by Mike Blakely
The beasts were tired from having swum the river, and Horseback closed on them quickly, his mount leaping obstacles in the timber as he ducked low limbs. Seldom had he ridden in thick timber, and this made the going slower. The hunter thought to himself that he had better practice this kind of riding in days to come in case he should ever have to attack or escape through thick trees.
Finally, the trees began to thin, and the buffalo burst onto the grassy bottom lands where the hunt had begun. Horseback felt sunlight hit his bare shoulders as he came out of the trees, and it felt like the voice of Sound-the-Sun-Makes, giving him strength. His father and the other hunters were watching now. His mind raced even faster than he rode, plunging across the green grassland with a wind of his own making, pulling his hair long behind him.
Suddenly, his guardian spirit gave him the idea. He veered to the right of the herd, as his hunting party remained spread out to the left, against the steep banks. He would choose an animal to lance from his horse, and at the same time frighten the other animals into the range of the bowmen.
The buffalo horse seemed crazy with the idea of catching the buffalo, his mane streaming with every galloping lunge of his head. The horned beasts were tired, their tongues hanging out as they ran. Horseback angled into the right side of the herd, choosing a lagging cow as his prey. The beasts cut to their left, but Horseback and his crazy buffalo horse stayed with them, closing fast.
The bloody flint point swooped downward as the gap closed, and Horseback leaned into the coming resistance just as the blade found its mark behind the ribs. He had learned from just the one kill of the broken-legged bull, and he reined his horse back as soon as the shaft reached deep enough to kill. The lance slipped free and the cow bellowed as she stumbled and weaved, finally falling with a cough of blood, and rolling with legs kicking air.
The rest of the buffalo scattered toward the other hunters. Horseback turned his heaving mount to watch. They were hiding behind the animals they had already killed, and when the live buffalo sped by in range of their arrows, they rose and sent feathered shafts speeding with such expert magic that not one missed, and all six of the animals ran wounded toward the slopes, some dropping within view, some lumbering into the trees.
“Ye-ye-ye-ye!” he cried, the dripping shaft of the lance held above his head. He felt a trickle of blood run warm across his knuckles, and lowered the fist to lick the fresh blood away.
The answer came back like a nation of echoes, and he felt like a great hunter—the first of his kind. Only now did he realize that he had lived his vision—and Spirit Talker’s—only now the vision of hunting horseback had come out of the fog and was plain.
But there were other still-hazy visions of other things to do on horseback. And the one nearest in the mist was battle. Horseback was ready. He was going to ride the war path soon. He would kill or die astride the gift his gods had given him.
14
Horseback woke happy and eager to get on with the day’s work. They had butchered and feasted until dark yesterday, gorging themselves on raw brains, blood, and curdled milk, raw liver smeared with juices of gall bladder, and raw marrow raked with sticks from bones broken open. Only half of the kill had been skinned, and plenty of butchering was left to do.
The women were already working at the Two Rivers camp, making many good things for the men to eat as they woke. Coming out of the lodge he had shared with his father and mother last night, Horseback saw River Woman stripping lengths of slick buffalo intestine between her fingers to carry to the river for washing.
She smiled when she saw him. “May the sun rise now in your heart, as it rises soon over the rim of the river valley.” She offered him the length of gut in her hands.
Horseback scratched his stomach and respectfully declined the raw intestine, having eaten plenty of that delicacy yesterday. Looking toward the cook fire, he saw a fresh buffalo paunch suspended by four sticks to make a cooking vessel, now bulging with water. “What are you cooking in the paunch, my mother?”
“Anything you like. Brains? Heart? Tongue? Liver?”
“Tongue,” he said.
Happily, she snatched a calf tongue from a branch where it hung and plunged it into the paunch filled with water. “The stones are hot,” she said. “It will not take long.”
