“We have it. Enough to buy anything we need.”
With renewed energy he rolled the stone back over. A few well-placed blows cracked it open like an egg along the weakness of the vein. With the heart of the stone exposed, he found it easy to chip the gold out of its fragile bed of quartz. By the time the sun had reached the top of the sky, he had filled a small pouch with chunks and flakes and small nodules. He walked over to the tall tree and sat down against the trunk. He was exhausted in both body and mind, and his hunger had begun to knot his insides. But looking at the pouch of gold, he felt a large wash of relief. He felt as if the final obstacles to the safety of his new friends had been swept away.
He laughed at his own simplicity. It was a long way from a pouch of gold to the security of a nation, but it was not unimaginable. He laughed again and felt freed by the release.
“We have it!” he shouted, and laughed some more.
He rode down the sun road into camp, feeling like a conquering hero. The sun hammered down from a white, cloudless sky. Most of the women were out gathering wood or digging roots, but George hoped to find Speaks While Leaving at home.
He turned south and guided his walker among the lodges of the Closed Windpipe band. The men, sitting in front of their homes, resting or working on their shields or arrows, looked up at him as he passed. They did not greet him; they just stopped what they were doing and watched him as he rode by. When he had passed, they returned to their activities without comment.
He found the lodge of One Bear and ordered his walker to a halt.
“Speaks While Leaving,” he called as he walked up. “Is Speaks While Leaving at home?”
There was no answer, but soon the doorflap opened and One Bear himself came out. He stood before the open doorway and stared at George, his face expressionless.
“How was your winter?” George asked, afraid he knew what he was up against. “I have some very good news to tell you.”
One Bear kept his silence and only stared impassively at him.
“I think this is very important. Last summer I talked with Three Trees Together about using gold to help the People. Now I have found it, lots of it, right where Speaks While Leaving said it was. Look.” He held out the pouch of gold. “There is much more, too, if we can only get to it.”
More silence. Tall, dark-eyed, oppressive silence.
“I know she wanted me to wait,” George said, pleading now. “But I had to know, and look, it is all fine now. The gold is there and from here on we can do it her way. Won’t you please tell me where she is?”
Silence. And the sound of movement from within the lodge.
Speaks While Leaving came outside and stood next to her father. George could see by the sheen on her cheeks that she had been crying but as she looked up at him now, there was no sadness in her eyes. George saw only anger, backed by an unbending will.
She held out her hand. George handed her the pouch. She undid the tie and poured some of the metal into her hand. The sunlight splintered against the gold, throwing up glints and gleams that danced in their eyes. She looked at George again, her eyes as hard as her father’s, as hard as the metal in her hand, and she emptied her hand and the pouch onto the ground.
“No!” George shouted and dove to recover the treasure strewn at her feet. He scrabbled in the dust and frantically began to refill the pouch. “Don’t you understand what this means? It’s the key to the future. It’s power. It’s control. It’s...”
He stopped, realizing that he had been speaking in English. He looked up at Speaks While Leaving. The anger on her face had been replaced by naked disgust. She did not say a word, but only turned and stepped back into the lodge.
From within the lodge, George heard the old grandmother ask, “What is going on out there?”
“Nothing,” was the answer Speaks While Leaving gave. “Nothing.”
George knelt in the dust and felt the heat of shame color his cheeks. One Bear still towered over him, unmoving and inscrutable. George did not look up. He simply scooped dirt and gold alike into the pouch and tied it closed. When he stood, he could not bring himself to look at One Bear at all, and just turned back toward his walker. No word stopped him as he mounted and left the camp.
He rode back to the rocks and the holes and the solitary tamarack tree that stood over it all, as silent and as still as One Bear in his disdain. He sat on the stony height and watched the moon follow the sun—further away today—while words like stubborn and unreasonable and ungrateful bounced around inside his head until he was numb and empty of thought.
The stars came out, eager and sharp. They dressed the world with a slow, blue light that dragged at George’s vision. He could see the pale stone on which he sat, the mound that was his sleeping walker, the bright shafts of his tools’ hickory handles, and the sheen that covered the ground: the dry prairie grass. But down at the base of his granite perch the heavens failed, unable to light the holes where he had dug. The pits and trenches lay on the ground like starless voids, doors to some dark, infernal realm. He stared into their blackness and listened to the night, to the nighthawk and the coyote, the owl and the bat. The wind ran in from the west. The prairie rippled as it whispered through the grass. Nothing, though, nothing touched the blackness he had made. It was impervious; alien and isolate.
By the time the morning star rose to prepare the east for the coming dawn, George felt he understood something of what Speaks While Leaving had said—his digging was wrong, incorrect, not proper. But wrong though it might have been, what he could not see was a way to get at the gold without doing it. He hefted the pouch in his hand. Its heaviness depressed him, for the things it represented—work, hope, future—now seemed either futile or lost.
He stepped down from the tall boulders and walked over to his last pit. Refusing further thought, he dropped the pouch into its depth and, taking shovel in hand, began to refill the hole.
The day dawned and he worked. The sun rose and he worked. The filling went much quicker than the emptying had gone, and one by one his trenches were unmade.
