by Mike Blakely
In the forge, the Metal Men made wonderful things. Weapons that never broke, flaked, nor chipped. Tools that dug and cut and chopped and scooped and bored and raked and scraped and pounded. Handles that pulled and pushed and twisted and lifted.
Sometimes the slaves in the forge would offer shapes of iron to the fire spirits, making the shapes smoke and glow and yield just enough to be pounded into new shapes between a cold hammer of iron and a cold hunk of sacred metal called an anvil. This work made ringing noises that hurt Horseback’s ears.
Other times, the slaves would plunge a red-hot piece of iron into water, then heat the iron again, then plunge it back into the water.
“This makes the iron very hard,” Raccoon-Eyes claimed.
“The spirits work the same way with Noomah warriors,” Horseback replied. “When I was a small boy, my father would take me from my warm robes beside the fire in our lodge. He would carry me out into the coldest day of winter and throw me down into a hole broken through ice. This made me hard, like iron.”
One day, Horseback helped Raccoon-Eyes take all his horses to the forge. There a slave heated and pounded iron that came in the shape of a river bend. This slave made these pieces fit the hooves of the horses, and drove iron thorns into the hooves to hold the pieces in place. Raccoon-Eyes called these curved pieces of iron pony-moccasins.
“A pony that needs iron moccasins,” Horseback said, “is better to eat than to ride. When my pony has a sore foot, I wrap it in wet rawhide. That is the only moccasin my pony needs.”
Besides the fine horses and the cattle, the Metal Men kept other strange animals. One was a lesser pony called a burro that was neither graceful nor good to ride. Horseback thought this race of ponies must have displeased the gods in ancient times and become malformed forever.
When a male burro mated with a true horse, the offspring was called a mule. This kind of animal was strong and useful to the Metal Men, but not as fast or as good to ride as a true horse. Also, the mules would not produce colts. Horseback understood this to mean that the gods did not approve of the mating between the two races. However, he thought a mule would make a fine feast for many families. The Metal Men packed many things on the backs of mules, without the use of a pole-drag. Horseback watched the way they did this, and learned.
Another strange animal of the Metal Men was a kind of sheep, but it scarcely resembled the wild sheep Horseback had seen in the high-mountain country of the Northern Raiders. Raccoon-Eyes explained how the curly hair of the sheep could be cut from the animal during the Moon of Shedding Buffalo.
“With much labor,” Raccoon-Eyes said, “this sheep hair is made into warm clothes, and robes, and blankets that are almost as warm as a buffalo robe.”
“You should kill these sheep and skin them,” Horseback replied, “then eat their meat. The robes last longer when the hair stays on the hide. I have seen good robes passed down for generations.”
“True,” Raccoon-Eyes said, “but the Metal Men have a saying that they believe is wise: ‘Shear a sheep many times; skin a sheep but once.’”
Horseback thought about this and said, “The spirits give us lambs so we will have more sheep for skinning when the circle of seasons comes around again. A robe made from sheep skin lasts longer than a blanket. It is also warmer and will shed rain. Why is a blanket better?”
“A blanket can be washed.”
“The wind and rain will cleanse a robe. If the spirits wrap the sheep in his own hide, why should I not wrap myself in the same hide? Am I wiser than the spirits?”
“No,” Raccoon-Eyes replied, with a big smile bending the tattooed lines around his mouth, “but I think you are wiser than Metal Men when it comes to the matter of sheep.”
Horseback nodded. “It is only because my heart is closer to the Great Mystery. The Metal Men have learned many things, but their hearts are far from the voices of spirits. Speaks Twice tells me that the Metal Men believe in only one god.”
“Speaks Twice tells the truth. The Metal Men worship the Great Creator, but do not know lesser gods.”
“How can this be? When the pony-moccasins fall red hot into the water, can they not see and hear the power of the fire spirits meeting with the water spirits?”
“They think it means nothing.”
“Everything means something.”
“That is true,” Raccoon-Eyes said.
“You are white, but you have lived among the Raccoon-Eyed People. You know the power of visions and spirits.”
