Owl marked his first venture into full-fledged duties as a medicine man.

  As the lodges of the newly arrived group were tilting into position, an anxious young woman came looking for him. Their Eastern band, she told Owl, had no medicine man, and her child was very ill. Owl had been pointed out as one who might help.

  Owl was reluctant at first. He told the woman of his recent return from captivity. He had had no time to construct a headdress or rattles, and had no drum, even. Then he saw tears in the eyes of the young mother, and agreed to try.

  He called to Willow, and asked her to borrow a drum. She darted away among the lodges. Then he rummaged in their possessions and brought out some of the herbs and grasses he had been collecting. He would wear his rabbit cape, for want of anything more suitable. He did take the time to paint his face, with a broad red band beneath each eye, across the cheekbone, and a narrow stripe of yellow down the nose.

  Willow returned with a small drum, her eyes shining with excitement. They followed the young woman back to her lodge, stooped, and entered.

  As their eyes adjusted to the dim light, Owl saw a boy of perhaps six summers lying on a robe. His eyes were wide open, and a look of fear and anxiety was fixed firmly on his face.

  “He cannot stand or even sit,” the mother was saying. “He falls over.”

  Owl nodded, and spoke a greeting to the husband, who hovered anxiously over the bed of his son. To himself he wondered, what manner of evil is this? He had expected merely the fever, or perhaps evils of the stomach. This was completely outside his experience. Well, first things must come first.

  He took a pinch of plant material from a pouch and tossed it into the fire. A puff of fragrant smoke arose, and he nodded to Willow, giving her the necessary rhythm for the drum. The soft beat began, and Owl stepped into the cadences of the dance. The words of the chant came slowly. It had been long since he had practiced, but at last he finished the song, threw another pinch of incense at the coals, and turned to examine the child.

  To his surprise, the skin was not flushed with fever. Slightly warm, perhaps, but not burning. The large dark eyes followed him, as he ran his hands over the boy’s arms and legs. Again he encountered a surprising thing. The child’s extremities were completely limp. Owl was reminded of a deer he had once seen with a broken neck. The animal had been completely alert but unable to move. Yet in this case there was no injury. Could there be something else about the neck?

  Owl ran gentle fingers up the sides of the boy’s throat and moved the head quietly. He felt the scalp itself, searching over the surface for some hint. Then something touched his finger tip, something cool and smooth and round, behind the left ear. He parted the hair gently and felt more closely. Yes, it was there.

  A fat, blood-swollen tick was attached firmly to the skin in the hollow behind the ear. The creature was as large as the ball of his thumb. Could this be the cause of the illness? Owl wasn’t sure, but it was certainly evil-looking enough. He would assume that it might be, and act accordingly. He thought it best, however, to conceal his find in case it was not the problem.

  White Buffalo had coached him carefully in sleight-of-hand, and made him practice long. With an exclamation, Owl jumped and threw his head aside, drawing the attention of the observers from the child. At the same time, he deftly plucked the insect free with a quick jerk and palmed the creature.

  Standing, he nodded to Willow for a drumbeat, and started a triumphal dance around the fire. In a moment he tossed another pinch of medicine, and with it the offending bloodsucker, completely unnoticed.

  At the end of the dance, he gave the mother a sprig of herb, to be crushed and given in water to the child. He would, he told them, return the following evening.

  On the way back to the lodge, Owl was very dissatisfied. He had no idea whether the tick had been the cause of the problem. Suppose the evil spirit was still within the child? Of one thing he was certain. White Buffalo had always reminded him: In a day, an illness will be either better or worse. He slept poorly that night.

  As it happened, the child was remarkably better. Before the appointed time even, the boy’s father appeared, recounting in awed phrases how the youngster was able to sit up, eat, and even stand. Owl quickly rose to go and see, and Willow accompanied him.

  The boy did indeed look almost well. Owl attempted to look as if he had known it all along, and Willow gazed at him with such adoration that he was embarrassed. The delighted parents insisted on presenting Owl with a beautifully tanned otter skin.

  He still had his doubts, but tried not to show his insecurity. By evening, his reputation as a skilled medicine man was known throughout the camp.

  30

  It was still several suns before the Elk-dog band approached the site of the Sun Dance. Scouts reported the column to be two sleeps away. Immediately Owl began to fidget. He became moody and irritable. Even little Red Bird failed to break through his preoccupation. Finally, on the advice of her mother, Willow drew him aside.

  “My husband,” she began, “go to meet your family. Red Bird and I will stay here, and I will be working on our lodge.” Here she snuggled against him seductively. “You would be away from us only one sleep.”

  Owl protested, but could see the wisdom of the plan. His parents deserved an opportunity to become accustomed gradually to all the changes before them. He could have a little time to inform them of his marriage and his daughter before the shock of meeting their new relatives. And aiee, he had almost forgotten. They still thought him dead!

  Much as he would miss Willow, he finally consented to start next morning because the plan was good. He would probably save her much embarrassment by giving his parents advance notice.

