by Mike Blakely
Falling against the neck of the sandy mare, Horseback found the coil of rope he had tied into the mane pressing against his bow arm. The lower curve of the coil was just right for his elbow to settle into, so he let this coil of rope bear his weight, and found he could use the neck of the horse as his shield by resting his elbow in this circle of rope.
All the wild sounds of this ride suddenly died away, and Horseback could feel the spirits talking in his head, though he could not quite understand their words. They were trying to tell him something, give him something, make him wiser. His thoughts came like water from a mountain cascade.
The growl of the Fire Stick came, and one of the horses in the herd fell with a shattered leg. The spirit voices faded in Horseback’s head. Now that the Fire Stick had missed him and his father, he knew he was going to escape with stolen horses, and stolen lodge poles, and much glory.
Shaggy Hump moved in front of the herd and made the six surviving horses stop at the edge of the trees. He began filling the air with laughter and cries of victory. The Northern Raiders had ceased in their pursuit, for they were tired of running and knew they could not catch horsemen.
“Where is the magic black paint for your feet,” Shaggy Hump said, “so that you may catch me with the speed of an elk?”
“Father,” said Horseback, “they do not understand the tongue of the True Humans.”
“They hear the laughter in my voice, and it speaks more than all the words of all the nations.” He shouted again at the enemy warriors: “I leave you with much horse meat to feed your white man while I take the live horses to ride in my own country!”
“We must go,” Horseback replied, “before the hairy-faced man fills the Fire Stick with more medicine.”
Shaggy Hump gestured his approval, but before he could start the horses, a shrill voice spoke from the line of Raiders who had stopped in the middle of the park. One of the women had caught up to the warriors and was cajoling the horse takers in their own language.
“Your Snake People will curse your name, horse taker! All the warriors of my great nation will hunt you down, and burn the lodges of your village, and scalp your sons, and rape your wives and daughters! You are the most evil of enemies of my people, for you killed my husband’s brother seven winters ago, and left your arrow in the ground to boast of it. Now you leave your arrow again in the shield of my husband. You leave your tracks upon the soil of our country, and our warriors will follow them forever, and you will know peace never again.”
Horseback looked at his father, and saw the surprise on Shaggy Hump’s face.
Shaggy Hump shouted: “You speak the tongue of the True Humans, ugly woman. Who are you?”
“I was born a child of the Noomah, but my people captured me and brought me to this better life, and this finer country. Now I hate you and your ways. I hate your language, and speak it only to torture you with knowledge of your own days to come. You will die a most painful death, horse taker, and your soul will live in an agony of pain forever!”
Horseback was watching the white man, far away at the edge of the village. He had seen enough of Fire Sticks to know when the killing spell was almost finished. Now the ugly hairy-faced man was pulling the medicine stick from the mouth of the evil weapon. “My father, she makes us stay too long. The Fire Stick!”
“My name is Shaggy Hump, woman. Tell your warriors to come die in my country! As for you, I will not speak of you to the Noomah, for you have ceased to exist. You are nothing!”
They moved their stolen herd into the timber and drove the animals toward the lodge poles they had cut, two ridges distant. The horses would be tired when they arrived and would stand while the horse takers burdened them with many lodge poles. Then they would drive the new horses mercilessly back into the country of the True Humans before the Northern Raiders could get more mounts and follow.
The killing power of the Fire Stick rattled through the limbs behind them, followed by the growl of the Fire Stick itself, muffled by distance. But they were safe inside the protection of the forest.
“Father, what did she mean?”
Shaggy Hump’s face turned to look at him, drawn with more worry than Horseback had ever seen before in his eyes. “You remember the story I have told of how I avenged my brother. I rode into the country of the Northern Raiders, killed one of their warriors, and left my arrow between two others that the spirits would not let me kill. The one I killed and scalped must have been the brother of a great warrior, for they remember the markings of my arrow, and now they have found me again.”
“Is this not why we mark our arrows, Father? So our enemies will know us?”
“The markings bring medicine from our guardian spirits. If our enemies know us by the markings, it is as the spirits wish.”
“Then you are great in the eyes of our enemy.”
“Yes, my son. I am great, for they have chosen me.”
“What does it mean to be chosen?”
“I am more than a man to them now. More than a warrior. To take my scalp would mean great medicine for one of their warriors. The things that woman said to me are true. They will destroy my family and my whole village to avenge the warrior I killed.”
Horseback weaved among the trees on the sandy mare, keeping the stolen horses herded together and moving in the right direction. When he came close enough to his father again, he said, “You could have killed all three of their warriors. Why do they hate you so much for letting two of them live?”
“They do not hate me. They fear me. I stood over them like a shadow, like a breath of wind that never touches the ground, like a spirit-warrior. I pushed my arrow into the ground while they slept like helpless babies in cradle boards. Now they dream of me when they sleep and wake up covered with sweat, even on the coldest of nights. Do you hate the great humpbacked bear, my son?”
“No.”
“Is it not a great thing to battle and kill the humpbacked bear and win glory?”
“It is a great thing, Father.”
