Ghost Dance

by John Norman

  Chance felt as though his boots were filled with frozen wood.

  They trudged on, dragging the ponies, Running Horse first, then Chance, then Winona.

  It was maybe an hour or so later when Chance looked back, perhaps because he suddenly became aware that he no longer heard the noises of Winona's pony, indistinct in the whipping snow, behind him.

  He could not see the girl.

  "Running Horse!" he yelled. "Winona!"

  Running Horse turned and squinted back through the snow, and then, together, dragging their horses, the two men began to retrace their steps. The trough they had cut with their feet and the hoofs of the horses was already invisible. They had gone about a hundred yards when, some twenty yards to their left, they heard the snort of a pony, and, a minute or two later, they found the animal, and Winona slumped in the snow beside it, her fist still holding the nose rope.

  Thank God, thought Chance.

  Running Horse gave Chance the nose rope of his pony and bent to the slumped figure of the girl.

  The two horses and Chance stood together for warmth.

  Chance watched Running Horse lift Winona to her knees and shake her, two blurred shapes in the whirling snow.

  "I am tired," Winona was shouting at him, "I am tired!"

  "Get up!" yelled Running Horse.

  "I am warm now!" shouted Winona. "Go on! I am tired! I will find you later."

  Running Horse then began to strike her with his open hand, again and again, savagely.

  Winona looked at him blankly, almost incredulously, then her eyes betrayed bewilderment, incomprehension at his cruelty, then pain, and then her face and body burned with feeling, with shame, under his blows. Her mouth bled, a red trickle across her snow-encrusted lips.

  "Get up," said Running Horse.

  "Yes, Husband," said Winona, struggling unsteadily to her feet.

  Then together the three of them, Winona now in the center, single file, pulling their ponies, leaning into the wind, continued to force their way northward through the snow.

  * * *

  The next day the wind died and, although more snow fell, the cold relaxed, and a deep, gentle white covered the prairie.

  Sheltering themselves in a grove of cottonwood trees, Chance and Running Horse at last built a fire, taking the risk that even Running Horse now granted was permissible. The horses, tied by their reins to cottonwoods, knocked the snow from these trees as far up the trunks as they could reach and peeled the bark in long strips with their front teeth. The sound of their feeding made Chance feel even more hungry.

  Winona stood up near the fire and listened. Then her face beamed. "Spotted Buffalo," she said to Running Horse. "Listen."

  Both men listened.

  In the near distance, possibly no more than seventy-five yards through the trees, they heard a plaintive, soft lowing. Three or four cattle had taken refuge in the trees last night, trying to escape the blizzard.

  "Wakan-Tonka is kind at last," said Running Horse, wading with his knife through the snow toward the sound.

  Winona, Chance and Running Horse remained in the grove for a day before moving on, waiting for the snow to stop falling. The next morning, the first of January, New Year's Day, 1891, they led their horses from the trees and continued their journey north to the Bad Lands.

  * * *

  A few hours later, two men, on large-boned army horses, rode into the cottonwood grove. Their big horses stepped through the snow with comparative ease. The men wore greatcoats and fur caps, carried rifles and led a provisioned pack horse.

  "This is where the rancher saw the smoke," said Corporal Jake Totter, dismounting and kicking at the embers of the dead fire. He scratched his ear carefully under his fur cap. His squarish face looked satisfied.

  "They aren't far ahead now," said Grawson. There was victory in his heavy voice.

  "I think you're like to crazy to go after that feller so goddam quick," said Totter. "I near froze last night."

  "You had a tent and fire," said Grawson.

  Totter looked around himself uneasily. "There's probably Injuns around," he said.

  "They're running," said Grawson. "Running."

  "They might stop," pointed out Totter.

  "You want to get the man that shot you, don't you?" jabbed Grawson.

  "I don't aim to get myself shot gettin' him," said Totter.