  The claybank mare moved well, and Owl thoroughly enjoyed the trip. He stopped to rest when Sun Boy’s torch was high. He drank from a cold spring which came out of a hole in the hillside, and chewed some of the pemmican his wife had sent with him. The mare grazed along the. hillside until Owl swung up again to proceed.

  The shadows were growing long when he sighted the night camp of his father’s band. Owl came near the closest of the flimsy brush shelters, and dismounted to walk on. An old woman was gathering fuel along the grassy hillside. She glanced up, then suddenly screamed and threw her armful of buffalo chips in the air.

  “Aiee!” she screeched. “It is the ghost of Owl!”

  Turning, she fled toward the camp, still shouting unintelligibly. People came running, accompanied by the inevitable barking dogs.

  Somehow, Owl had not realized the impact that his return would create. His progress through the camp was impeded for a time by the crowd of curious people. Young men who were his contemporaries pushed forward to clasp his hand and welcome him home. They were more mature, heavier, than he remembered them. He realized that he himself had changed.

  His brother Eagle shouldered through the crowd, still appearing healthy and athletic. Eagle fell in beside Owl and the two walked on toward their parents’ brush lodge.

  “It is good to see you, my brother,” Eagle began. “You have grown up!”

  “You have, too! Have you a wife?”

  “Yes, and a small son.”

  “I have also, but mine is a daughter.”

  The two laughed and continued on their
way.

  Their mother looked up from her cooking, recognized the son she thought lost, and stood speechless for a moment. Then she gave a shriek of joy and ran to meet him Heads Off emerged from the shelter and came quickly after her.

  The curious crowd began to melt away in deference to the privacy of the reunion. For a time it seemed that everyone must talk at once.

  “Aiee, my small brother has a wife and child!” announced Eagle proudly.

  “Is this true, my son?” His mother appeared concerned.

  “Yes, Mother. I am sure you will love her as I do. Her name is Willow.”

  “Is she of the People?” asked his father.

  “Yes, the Mountain band. I met her while we were prisoners of the Head Splitters.”

  “Aiee, we thought you dead!” Tall One was still not accustomed to his return. “The men found your camp, and blood on a stone.”

  “It was not my blood, Mother. I broke a man’s face with the stone before I was captured.”

  How much more to the story than that, Owl thought. It will take long to tell.

  For a long time the family sat and listened to his account. Owl’s grandparents, Coyote and Big-Footed Woman, joined the circle. Eagle brought his wife, a handsome girl Owl did not remember from their childhood, and proudly introduced her and a fat baby. Owl exclaimed appropriately. His brother, a family man!

  Just as amazing to him was his younger sister, Dove Woman. She had been a child when he left, and was now a strikingly beautiful woman. Her gaze of adoring wonder for the brother now restored to her family was almost an embarrassment to him.

  After the initial dialogue, as things became a bit quieter, Owl found opportunity to speak to his father alone.

  “Father, I found a tribe of your people,” he began haltingly. “I was their prisoner.”

  Owl thought he had never seen such a look of love and compassion on his father’s face. The older man understood full well the implications of the simple statement. He knew the sort of treatment which would have been accorded a half-breed prisoner.

  “I am sorry, my son.” He reached a hand and gave a firm fatherly squeeze to Owl’s shoulder. A shoulder, Owl thought, marked with the ugly purple welts of the cat.

  “I can now understand, Father, why you left your tribe to become one of the People.”

  The eyes of Heads Off became misty with tears as he recalled how hard he had tried to return to his own. Why had he ever wanted to? It was difficult to remember that he had once been Juan Garcia, only son of the wealthy Don Pedro Garcia. These, the People, were his people.

  “It was bad, my son?”

  Owl nodded, noticing for the first time that his father was a little older, a little grayer around the temples. And the facial hair, he now realized, was sprinkled with frost.

  “Yes, but I am back now with the People.” He went on quickly, “I have seen many wondrous things, and I will tell you of them all. But now, I must go and see White Buffalo. I am ready to join him as a medicine man!”

  It was a moment before Owl realized that everyone was staring at him sadly. Shocked tragedy was reflected in their faces. Something was badly amiss.

  “What is it?”

  “Owl,” his mother finally spoke, “White Buffalo is dead, since the Moon of Snows.”

  “Then, I must see Crow Woman,” Owl rose to leave, “and I will be needed as medicine man.”

  “No.” His father motioned him to sit again. “She is dead, too. Crow Woman seemed lost without her husband, and she soon gave up.”

  There was an awkward silence. Owl sensed that there was more to the story. Everyone appeared acutely uncomfortable. Finally, his father spoke again.

  “Two Dogs is medicine man. He has taken over the medicine of White Buffalo.”

  31

  Two Dogs! Owl’s childhood enemy, the perennial bully, had originally been one of his main reasons for entering the medicine man’s apprenticeship.

  “But, how?” Owl stammered. “How could he be a medicine man?”

  The story was quickly told. After the loss of Owl, old White Buffalo had become very depressed. He now had no possibility at all for an understudy to learn his buffalo medicine. He had begun to age rapidly, appearing not to care what happened.