Grabbing the forked limb she had fashioned for the purpose, River Woman slipped the green forks under one of the stones in the coals. Bending the other end of the green limb over, she clamped the hot stone firmly against the fork and lifted it, smoking, from the fire. The stone was the size of a turkey egg, smooth from much use and travel. River Woman carried her best cooking stones with her from camp to camp, for they were heavy and hard and possessed the magic of holding much heat—more than ordinary stones.
Using the bent and forked stick, she dropped the stone into the paunch with the water and calf’s tongue. The music of the boiling water made her smile, and she turned back to the fire to get another hot cooking stone.
Soon the tongue was boiled and Horseback was tearing at it with his teeth, holding it on a sharpened stick. His mother had added some marrow and wild onion to the water, flavoring the tongue to his liking. As he ate he saw the ponies standing in the grass, and noticed the buffalo horse he had ridden yesterday looking at him while the others grazed.
“My son,” Shaggy Hump said, walking briskly back to the lodge from upstream, “we have one more cow to track. I hit her with an arrow yesterday when you ran the six strays past us. She did not bleed much, but I have found a trail.”
“I will find her,” Horseback said. “I know how to look for blood and tracks. If my father shot an arrow into a cow, she could not have run far.”
“It was not my straightest shot, but straight enough to kill. We will find her around the next bend of the river, or the next. The wolves and coyotes scattered far after the herd yesterday. If our medicine stays strong, we will find the cow before them. And if they find her first, they will have her, for they are our ancestors, and we have already made much meat.”
They fixed the war bridles around the jaws of their horses and threw the buffalo-hide pads over backs and withers, winding the coils of rope around behind the forelegs. Grabbing a handful of mane, each rider vaulted onto his pad. Returning the proud looks of the other hunters, they rode upstream, seeking the last of the wounded animals from yesterday’s great hunt.
“The cow ran into the timber here,” Shaggy Hump said, “between these two sohoobi trees. From this place, only Mother Earth can tell the story of where our meat has gone.”
Horseback slid off the horse and crouched, looking for some tiny speck of blood on a blade of grass. He covered the distance between the two trees painstakingly, but failed to find the sign he sought. He heard his father chuckle.
“My son, when the hawk hunts, does it walk upon the ground? Does it slide through the grass like a snake?”
“The hawk flies.”
“Yes. It looks not for the track, but the trail.”
Horseback straightened and led his horse away from the place. He mounted again, and thought of himself as a hawk. He looked again at the space between the two trees, and saw what the hawk would see. A trail of grass stalks bent slightly lower than those around them showed plainly where the wounded cow had run into the timber. He had come near obliterating it with his own trail, but saw enough of it to show which way the buffalo had entered the timber. He made his horse walk beside this trail and leaned to one side as he watched the ground pass slowly under him, as if he were a soaring bird of prey.
The signs came to him like little leftover pieces of yesterday: a broken stick, a trampled vine, a tuft of hair on rough bark, the print of a dew claw in the forest litter, a speck of dried blood on a leaf. Through them, he remembered sounds he never heard, glimpsed sights he never saw. Two led toward the third, three to the fourth, four to the fifth, and so the tracks became the trail, and the signs became the story.
He remained astride his horse, loo
king down, plodding steadily up the river bottom, until he came to something that made him jerk his horse to a standstill. There were deer droppings here, and part of one deer track, crossing the trail of the wounded buffalo. Worrying that he might have missed other deer tracks, Horseback stopped to judge the path of the lone deer, so he would not tread on it and offend his guardian spirit. Making his pony back away from the deer trail, he found a dead limb on the ground to make the horse jump over, assuring himself that he would jump over the deer trail as he crossed it.
His search for the wounded buffalo continued until, riding down into a draw that led to the river, he heard a deep growl, and looked up from the ground. There across a small clearing, a great humpbacked bear was tearing a huge piece of meat from the loin of the dead buffalo cow. He reached for his bow as his father came up beside him.