  Corporal Jake Totter wasn't too happy with law officer Grawson. There was something strange about the big fellow, and the side of his face, the way it moved sometimes. It made Totter nervous. And the big fellow didn't seem to have much common sense. Totter was not the brightest man in his unit but he'd been on the prairie long enough to know how to be careful. Grawson wasn't. Totter had no particular hankering to meet up with Sioux stragglers after Wounded Knee. For his money, he'd prefer to be back in Good Promise, on leave, to go to the saloon, to see Nancy upstairs, who'd said she liked him. I might marry that gal, someday, thought Totter. But there wouldn't be any leave, or any drinks, or any Nancy, if Grawson got them both scalped. Vaguely Totter wondered about putting a bullet in Grawson. They'd probably never bother digging it out. They could take it for a Sioux bullet anyway. He could say Indians did it. What was Chance to him? He wouldn't mind shooting him, or getting him and giving him to Grawson, but it didn't really make that much difference to Totter. Totter made more difference to Totter. If he never saw Edward Chance again Totter would not have much minded. Live and let live, said Totter to himself.

  "Mount up," said Grawson.

  "Yes, Sir," said Grawson, climbing into the saddle.

  "If we get Chance by sundown," said Grawson, "I'll give you a month's liquor as a bonus."

  Totter grinned. "That's a lot of likker for me, Mister," said Totter.

  "After I get through with our friend Chance," said Grawson, "you might feel like getting drunk for a month."

  "Hell, I'd celebrate," said Totter.

  Totter pulled his horse back beside Grawson's.

  "No," said Grawson, "you first," gesturing ahead.

  Totter shrugged and led the way, the two men riding from the cottonwood grove, following the tracks in the snow, the tracks of two ponies and one shod horse.

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon, Chance, Winona and Running Horse could see the jagged rim of the Bad Lands rearing in the distance. In the snow it looked like the teeth of broken jaws.

  "I'll meet you later at the old camp," said Chance. "I want to see Lucia first, down at the Carters'."

  Chance had thought that he would not see the girl again, but now, being so close, he knew that he would not resist, foolish though it might be. He must see her again, if only once more.

  But Running Horse was looking at him, his eyes sad. "My heart is heavy for you," he said.

  Suddenly Chance's heart seemed to stop beating, went cold.

  He forced his horse through the snow, wildly, up to the top of a slope, from which he judged he would be able to see the Carter homestead.

  Gasping, its flanks sore from the blows of Chance's boots, the horse stopped bewildered turning on the top of the slope, trampling the snow, snorting, and Chance jerked it around and searched the valley, seeing back in the trampled snow some quarter of a mile away the black shell of the Carter soddy. The roof had been burned; there were no livestock in sight; a wagon was overturned in the yard.

  "Lucia!" cried Chance at the top of his voice, and kicked the horse, driving it down the slope toward the soddy.

  Running Horse and Winona followed him, slowly, not wanting to be there when he first reached the ruin.

  At the door of the soddy Chance leapt from the back of his horse and stood in the threshold. The door of the soddy, marked with the blows of rifle stocks and hatchet scars, hung broken on its leather hinges.

  Inside the wind had blown some soft snow over the ashes of the fallen roof, making the place seem calm and white. Under a charred beam, dusted with snow, lay the scalped body of Sam Carter, his little shape cru
mpled into a crooked heap, still wearing its Christmas shirt, a red wool shirt, the collar of which was too large.

  "Lucia!" yelled Chance.

  She was not in the soddy.

  Running Horse looked through the opening where, perhaps yesterday, the door had been locked.

  "Lucia!" yelled Chance at him.

  Running Horse shook his head.

  "Did you find her?" yelled Chance.

  "No," said Running Horse.

  "Is she outside?" yelled Chance, irrationally.

  "No," said Running Horse.

  "Where is she?" demanded Chance.

  "She is alive," said Running Horse.

  Chance drew a deep breath, the deepest it seemed to him he had ever drawn. His hands and arms trembled.

  "How do you know?" he asked.

  "She is not here," said Running Horse simply.

  "We've got to find her," said Chance.

  "It will not be hard," said Running Horse, something strange in his voice.

  The young Indian turned, and Chance, stumbling, followed him from the grisly soddy.

