Ghost Dance

by John Norman

  The tom-tom's beat raged on, drunken, intoxicating.

  I want to own that woman, thought Chance.

  No, thought Chance, no.

  He tried to shake the wildness from his thoughts, his wanting to possess the woman, tried not to respond to the heady, fiery rhythms of the tom-tom, the stamping feet, the twisting bodies, the cries, the Scalp Dance of the Hunkpapa and Minneconjou. He was a civilized man, a gentleman, bred to courtesy and regard, the product of a silken, chivalrous tradition, a gracious tradition of white linen and polished silver, candlelight and imported wines, a man whose first thought would once have been always to favor and respect the fair, gentler sex; and yet Chance had realized in the past years that the implicit condescension of his familial, Southern tradition, with its indulgence and courtesy towards the fair had been in its own way an imprisonment of the very creatures it purported to shelter and honor; and then he had been convinced, partly by Lucia Turner herself, that a woman must be accepted and esteemed for what she might be in herself, as a person, and not for her sex, no more than a man, and this had seemed decent to him and probably right; but this night he had seen that woman, whatever might be her capacities, her glories, her rights, was yet woman; and his blood told him older secrets than he had imbibed during evening suppers in South Carolina, undiscussed, unremarked secrets beyond the tutorings of liberals and radicals with their insane myopia to the subtle chemistries of human conquest and surrender, to the genetic tenacity of the instincts of the female to belong, of the male to possess. Beautiful as they are, intelligent as they are, they are weaker than we, thought Chance, and they are our mates, ours forever, in their hearts and in our blood, victorious only in surrender, whole only in annihilation, fulfilled only by the incontestable delight of complete, unconditional submission, wanting it, desperate for it, ancient as the caves, knowing it or not.

  Lucia Turner, standing before him, captive female, woman of the enemy, he by the blood of his Indian brother Hunkpapa, was woman, so designated by a handful of cheap glass beads that bound her hair, woman alone, female, all else, education, accomplishments, stripped away from her, meaningless, save the worn dress of an Indian squaw, the thin hide of an animal given to her that her nakedness might be clothed.

  The madness of the drum swept through Chance.

  As the dance swirled about Lucia and the tom-tom's beat infused her blood, making her senses reel, and the imperious demand of the drum, the wild turning circle of men who shouted and stamped about her, spoke words to her without speech, she felt for a wild moment that yet another dancer had suddenly entered the circle, that about her, knife in hand, howled and reeled and stamped yet another warrior of the Hunkpapa.

  No, he was sitting quietly beside Old Bear, watching, not stirring, the reflection of the flames on his impassive countenance.

  Yet still Lucia could not rid herself of the wild feeling that had swept her, that yet another presence now shared the savage circle, one claiming her more than any other, one more fierce and terrible than any other, one who would not yield her to another, not for horses or gold or life itself.

  Yes, she said, half drunk with the fire, the madness, the pain, the howling dance, the tom-tom, join them, my love. Thou, too, my love, join them and dance about me; dance your victory and your desire and your pride; dance your manhood, your claim on this she, whom I am. Dance, Edward Chance, Medicine Gun of the Hunkpapa, dance about me; thou more than any other.

  Edward Chance leaped to his feet.

  Chapter Twenty

  The morning after the Scalp Dance Chance awoke thinking maybe it was strange he should have slept those few hours between the ending of the dance and dawn. Quite possibly it had been his last night. Yet he had slept. He did not object. If he had to die in an hour or so he preferred to do so with his senses alive and keen.

  He lay wrapped in a saddle blanket which had been taken from Totter's horse.

  He recalled the ending of the dance, how he had gone to Lucia and helped her to lower her arms, taking the scalps from her, moving her arms for her.

  Old Bear had not permitted her that night to go to the shelter of Drum, nor had he permitted her to sleep beside him. Such matters were contingent on the outcome of the morning's business.

  It was dawn now.