Raccoon-Eyes looked away, as if he had heard something in the mountains. “I know what I know,” he said.
“You should teach the Metal Men what you have learned.”
Raccoon-Eyes shook his head. “They would burn me alive for practicing sorcery. They are afraid that the Great Creator will be jealous of lesser gods and spirits, and will punish anyone who worships them.”
“Will the Black Robe speak to me about these things?”
“He is very powerful,” Raccoon-Eyes warned. “Many of the Metal Men fear his power and will do whatever he says.”
“Will he speak to me?”
“Yes, but he does not understand your way, and he is afraid that the Great Creator will punish him if he tries to understand.”
“How will the Creator punish him?”
“By making him burn forever in the Shadow Land. This is what the Black Robe believes.”
“I want to speak to him.”
Raccoon-Eyes sighed. “Listen, my friend. The Black Robe wants one thing with you. He wants you to know about the son of the Great Creator, who walked the earth, like a human, a long time ago.”
“Is it true?”
“In my heart, I believe it is true.”
“Then I want to know about this.”
“I will tell you about it. It is dangerous if the Black Robe tells you.”
Horseback thought of how old Spirit Talker had warned him about the danger associated with great puha. “What will happen if I listen to the Black Robe?”
Raccoon-Eyes made graceful moves with his hands as he supplemented his Yuta vocabulary with signs. “The Black Robe hears the voice of the Great Creator telling him to make all people believe in the son of God who walked on earth. He believes this is more important than anything. More important than my life, or yours, or even his own. To him, the soul of one who believes his way is more important than all the souls of all others who believe all the other ways, even though the others number like blades of grass.”
Horseback narrowed his eyes at the white man. “You make him sound evil. Is he not a holy man?”
Raccoon-Eyes shrugged. “The brightest light makes the darkest shadow.”
Horseback said nothing more about the matter. His heart told him to trust Raccoon-Eyes. He would stay away from the Black Robe. He would listen to Raccoon-Eyes tell the story of the son of God who walked on earth, but he would trust first in his own spirit-guide. He would purify himself with cedar smoke in his lodge and pray to Sound-the-Sun-Makes for protection from shadows made dark by bright lights.
* * *
The next day, Raccoon-Eyes took Horseback to the sacred lodge of the Black Robes. This lodge had a large metal noisemaker with a tongue in it that made it ring loudly. Inside were many strange things: a vessel of water said to be sacred; paintings and carved wooden likenesses of white holy people from long ago; an altar where the Black Robes made people kneel before the Great Creator, which Horseback knew would only anger and disgust the spirits.
On the far wall of the holy lodge hung a large carving in the shape of a man who was bleeding from many places. This man was stretched across the sacred symbol of the Metal Men: the cross. Blood came from places where his hands and feet had been pierced by spikes that held him to the cross, and from a wound in his side where he had been stabbed. Thorns circled his head, and these, too, made him bleed. The carving made Horseback fear evil spirits, for the body of the man seemed misshapen, rudely carved from pine branches. He was famil
iar with hide paintings depicting warriors, but this was different. All the features of the face had been painted on, including eyes that looked sadly upward. The crimson streaks of blood seemed to glisten as if still wet. Yet the body on the cross looked as twisted and unnatural and as ill-proportioned as a grass doll carried by a Noomah girl.
“Why do the Black Robes hang such a thing in a sacred place?” Horseback asked.
“It is supposed to look like the son of the Great Creator who walked on earth. His name was Jesus.” Raccoon-Eyes made the sacred sign across his face and chest. “It is not a very good carving. Jesus did not look like that. He was a natural human, like you or like me.”
“You and I are very different.”
“We are both human.”
“I am a True Human.”
Raccoon-Eyes nodded. “So was Jesus.”
Horseback studied the carving. “Was Jesus not half god?”
“He was all human, yet all God.”
“How did he show that he was god?”
Raccoon-Eyes thought about this for some time, using the curious habit the white people had of scratching their heads while thinking, as if wisdom came from their heads instead of their hearts. “He had powerful magic to cure sick people and heal lame people. He made things appear and disappear. He was God.”