  Outside, Running Horse pointed in the snow. There, a few feet from the overturned wagon, a sign was drawn, like a diagram in sand. It was a crude angle, and inside the angle were two circles, connected by small lines.

  "It is the sign of Drum," said Running Horse, speaking slowly, watching Chance's face. "The pointed lines show which way the war party went. The sign is left to guide any of the Minneconjou or Hunkpapa who come this way."

  The angle of the sign pointed to the Bad Lands.

  "All right," said Chance, gathering himself together, trying to regulate his breathing. "Let's get the horses."

  Running Horse put his hand gently on his arm. "If you want your woman," he said, "you must not rush to the camp. You must not try to fight. They are ready to kill anyone. If you try to take her away from them, you will be killed, maybe her too."

  "I'm going to get her out," said Chance.

  "There are braves, maybe twenty," said Running Horse. "You do not even have your gun."

  Chance remembered he had dropped the Colt at Grawson's command and Grawson had kicked it away. The Hotchkiss guns had opened up on the camp about that time and he and Running Horse had fled. He hadn't had time to pick up the weapon. Between them they had one carbine, which belonged to Running Horse, and a handful of bullets, also belonging to Running Horse. Chance's bullets, contained in the tiny loops on his gun belt, were useless unless he could find a .45 caliber pistol.

  "I do not think they will kill her," said Running Horse, "at least not until after the Scalp Dance."

  "Scalp Dance?" asked Chance.

  "Tonight," said Running Horse.

  "I've got to get her out," said Chance.

  "You must be wise as well as brave, my Brother," said Running Horse.

  Chance nodded. There was no question of bravery. Indeed, he was ready to act like a damn fool, do anything. It would be hard though, to be wise, even to be patient, even to wait an hour.

  Chance shook himself, looking at the soddy. There was work to be done here. The Scalp Dance, whatever that was, would not take place until tonight. There was time. Chance would force himself to wait. And there was work, there was work to be done here.

  Chance found an ax and a shovel, and kicked the snow away from a small area about the size of the wagon box. Then he began to chop and cut at the frozen ground. Winona and Running Horse carried the bodies from the soddy and laid them in the snow. Soon Chance had cut and scooped out a shallow grave. He put the four bodies in the grave, composing their limbs as well as he could, and covered them, laying chunks of frozen earth on by hand.

  "The spring rains," said Running Horse, "will make the dirt soft."

  Chance went back into the soddy and took the back of a broken, burned chair. He carved: "Samuel Carter, Wife and Two Sons. Died Maybe New Year's Day, 1891." He didn't know the names of the woman and the two boys. Someone probably knew. Someone would come sometime, and they could do things better. Chance, using the ax, sharpened the side slats of the chair and then, tapping with the ax head, drove his simple marker into the soil.

  Finished, he stood up.

  Running Horse and Winona, who had stood by not speaking, regarded him.

  "I suppose I ought to say something," said Chance.

  Neither of the Indians spoke.

  "I can't say anything," said Chance.

  Running Horse shrugged.

  Chance looked up into the blue, cold sky, watched a white cloud move past, some thousands of feet above, moved by the wind, the pressures and volumes of the air. Then the cloud was gone and the sky seemed empty to Chance, very beautiful, but not much concerned, and empty.

  He looked down at the chopped clods of frozen soil, brown, black chunks; at the snow muddied by his boots; at the shovel he had dropped to one side; at the bit of a piece of chair that he had pounded into the hard soil at the head of the grave.

  "I don't think the coyotes will get them," said Chance.

  "No," said Running Horse.

  Together the three of them, the two men and the woman, went to their horses, mounted and rode slowly through the snow toward the looming Bad Lands, leaving behind them the burned soddy and the turned soil nearby, a patch about the size of a wagon box.

  Chapter Nineteen

  "God," said Jake Totter, steadying his horse near the Carter soddy. "I thought you said the Injuns was scared." His eyes took in the desolate, calm scene, ending on the simple grave.

  His horse shied, backing away, stamping the snow.

  "What's wrong with your horse?" asked Grawson.

  "He don't like the smell of killing," said Totter. "I don't either, leastways around here."

