At the first family dinner, conducted at a long table in the formal dining room, her cousin was somberly caning a roast when she lunged across the table, snatched a fresh-cut slab of meat, and stuffed it into her mouth.
She would defecate or urinate in public, refused to bathe except in a nearby stream, cried without warning, hardly spoke, and, after only a few days, had driven the entire Gunther family to distraction. Not a moment seemed to pass without crisis. Children complained about the interminable labor of "watching Cousin Christine," a steadfast wife's nerves began to fray, and the cousin who had so righteously stepped forward to claim his kin now found himself lying awake at night, vainly wondering how life could be returned to normal.
Faced with a dilemma beyond his ability, the elder Gunther, with the eager support of his family, turned to a higher authority, who appeared a few days later in the pallid, squeamish form of a man named Tooey, reputed to be the most mesmerizing preacher in the district.
Firm and soft-spoken, Reverend Tooey assured the rattled Gunthers that there was nothing to worry about because while he taught Christine the rudiments of English he would be instructing her in the basics of scripture – a potent formula in which he had every confidence.
But by the end of the second full day of "instruction" he had stretched the narrow limits of his imagination to their fullest. The woman in his charge seemed unable to grasp any of what he was trying to teach. When he was certain that she was poised for a breakthrough, the dull-witted creature would lapse into a litany of mumbles and grunts that comprised the only language she seemed capable of speaking. At last he turned to God, expecting that if she were anointed with the power of prayer, the light of understanding was sure to fill her eyes. For twenty minutes he tried to explain what he wanted, talking, cajoling, and pantomiming until uncharacteristic beads of sweat appeared at his hairline and ran downward in tiny, determined rivulets until they reached the reverend's brow, causing the single-minded preacher to swipe constantly at his face as he tried to prepare Stands With A Fist for a profound encounter with the Almighty.
At last the beleaguered Reverend Tooey, fearing the onset of his own derangement, sank to his knees, and was pleasantly surprised to see his refractory subject settle next to him. The emaciated man of God smiled wanly at his wide-eyed pupil, lifted his head, closed his eyes, and launched into a dirge-like recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Almost at once a mantle of warmth descended onto the reverend. All worldly anxiety vanished as he steeped himself in the word of God, and, as often happened when ministering to distraught members of his flock, one of his bony hands lifted into space to search out and give comfort to his needy partner in worship.
But the pastoral hand that settled on Stands With A Fist's landed with the devastating impact of a bomb. She leaped to her feet, emitting a long, violent, ear-splitting shriek that rattled the panes of the closed window. Dropping into a crouch, she began to back up, one slow step at a time, all the while spitting a stream of Comanche expletives at her molester.
His mouth agape, the Reverend Tooey got to his feet and made the near-fatal mistake of advancing, his upraised hands signaling peace.
When he had closed to within a few feet of his would-be convert, the cooing preacher saw her crouch even lower and an instant later her lips peeled back in a sneer. An unearthly howl flew from her mouth, and she charged, striking the Reverend Tooey's meatless chest with all the force her two clenched fists could muster.
Lifted clean off his feet by the blow, the Reverend Tooey shot backward onto the far wall, which he hit so hard that great flashes of light erupted in his head. He sank to the floor like a sack of grain, and as breath flowed once more into his emptied lungs, he raised his head and was horrified at what he saw.
With unmitigated violence she was assaulting the metal bed, alternately kicking and grappling at it with such demonic force that the entire frame was being pulled this way and that. Every hair on the Reverend Tooey's body sprang to terrified attention as he realized she was trying to secure a weapon.
Frantic to escape, he crawled along the floor, scooped up his Bible, and scuttled, crablike, toward the salvation of the door, which, to his frenzied despair he could not open. The door was locked.
"Help!" bleated the Reverend Tooey. "Open the door! In the name of God, open the door!"
Fortunately for the panicked Tooey, Cousin Gunther and his family had gathered at the door on first hearing the commotion, and he flew out when it finally opened, landing face first at the feet of the aghast family. With the help of many fumbling hands, the reverend's sticklike frame ascended from the hallway floor amid a clamor of succoring voices.
The reverend didn't respond to their solicitous remarks but glanced back at the open door, where he saw that the object of his fright still concentrating her fury on the unyielding bed frame.
"Close the door," he intoned. "Lock it!"
Again he was peppered with inquiries as to his condition.
"I am all right," he announced, hoisting a hand to silence the Gunthers. Then he gazed over the heads of the anxious clan, and in a tone both distant and final, declared:
"The woman is a hopeless idiot."
Reverend Tooey's failure drove the Gunthers away from miracle cures and into a more utilitarian realm. A modified version of the plan to make Christine the town domestic was put into motion, but because Stands With A Fist knew nothing about maintaining a box and seemed incapable of grasping even elementary tasks, like where to empty a chamber pot, that, too, was a failure, so much so that ultimately no one in Jacksboro would allow the repatriated Gunther in their front yard, much less their home.