“Why does a god endure such torture? Why does he not call on his powers and destroy those who torture him?”
“He wanted to prove his courage to those who would worship him.”
Horseback’s heart beat strong to think of a god brave enough to lay aside his powers and live among people. “Did he fight well before he was captured and tortured?”
“He did not fight at all.”
Horseback shot a curious glance at Raccoon-Eyes. “If he knew he was going to be tortured, he should have fought. He should have made his enemies kill him swiftly on the battlefield rather than die slowly on the cross. When I ride the war path against my enemies, I know I will be tortured if I am captured. That is why I fight so fiercely. That is why my brothers will ride into certain death to keep me from being taken alive. They know I will do the same for them, for if we are captured, our enemies will make us suffer tortures much worse than Jesus on his cross.”
Raccoon-Eyes folded his arms across his chest and looked at the carving on the wall. “Like you, Jesus did not fear death, for he was God. Yet he was human, and he feared torture. Still, he endured it, proving that his courage was great. The Black Robes say Jesus died this way to wash away the sins of all humans—even those who came after his time, like you and like me. The Black Robes say that if you believe this, you will go to a good place in the next life, and if you do not believe, you will go to a bad place.”
“Do you believe this?” Horseback said.
Raccoon-Eyes sighed, then spoke in a voice almost as soft as a whisper: “I believe what I believe. I say only as much as I must. The Black Robes are powerful.”
Horseback looked for a long time upon the likeness of the god-man on the cross. Finally, he turned toward the door of the sacred lodge, saying, “The Great Creator of the True Humans would have counted many strokes upon his enemies before enduring such torture.”
35
While Horseback learned from Raccoon-Eyes and Speaks Twice, the others—Shaggy Hump, Whip, and Echo—hunted in the mountains for deer, elk, bear, and lesser game. The hunting was hard near the city of the Metal Men, yet over the mountains, meat abounded. Also, there were signs of Na-vohnuh camps.
“My son,” Shaggy Hump said one evening, as Horseback returned from the square lodge of Raccoon-Eyes, “I have found the trail of a Na-vohnuh band over the mountains. It is only four suns old and shows the tracks of sixteen horses. Echo and Whip wish to go with me to steal the horses.”
“Will you take scalps?” Horseback said.
“I have prayed, and the spirits tell me this band of Na-vohnuh is not for killing, but for providing the horses for us. I wish to kill many Na-vohnuh in days to come, but I do not wish to displease the spirits.”
“The spirits are wise. We are only four warriors. Go. I will stay here with Raccoon-Eyes. He is going to show me how the Metal Men catch the cattle by throwing a snare made from rope.”
The next day, Horseback woke alone in the lodge of the searchers, for the others had left in the night to steal ponies. He rode through a light snow to the square lodge and found Raccoon-Eyes waiting there with three horsemen.
“The riders are dark-skinned,” he said, “but they dress like whites.”
“They are Indio by blood,” Raccoon-Eyes explained, “yet their grandfathers lived among the Metal Men far to the south, and they know the ways of the whites. You will like them. They ride well.”
Horseback looked at them suspiciously. “I will see.”
The Indio riders used the heavy saddles of the Metal Men, and this made Horseback doubt that they could show him anything he did not know about riding. He noticed that each of the riders, including Raccoon-Eyes, had a large coil of rope tied to his saddle. He had studied this kind of rope before, and had even watched a slave making a length of it. It consisted of rawhide strips woven expertly into a strong cord about as big around as a finger. Horseback wanted to trade for such a rope, for it would be good to trail behind a buffalo pony.
To hold his horses and cattle, Raccoon-Eyes’s slaves had made a trap of straight tree trunks that were too big around to serve as lodge poles. Inside this trap he saw six cows. Taking down the lighter poles that closed the trap, the five riders stood their mounts in the opening so the cattle would not escape the trap. Then one of the Indio riders took the coil of rope from his saddle. As if by magic, he formed a noose in the end of the rawhide rope. It reminded Horseback of how his father once tricked him when he was a boy by making things appear from nowhere in his empty hands.