  Grawson pointed to the marker on the grave. "A white man did that," he said. "Chance came this way."

  Grawson dismounted and went to some tracks in the snow. "Three horses," he said, "two unshod, one shod." He crouched down, looking at the sides of the prints, their relative sharpness. "Not over three hours old," said Grawson. He stood up. "We got him," he said.

  Totter looked off where the tracks led. "I ain't riding into the Bad Lands," he said.

  Grawson mounted, loosening the carbine in his saddle boot. "A month's liquor is a lot of liquor," he said.

  "Not if you ain't alive to drink it," said Totter.

  Grawson drew the carbine from the boot. "There's only three of them now," he said.

  "Where they're going," said Totter, "there may be fifty of 'em. I ain't going into the Bad Lands."

  Grawson checked his weapon, released the safety. "You're on special orders to me, Corporal," he said.

  "I ain't going there," said Totter.

  The carbine rested across the saddle, casual. "Yes, you are," said Grawson.

  "Not me," said Totter.

  "I guess you don't understand, Corporal," said Grawson, "that's one of those special orders."

  "Go to hell," said Totter. "I ain't going."

  Totter saw he was looking down the barrel of Grawson's carbine. When Grawson pulled the trigger it would hit him about two inches over the belt buckle.

  "If you ain't going, Corporal," said Grawson, "I'm going to leave you right here."

  "You can't go shooting a white man," said Totter, his voice stumbling, his eyes not leaving the penny-sized hole at the end of the carbine.

  "I wouldn't," said Grawson, "but Indians might–right here."

  "I'm coming," said Totter.

  "Ride ahead, Corporal," said Grawson.

  Cursing under his breath, Totter turned his mount toward the Bad Lands.

  "You're crazy, Mister," he said over his shoulder.

  Totter heard the hammer snap back on the carbine, as though it was jerked, the way Grawson's face moved sometimes. The hair lifted on the back of Totter's neck. Then no bullet came and he rode on, his hands shaking on the reins.

  As the two men rode from the Carter soddy they passed, not noticing it, a sign drawn in the snow,
two circles connected with short lines, and an angle pointing toward the white ridges in the distance.

  In about a half hour Totter and Grawson were making their way through the first arroyos of the Bad Lands. They had ridden a few minutes, down the bottom of one arroyo, when Totter stopped.

  "I thought I heard something," he said.

  "Keep going," said Grawson.

  Totter kept going.

  Then in about a minute he stopped again. "There it is again," he said. He looked around. Everything seemed still. "Snow," said Totter, "snow slipping into the arroyo."

  "The wind pushed it off," said Grawson.

  Totter looked at him, and at the carbine which had not been returned to the saddle boot.

  "Let's go, Corporal," said Grawson.

  "There ain't no wind," said Totter.

  Grawson gestured with the barrel of the carbine.

  Totter, his face white, trembling, watching, moved his horse slowly ahead.

  * * *

  It was dusk in the Bad Lands when Chance, Winona and Running Horse reached the camp.

  For the past few minutes they had heard the light tap of a tom-tom, getting louder as they approached it.

  "It'll give their position away," Chance had said.

  "No one will hear," Running Horse had responded.

  Chance realized then that the young Indian was right. There were no soldiers within miles. The Carters, even if they might have heard, were dead.

  A woman's scream carried over the snow, through the cold air.

  "Lucia!" said Chance, kicking his horse forward.

  Running Horse turned his pony into Chance's path and the two animals struck shoulders, snorting. "No!" said Running Horse, sternly. "No!"

  Chance's face contorted with agony.

  "No," said Running Horse gently, putting his hand on Chance's arm.

  Together then he, with Winona, following Running Horse, continued down the arroyo, following the sound of the tom-tom. At last, turning a final bend, they passed two grim Hunkpapa guards, and came to the camp.

  It was in a small canyon, something like a box canyon except that at the far end there was a cut, giving access to another arroyo beyond. The walls of the tiny canyon were pretty steep, and the place, like the arroyos, was sheltered from the wind. Finding such a retreat in the Bad Lands, had Chance and Running Horse not known where it was, might have taken days.