Shortly, two riders broke away from the meeting and galloped back down the line. while they were gone Kicking Bird glanced once at the lieutenant, and Dunbar knew his face well enough now to know that this expression meant not all was as it should be.
Hoofbeats sounded behind him, and the lieutenant turned to see a dozen warriors charging to the front of the line. The fierce one was leading them.
They stopped next to Ten Bears’s group, held a brief consultation, and, taking one of the scouts with them, flew off in an easterly direction.
The column began to move again, and as Kicking Bird came back to his place next to the white soldier, he could see that the lieutenant’s eyes were full of questions. It was not possible to explain this thing to him, this bad omen.
Enemies had been discovered in the neighborhood, mysterious enemies from another world. By their deeds they had proved themselves to be people without value and without soul, wanton slaughterers with no regard for Comanche rights. It was important to punish them.
So Kicking Bird avoided the lieutenant’s questioning eyes. Instead, he watched the dust of Wind In His Hair’s party trail off to the east and said a silent prayer for the success of their mission.
two
From the moment he saw the little rose-colored bumps rising in the distance, he knew he was coming on to something ugly. There were black specks on the rose-colored bumps, and as the column drew closer, he could see that they were moving. Even the air seemed suddenly closer and the lieutenant loosened another button on his tunic.
Kicking Bird had brought him to the front with a purpose. But his intention was not to punish. It was to educate, and the education could best be served by seeing rather than talking. The impact would be greater in front. It would be greater for both of them. Kicking Bird had never seen this sight, either.
Like mercury in a thermometer, a bilious mixture of revulsion and lament climbed steadily in Lieutenant Dunbar’s throat. He had to swallow constantly to keep it from coming out as he and Kicking Bird led the column through the center of the killing ground.
He counted twenty-seven buffalo. And though he couldn’t count them, he figured there were at least as many ravens swarming over each body. In some cases the heads of the buffalo were covered with the battling black birds, screaming and twisting and flopping as they fought for the eyeballs. Those whose eyes had already been swallowed played host to larger swarms, which pecked ravenously as they strolled back and forth on the carcasses, defecating every so often as if to accent the richness of their feast.
Wolves were appearing from all directions. They would be crouching at the shoulders and haunches and bellies as soon as the column passed.
But there would be more than enough for every wolf and bird within miles. The lieutenant calculated roughly and came up with a figure of fifteen thousand. Fifteen thousand pounds of dead flesh decaying in the hot afternoon sun.
All this left to rot, he thought, wondering if some archenemy of his Indian friends had left this as a macabre warning.
Twenty-seven hides had been stripped away from neck to buttocks, and as he passed within feet of a particularly large animal, he saw that its open mouth held no tongue. Others had been robbed of their tongues, too. But that was all. Everything else had been left.
Lieutenant Dunbar suddenly thought of the dead man in the alley. Like these buffalo, the man had been lying on his side. The bullet that had been fired into the base of his skull had taken the right side of the man’s jaw out when it exited.
He had been just John Dunbar then, a fourteen-year-old boy. In succeeding years he’d seen scores of dead men: with whole faces missing, men whose brains leaked onto the ground like spilled mush. But the first dead man was the one he remembered best. Mainly because of the fingers.
He’d been standing right behind the constable when it was discovered that two of the dead man’s fingers had been sliced off. The constable had looked around and said to no one in particular, “This fella got killed for his rings.”
And now these buffalo lying dead on the ground, their guts spread all over the prairie just because someone wanted their tongues and hides. It struck Dunbar as the same kind of crime.
When he saw an unborn calf, half hanging from its mother’s slit abdomen, the same word he’d first heard that evening in the alley jumped into his mind like a glowing sign.
Murder.
He glanced at Kicking Bird. The medicine man was staring at the wreckage of the unborn calf, his face a long, sober mask.
Lieutenant Dunbar turned away then and looked back along the column. The whole band was weaving its way through the carnage. Hungry as they were after weeks of scraps, no one had stopped to help himself or herself to the bounty spread out around them. The voices that had been so raucous all morning were now stilled, and he could see in their faces the melancholy that comes from knowing a good trail has suddenly turned bad.
three
The horses were casting giant shadows by the time they reached the hunting grounds. While the women and children set to work pitching camp in the lee of a long ridge, most of the men rode ahead to scout the herd before night fell.
Lieutenant Dunbar went with them.
About a mile from the new camp they rendezvoused with three scouts who had made a little camp of their own a hundred yards from the mouth of a wide draw.
Leaving their horses below, sixty Comanche warriors and one white man started quietly up the long western slope leading out of the draw. As they neared the crest, everyone dropped close to the ground and crawled the final yards.
The lieutenant looked expectantly at Kicking Bird and was met with a shallow smile. The medicine man pointed ahead and put a finger to his lips. Dunbar knew they had arrived.
A few feet in front of him the earth fell away to nothing but sky, and he realized they had surmounted the back side of a cliff. The stiff prairie breeze bit into his face as he lifted his head and peered into a great depression a hundred feet below.
It was a magnificent dish of a valley, four or five miles wide and at least ten miles across. Grass of the most luxuriant variety was rippling everywhere.