As Horseback tried to catch the rider at this sleight-of-hand trick, the others let one of the cows out of the trap. The beast loped away, then began to trot aimlessly, as if uncertain where it should go. These beasts the Metal Men kept were stupid animals who had no spirits in their hearts to guide them.
Suddenly, the rider with the noose in his rope galled his horse with the iron things the Metal Men wore on their heels like the weapons of turkey gobblers. They had to wear these spurs, as they were called, to make their horses run, after strapping all that heavy wood and leather and iron onto them. The horse lunged into a gallop, lay his ears back, and angled directly toward the cow that had been released from the trap.
Now Horseback saw the rider whirl the noose above his head like a Noomah boy playing with a bull-roarer. The cow turned away, but the horse gave chase and closed quickly on the slower animal. When the rider came near, he lashed out with his noose, making it fly ahead of him and settle around the head and neck of the cow. Now he wrapped the end of his rope around the part of the Spanish saddle the Metal Men called a pommel. He flicked the slack around the hocks of the cow and angled sharply away, jerking the snared beast to the ground.
Horseback smiled as he watched the Indio rider jump from his mount and tie three legs of the stunned cow together, leaving her writhing on the ground. Before he could ask any questions, Raccoon-Eyes had chased another cow from the trap and another Indio rider was whirling a noose. This rider made his loop touch the ground just in front of the cow, and when the cow stepped into the noose with her front legs, the rider jerked the rope, tripping the cow hard to the ground.
A third cow ran from the trap. Raccoon-Eyes and the third Indio rider gave chase. The Indio caught the cow by the neck. Raccoon-Eyes rode in behind the cow, threw his noose, and caught her by the back feet. The two riders pulled the cow in two directions until she fell on the ground.
After the cow had been tied down like the others, Raccoon-Eyes shouted at Horseback: “Release the rest of the cows from the trap, Kiyu!”
Horseback rode his pony around the inside of the trap until the four remaining cows ran out. Each of the riders chased one of
the cows, yet none whirled his noose as Horseback had expected. Raccoon-Eyes rode the fastest horse and closed in on the nearest cow. Riding to the left side of the cow, he leaned to his right and grabbed the tail of the cow. He threw his leg, stirrup and all, forward and over the tail he held in his hand. Using the strength of his leg and arm together to hold the tail, he suddenly angled his horse to the left and pulled the cow off balance, releasing her tail as she tumbled to the ground.
Horseback laughed at the silly-looking animal lying stunned on the ground. The three Indio riders caught the cows they chased about the same time, and made three more clouds of dust rise as they jerked the cows off their feet. He laughed out loud at the trick the men had played on the stupid beasts.
Riding out to meet Raccoon-Eyes, Horseback said, “That is a good game, my friend, but why not kill these beasts with a lance? That is also a good game that makes much meat. Why tie them on the ground?”
“The Metal Men have different ways. They live in one lodge and keep their cows nearby to make calves, so they do not always have to hunt. The owners catch the cows with the nooses so they can mark them with a hot iron that burns their own symbol on the cow.” He pointed to the brand on the hip of the cow. “When they want one for meat, they bring it to a pen, and kill it by cutting its throat.”
Horseback nodded and put his fingertips on his chest, searching his heart for questions. “They own cows, as I own horses?”
“Yes.”
Horseback grunted at the strangeness of this thought, then pointed at Raccoon-Eyes’s coil of rawhide rope. “The noose is good. I would like to learn to throw it. Can it catch an enemy?”
“It has been used that way before. Also as a game to catch lions, wolves, coyotes, and bears—even the great humpbacked bears.”
“Buffalo?” Horseback asked.
“It has been done, but it is a dangerous game. The Metal Men send large hunting parties out onto the plains to the east, in the country of the Inday. They kill the buffalo with lances, as your hunters do. It is better to kill the buffalo with the lance than to rope it.”