“So it is. I am chosen. We must move away from this country of Northern Raiders. I am not afraid to die, but I do not wish our enemies to rub out our whole band of Burnt Meat People. We must move to the south.”
“Yes,” Horseback said. “Far to the south.”
23
As his seventeenth winter came near, he began to have powerful dreams. It started during the Moon of Falling Leaves, when the groves of aspens on the faraway mountains turned the color of tanagers; when the sacred deer battled one another with their antlers; when the cranes and the geese and the ducks made noisy lines in the sky; when the antelope danced before the early blasts of cold air and were good to touch as they lay dead on the ground, for they wore much fat under their hides.
It was in this good part of the circle of time, before the harsh days of winter, in the country of the True Humans, that Horseback began to see visions in his dreams.
In one of the first dreams, he was attacking a war party of Northern Raiders who had come to rub out the Burnt Meat People. Riding with the speed of a falcon, he made a sacred ring around his enemies. All the while, the Northern Raiders shot arrows at him. The arrows flew around him in such numbers that he ducked his head behind the neck of his horse, using the horse as his shield. He leaned so far that he began to fall, and he feared he would land on the ground and be killed by his enemies. Then the dream made a horsehair rope appear, looping under the neck of his mount. As he fell, Horseback slipped his arm into this loop almost up to the elbow, and found he could ride at full speed hanging on the side of his warhorse.
When he woke after having this dream, Horseback began making a rope of corded rawhide made from the hide of a dead pony. He started with two strips of hide, each as thin as a quill shaft. He would twist one strip away from himself with his fingers, then turn it toward himself with his wrist. Holding it there, he would then twist and turn the second strip, adding new strips of rawhide all the while, making a cord of the two twisted strips.
When this cord was long enough, he doubled it, again twisting and turning, making the cord twice as thick, with four bundles now making up the cord. Doubling the cord again, he finally finished a rope of eight strands, as long as he was tall.
Horseback looped this rope under the neck of the sandy-colored mare he had captured, weaving each end of the rope into the mane of the mare. The Burnt Meat People watched as he rode around the camp, hanging from the side of his horse, his forearm resting in the loop he had made. Only one leg slung over the back of the mare remained exposed to his imaginary enemies.
Spirit Talker, the old puhakut, told the other young warriors that they should fashion like slings under the necks of their warhorses. “Horseback’s medicine grows strong,” he said. “Watch him well.”
When Looks Away saw what Horseback had done, she went to River Woman and said, “Do you see what your son has made, my sister?”
“I saw it in the dream,” River Woman replied.
“What dream, my sister?”
“The dream my son had.”
River Woman spoke strangely like this all the time now. It was said that she never came all the way home after battling the demons in her trance-world. This sometimes happened to warriors who had seen much battle, as it had happened to River Woman.
The next dream vision Horseback had was very strange. He spoke of it to Spirit Talker:
“I rode over much land, Grandfather, and my horse had much speed and could leap over great canyons and rivers. I saw many strange lands. In one place, the land was so flat that it looked like the surface of a lake with no shores. It was covered with nothing but grass that rippled like water. While I rode over this land, I came to a place where buffalo were coming up from the ground, like water from a spring.”
Spirit Talker threw a pinch of sacred powder into the fire.
“What does it mean to have a vision like this?”
“I do not know. Maybe it means you are hungry.” This was all Spirit Talker had to say about the dream.
Then, Horseback saw another vision in his dreams and came to Spirit Talker to tell him about it:
“I came out of a cloud over some mountains with lodge poles and much timber. Across the mountains I saw people living in lodges made of dirt. I went into one of the dirt lodges, and it was very dark. While I was in the lodge, I heard horses running outside. I heard so many horses that it took them all day to run by the lodge.”
“Did you see the horses?”
“I only heard them, Grandfather.”
“Then it could have been just a few horses running by many times.” Spirit Talker would say nothing more about this vision.
Horseback continued to dream and came to Spirit Talker to tell him of yet another vision:
“Grandfather, I was in a strange place. I was looking into a pool of clear water. There were leaves of some strange tree floating on the top of the water. I saw many deer tracks at the edge of the pool. The water was so clear that I could see fish swimming in it. It was so still that I could see the sky, and limbs of a strange tree reflected in the surface, but when I bent over the water to get a drink, I could not see my own image.”
Spirit Talker seemed thoughtful for some time. “I once had a dream that I was walking along and looked down to notice that I cast no shadow.”
Horseback straightened, hopefully. “What did that mean, Grandfather?”
“The sun was behind a cloud.”
Spirit Talker would offer no further interpretations of Horseback’s many visions. Finally Horseback dreamed of white men with hairy faces, iron shirts, and Fire Sticks. They tended many beautiful horses. There were only a few white men, and many horses. In this dream, night came, and the moon rose full. Horseback found himself running with the horses, as if he were one of them. The sun rose on his right and set on his left many times before he came to his own country and found the village of the Corn People, and gave the many horses to Teal’s father.
He did not ask Spirit Talker to interpret this dream. He knew he was to search out the source of horses to the south. He told his father that he was going to raise a party to travel into the distant country of the Sacred South.