Suddenly the bear turned its head and looked at the men. It roared once, loud and quick, then charged with its muscles shaking fur violently all across its shoulders. To his surprise, Horseback heard his father yell the war cry and felt him rush by to meet the bear with the lance he had brought to finish the cow should she still live. Shaggy Hump’s mount refused to meet the great bear, shying to one side, but the bear came on, and ran onto the point of the lance. Screaming, in rage and pain, the great beast swatted at the shaft, then gathered it in with its forepaws and snapped it in its jaws.
Horseback was trying to string his bow, but had to hold his frightened horse. He had never tried to use a bow while riding a calm horse, let alone one crazed by an attack of a huge humpbacked bear. Glancing up, he saw that his father’s bow was strung, and Shaggy Hump was reaching for an arrow.
The bear charged Shaggy Hump’s mount again, which ran around the edge of the clearing in terror, against every effort of the rider to hold it. Plunging into the trees, Shaggy Hump was knocked aside by a limb and landed on the ground at the same moment the bear raked its claws across the rump of the horse. Kicking and squealing, the horse drove the bear away with hard hooves and made an escape.
Before he could think, Horseback was using his bow on his mount’s rump to charge ahead and draw the attack of the bear away from his father. When the bear turned to him, he let his horse dodge and run back up the trail. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the bear turning back for his father again, but Shaggy Hump was drawing his bow, and his arrow sank deep into the great bear’s flank.
After biting at the new wound, the bear charged Shaggy Hump again, and again Horseback had to whip his horse into the middle of the clearing to lure the bear away from his father. Horseback even held his mount back so the bear would chase him longer, for he could not stand to think about his father falling into the jaws of this ravenous beast.
The bear chased Horseback from the clearing, but still refused to leave the dead cow it had claimed, and turned back to do battle with Shaggy Hump. Shaggy Hump was climbing a tree when Horseback came back to the clearing, and this seemed to enrage the bear. Nothing Horseback could do could keep the bear from swatting at his father, and one sharp claw raked Shaggy Hump’s leg, almost causing him to fall. Yet, the pain gave the hunter more strength and he scrambled higher, beyond reach of the creature so crazed with bad medicine.
Horseback took confidence, seeing his father safe in the tree, and he started to string his bow again. His hands were shaking, so he thought of his vision, of Sound-the-Sun-Makes. He felt his medicine pouch inside his loin skins, and knew it granted him protection. He hooked the bow over his thigh and under his foot and bent it to loop the bowstring on the other end. He heard his father’s bow string thump, followed by the roar of the bear.
Reaching for an arrow in his own quiver, Horseback saw the bear shaking the sohoobi tree that held his father, biting at the trail of blood that ran down from Shaggy Hump’s wounded leg. He notched the arrow, thought of his shadow-song, and let the shaft fly into the bear’s back.
Startled by a noise behind him, he turned to see the other hunters coming, having heard the fight all the way from the camp. Arrows flew like wasps, and the great bear attacked his own flesh where each point stung him, finally attempting to drag himself into the trees. Even before the bear had stopped crawling, Shaggy Hump was coming down from the tree. Dropping to the ground, he favored his mangled leg.
The bear tried to snap at him, but Shaggy Hump poked a hind quarter with his bow, yelling, “Aaa-hey! I claim the first honors!”
Now Horseback raced ahead to beat the others to the second battle stroke, for he deserved it more than they. The other hunters had left their horses to fight the bear afoot, so Horseback easily beat them to the dying bear. Leaning from his mount, he struck the very head of the bloody beast with his bow and yelled, “Aaa-hey! I have the second!”
The men sang like their coyote forebears over the carcass of the bear, so the women back in camp would know of their victory. Then Shaggy Hump tied a leather strap tight around his leg under the knee.
“Your leg, my father,” Horseback said, as the others looked over the huge dead bear.
“Let me ride behind you, son. Your mother will know how to make the leg well. The strap will make the blood stop flowing, and the pain makes me feel proud. You fought bravely, and the great humpbacked bear is as dangerous as any of our many enemies in a close fight. You will do well in battle.”
Horseback helped his father onto the horse behind him. “I will make my father and my mother proud, and all of my people. I will kill or die on my war pony.”