  Old Bear had been kind. He had designated Totter's greatcoat for Lucia's use. After the dance Lucia had been returned by Winona to the blanket shelter from which Chance had first seen her emerge, driven by the thin woman with the pointed stick. There, Winona made Lucia sit upon Totter's greatcoat, which she opened under her like a blanket. Then, as Winona ordered her, not resisting, Lucia crossed her ankles and placed her wrists, also crossed, behind her back; then, with rawhide straps, Winona bound her. She had not tied Lucia cruelly, as Drum might have done, but she tied her well; Lucia had hoped that the Indian girl might free her or, intentionally or through lack of skill, bind her loosely enough that she might, with effort, escape; but after an hour's piteous struggle in the lonely darkness of the crude shelter Lucia knew this hope was unfounded; that her former pupil had secured her perfectly; that she had been bound by a Hunkpapa woman, who did not intend her to escape; when the men came in the morning she would be, thanks to Winona, yet a bound captive in the blanket shelter, awaiting her fate. But before she had left Winona had gently placed Lucia on her side, wrapping Totter's greatcoat about her, buttoning it closed for warmth.

  Chance sat up in the blanket, wiping his eyes.

  The ashes of the huge fire formed a sloping mound, now covered with a light dust of snow that had fallen in the night. Near the fire, naked, still staked out, lay the corpse of Jake Totter, mutilated and eyeless, the snow on it not melting any more than on the rocks and brush.

  Chance was waiting for the discovery to be made, that Grawson had made his escape.

  He had not tried to free Lucia.

  On the snowy prairie, had they been able to clear the Bad Lands, they might have been trailed easily, and the vengeance of Drum would have been terrible, falling on Lucia perhaps as well as himself; Chance did not wish to face the almost certain dilemma at the end of such a flight, whether to allow the girl to fall into the hands of Drum or to put his last bullet through her brain; if he stayed to fight he might win, and if he did, he was free to go, taking the girl with him; if he lost he did not know what would happen, other than the fact that he would be dead and the girl would be Drum's; perhaps she would live for a time as his squaw and sometime, perhaps, if he tired of her, he might sell her to another, and perhaps this other, or the next, might take ransom or trade her, perhaps for a pair of horses, or a rifle, or a handful of cattle, perhaps to homesteaders, perhaps to a patrol of soldiers; it was possible she might be carried as far as Canada, or after weeks, across the Rio Grande to Mexico, changing hands several times; if this sort of thing happened, eventually, somewhere, somehow, she would find her freedom; a greater danger was that soldiers might attack the Indians who owned her, and that she might fall in the fighting; or be slain by the Indians, whom she might otherwise impede in their retreat; perhaps she would be shot that she might not fall alive into the hands of the soldiers, not be rescued; Chance could imagine Drum killing her under such circumstances; all things considered Chance decided it was best for Lucia that he meet Drum; it was hard to judge the matter.

  And something within him was not altogether dissatisfied with this decision.

  Old Bear, Running Horse, the others, expected him to meet Drum; he had said he would do so; he was expected to fight, as a warrior fights, not run.

  Chance smiled to himself thinking of honor, and of a distant field many years ago.

  How foolish that had been.

  But, Chance realized, the foolishness of that act in which he had found himself involved, expected to assume a homicidal cultural role, had not been the consequence of the foolishness of honor, but rather of its perversion and distortion; that act, in its special circumstances, had been a misunderstanding of the obligations and signi
ficance of honor; a misrepresentation of its imperatives; it had been vanity, not honor.

  Chance wondered on the thing honor, understanding it not much at all, wondering if it could much be understood.

  It was a strange thing.

  If he had run, he knew, astoundingly, that when Lucia was safe, he would then have turned his horse once more toward the Bad Lands, would have returned to meet angry Drum and his people.

  Was that honor?

  Or foolishness?

  Or only the blood of Running Horse in his veins?

  Hunkpapa pride?

  How can we understand honor, Chance asked himself, or pride, or courage or loyalty; how can we understand what we are, man, ourselves?

  What are these remarkable genetic dispositions to nobility, so easily betrayed, that will insist on stubbornly, doggedly filing their claims, whether they be acknowledged or not?

