“The Comanches have a bridge
That passes to another world
The bridge is called Stands With A Fist.”
Too embarrassed to hear more, she hurried along to bed. But as she tucked the covers under her chin, she was not thinking bad thoughts about the song. She was thinking only of the words she had heard, and on reflection, they seemed quite good.
She slept deeply that night. It was already light when she woke the next morning. Scrambling to catch up with the day, she hurried out of the lodge and stopped short.
Dances With Wolves was riding out of camp on the little buckskin horse. It was a sight that made her heart sink a little further than she might have imagined. The thought of him going did not disturb her so much, but the thought of him not coming back deflated her to the extent that it showed on her face.
Stands With A Fist blushed to think that someone might see her like this. She glanced around quickly and turned a brighter shade of red.
Kicking Bird was watching her.
Her heart beat wildly as she struggled to compose herself. The medicine man was coming over.
“There will be no talk today,” he said, studying her with a care that made her insides squirm.
“I see,” she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.
But she could see curiosity in his eyes, curiosity that called for an explanation.
“I like to make the talk,” she went on. “I am happy to make the white words.”
“He wants to see the white man’s fort. He will come back at sundown.”
The medicine man gave her another close look and said. “We will make more talk tomorrow.”
five
Her day passed minute by minute.
She watched the sun like a bored office worker watches each tick of the clock. Nothing moves slower than watched time. She had great difficulty concentrating on her duties because of this.
When she wasn’t watching time she was daydreaming.
Now that he had emerged as a real person, there were things in him she found to admire. Some of them might be traced to their mutual whiteness. Some of them were his alone. All of them held her interest.
She felt a mysterious pride when she thought of the deeds he had performed, deeds that were known by all her people.
Remembering his playacting made her laugh. Sometimes he was very funny. Funny but not foolish. In every way he seemed sincere and open and respectful and full of good humor. She was convinced that these qualities were genuine.
The sight of him with the breastplate on had seemed out of place at first, like a Comanche would be out of place in a top hat. But he wore it day after day without paying the least attention to it. And he never took it off. It was obvious that he loved it.
His hair was tangled like hers, not thick and straight like the others. And he hadn’t tried to change it.
He hadn’t changed the boots and pants either but wore them in the same natural way he took to the breastplate.
These musings led her to the conclusion that Dances With Wolves was an honest person. Every human being finds certain characteristics above all others to cherish, and for Stands With A Fist it was honesty.
This thinking about Dances With Wolves did not subside, and as the afternoon wore on, bolder thoughts came to her. She pictured him coming back at sundown. She pictured them together in the arbor the following day.
One more image came to her as she knelt by the edge of the river in the late afternoon, filling a jug with water. They were together in the arbor. He was talking about himself and she was listening. But it was only the two of them.
Kicking Bird was gone.
six
Her daydream became real on the very next day.
The three of them had just gotten down to talking when word was brought that a faction of young warriors had declared their intention to make a war party against the Pawnee. Because there had been no previous talk about this and because the young men in question were inexperienced, Ten Bears had hastily organized a council.
Kicking Bird was called away and suddenly they were alone.
The silence in the arbor was so heavy that it made both of them nervous. Each wanted to talk, but considerations of what to say and how to say it held them up. They were speechless.
Stands With A Fist finally decided on her opening words, but she was too late.
He was already turning to her, saying the words in a shy but forceful way.
“I want to know about you,” he said.
She turned away, trying to think. The English was still hard for her. Fractured by the effort of thought, it came out in clear but half-stuttered words.
“Whaa . . . what you know . . . want to know?” she asked.
seven
For the rest of the morning she told him about herself, holding the lieutenant’s eager attention with the stories of her time as a white girl, her capture, and her long life as a Comanche.
When she tried to end a story he would ask another question. Much as she might have wanted, she could not get off the subject of herself. He asked how she came to be named, and she told the story of her arrival in camp so many years ago. Memories of her first months were hazy, but she well remembered the day she got her name.
She had not been officially adopted by anyone, nor had she been made a member of the band. She was only working. As she carried out her assignments successfully the work became less menial and she was given more instruction in the various ways of living off the prairie. But the longer she worked, the more resentful she became of her lowly status. And some of the women picked on her unmercifully.
Outside a lodge one morning she took a swing at the worst of these women. Being young and unskilled, she had no hope of winning a fight. But the punch she threw was hard and perfectly timed. It cracked against the point of the woman’s chin and knocked her cold. She kicked her unconscious tormentor for good measure and stood facing the other women with her fists balled, a tiny white girl ready to take on all comers.
No one challenged her. They only watched. In moments everyone had returned to what they were doing, leaving the mean woman lying where she had dropped.
No one picked on the little white girl after that. The family that had been taking care of her became open with their kindnesses, and the road to becoming a Comanche was smoothed for her. She was Stands With A Fist from then on.