“I will follow you, my son,” Shaggy Hump said.
When Spirit Talker heard, he came to Horseback and said, “Now you have found the meaning of your own visions, young Horseback. I do not understand why you have been called to travel so many sleeps from your own country, for your spirit power is more than I can understand.” Then he came very close to Horseback and spoke in a low voice, saying, “Always remember, if the visions grow too powerful, if the magic makes too much danger, you may give it back to the spirits, and no one will speak out against you. Do not let your gift destroy you, young Horseback.”
Others heard about Horseback’s search, but few trusted his visions enough to ride with him on the trail south. Most of the men with wives and children said they must stay with their families through the winter. One young married man named Bear Heart, who had elder brothers to take care of his wife, said he would go south with Horseback, for he wanted many horses. Echo-of-the-Wolf and Whip also agreed to follow Horseback.
They prayed the whole night before they left, except for Whip, who still had not received a vision and did not believe in praying. The women prepared a small lodge for the searchers, packing it on a pony drag. Before dawn Shaggy Hump went to Looks Away’s lodge, and Bear Heart went with his wife into his lodge. But when the dark robe of night began to roll away from the east, all of Horseback’s followers were ready to ride.
They took very little pemmican, for they expected to move onto better hunting grounds, and wanted the people in the camp to have the pemmican for the winter. They left their barbed war points at home; carrying only hunting points in their quivers, hoping to avoid battle with the many strange nations to the south. When they left, the whole band of the Burnt Meat People came out to sing prayers to them as they turned south, except for River Woman, who was chanting strangely in the lodge she shared with no one. Then, when the riders were almost too far away to hear, she came running out of her lodge, shouting, “My son! My son!”
Horseback held his party of searchers back long enough for his mother to catch up to him. “Mother, why do you keep us from leaving? Father Sun looks upon us.”
“My son,” she replied, placing one hand on his leg and one hand on the mare he rode. “It is well that you let Bad Camper go free. I know he is the brother of my sister. You have done well, my son.” She turned and walked back toward the lodges.
Shaggy Hump smiled, for he found a certain charm to River Woman’s crazy talk, though others accused her of sorcery. The other searchers looked southward, wanting to ride. Only Horseback made sense of what his mother had said, and he took it as a powerful sign. A good sign. Horseback loved his mother very much.
24
Sound-the-Sun-Makes blessed and protected Horseback’s party of searchers many sleeps to the south. They traveled far each day, stopping to rest and let their horses graze only as Father Sun began his return to earth in his great leap across the sky. For the first few nights they made no fires, eating only the dried meat and pemmican they had brought with them. The night sky stayed full of stars, so the searchers left the hides for their small lodge folded and lashed to the pole-drag, choosing to sleep under the open sky, trusting their medicine to keep the giant cannibal owl from plucking them from their robes.
The Thunderbird flew over on the fourth day, making the riders wet and cold. But the rain softened the ground, which made traveling easier on the feet of the horses. On the evening after the rainstorm had passed, Horseback began unpacking the lodge at that night’s camp.
“We will not need the lodge, my son,” Shaggy Hump said.
“The Thunderbird may return,” Horseback replied. “His cloud hangs over us still.”
“Spider tells me no rain will fall this night.”
“Does my father know the talk of spiders?”
Shaggy Hump took Hor
seback to a place along the bank of the nearby stream where a spider was building a new web between two bushes. “When the web is thicker than a hair from the tail of a horse, rain will come soon. If the web is thinner than the hair, the Thunderbird will fly over another country.”
“My father knows much that I do not,” Horseback said. He left the lodge skins packed on the pole-drag and slept dry under the cloudy sky, rolled in his buffalo robe.
As they rode southward on their search, Horseback drank in the sights of this new land. The sage had given way to grass as he left the country of the Noomah, and the grass had grown thicker and taller with every day he led his party south. Small herds of buffalo had become common, and antelope were more numerous than he had ever imagined. Large bands of elk congregated in the valleys of streams. Through stands of timber, lesser bears ambled, ranging in color from that of the night sky to that of sand along a cutbank.
The searchers kept the mountains in sight to the west, the vast plains under them rolling away to the east, carved by creeks and rivers. The mountains were their landmarks, but the mountains also harbored the Yutas. These plains were often used as hunting grounds by the Yutas and by other fierce peoples, such as the Wolf People, who lived far to the east, but sometimes wandered all the way to the great mountains to hunt and wage war and take captives. Horseback’s father was his guide on this part of the journey, for Shaggy Hump had made this long dangerous trip once before, to trade with the Raccoon-Eyed People far out on the plains.
On the fifth day, Echo rode up one of the streams they crossed and killed a fine young elk cow. That night, they made a small fire and cooked some of the meat. The searchers were eating plenty, and good grass was keeping the horses strong.
Through seven suns they encountered no people. Shaggy Hump knew how to avoid the likely campsites of his enemies. Horseback listened to the advice of his father on these matters and hoped the tracks of his party’s little pole-drag would not arouse suspicion. The True Humans had no allies, and so they had to travel cautiously and make ready to run or fight.