  Yet Chance, partly from himself, partly from the bravery of a fine, beautiful girl, partly from the Hunkpapa, understood himself somehow, not quite knowing how, to have learned in the past few weeks something of the mysteries of honor and such matters, more than he had learned in all the preceding empty years of his past life, before he had known friendship, and love; perhaps he had learned most from the Indians, from savages, where honor's primitive rudiments were least concealed by the complex customs and hypocrisies of a civilization of bricks and dollars, that could preach love and brotherhood and on the banks of a creek in South Dakota bayonet women and children. Running Horse, his brother, had taught him something of honor; and so too had Old Bear, Sitting Bull, and Drum; and the Sun Dance had taught him, and smoking, and Wounded Knee; he had learned lessons of truth to oneself, of the keeping of pledges and the being of a brother, and of the incomparable horror of the dishonorable deed, performed because it may be accomplished with impunity.

  And so it was that the physician, Edward Chance, in an Indian camp in the Bad Lands of South Dakota discovered himself incontrovertibly sensitive to certain kinds of claims, those of honor among them, sensitive to the coercions of codes of nobility; in this he was a man, not the sly animal that denigrates honor and courage as stupidity and foolishness, the petty envious animal incapable of either, scurrying about in its smugness, the intellectual rodent seeking its hole when the wind blows or the cat prowls, content to be protected by the works and valor of others, men, whom he fears and despises, to whom he owes his wretched existence.

  Chance had gone to the brush shelter of Grawson.

  He wondered if it had been honor that had sent him there, cutting the big man free. He doubted it. He thought rather it might have been, incredibly enough, pity, perhaps the memory of the screams of Totter.

  Pity?

  Grawson would have hated that.

  He had given Grawson his Colt, unloaded, and a handful of bullets.

  "You're a fool," the big man had said, taking the weapon, the bullets.

  Perhaps, thought Chance, perhaps I am a fool, but perhaps there is some difference.

  I saw, as you did not, what was done to Totter.

  Edward Chance, though he rode with the Hunkpapa, though he was used to the weight of a weapon at his thigh, the precision steel of a device for killing, had seen enough, had seen too much; never again, if he could help it, would a man die as Totter had, no matter who the man might be, Grawson or any other, stranger or mortal enemy.

  And yet if this simply, this alone, was his motivation, he found it hard to understand what he had said to Grawson. He had said simply, knowing he would meet this man again, "I do not let the Hunkpapa do my killing."

  The big man had disappeared from the brush shelter.

  Chance remained behind, to meet Drum, to fight for a woman–whom he could not keep even should he win her.

  There was the scream, announcing the discovery.

  The thin woman, she with the scabs of mourning wounds crusted on her face, had crept to Grawson's brush shelter, to be the first to taunt the prisoner.

  Her shriek awakened the camp.

  She scrambled among the blanket shelters and the snowy figures of sleeping warriors curled like dogs in the snow, pulling at them with long fingers, jabbing them, shaking them, screaming. Then she stood in the center of the camp, almost over Totter's corpse, holding Grawson's severed bonds in her fists, shaking them like snakes, looking at the gray sky, howling in disappointment.

  Warriors sprang up bewildered, some angry, some looking about as if to see soldiers on the cliffs or the horses gone. The startled shrill voices of the squaws pierced the bedlam, ringing from the stone walls of the canyon.

  Then suddenly the camp fell quiet.

  Chance, not looking or paying much attention, felt them turn toward him, then heard the movement of dozens of moccasined feet on the snow, coming towards him.

  He stood up, getting himself out of the blanket. He picked it up by one corner, straightened it out and began to fold it into neat squares.

  When the blanket was folded Chance dropped it to the ground and looked at the Indians.

  Their eyes were not pleasant.

  It suddenly occurred to Chance that they might expect him to take Grawson's place. He hadn't even thought of that. He did not much care to think of it now.

  He met Old Bear's eyes. The old man's gaze was stern. "The red-haired man is gone," he said.

