Ghost Dance

by John Norman

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Indian troubles were over.

  Chance was glad.

  On a butte at the edge of the Bad Lands, Chance, with Running Horse, watched two bands of Sioux begin the long, cold journey to the Pine Ridge Agency.

  It was two days after Christmas.

  Last night, Big Foot's band of Minneconjou Sioux had camped with Old Bear in the Bad Lands on their way to Pine Ridge. The Minneconjou had come all the way from Cherry Creek, which lay in the Cheyenne River country.

  A few days before, several companies of soldiers had suddenly appeared at Big Foot's reservation, tenting in loose bivouac rather than the orderly formation of a more permanent camp. Apparently these men had meant business and whatever business they had in mind they did not expect to last very long. Big Foot, fearing his people were to be massacred, had led his Minneconjou by night from the reservation, while their campfires still burned, eluding the troops and making his way to the temporary safety of the open prairie, but it was a winter prairie and in time, not much time, with no food and almost no shelter, his band would starve or die of exposure.

  Big Foot, who himself was dying of pneumonia, had decided to surrender at Pine Ridge, taking his chances with the soldiers there.

  Last night he had ridden into the Bad Lands, tied upright on his horse, a shape in blankets, eyes glazed with fever, every breath like a knife twisting in his lungs, and had found Old Bear and with him had smoked and held council.

  This morning, as Big Foot's band left the Bad Lands, Old Bear's Hunkpapa silently joined their ranks.

  Chance had decided to ride with the Hunkpapa as far as Wounded Knee Creek on the way to Pine Ridge. There, he would cut southwest across country to Chadron, Nebraska. After buying supplies at Chadron, he planned to cross overland to California. If Grawson followed him, he would turn to meet him, but he would not deliberately seek him out. Perhaps, with the Indian troubles and the confusions of the past days, Grawson had lost the trail, and would never recover it. If this were true, Chance would let it go at that. If it were not true, at some point he would confront Grawson.

  The ride to California would be long, and hard, lasting several weeks. Chance was glad to have the company of Running Horse and Old Bear for a portion of the journey. Also he anticipated with regret the moment in which he must say good-bye to these men, Old Bear, who was his friend, and Running Horse, who was his brother.

  Wounded Knee seemed to Chance a good place to break away from the march. The Indians would camp there, so he could spend the night with them, and Wounded Knee was about fifteen or sixteen miles northeast of the Pine Ridge Reservation, and accordingly was about as close to civilization, to white men with their law and their curiosity and questions, as Chance cared in these days to come.

  The Indians, leaving the Bad Lands, passed within a few hundred yards of the Carter soddy, and Sam Carter, in front of the soddy, still in his red wool Christmas shirt, with his family behind him, watched the long, slow, quiet lines of Sioux, both Minneconjou and Hunkpapa, begin their journey to the Pine Ridge Agency, a journey which for many of them would be their last, a journey which in its way was also to be fateful for the Carters.

  Hunched in their blankets, mounted on their scraggy ponies, the ribs of which were prominent jutting against the brush of their winter coats, the Sioux rode.

  Some of the warriors clutched their rusty firearms beneath their blankets, to keep the guns warm and prevent their hands from sticking to the cold metal. Others held the rifles by the stocks, letting the barrels ride the ponies' backs. Many of the Sioux, particularly the women were on foot. Some of the squaws dragged travois behind them, leaning against the traces like beasts of burden. The Indian children most of whom had known nothing of the old life and were bewildered by the cold and the loss of rations, were quiet, their eyes dull with the depression of hunger, their lips pressed against the ragged swiftness of the wind, the sharpness of the December cold.

  Chance, on horseback, Running Horse near him, watched the loose grim lines of Sioux pass from the cruel shelter of the Bad Lands to the shelterless cruelty of the prairie.

  These, he thought, are the mighty Sioux, who once ruled a country bigger than Texas. Now they are old men, like Old Bear or Big Foot, who was dying; or they were rebellious braves, like Drum, who scowled as he rode, men whose blood and whose culture had prepared them to take a place in a world that no longer existed; or exhausted women, or frightened, hungry children.

