five
They’d been under way only half an hour when the storm hit with full power, sending rain down in great, running sheets. It was impossible to see, and the four men shepherding the two travois across the plains had to grope their way back.
But with the importance of their mission uppermost in each man’s mind, they never paused, and made the return trip in amazing time. When at last they were in sight of the village, the storm had died down. Above it, a few long streaks of gray had appeared in the turbulent sky, and through this first feeble light of day they could see that the village was still safe.
They had just started down the depression leading to camp when a spectacular barrage of lightning struck upriver. For two or three seconds the bolts lit the landscape with the clarity of daylight.
Dances With Wolves saw it, and so did the others.
A long line of horsemen was crossing the river no more than half a mile above the village. The lightning struck again and they could see the enemy disappearing into the breaks. The plan was obvious. They would come from the north, using the foliage along the river to move within a hundred yards of the village. Then they would attack.
In perhaps twenty minutes the Pawnee would be in position.
six
There were twenty-four rifles in each crate. Dances With Wolves personally passed them out to the fighting men clustered around Ten Bears’s lodge while the old man gave last-minute instructions.
Though he knew that the main assault would be coming from the river, it was probable that they would send a diversionary force from the open prairie, thus giving the real attackers a chance to overrun the village from behind. He designated two influential warriors and a handful of followers to fight off the suspected charge from the prairie.
Then he tapped Dances With Wolves on the shoulder, and the warriors listened as he spoke.
“If you were a white soldier,” the old man said wryly, “and you had all these men with guns, what would you do?”
Dances With Wolves quickly thought this over.
“I would hide in the village . . .”
Cries of derision flew from the mouths of the warriors who had been within earshot. Ten Bears quieted them with a raising of his hand and an admonishment.
“Dances With Wolves has not finished his answer,” he said sternly.
“I would hide in the village, behind the lodges. I would watch only the breaks and not those coming from the prairie. I would let the enemy show himself first. I would let the enemy think we are fighting on the other side and that taking the camp will be easy. Then I would have these men hiding behind the lodges jump out and shoot. Then I would have these men charge the enemy with knives and skull crackers. I would drive the enemy into the river and kill so many that they would never come this way again.”
The old man had been listening carefully. He looked out over his warriors and lifted his voice.
“Dances With Wolves and I are of the same mind. We should kill so many that they will never come this way again. Let us go quietly.”
The men moved stealthily through the village with their new rifles and took up positions behind lodges that faced the river.
Before he took his place beside them, Dances With Wolves slipped into Kicking Bird’s lodge. The children had been herded under robes. Sitting in silence beside them were the women. Kicking Bird’s wives were holding clubs in their laps. Stands With A Fist had his rifle. They said nothing, and neither did Dances With Wolves. He’d only wanted to see that they were ready.
He stole past the arbor and stopped behind his own lodge. It was one of the closest to the river. Stone Calf was on the other side. They nodded at each other and turned their attention to the open ground in front of them. It sloped for about a hundred yards before it met the breaks.
The rain was much lighter, but it still served to obscure their view. Clouds hung thickly overhead, and the halflight of dawn was almost no light at all. They could see little, but he felt sure they were there.
Dances With Wolves glanced up and down the line of tipis to his left and right. Comanche warriors were packed in behind each one, waiting with their rifles. Even Ten Bears was there.
The light was stronger now. The storm clouds were lifting and the rain was going with them. Suddenly the sun broke through, and a minute later steam was rising off the ground like fog.
Dances With Wolves squinted through the fog at the breaks and saw the dark shapes of men, sifting like spirits through the willows and cottonwoods.
He was starting to feel something he had not felt in a long time. It was that intangible thing that turned his eyes black, that turned on the machine that could not be shut down.
No matter how big, how many, or how powerful the men moving in the mist were, they were nothing to fear. They were the enemy and they were on his doorstep. He wanted to fight them. He couldn’t wait to fight them.
Gunshots rang out behind him. The diversionary force had hit the small group of defenders on the other front.
As the noise of the fighting increased, his eyes checked the line. A few hotheads tried to break away and run to the other fight, but the older warriors did a good job of holding them in check, and no one bolted.
Again he scanned the mists clinging to the breaks.
They were coming up slowly, some on foot, some on horseback. They were inching up the incline, shadowy, roach-haired enemies dreaming of a slaughter.
The Pawnee cavalry was behind the men on foot, and Dances With Wolves wanted them at the front. He wanted the mounted men to take the brunt of the fire.
Bring up the horses, he pleaded to them silently. Bring ‘em up.
He looked down the line, hoping they would wait a few more seconds, and was surprised to see many eyes riveted on him. They kept watching, as if waiting for a sign.
Dances With Wolves raised an arm over his head.
A fluttering guttural sound came up the slope. It rose higher and higher, blasting through the quiet, rainy morning, like hot air. The Pawnee were sounding the attack.