A special kind of warmth filled the arbor as she told the story. Lieutenant Dunbar wanted to know the exact spot where her fist struck the woman’s chin, and Stands With A Fist unhesitatingly grazed his jaw with her knuckles.
The lieutenant stared at her after this was done.
His eyes slowly rolled under his lids and he keeled over.
It was a good joke and she extended it, bringing him to by gently jiggling his arm.
This little exchange produced a new ease between them, but good as it was, the sudden familiarity also caused Stands With A Fist some worry. She didn’t want him to ask her personal questions, questions about her status as a woman. She could feel the questions coming, and the specter of this broke her concentration. It made her nervous and less communicative.
The lieutenant sensed her pulling back. It made him nervous and less communicative as well.
Before they knew it, silence had fallen between them once again.
The lieutenant said it anyway. He didn’t know precisely why, but it was something he had to ask. If he let it pass now, he might never ask. So he did.
Casually as he could, he stretched out a leg and yawned.
“Are you married?” he asked.
Stands With A Fist dropped her head and fixed her eyes on her lap. She shook her head in a short, uncomfortable way and said, “No.”
The lieutenant was on the verge of asking why when he noticed that her head was falling slowly into her hands. He waited a moment, wondering if something was wrong.
She was perfectly still.
Just as he was about to speak again s
he suddenly clambered to her feet and left the arbor.
She was gone before Dunbar could call after her. Devastated, he sat numbly in the arbor, damning himself for having asked the question and hoping against hope that whatever had gone wrong could be put right again. But there was nothing he could do on that account. He couldn’t ask Kicking Bird’s advice. He couldn’t even talk to Kicking Bird.
For ten frustrating minutes he sat alone in the arbor. Then he started for the pony herd. He needed a walk and a ride.
Stands With A Fist went for a ride, too. She crossed the river and meandered down a trail though the breaks, trying to sort her thoughts.
She didn’t have much luck.
Her feelings about Dances With Wolves were in a terrible jumble. Not so long ago she hated the thought of him. For the last several days, she hadn’t thought of anything but him. And there were so many other contradictions.
With a start she realized she had given no thought to her dead husband. He had been the center of her life so recently, and now she had forgotten him. Guilt bore down on her.
She turned her pony about and started back, forcing Dances With Wolves out of her head with a long string of prayers for her dead husband.
She was still out of sight of the village when her pony lifted his head and snorted in the way horses do when they’re afraid.
Something large crashed in the brush behind her, and knowing the sound was too large to be anything but a bear, Stands With A Fist hurried her pony home.
She was recrossing the river when the idle thought hit her.
I wonder if Dances With Wolves has ever seen a bear, she said to herself.
Stands With A Fist stopped herself then. She could not let this happen, this constant thinking of him. It was intolerable.
By the time she reached the opposite bank the woman who was two people had resolved that her role as a translator would from now on be a thing of business, like trading. It would go no further, not even in her mind.
She would stop it.
CHAPTER XXIII
one
Lieutenant Dunbar’s solo ride carried him along the river, too. But while Stands With A Fist rode south, he went north.
Despite the day’s intense heat, he swung away from the river after a mile or two. He broke into open country with the idea that, surrounded by space, he might start to feel better.
The lieutenant’s spirits were very low.
He ran the picture of her leaving the arbor over and over in his mind, trying to find something in it to hang on to. But there was a finality about their departure, and it gave him that dreadful feeling of having let something wonderful slip from his hand just as he was picking it up.
The lieutenant chastised himself mercilessly for not having gone after her. If he had, they might be talking happily at this moment, the tender issue, whatever it was, settled and behind them.
He’d wanted to tell her something of himself. Now it might never happen. He wanted to be back in the arbor with her. Instead he was stumbling around out here, wandering like a lost soul under a broiling sun.
He’d never been this far north of the camp and was surprised at how radically the country was changing. These were rear hilts rising in front of him, not mere bumps on the grassland. Running out of the hills were deep, jagged canyons.
The heat, coupled with his constant self-criticism, had set his mind to simmering, and feeling suddenly dizzy, he gave Cisco a little squeeze with his knees. A half mile ahead he had spotted the shady mouth of a dark canyon spilling onto the prairie.
The walls on either side climbed a hundred feet or more and the darkness that fell over horse and rider was instantly refreshing. But as they picked their way carefully over the canyon’s rock-strewn floor, the place grew ominous. Its walls were pressing tighter against them. He could feel Cisco’s muscles bunching nervously, and in the absolute quiet of the afternoon he was increasingly aware of the hollow thump in his own heart.
He was struck with the certainty that he had entered something ancient. Perhaps it was evil.
He had begun to think of turning back when the canyon bottom suddenly started to widen. Far ahead, in the space between the canyon walls, he could see a stand of cottonwoods, their tops twinkling in bright sunlight.