  "I set him free," said Chance.

  Anger swept through the Hunkpapa and Minneconjou clustered about him; it was almost like a wind shaking branches, or the sudden, surprising shock that can move between animal and animal in a herd or pack when a stranger is suddenly, unexpectedly confronted.

  "I'm sorry," said Chance.

  "Why did you do this?" asked Old Bear.

  Chance thought about it. "I didn't want you to kill him," he said.

  "There is still a white man," said the thin woman.

  She meant Chance. Bless you, thought Chance, unkindly.

  "Why did you let him go?" asked Old Bear, still not satisfied.

  "There has been enough killing," said Chance.

  Drum pushed forward. "We can still catch him," he said. "I have looked at the prints. He bit through a picket rope and took a horse, but the prints are fresh."

  "Do not go after him," said Chance.

  "Why not?" asked Drum.

  "He is armed," said Chance. "I gave him my gun. By now he is on the prairie and you cannot surprise him. He is dangerous. He may kill someone."

  Drum moved as though to leave.

  "Wait," said Old Bear. "There is time." He was looking at Chance closely.

  Drum chafed with impatience.

  Chance looked at him. "Are we not to fight?" he asked.

  Drum glared at him, angrily.

  Old Bear, regarding Chance, shook his head. "I do not think it is a good thing you have done," he said.

  "Old Bear," said Chance, "is wiser than I and he may be right, but I do not think so." Chance looked at the Indians. "There has been killing at Grand River," he said, "at Wounded Knee, and on the prairie." He pointed to the stiff, angular figure of Totter. "There has been killing here." He looked at Old Bear. "Has there not been enough of killing?"

  "No," said Drum.

  Chance looked at him.

  Drum turned to the Indians. "What of Wounded Knee?" he asked. "Medicine Gun says there has been enough killing, but Drum says there has been enough killing of the Hunkpapa and Minneconjou, not enough of white men." Drum regarded the Indians. "Drum," he said, "does not forget Wounded Knee." He pointed to the thin woman with the scabbed mourning wounds on her narrow face. "Where is your brave and your son?" he asked. "Wounded Knee," she said, looking at Chance. Then Drum, over and over, jabbed the Indians with his words, reminding each of loved ones lost at Wounded Knee, men, wives, sons, daughters, children, infants. There was almost no one present who had not lost at least one member of his family at Wounded Knee. The Indians began to stamp with rage, awaiting Drum to address them individually. And as each in turn cried "Wounded Kne
e!" in answer to his question, the others repeated it, and soon in Chance's ears rang a violent, enraged chorus, "Wounded Knee! Wounded Knee! Wounded Knee!" Then Drum cried out, "All the blood of all the white men in the world will not make up for Wounded Knee!"

  The Hunkpapa and the Minneconjou grunted their assent.

  Then the Indians were silent, regarding Chance.

  He would speak very quietly. "Drum," he said, "is right. All the blood of all the white men in the world cannot make up for Wounded Knee. The white men can never make up for Wounded Knee." Then Chance paused. "But the stain of blood," he said, "cannot be made clean with more blood."

  The Indians looked at him.

  "I think my Brother is right," said Running Horse, now speaking for the first time. "I think what he says is hard to hear but I think it is true."

  Old Bear looked thoughtful.

  "Are the Hunkpapa and the Minneconjou afraid to fight?" cried Drum.

  "No," said Chance, looking at Drum, speaking very quietly. "They are not afraid. They have proved their courage to everyone, to me, to the Long Knives, to themselves. It is only Drum who asks if they are afraid. If anyone thinks they are afraid it is only Drum."

  As one man the Indians regarded Drum.

  "No," said Drum, looking down, "I do not think the Hunkpapa and the Minneconjou are afraid–they are warriors."

  Chance turned to the Indians. "If you go on fighting and killing you will take more scalps, you will kill more white men, more Long Knives, but in the end you must lose–there are too many to fight. If your women are to bear children and live you must live in the world with the white men."