When he stopped, the sun was setting and he was alone. He searched the landscape for his walker and found her, nearly a mile away, hunting field mice to pass the time. Beyond her, on the same hilltop as the day before—or was it two, he wondered—stood the two dark riders with their Thunder Bows. He rubbed at the bleariness with which fatigue had veiled his eyes. As they had the time before, this time, too, the men stood in the day’s final light, watching. George, however, waved at them and shouted.
“See? See what I have done? See?” He knelt and patted the fresh earth. “See? Go tell her.”
The men on the hilltop did not acknowledge his words. They only watched and as the sun’s rays died out, they turned and rode away, disappearing behind the hill.
“Tell her,” George shouted after them as the night advanced.
He spent the night out on the rock. Hunger had long ago left him for more fertile ground, but sleep avoided him, too, and he could do little more than watch the stars overhead play hide-and-seek among the clouds. He looked for the shapes of familiar constellations and made up some of his own—”The Aster,” “The Carriage.” He was working on “Washington Crossing the Delaware” when the sun began to blanch the sky with its morning fires.
“You have worked hard,” said a deep voice.
George sat up, blinking, and saw Stands Tall in Timber sitting nearby on the rocks. He was an old man—his hair gray, his skin dark and lined, his black eyes set deep on either side of a strong, hooked nose. George knew him to be one of the holy men of the People, but he knew nothing more than that. Now, the old man sat on the rocks next to him, his knees tucked up against his chest, the ends of his long braids dangling down near his feet, as he looked over the area of George’s prospecting.
“Yes,” George said. “I have.”
“It still looks pretty bad,” the old Indian said.
George looked at the humps of dirt, the scattered cl
ods, and the torn edges of the earth. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose it does.”
Stands Tall in Timber sighed but did not look away from the scars in the prairie ground. George did not say anything; he did not want to argue anymore. Finally it was Stands Tall in Timber who broke the silence.
“Three Trees Together says that this yellow chief-metal could be very helpful to the People.”
George did not reply.
“He says we could use it against the bluecoats, by trading it for powerful weapons. I don’t know if I like that idea.” The old man picked up a small shard of stone, inspected it, and put it back where he had found it. “I used to be an angry man,” he said, “a soldier of the Crazy Dogs, and I walked the path of war for many years. It was many years ago now, during a time of great strife between us and the Crow People. I fought many battles, took many scalps, stole many whistlers, and counted many coups. I was a very great warrior, but I was not a very good man. I thought only of myself.” George watched as the old man’s gaze lifted to the east and the still-new sun that hung there under the morning clouds. He squinted into the light until his eyes were slits; deeper wrinkles in a deeply wrinkled face.
“But one day, I was finished. I just left all my anger on the plain. I came home, I married a wise woman, and I learned to help others. In time, I was chosen as the keeper of the Maahotse, the Sacred Arrows.” He chuckled to himself. “Perhaps I was chosen because of my failings. It does make it easier to understand the failings of others.”
He glanced over at George and then looked back toward the horizon.
“There is a saying among the People: You cannot tell a man what to do. I think you may have heard this, now that you talk like a real person, but I don’t think that you understand what we mean.” He glanced over again, but George just waited for him to continue. The holy man’s voice was paced and mellifluous, and his words were easy to understand. George was willing to listen to him all day.
“No one can tell me what to do,” he went on. “That means that only I can tell me what to do, and that means that I must judge for myself whether the results of my acts are worth the acts themselves.” He pointed to the dirt-filled holes. “When you began, were you thinking of what would happen if you did this thing?”
George thought back. “No,” he said after a moment. “I was only thinking that I was right and she was wrong.”
The old man smiled. “That is young-man-thinking. You will get over that in time. But tell me. Were you right?”
“Yes,” George said.
“And was she wrong?”
“Yes,” he said, and then, “No,” and then, “I do not know. We weren’t asking the same questions.”
“Aaahh,” Stands Tall in Timber said. “Now that sounds better.”
“How can it?” George asked. “If Speaks While Leaving is right, then the digging is wrong. But we can’t get the gold without digging. And if we can’t get the gold, then why am I...”
Stands Tall in Timber waited for George to finish his sentence. When George did not, he said, “And if we cannot get the gold, then why are you with the People in the first place? Is that what you were going to say?”
George clenched his jaw and frowned. With a gesture, he said that it was.
“My young friend,” the old man said, “you are here because you are here; there is no why. There is only how. It is how you live that makes a difference.”
Stands Tall in Timber’s words flowed into George like water over a parched land. They rolled over his surface, beading up, unable to penetrate until, suddenly, the tension in his mind disappeared and they soaked straight in, down to his soul.
“The gold is important,” George said. “And we must dig to get it.”
“That seems so,” Stands Tall in Timber agreed.
“But my digging was wrong,”
Stands Tall in Timber smiled, showing worn and crooked teeth. “So we must find a way to make it right.”
“You make it sound so simple,” George said. “What will Speaks While Leaving say?”