  Chance and Running Horse urged their horses down the steep, white side of the butte.

  When Chance and Running Horse reached the lines of Sioux, Chance cut north to make one last visit to the Carter soddy, telling Running Horse that he would join the march later.

  For the last two days Chance had spent most of his time at the soddy, treating Lucia's frostbite, gradually helping her regain her strength, mostly just seeing her. Mrs. Carter's hot broths and fresh hot bread had burned some warmth and substance back into Lucia. The frostbite had not been as serious as Chance had feared and the first night, soaking her feet in cold water, he had managed to restore circulation and feeling. He had not massaged the frozen areas to avoid bruising the tissues, with the result of perhaps predisposing the extremities to gangrene. He had, however, near the frozen areas, rubbed with a dry, coarse towel, working toward but avoiding the frozen parts. At last he could gently move the joints, and then, though it might have seemed cruel, he forced Lucia herself to move about as she could. Perhaps even beyond the effective simplicities of his treatment, matters almost of physiology alone, Chance was most satisfied to feel that his presence, his own presence, had helped to revive the girl from the horror of her capture, helped to thaw at last from her soul the most terrible ice of all, the hidden, invisible ice of numbness and shock, ice that formed a last brittle, frozen barrier behind which she, for days a delicate, brutalized creature on the tether of Indian warriors, had sheltered her sanity.

  Now as this girl sat across from him, propped up in the Carters' bed, wrapped in blankets, she was smiling.

  Chance wondered how it was that this girl could be happy.

  Mrs. Carter had had a knowing look about the house the last two days, and Sam Carter, Chance thought, had whistled a great deal, and both of them had found numerous chores to attend to outside the soddy. More than once both Carter boys, one by each ear, had been escorted from the soddy by one parent or the other.

  Had Chance been of a more suspicious nature he might have suspected that he was the object of a benevolent conspiracy, but as it was, trained in medicine and tending on the whole to think well of his fellow man, he did not quite put all of two and two together. He was, however, vaguely grateful that he had had as much time to spend with Lucia alone as he had.

  "I'm riding out with Running Horse," said Chance to Lucia. "I'm going to California."

  "I'll like California," said Lucia.

  Chance stared down at the dirt floor of the soddy, past the colored patchwork quilt on the bed.

  Lucia began to kick under the covers and blankets, and finally kicked them off, sitting on the bed, quickly tucking her nightgown, from Mrs. Carter, about her ankles. She wiggled her feet and toes.

  Chance could see there would be rope scars where her ankles had been bound. The same sort of mark would be carried on her wrists.

  "Two days ago," said Lucia, "I couldn't even do that."

  "That's right," said Chance.

  "You might check the joints or something," suggested Lucia.

  "They're all right," said Chance, "or you couldn't move like that."

  "Oh," said Lucia.

  She paused for a moment, and drew up her feet and put her head on her knees, looking at Chance.

  "I didn't know that," she said.

  "It's true," said Chance. He added, "You should be able to walk all right by now, too, but I wouldn't walk too far at first."

  "That's a good idea," said Lucia, and she swung her feet off the bed and stood a bit too unst
eadily beside it.

  She walked a step or two from Chance, and turned to look over her shoulder. "I'm actually pretty good," she said.

  "In a day or two," said Chance.

  She took two or three more steps, and then turned to make it back to the bed.

  She started to walk back toward Chance, tottering but brave, and then suddenly squeaked and had it not been for the fact that Chance swiftly, alertly, sprang to his feet, she might have fallen. Fortunately he managed to catch her.

  "Oh," she said.

  Chance held her softly beside the bed, and stood her on her feet, lifting her by the arms, and then with his hands touched her hair and as she looked at him, he gently, very gently, kissed her forehead.

  "I guess," said Lucia, "I'm not as ready to walk as I thought."

  "I guess not," said Chance.