  Into this situation had stepped Two Dogs. He was still a bully, and as he matured, his added physical ability had made him even more sadistic. White Buffalo, in spite of his applicant’s complete lack of proper motivation, had accepted him in desperation. Time was running out.

  From the beginning, Two Dogs assumed an arrogant, superior attitude. Far from the humble apprentice, he soon bullied the old man unmercifully. It became obvious that White Buffalo had no control over the situation whatever. The Elk-dog band saw, but no one seemed to know how to proceed. Crow Woman cried quietly most of the time.

  Two Dogs rapidly assumed the use of the medicine man’s equipment, even wearing some of his robes and ornaments. Soon White Buffalo had lost all initiative to resist.

  There were those, it is true, who insisted that Two Dogs was possessed of powerful medicine. How else could it be that he grew stronger while White Buffalo became weaker? After all, the band was in need of a medicine man, and here was a strong replacement for the now senile old man. While the band argued, privately of course, Two Dogs became more arrogant, and White Buffalo became more ineffectual. When the weakening medicine man finally died in his sleep, there were even some who whispered that Two Dogs’ medicine had killed him.

  There was no way, of course, to prove this theory. Already Two Dogs had gone to the medicine man’s lodge and appropriated all of the accoutrements of the office. He made a public ceremony of burning the old man’s medicine pouch. He donned the sacred white cape and performed the Dance of the Buffalo, while one of his friends tapped the cadence on the medicine drum. Crow Woman watched and cried silently.

  At the end of the dance, Two Dogs announced that henceforth he would be known as White Buffalo. The crowd melted away, troubled but unsure. Who could challenge the authority of the medicine man?

  It became inadvisable to criticize the new medicine man. Two of his friends had now become his assistants, and their ears were everywhere. A woman spoke out in a semipublic place, that Two Dogs had corrupted the authority of the office. One of his assistants was then seen to be listening. For the next two suns the woman writhed in abdominal pain, retching constantly. The People became more apprehensive about disagreement with the new medicine man.

  Still, no one called him White Buffalo, except to his face.

  “He is a poor medicine man, Owl,” stated Coyote, and the others nodded. “He thinks only of his own power, and he has not studied his lessons well. He fired the grass at the wrong time this season, and we had to move to find buffalo!”

  Owl saw little that could be done. The man was a charlatan, but he possessed the symbolic white cape and other symbols of authority. It would be difficult to challenge such medicine.

  Some of Two Dogs’ medicine, like the induction of vomiting in the woman who challenged his authority, was simple. It would require only a pinch of certain herbs, secretly introduced into her food, Owl knew. But there was no real cause for challenge. The wrong time for burning was understandable. Anyone could make such an error in judgment, he realized.

  “I will go and pay my respects to him,” Owl finally decided. Over the misgivings of the others, he rose and threaded his way to the shelter pointed out as that of the medicine man.

  Two Dogs was seated in a presumptuous shelter, surrounded by a disgusting array of fine skins and other medicine items. Owl was about to greet him, when his way was suddenly barred by another man wearing the headband of a medicine man’s apprentice.

  Owl recognized the sneering face as that of one of Two Dogs’ childhood friends. The other showed no sign of recognition.

  “I would speak with the medicine man,” Owl began. The man said nothing. “You remember me! I am Owl. We grew up together. I, too, am a medicine man.”
There was still no answer.

  “Who is here?” asked Two Dogs haughtily, though he could plainly see all in the firelight, as well as hear the conversation.

  “He says he is a medicine man,” stated the apprentice with a chuckle.

  Two Dogs waved his arm in dismissal.

  “Tell him to go away. He is an impostor. I am medicine man to the Elk-dog band.”

  He made another sweeping gesture, and a puff of smoke rose from the fire. A revolting display of dramatics, thought Owl.

  “White Buffalo says you are to leave,” the apprentice was saying.

  “I heard.” Owl turned to depart.

  Things were indeed difficult. There was no precedent for this sort of situation. Normally, disputes could be settled by the council, and enforced by the warrior society. In this case, however, the chief presiding over the Elk-dogs’ council was the father of one of the parties involved. The other chiefs of the band would be reluctant to take sides. To side with Heads Off and his family would provoke the wrath of the medicine man, who already had a reputation as a dangerous man.

  On the other hand, there was no wish to abandon Heads Off, one of the most admired chiefs of all the People.

  Owl was thinking of these things as he returned to his parents’ fire.

  “He would not talk to me.”

  There was no surprise in the faces of the others.

  “Coyote,” Heads Off was speaking, “what is the custom in a thing of this sort?”

  Coyote had spent many days attempting to answer this same question. He could not remember such a problem in his lifetime. Aiee, if he could talk to White Buffalo for a little while. But, that, of course, was the problem. White Buffalo was gone.

  It would be very simple, he thought, if some mishap would occur to Two Dogs. It was tempting, but no, it would not do. Among the foremost taboos of the People was murder. Besides, even if it could be accomplished, suspicion would fall on the family of Heads Off.

  Even, he reminded himself, if someone else were actually guilty. Certainly, there were many who would wish Two Dogs dead. He hoped no one would feel obliged to take action. He spread his hands in frustration at his son-in-law’s question.