“I have already talked to the daughter of One Bear. Her vision was very strong. It tells us all we need to know, and some things I do not understand. But we will bring her vision into this world and make it true.”
“And the other two? What do they say?”
“Who do you mean?”
“The two Contraries that you sent to check up on me.”
Stands Tall in Timber shrugged. “I sent no one.”
“Then Speaks While Leaving—”
The old man signed with an upturned palm. “No, she sent no one except me. What did these men look like?”
George described the men and Stands Tall in Timber became thoughtful.
“I do not think that those were men,” he said. “Not men at all. I think the Thunder Beings have taken an interest in you. A very great interest.”
Storm Arriving led the caravan of people up the slope as the sun dipped down toward the western mountains. The evening breeze freshened and brought the sound of drums and the scent of sage-blessed smoke. He thanked nevé-stanevóo’o, the sacred powers, for getting them all home, and heard murmurs of thanks from those behind him as well. His patrol was more than a week overdue but they brought back with them over a hundred people, all fleeing the new laws of the vé’hó’e: Wolf People, Greasy Wood People, even some Fox People who everyone had thought were all long dead. Whole families had crossed the great river, hoping to find a land to live in, even if it meant begging at the doorstep of old enemies.
The refuge-seekers rode whistlers and hardbacks borrowed from the stocks the People kept at the Ree villages near the White Water. The whistlers fluted at the scents of home and chafed at the heavily-laden travoises they dragged behind them. The elderly people riding on the hardbacks cried out in alarm as their mounts—nearly twenty in number—answered the drums ahead by lifting their club-tipped tails and thumping the ground.
Storm Arriving had pushed them, human and beast alike, allowing little rest, wanting only to bring everything safely within the circle of the People—his soldiers, the refugees, the body of Red Hat, and especially the information he had gained about the bluecoats.
Up ahead along the top of the last low swell of land, ten soldiers appeared, all on whistlers and with bows at the ready.
“Ho!” Storm Arriving cried out, raising his own bow. “We are Kit Foxes, coming home. And we bring some new friends.”
The soldiers relaxed and rode down to meet them. Storm Arriving recognized Raccoon, his father-in-law’s nephew.
“Cousin,” Raccoon said in greeting. “Who are all these people with you?”
“They are new friends, I think. We need to speak with the Council.”
“You will have to wait until morning,” Raccoon said. “There is a dance tonight.”
Storm Arriving waved a hand. “What I have to say is more urgent then a summer-sweetheart dance.”
“It’s not a social dance,” Raccoon said. “Speaks While Leaving has had a new vision, and they are dancing it into the world.”
Storm Arriving felt his throat tighten and his mouth go dry.
First the people from across the Big Greasy, he wondered silently. Then the bluecoats, and now a vision dance? The world is changing too fast.
“We will wait until morning,” he said, “but we must see to these families.”
Raccoon conferred with his squad. “We will take them from here,” he said.
They rode up over the rise, but everyone halted on the far side. The families whispered to one another, amazed at the size of the Alliance laid out before them. For Storm Arriving and the rest of his patrol, however, the wonder was in the center of the camp.
In the clearing, the dancing ground was lined with drummers and singers. Around them, people from the camp had gathered, listening, moving with the rhythm and joining their voices in song.
Tall lodgepoles had been set upright in a large circle, and buffalo skins had been hung between t
hem to create a great lodge with no roof, just sides reaching up to heaven. The sky lodge was empty save for a large fire and a single dancer, a deer-dancer, representing the earth. Other dancers waited outside the sky lodge—dancers representing the soldier societies, and one dancer clothed in white, representing the great spirit. Storm Arriving could feel the power of the vision and the dance that was making it true.
The dance progressed, and Storm Arriving watched as Speaks While Leaving’s vision was acted out. The meaning was clear for any man to see: when you take from the earth, you must give something in return.
The drumbeats built in intensity. The deer-dancer gave the soldiers the gifts of the earth. The gifts changed into rifles and wheels and smoke. The singing rose in pitch. All the soldier-dancers circled around the white spirit, dancing their thanks to the world’s four corners, the earth, and the sky.
Storm Arriving felt the power build, felt his chest constrict with it. He closed his eyes and felt the drumbeat in his veins, felt the trueness of the vision. The tempo began to sprint, the sun began to set, and Storm Arriving heard new, far away voices draw nearer—perfect voices, spirit voices—singing the vision from their world into his. The voices, spirit and flesh, ran with the drums. The sun set with a last wink of light. The voices became one. Storm Arriving opened his eyes and saw a gust of wind rush through the camp. It ran through the clearing and past people and dancers. It ran up the slope to where Storm Arriving and the others stood. It hit him in the face—cool and spring-like and full of the scents of life—and then it was gone.
The drums had stopped. The singers were silent. The dancers stood still. And then Storm Arriving felt it: an elation that came from some place within his breast and from some place outside the world, a surge of emotion that welled up and came out in a whoop of joy.
The vision had been made real.
The magic that had rooted him to the earth was gone. Storm Arriving and his colleagues bade each other a good night and headed off to their camps.
The Spirit of Thunder Page 13