  Lucia was looking up at him and very slowly she lifted her lips to his and touched them. The sound of the kiss was very delicate.

  "When you brought me inside two nights ago," said Lucia, "you said something to me."

  "Merry Christmas," said Chance.

  "Not that," said Lucia.

  "Oh?" said Chance.

  "I said something to you, too," she said.

  "Did you?" asked Chance.

  "Yes," said Lucia, kissing him again on the lips, a delicate thing, like the touch of a bird.

  "You probably didn't know what you were saying," said Chance.

  "I did," said Lucia.

  "What did you say?" asked Chance.

  "My feet are cold," said Lucia.

  "Oh," said Chance.

  "I don't have any money, you know," said Lucia, looking up at him.

  "I know," said Chance.

  Lucia pushed back from him a bit, careful not to let him go. "That's not a very proper thing for a doctor to say," she said.

  "Sorry," said Chance.

  "So I don't know what to do about your fee," she said.

  "I'd forget it," said Chance.

  "Not me," said Lucia.

  "There's no fee," said Chance.

  "If I were a hussy," said Lucia, "I'd know how to pay you."

  Chance smiled.

  "I'm a hussy," said Lucia.

  Chance's laugh was cut short when she seized him by the back of the head and pulled his face down to hers, kissing him so fiercely that he felt the imprint of her teeth on his lip. She then pulled back, and laughed. "There," she said, "you see!"

  "Oh," she cried as he drew her into his arms, and then she was frightened, feeling herself by his arms bound against his hardness, unable to move, and his mouth covered hers and through her teeth as she struggled she felt his remorseless tongue thrust through touch hers, turning it back and her body, she felt as if it were flying as he lifted her from the floor and placed her on the bed, half across it, and his tongue never left hers and she felt on her ankle, gently controlling her, his warm hand moving thighward and she swam not caring in pleasure wanting only his closeness and the immersion like joy and fainting and wine and not being able to move and not wanting to and then, he threw back his head and shook it crying aloud and she too cried out with joy loving him and reached for him loving him, loving him.

  Chance, recalling the matter later, remembered that she had said at one point that she would like California.

  Chance never quite understood how things had been decided but he knew that they had been, and that he was glad, and that he, as a male, and a rational one, would probably never by himself have been responsible for a decision so foolish, and so incontrovertibly glorious, as the one to which he discovered, to his amazement, he had been party.

  His life was one of danger, he himself was hunted. He had nothing to offer a woman, neither security nor prospects. He had no home, no practice, no future. He had little to give her but himself and his love, and to his astonishment, he had learned that this was all she wanted.

  Chance did not bother comprehending love, but was thankful to move within it, as one might move in the air he breathed, in the sunlight that showed him the world.

  And Lucia, too, was unutterably other than she had been; and so too was her world, even to the shine on the walnut chest in the Carter soddy, the gleam on the brass kettle on the shelf near the stove, the tiny drops of grease on the kindling bucket, the grains of dust in the floor of the soddy, the weaving of the blanket, the careful stitching in the quilt on the bed; all things were different and beautiful to her and objects which she had hitherto thought prosaic, like a glass jar, a metal spoon, a piece of string, a kitchen match, the wood of a slat on a kitchen chair, now seemed to gather into themselves and radiate a startling, incredible perfection.

  Chance replaced the blankets about Lucia.

  "I've got to go now," said Chance.

  Lucia nodded.

  Chance looked on the luster of her eyes, the new softness of her face. He held her wrist, noting the deep rhythm of the blood moving through her body. When she spoke her voice for an hour or so would be a bit lower than normal.

  Chance smiled and kissed her.

  He rose and slung the Indian blanket that was his only wrap over his left shoulder.

  He would write to her from California. She would join him there.

  Then suddenly as he stood there, looking down upon her, seeing her as beautiful and as his love, he felt as though the room suddenly darkened and as if his heart stopped beating for that instant.

  It seemed then as though the walls of his hope trembled, and the towers of the future which had seemed so shining, so bright with promise, crumbled.