After managing a few more twists and turns he and Cisco burst all at once into the large, natural clearing where the cottonwoods stood. Even at the height of summer the place was remarkably green, and though he could see no stream, he knew there must be water here.
The buckskin arched his neck and sniffed the air. He would have to be thirsty, too, and Dunbar gave him his head. Cisco skirted the cottonwoods and walked another hundred yards to the base of a sheer rock wall that marked the canyon’s end. There he stopped.
At his feet, covered with a film of leaves and algae, was a small spring about six feet across. Before the lieutenant could jump off, Cisco’s muzzle had thrust through the surface’s coating and he was drinking in long gulps.
As the lieutenant knelt next to his horse, going to his hands at the edge of the spring, something caught his eye. There was a cleft at the base of the rock wall. It ran back into the cliff and was tall enough at its entrance for a man to walk into without stooping.
Lieutenant Dunbar buried his face next to Cisco’s and drank quickly. He slipped the bridle off his horse’s head, dropped it next to the spring, and walked into the darkness of the cleft.
It was wonderfully cool inside. The soil beneath his feet was soft, and as far as he could see, the place was empty. But as his eyes passed over the floor he knew that man was a fixture here. Charcoal from a thousand fires was scattered over the ground like plucked feathers.
The ceiling began to shrink, and when the lieutenant touched it, the soot of the thousand fires coated his fingertips.
Still feeling light-headed, he sat down, his bottom hitting the ground so heavily that he groaned.
He was facing the way he had come, and the entrance, a hundred yards away, was now a window to the afternoon. Cisco was grazing contentedly on the bunchgrass next to the spring. Behind him the cottonwood leaves were blinking like mirrors. As the coolness closed around him, Lieutenant Dunbar was suddenly overcome with a throbbing, all-encompassing fatigue. Throwing his arms out as a pillow for his head, he lay back on the smooth, sandy earth and stared up at the ceiling.
The roof of solid rock was blackened with smoke, and underneath there were distinct markings. Deep grooves had been cut in the stone, and as he studied them, Dunbar realized they had been made by human hands.
Sleep was pressing in about him, but he was fascinated by the markings. He struggled to make sense of them as a star gazer might strain to connect the outline of Taurus.
The marks immediately above suddenly fell into place. There was a buffalo, crudely drawn but bearing all the essential detail. Even the little tail was standing up.
Next to the buffalo was a hunter. He was holding a stick, a spear in all likelihood. It was pointed at the buffalo.
Sleep was unstoppable now. The idea that the spring might have been tainted occurred to him as his invisibly weighted eyes began to close.
When they were shut he could still see the buffalo and the hunter. The hunter was familiar. He wasn’t an exact duplicate, but there was something of Kicking Bird in his face, something handed down over hundreds of years.
Then the hunter was him.
Then he went out.
two
The trees were bare of leaves.
Patches of snow lay on the ground.
It was very cold.
A great circle of uncounted common soldiers waited lifelessly, their rifles standing at their sides.
He went from one to another, staring into their frozen blue faces, looking for signs of life. No one acknowledged him.
He found his father among them, the telltale doctor’s bag hanging from one hand like a natural extension of his body. He saw a boyhood chum who had drowned. He saw the man who owned a
stable in his old town and who beat the horses when they got out of line. He saw General Grant, still as a sphinx, a soldier’s cap crowning his head. He saw a watery-eyed man with the collar of a priest. He saw a prostitute, her dead face smeared with rouge and powder. He saw his massively bosomed elementary-school teacher. He saw the sweet face of his mother, tears frozen to her cheeks.
This vast army of his life swam before his eyes as if it would never end. There were guns, big, brass-colored cannons on wheels.
Someone was coming up to the waiting circle of soldiers.
It was Ten Bears. He walked smoothly in the brittle cold, a single blanket draped over his bony shoulders. Looking like a tourist, he came face-to-face with one of the cannons. A coppery hand snaked out of the blanket, wanting to feel the barrel.
The big gun discharged and Ten Bears was gone in a cloud of smoke. The upper half of his body was somersaulting slowly in the dead winter sky. Like water from a hose, blood was pouring out of the place where his waist had been. His face was blank. His braids were floating lazily away from his ears.
Other guns went off, and like Ten Bears, the lodges of his village took flight. They gyrated through space like heavy paper cones, and when they came back to earth, the tipis stuck into the iron-hard ground on their tips.
The army was faceless now. Like a herd of joyous bathers hustling to the seashore on a hot day, it swept down on the people who had been left uncovered beneath the lodges.
Babies and small children were flung aside first. They flew high into the air. The branches of the bare trees stabbed through their little bodies, and there the children squirmed, their blood running down the tree trunks as the army continued its work.
They opened the men and women as if they were Christmas presents: shooting into their heads and lifting off the skull tops; slitting bellies with bayonets, then parting the skin with impatient hands; severing limbs and shaking them out.
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