As they charged, the cavalry surged ahead of the men on foot.
Dances With Wolves dropped his arm and sprang out from behind the lodge with his rifle raised. The other Comanches followed suit.
The fire from their guns hit the horsemen at a distance of about twenty yards, and as cleanly as a sharp knife cutting skin, it wrecked the Pawnee charge. Men tumbled from their horses like toys shaken off a shelf, and those not actually hit were stunned by the blistering concussion of forty rifles.
As they fired the Comanches counterattacked, streaming down through the screen of blue smoke to pounce on the dazed enemy.
The charge was so furious that Dances With Wolves crashed square into the first Pawnee he met. As they rolled awkwardly on the ground he thrust the barrel of the Navy into the man’s face and fired.
After that he shot men where he could find them in the turmoil, killing two more in rapid succession. Something large bumped him hard from behind, nearly knocking him off his feet. It was one of the surviving Pawnee war ponies. He grabbed its bridle and swung onto its back.
The Pawnee were like chickens being set upon by wolves and already they were falling back, desperately trying to make the safety of the breaks. Dances With Wolves picked out a tall warrior running for his life and rode him down. He fired at the back of the man’s head, but there was no report. Flipping the barrel around, he clubbed the fleeing warrior with the butt end of the revolver. The Pawnee went down right in front of him, and Dances With Wolves felt the pony’s hooves strike the body as they passed over. Just ahead of him another Pawnee, his head turbaned with a bright red scarf, was picking himself off the ground. He, too, was going for the breaks.
Dances With Wolves kicked viciously at the pony’s flanks, and as they pulled abreast of the runaway, he threw himself at the turbaned man, taking him in a headlock as he slid from the pony’s back.
Momentum sent them careening across the last of the open space
and they slammed hard against a large cottonwood. Dances With Wolves had the man by both sides of his head. He was bashing his skull against the tree trunk before he realized that the warrior’s eyes were dead. A broken branch low on the trunk had skewered the Pawnee like meat.
As he stepped back from this unnerving sight, the dead man slumped forward, his arms flopping pitifully against Dances With Wolves’s sides as if he wanted to embrace his killer. Dances With Wolves skipped back farther and the body fell flat on its face.
In the same instant he realized that the screaming had stopped.
The fight was over.
Suddenly weak, he staggered along the edge of the breaks, picked up the main path, and trotted down to the river, sidestepping Pawnee bodies as he went.
A dozen mounted Comanches, Stone Calf among them, were chasing the dregs of the Pawnee force up the opposite bank.
Dances With Wolves watched until the skirmishers disappeared from sight. Then he walked slowly back. Coming up the incline, he could hear yelling. When he reached the slope’s crest, the battlefield he’d lately occupied opened wide to him.
It looked like a hastily abandoned picnic site. Refuse was scattered everywhere. There were a great number of Pawnee corpses. Comanche warriors were moving among them excitedly.
“I killed this one,” someone would call.
“This one still breathes,” another would announce, prompting the arrival of whoever was close by to help finish him off.
The women and children had come out of the lodges and were scurrying down to the battlefield. Some of the bodies were being mutilated.
Dances With Wolves stood stock-still, too fatigued to retreat into the breaks, too repulsed to move forward.
One of the warriors saw him and then cried out.
“Dances With Wolves!”
Before he knew it, Comanche fighters were all around him. Like ants rolling a pebble uphill, they pushed him onto the battlefield. They were chanting his name as they went.
In a daze he allowed himself to be carried along, unable to comprehend their intense happiness. They were overjoyed at the death and destruction lying at their feet, and Dances With Wolves could not understand.
But as he stood there, hearing them shout his name, understanding came to him. He had never been in this kind of fight, but gradually he began to look at the victory in a new way.
This killing had not been done in the name of some dark political objective. This was not a battle for territory or riches or to make men free. This battle had no ego.
It had been waged to protect the homes that stood only a few feet away. And to protect the wives and children and loved ones huddled inside. It had been fought to preserve the food stores that would see them through the winter, food stores everyone had worked so hard to gather.
For every member of the band this was a great personal victory.
Suddenly he was proud to hear his name being shouted, and as his eyes focused again, he looked down and recognized one of the men he had killed.
“I shot this one,” he yelled out.
Someone shouted in his ear.
“Yes, I saw you shoot him.”
Before long, Dances With Wolves was marching around with them, calling out the names of fellow Comanche men as he recognized them.
Sunshine spilled across the village, and the fighters began a spontaneous dance of victory, exhorting each other with back slaps and cries of triumph as they cavorted over the field of dead Pawnee.
seven
Two of the enemy had been killed by the force defending the front of the village. On the main battlefield there were twenty-two bodies. Four more were found in the breaks, and Stone Calf’s team of pursuers managed to kill three. How many had gotten away wounded, no one knew.