But the lieutenant barely noticed the grass or the valley or its dimensions. Even the sky, now building with clouds, and the sinking sun, with its miraculous display of cathedral rays, could not compare with the great, living blanket of buffalo that covered the valley floor.
That this many creatures existed, let alone occupied the same immediate space, set the lieutenant’s mind spinning with incalculable figures. Fifty, seventy, a hundred thousand? Could there be more? His brain backed away from the enormity of it.
He didn’t shout or jump or whisper to himself in awe. Witnessing this put everything but that which he was seeing in suspension. He didn’t feel the little, odd-sized rocks pinching against his body. When a blue wasp landed on the point of his slackened jaw he didn’t brush at it. All he could do was blink at the coating of wonder that glazed his eyes.
He was watching a miracle.
When Kicking Bird tapped him on the shoulder, he realized his mouth had been open the whole time. It was parched dry by the prairie wind.
He swung his head dully and looked back along the slope.
The Indians had started down.
four
They had been riding in darkness for half an hour when the fires appeared, like faraway dots. The strangeness of it was like a dream. Home, he thought. That’s home.
How could it be? A temporary camp of fires on a distant plain, peopled by two hundred aborigines whose skin was different than his, whose language was a tangle of grunts and shouts, whose beliefs were yet a mystery and probably always would be.
But tonight he was very tired. Tonight it promised the comfort of a birthplace. It was home and he was glad to see it. The others, the scores of half-naked men with whom he’d been riding the last few miles, were glad to see it, too. They had begun talking again. The horses could smell it. They were walking high on their t
oes now, trying to break into a trot.
He wished he could see Kicking Bird among the vague shapes around him. The medicine man said a lot with his eyes, and out here in the darkness, bunched so intimately with these wild men as they approached their wild camp, he felt helpless without Kicking Bird’s telling eyes.
A half mile out he could hear voices and the beat of drums. A buzzing swept the ranks of his fellow riders and suddenly the horses surged into a run. They were packed so tightly and moving at such a good clip that, for a moment, Lieutenant Dunbar felt part of an unstoppable energy, a breaking wave of men and horses that no one would dare to oppose.
The men were yipping, high and shrill, like coyotes, and Dunbar, caught up as he was in the excitement, let out a few barks of his own.
He could see the flames of the fires and the silhouettes of people milling about the camp. They were aware of the returning riders now and some were running onto the prairie to meet them.
He had a funny feeling about the camp, a feeling that told him it was unusually agitated, that something out of the ordinary had happened during their absence. His eyes widened as he rode closer, trying to pick up some clue that would tell him what was different.
Then he saw the wagon, parked at the fringes of the largest fire, as out of place as a fine carriage floating on the surface of the sea.
There were white people in camp.
He pulled Cisco up hard, letting the other riders blow past while he hung back to collect his thoughts.
The wagon looked crude to him, a thing of ugliness. As Cisco danced nervously under him, the lieutenant was startled by his own thoughts. He imagined the voices that had come with it, he didn’t want to hear them. He didn’t want to see the white faces that would be so eager to see his. He didn’t want to answer their questions. He didn’t want to hear the news he’d missed.
But he knew he had no choice. There was no place else to go. He fed Cisco a little rein and they walked forward slowly.
He paused when he was within fifty yards. The Indians were dancing about exuberantly as the men who had scouted the herd jumped off their horses. He waited for the ponies to clear out, then he scanned all the faces in his line of sight.
There were no white ones.
They came closer and once again Dunbar paused, his gaze searching the camp carefully.
No white people.
He spotted the fierce one and the men of his little party that had left them in the afternoon. They seemed to be the center of attention. This was definitely more than a greeting. It was a celebration of some sort. They were passing long sticks back and forth. They were yelling. The villagers who had gathered to watch them were yelling, too.
He and Cisco edged still closer and the lieutenant saw right away that he was wrong. They weren’t passing sticks around. They were passing lances. One of them came back to Wind In His Hair, and Dunbar saw him lift it high into the air. He wasn’t smiling, but he was surely happy. As he let out a long, vibrating howl, Dunbar caught a glimpse of the hair tied near the lance’s point.
At the same moment, he realized it was a scalp. A fresh scalp. The hair was black and curly.
His eyes darted to the other lances. Two more of them held scalps; one was light brown and the other was sandy, almost blond. He looked quickly at the wagon and saw what he had not seen before. A load of stacked buffalo hides was peeking over the rails.
Suddenly it was clear as a cloudless day.
The skins belonged to the murdered buffalo and the scalps belonged to the men who had killed them, men who had been alive that very afternoon. White men. The lieutenant was numb with confusion. He couldn’t participate in this, not even as a watcher. He had to leave.
As he was turning away he happened to catch sight of Kicking Bird. The medicine man had been smiling widely, but when he saw Lieutenant Dunbar in the shadows just beyond the firelight, his smile vanished. Then, as though he wanted to relieve the lieutenant of some embarrassment, he turned his back.
Dunbar wanted to believe that Kicking Bird’s heart was with him, that in some vague way it knew his confusion. But he couldn’t think now. He had to go off by himself.