  Suddenly it seemed as though the air was gone, as if the sun had vanished, leaving the pelt of night behind, the darkness of which was marked by not a star.

  "Edward?" she asked.

  "It's nothing," he said.

  It would be wisest, of course, not to write, but to try to forget, best for her probably, maybe best for him.

  "Edward?" she asked.

  "It's nothing," he said, "nothing."

  What sort of life would it be for her? What sort of life could it be for her?

  "You love me?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said.

  "You frightened me," she said, "–how you looked."

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."

  He turned and went to the door of the soddy, fumbled with the latch, pushed it up.

  At the door he turned to look on her once again, and as he looked, tears formed in his eyes, because he knew that he should not send for her, that if he loved her he could not do so.

  "Good-bye, Lucia," said Chance.

  "Edward!" she cried.

  But he was gone, and in a bound he had mounted his horse and the soddy was behind him.

  "We'll take good care of her for you," Mrs. Carter had called after him.

  He thought he heard Lucia's voice cry his name again, perhaps from outside the soddy, but the sound was indistinct in the wind and covered by the hoofbeats of his horse.

  In a few seconds Chance, crying, reined his horse sharply to the left, turning it to follow the travois tracks and the pressed grass that marked the trail of the Sioux.

  In an hour he had rejoined the band.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The winter morning was crisp, the air as brittle and clear as thin ice. It was the 29th of December, 1890, at the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.

  The lodges of the Minneconjou, also on the whole sheltering the Hunkpapa of Old Bear, irregularly dotted the still prairie, like some silent, natural formation, not the habitats of men. The barkless tepee poles showed like bones through the weathered hide of the old skins that clung to them.

  The camp was quiet.

  Not even a cooking fire rippled the still December air above the lodges. None of the dogs crept through the camp to smell for food. They lay curled in the ashes of last night's fires, their eyes open, not willing to move.

  Outside the perimeter of the camp, soldiers walked in pairs, calling the signals of their post. The sentries walked i
n short, shuffling steps to keep their feet warm. They carried their weapons at right shoulder arms, their free hands unmilitarily buried in the refuge of their blue greatcoats, except when officers checked the watch. The breath of the sentries hung about their rifles like gunsmoke, eventually drifting upward and behind them.

  * * *

  Yesterday afternoon the soldiers had appeared.

  The Sioux had been on their second day of the march when the shout, "Long Knives!" hurtled like a volley of shots the length of the long, ragged line.

  Chance had not counted on soldiers surprising the Sioux on the prairie, coming to escort them to Pine Ridge.

  Chance supposed there were about five hundred of them.

  On the left and the right they had appeared, dust moving into the sky about twelve hundred yards away, on both sides.

  Old Bear had ridden the line of the Sioux, crying out, "Do not fire! Do not fight!"

  About two hundred yards away, the two converging forces of cavalry reined in, their sabers out of the sheath, their colors flying.

  Chance had strained his eyes to make out the small triangular flag in the distance.

  Running Horse had read it easily. "Seven," he said. And he had added to Chance. "That is bad."

  Chance nodded. He, like everyone else, had heard of the Custer Massacre, but it had only been a thing in newspapers when he had been fourteen or fifteen years old; then he had read about it in a book or two. It had always been distant, remote, something that had happened to someone else on the other side of the world, meaning nothing much to him, nothing that wasn't abstract.

  But somehow Chance felt that that event, that had been to him only a few lines of newsprint, a paragraph or two in a book, had not yet finished.

  Not all of the Seventh Cavalry of course had been wiped out with Custer, only the detachments which he had personally led. There would be large numbers of career men left who would remember Custer, and their comrades, from fourteen years before. Chance could well suppose that these men might instill as a matter of course newer recruits with their own anger, their own vehemence. The Seventh might, for all Chance knew, suppose itself to have a score to settle; they might suppose, for all he knew, that there was a blot on that small, defiant triangular flag whipping in the wind some two hundred yards away, a blot to be rubbed out, a blot that had waited fourteen years for its cleansing.