Shaggy Hump pointed down the trail that had led him and his son to this glorious fight. “It is better to wear battle scars and count honors on living enemies, than to kill or to die. Too much killing makes our enemies crazy to enslave our women and children and to take our scalps. Dying makes our women weep and slash their breasts, for they will have no one to feed them when we are gone. But these are things for the spirits to teach. Listen to the spirits, my son, not your father.”
15
With a buffalo rib held delicately in her hand, Looks Away lightly scraped at the deposit of fine white clay she had found, gathering it into the palm of her other hand. She took care to pick out all the pebbles and particles of dirt that did not gleam with the pure brilliance of snow. Satisfied that the handful of clay was pure, she poured it into a small buckskin pouch. This clay would make fine white paint for her husband. As she filled the pouch, she heard hoofbeats over the crest of the river bank, so she left the small outcropping of white clay and climbed higher up the steep bank to see what caused the commotion.
Peeking over the crest of the river bank, she saw Horseback and his two young friends stalking a tawny mare with golden mane and tail. The mare watched, head high, as they crept up from three directions, their arms spread wide as if to gather her in. This mare was the one horse in the herd who dragged a long rawhide tether, looped around her neck. She was difficult to catch, but once mounted, made a good riding horse upon which to catch the other horses.
As the young warriors closed in, the mare made a dash between Horseback and Trotter, and Horseback ran hard to leap for the rope before the mare could drag it past him. She pulled him along the ground until Trotter and Whip could help him hold on. Knowing she was caught now, the mare let Horseback put the war bridle around her jaw and scramble onto her back. He left the long tether dragging behind, in case he fell off and had to catch the mare again.
Looks Away made sure she would not be seen by the boys, for she enjoyed watching them work with the horses and did not want to interfere with their fun. She was responsible for much of what the boys had learned, and this made her heart feel light.
Looks Away had lived in the mountains as a girl, with the Yutas. She had known horses as long as she could remember, for the Yutas had owned horses many winters before the Noomah.
When Horseback’s uncle, Black Horn, captured her and made her his wife, she brought with her much knowledge about horses that she did not even know she possessed. Looks Away’s brother, a Yuta warrior named Bad Camper,
had traveled far to the south to steal some ponies. Bad Camper had told the warriors of his band that the ponies came from strange men in the south with iron shirts and pale skin and hairy faces. It always frightened her to think of such things.
Looks Away tried not to ponder her old life in the mountains. She missed many things from that life. Her name had been Pine Cone there. Summers were cool, and winters spent in protected canyons. Food was more plentiful than it was among the Noomah. The hunting grounds of her people were green and there were many elk, whose whistling she missed during the Moon of Falling Leaves.
Among these happy mountain people, the Noomah had been regarded as savage foreigners with very dark skin, bowed legs, and broad faces. The Yutas called the Noomah by the word Komancia, which meant Those Who Always Want to Fight Us in the Yuta tongue. Looks Away had been warned as a girl that they were horrible torturers, that they ate bugs and snakes and even their own filth. Judging from the few captives she had seen as a girl, these strange people were small and squatty, shorter and more heavily muscled than other peoples she had seen. Now she noticed that this compact build seemed to make the Noomahs more suited to riding the horse, as their weight and bulk stayed low on the back of the animal, making them almost become a part of the horse itself.
Many things were different here among these embattled people who had captured and adopted her, but she did not dwell on the Noomah hardships. Here she had already served two great warrior husbands. First, Black Horn, who had died well. And now, Black Horn’s brother, Shaggy Hump, who was the bravest and richest warrior of all the Burnt Meat People, and perhaps all the Noomah nation. And she had become a second mother to Horseback, whom she loved as much as any child she could have borne herself. Horseback was a rider with medicine, and she had brought much of the knowledge he needed to become great. Though life was hard here—harder than it had been with the Yutas—the spirits had acted wisely when they sent her to live with the people who call themselves the True Humans.