Skirting the camp, he located his gear on the far side and went out onto the prairie with Cisco. He went until he could no longer see the fires. Then he spread his bedroll on the ground and lay looking at the stars, trying to believe that the men who had been killed were bad people and deserved to die. But it was no good. He could not know that for certain, and even if he did . . . well, it was not for him to say. He tried to believe that Wind In His Hair and Kicking Bird and all the other people who shared in the killing were not so happy for having done it. But they were.
More than anything he wanted to believe that he was not in this position. He wanted to believe he was floating toward the stars. But he wasn’t.
He heard Cisco lie down in the grass with a heavy sigh. It was quiet then and Dunbar’s thoughts turned inward, toward himself. Or rather his lack of self. He did not belong to the Indians. He did not belong to the whites. And it was not time for him to belong to the stars.
He belonged right where he was now. He belonged nowhere.
A sob rose in his throat. He had to gag to stifle it. But the sobs kept coming up and it was not long before he ceased to see the sense in trying to keep them down.
five
Something tapped him. As he came awake he thought he’d dreamed the little nudge he felt in his back. The blanket was heavy and damp with dew. He must have pulled it over his head during the night.
He lifted the edge of the blanket and peered out at the hazy light of morning. Cisco was standing alone in the grass a few feet in front of him. His ears were up.
There it was again, something kicking him lightly in the back. Lieutenant Dunbar threw off the blanket and looked into the face of a man standing directly over him.
It was Wind In His Hair. His stern face was painted with bars of ocher. A sparkling new rifle was hanging from one of his hands. He started to move the rifle and the lieutenant held his breath. This might be his time. He pictured his hair, dangling from the fierce one’s lance.
But as Wind In His Hair lifted the rifle a little higher, he smiled. He jabbed his toe gently into the lieutenant’s side and said a few words in Comanche. Lieutenant Dunbar lay still as Wind In His Hair sighted down his rifle at some imagined game. Then he shoved a hunk of imaginary food into his mouth, and like one friend playfully rousting another, he tickled Dunbar’s ribs with the toe of his moccasin once again.
six
They came from downwind, every able-bodied man in the band, riding in a great, hornlike formation, a moving crescent half a mile wide. They rode slowly, taking care not to startle the buffalo until the last possible moment, until it was time to run.
As a novice among experts Lieutenant Dunbar was absorbed in trying to piece together the strategy of the hunt as it unfolded. From his position close to the center of the formation he could see that they were moving to isolate one small section of the gigantic herd. The riders comprising the right part of the moving horn had nearly succeeded in closing off the small section while the middle was pressuring its rear. Off to his left the hunting formation was swinging into an ever straightening line.
It was a surround.
He was close enough to hear sounds: the random bawling of calves, the lowing of mothers, and an occasional snort from one of the massive bulls. Several thousand animals were straight ahead.
The lieutenant glanced to his right. Wind In His Hair was the next rider over, and he was all eyes as they closed on the herd. He seemed unaware of the horse moving under him or of the rifle rocking in his hand. His keen eyes were everywhere at once: on the hunters, on the quarry, and on the shrinking ground between them. If the air could be seen, he would have noticed every subtle shift. He was like a man listening to the countdown tick of some unseen clock.
Even Lieutenant Dunbar, so unpracticed at such things, could feel the tension bristling ab
out him. The air had gone absolutely dead. Nothing was carrying. He could no longer hear the hooves of the hunter’s ponies. Even the herd ahead had gone suddenly silent. Death was settling over the prairie with the surety of a descending cloud.
When he was within a hundred yards a handful of the shaggy beasts turned as a unit and faced him. They lifted their great heads, nosing the dead air for a hint of what their ears had heard but their weak eyes were as yet unable to identify. Their tails went up, curling above their rumps like little flags. The largest among them pawed at the grass, shook his head, and snorted gruffly, challenging the intrusion of the approaching riders.
Dunbar understood then that for every hunter, the killing about to take place would not be a foregone conclusion, that it would not be a lying-in-wait thing, that to perform death on these animals, each man was going to chance his own.
A commotion broke out along the right flank, far up the line at the tip of the horn. The hunters had struck.
With astonishing speed this first strike set off a chain reaction that caught Dunbar in the same way an ocean breaker slams into an unsuspecting wader.
The bulls that had been facing him turned and ran. At the same time every Indian pony shot forward. It happened so fast that Cisco nearly ran out from under the lieutenant. He reached back as his hat blew off, but it tumbled past his fingertips. It didn’t matter. There was no stopping now, not if he had used all his strength. The little buckskin was surging ahead, chewing up the ground as if flames were tickling his heels, as if his life depended on running.
Dunbar looked at the line of riders to his right and left and was appalled to see that no one was there. He glanced over his shoulder and saw them, flat on the backs of their straining ponies. They were going as fast as they could, but compared to Cisco they were dawdlers, hopelessly struggling to keep up. They were falling farther behind with each passing second, and suddenly the lieutenant was occupying a space all to himself. He was between the pursuing hunters and the fleeing buffalo.