Seven Comanches had been wounded, only two seriously, but the real miracle was in the number of dead. Not a single Comanche fighter had been lost. Even the old men could not remember such a one-sided victory.
For two days the village reveled in its triumph. Honors were heaped on all the men, but one warrior was exalted above all others. That was Dances With Wolves.
Through all his months on the plains the native perception of him had shifted many times. And now the circle had closed. Now he was looked on in a way that was close to their original idea. No one came forward to declare him a god, but in the life of these people he was the next best thing.
All day long young men could be found hanging around his lodge. Maidens flirted openly with him. His name was foremost in everyone’s thoughts. No conversation, regardless of subject, could run its course without some mention of Dances With Wolves.
The ultimate accolade came from Ten Bears. In a gesture previously unknown, he presented the hero with a pipe from his own lodge.
Dances With Wolves liked the attention, but he did nothing to encourage it. The instant and lasting celebrity pressured the management of his days. It seemed that someone was always underfoot. Worst of all, it gave him little private time with Stands With A Fist.
Of all the people in camp, he was perhaps the most relieved to see the return of Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair.
After several weeks on the trail they had yet to engage the enemy when sudden and unseasonable snow flurries caught them in the foothills of a mountain range.
Interpreting this as a sign of an early and savage winter, Kicking Bird had called off the expedition and they had flown home to make preparations for the big move south.
CHAPTER XXVII
one
If the party had any misgivings about returning empty-handed, they were washed away with the incredible news of the Pawnee rout.
One immediate side effect of the homecoming was that it reduced the heat of celebrity that Dances With Wolves had been subjected to. He was no less revered, but because of their traditional high standing, much attention was shifted back to Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair, and something approximating the old routine was reestablished.
Though he made no public demonstration, Kicking Bird was astounded by Dances With Wolves’s progress. His bravery and ability in repelling the Pawnee attack could not be overlooked, but it was his progress as a Comanche, particularly his mastery of the language, that moved the medicine man.
He had sought only to learn something of the white race, and it was hard, even for a man of Kicking Bird’s experience, to accept the fact that this lone white soldier, who months ago had never seen an Indian, was now a Comanche.
Harder to believe was that he had become a leader of other Comanches. But the evidence was there for all to see: in the young men who sought him out and in the way all the people talked.
Kicking Bird could not figure out why all this had happened. He finally came to the conclusion that it was just another part of the Great Mystery that surrounded the Great Spirit.
It was fortunate that he was able to accept these rapid developments. It helped pave the way for yet another surprise. His wife told him about it as they lay in bed on his first night back.
“Are you certain of this?” he asked, thoroughly confounded. “This is hard for me to believe.”
“When you see them together, you will know,” she whispered confidentially. “It is there for all to see.”
“Does it seem a good thing?”
His wife answered this question with a giggle.
“Isn’t it always a good thing?” she teased, squeezing a little closer to him.
two
First thing next morning Kicking Bird appeared at the celebrity’s lodge flap, his face so clouded that Dances With Wolves was taken aback.
They exchanged greetings and sat down.
Dances With Wolves had just begun to pack his new pipe when Kicking Bird, in an unusual display of bad manners, interrupted his host.
“You are speaking well,” he said.
Dances With Wolves stopped working the tobacco into the bowl.
“Thank you,” he replied. “I like to speak Comanche.”
&n
bsp; “Then tell me . . . what is this between you and Stands With A Fist?”
Dances With Wolves nearly dropped his pipe. He stammered a few unintelligible sounds before he finally got something coherent out.
“What do you mean?’”
Kicking Bird’s face flushed angrily as he repeated himself.
“Is there something between you and her?”
Dances With Wolves didn’t like this tone. His answer was framed like a challenge.
“I love her.”
“You want to marry her?”
“Yes.”
Kicking Bird thought on this. He would have objected to love for its own sake, but he could find nothing to disapprove of so long as it was housed in matrimony.
He got to his feet.
“Wait here in the lodge,” he said sternly. Before Dances With Wolves could reply, the medicine man was gone.
He would have said yes at any rate. Kicking Bird’s brusque manner had put the fear of God into him. He sat where he was.
three
Kicking Bird made stops at Wind In His Hair’s and Stone Calf’s lodges, staying about five minutes in each tipi.
As he walked back to his own lodge, he found himself shaking his head again. Somehow he had expected this. But it was still baffling.
Ah, the Great Mystery, he sighed to himself. I always try to see it coming, but I never do.
She was sitting in the lodge when he came in.
“Stands With A Fist,” he snapped, bringing her to attention. “You are no longer a widow.”
With that, he retreated back through the lodge flap and went to find his favorite pony. He needed a long, solitary ride.
four
Dances With Wolves hadn’t been waiting long when Wind In His Hair and Stone Calf appeared outside his door. He could see them peeking inside.