People altered their path of travel to avoid contact with the family. The local pastor asked them, in the interest of preserving decorum, to sit in the last pew of God's house, a request to which the family glumly acceded. Visits to the Gunther habitat quickly trickled down to errands of necessity, and the family felt the sting of its pariah status for the first time in their long and unstoried tenure.
All of them wanted desperately to rid themselves of the cancer they had unwittingly embraced, and when Cousin Gunther's wife struck on the idea of somehow marrying her off they realized a perfect candidate existed in the person of Axel Strunk, a dimwit far past marrying age who lived with his mother only a few miles away.
Certain overtures were made to the simpleton's mother and expectations soared when Cousin Gunther's discreet inquiry was greeted with unalloyed zeal. Nearing the end of her life, the old woman had long dreamed of seeing her son married before she passed on, and the contrived courtship was commenced when the Strunks came calling a few days later.
Unfortunately, the first close-up view of the prospective groom reminded the Gunther clan of how pitiful his condition was, and their spirits dipped.
A futile attempt had been made to drag a comb through his thick, yellowish hair. His clothes were reasonably tidy but a clue to his implausibility lay in the fact that he was wearing two left boots. Though his hands had been recently washed, the stunted sleeves of his jacket showed that it had been some time since his arms had encountered a cleaning agent.
Hygiene aside, it was the essence of Axel himself that caused a momentary deflation in the family's hopes. His small, close-set eyes peered out of a bony promontory that was more ledge than brow and was complemented by a wide, impenetrable jaw. In rustic parlance he was what was called a “mouth breather" and he shuffled wherever he went in the short, careful gait usually associated with advanced age. His great paws hung lifelessly at his sides and, aside from an occasional expression of glee at some childish stimulus, he rarely spoke unless by way of a response to some simple instruction.
It was patently clear to all who saw him that for a dullard of Axel's magnitude to conduct a courtship was impossible. Nor was it conceivable that he could form any kind of proposal, even if his unknown desires were to hit upon the idea.
But nothing could deter the Gunthers in their desper
ation and, despite the suitor's total lack of qualification, they pressed forward. After a short-lived repast, they managed, through a flurry of hasty, bald-faced maneuverings, to isolate the trio of Axel, Christine, and her undemonstrative offspring on a porch bench. Once the players were in place, the Gunthers retreated into the house to monitor developments from behind a curtained window.
Stands With A Fist's back felt their eyes, but the surveillance did not bother her. To sit alone on the porch freed her from the constant and annoying presence of the whites, whom she had come to regard as incessantly antic. Here she could think and dream and feel without interruption. Nor was she concerned with Axel's presence. Far from being ostracized, the feebleminded of Ten Bears' village were fully accepted, and there was nothing unusual about sitting next to one of the "slows," whose behavior was harmless and easily predicted.
To be alone in thought also gave her the opportunity to muse about her secret. When she thought about it, she indulged herself with an inward smile. It was hard not to smile openly, or even laugh out loud, when she considered the monumental foolishness of the whites.
It had surprised her when it all came back during the long ride as a prisoner of the rangers, and she remembered thinking at the time that such a thing, coming so easily and so completely, must have emanated not from her own mind but from the Great Mystery.
There were words she still could not understand, but the gist of everything had been plain almost from the beginning. She knew who the Gunthers were supposed to be and was aware of political and social divisions in the town. She had not expected Reverend Tooey to touch her, but she had known who he was and why he was coming long before she faced him. She also knew why the slow one sitting next to her had come.
The secret had made it possible for her to navigate the trials of captivity one step ahead of her keepers while allowing her to use her own language, in fact her entire being, as a part of the subterfuge, and even now, sitting in the still, heavy air of summer, it infused her with hope.
To the consternation of the ever-vigilant Gunthers, more than an hour passed in which the thrown-together couple shared neither word nor look. Once or twice Stays Quiet made brief inquiries of her mother but that was all and it is likely that the couple, both of whom were quite content to sit, would have continued in silence had not Axel happened to lay one of his huge hands on the trouser pocket in which he kept his sizable collection of marbles.
He loved his marbles completely, and the simple act of rubbing them back and forth inside the pocket was enough to produce a ferocious-looking, gap-toothed grin on his face. The light clacking sound drew Stays Quiet's interest. When she gazed first at the pocket, and then at Axel, the moron nodded smugly. Gurgling happily, he lifted his bulk off the bench and shuffled down a short flight of steps to the yard. There he selected a patch of bare earth just below the porch and tamped it gently with one of his left boots.
Stays Quiet was now hanging over the railing, peering down inquisitively at the moron's ritual. Axel knelt in front of the spot he had chosen, and, using the side of his hand, spent a minute or two smoothing the surface with extraordinary care. Satisfied at last, he made a fist, then flipped out an index finger as if it had been sprung from a jackknife, and, marshaling all his concentration, began to draw a circle in the ground he had so assiduously prepared. When the circle was complete, Axel leaned back to better regard his effort, and, pleased with it, started a hand into the marble pocket with a delicacy that gave the impression he was after something fragile as a flower.
The girl on the railing watched, spellbound, as Axel closed his eyes to all distraction and let his fingers search out the treasured cache. Stays Quiet didn't see the marbles when Axel first drew them out in a cupped hand. But when he opened his fingers and let the perfectly round, multi-colored stones dribble onto the dirt inside the circle, Stands With A Fist's daughter fell into a trance that pulled her along the porch and down the steps to Axel's side. There she stood, her light, hazel eyes drifting from one magical sphere to another as Axel tucked his shooter into the crook of his thumb and scanned the playing field for the most promising opportunity.
Settling on a nearby cat's-eye, Axel crouched low, bounced his eyes from target to shooter several times, and fired. The shooter sped across the pancaked ground, made a loud pop as it impacted, and sent the larger marble rolling out of the circle and into the nearby rough.
Axel cried out. Stays Quiet clapped her hands and, in a few bounds, located the marble. She lifted it gingerly out of the grass, stared at it in a brief spasm of awe, bounded track to Axel, and placed it in his yawning palm.
Stands With A Fist was now standing at the rail, and as she watched Axel ready himself for the next shot, the moron's concentration was suddenly broken. He lifted his eyes to the girl standing next to him. Then he glanced at the shooter wedged against his thumb, plucked it daintily away, and offered it to Stays Quiet.
For the first time since her capture, Stands With A Fist's soul was invaded by a good feeling as Axel positioned the girl next to him, tenderly fixed the marble against her thumb, and generously provided his expertise in the selection of the most likely target. Though Stays Quiet's first attempt skipped across the circle without hitting anything, Axel yelped happily and stroked the girl's shoulder as if she were a puppy.
The rest of the afternoon transpired without incident. Stands With A Fist sat stoically on the porch while the two competitors below her who proved to be quite evenly matched, played game after game, each contest conducted with a joy that made winning and losing irrelevant.
From then on, Axel didn't miss a day, often waking in the dark to walk the miles that separated him from Stands With A Fist and Stays Quiet. He was always at their side and one look at the contented three-some, whether at work or play, suggested a familiarity that might have spanned years rather than days.
The Gunthers watched all this with pleasure, for even the most careless observer could have detected a bond between the disabled man, the former captive, and her child. In a sense it was better than a marriage, the arrangement of which would have taxed the family's skimpy reserve of emotional energy.
Without the rigors of public sanction, a family unit had been created and the effect on Christine's kin was evident. The coming of Axel Strunk seemed to sedate the Gunthers' wild charge and the family dropped most of its efforts at rehabilitation to let her life follow its languid, routine course of eating and sleeping and work and play.
Everyone was happy except Stands With A Fist, but true to the form that made her captivity bearable, she kept her feelings hidden from all but Stays Quiet. When the key turned in the lock at twilight, they invariably sat together at the west-facing window, watching the sun make its fiery exit.
In the terrible days following their arrival in Jacksboro she had explained to her daughter the purpose of the ritual. The same sun was shining somewhere on her sister, brother and father, and it was important to wish them good dreaming each twilight. In that way their family could stay together.
Stays Quiet often asked her mother when Dances With Wolves would come and get them, and her response was always the same.
"He'll come, little girl," she would whisper.
"Tomorrow?"
"Maybe tomorrow."
Then she would stare out the window, wondering if her hopes were foolish. Sometimes she thought he might be dead or too badly wounded to ever come. But she never indulged despair for long, and as darkness descended at the wane of day, she would close her eyes and imagine her family whole once more.
Chapter XXVI
The valley was long and flat, broken occasionally by oak trees in various stages of growth and a few stunted mesquites. It was covered with tawny grass a few inches high. Etched along its center were the twin depressions set close together that indicated a white man road. Scouts had crept down the night the main war party reached the area and, after close inspection, pronounced the road frequently and heavily used.
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Hills rose like shoulders on each side of the valley and it was on the westernmost of these, on the upper slopes overgrown with ash and scrub oak and sumac, that the great party of Comanche and Kiowa warriors awaited their prey.
Just after sunrise, scouts had come in from the east to report that white men had taken the road and were coming their way. A council was immediately convened. The admonitions of Owl Prophet were remembered and it was decided that the,very small party of soldiers and one wagon would be allowed to pass unmolested, while a fresh group of scouts was sent east once again with orders to look for the next white people that might be coming along.
The whites who had been spotted, though they were to be granted life, would be passing very close, and this prospect of proximity to the enemy stirred the warriors. All of them, trained from birth to risk their lives in battle, were aware of the end of existence, and for some the moments they were living now would be their last.
Who might fall could not be known, but it was likely that some of the younger men would not come home. Young men were often foolish. They wanted honors and they wanted to impress young women. They weren't afraid of death, but few, if any, thought they would be killed. They were teenagers who had ridden on few raids and the finality of life was an abstract idea to them. Youth had ordained them bulletproof.
Yet in each there was a mysterious trembling that often led them into peril. The trembling made for an odd sort of giddiness that none was able to confront. They had to ignore the fear rattling up and down their bodies, because those who paid fear too much attention were sure to die. Every boy marshaled his fighting spirit in hope that he might survive.
For men like Wind In His Hair and Iron Jacket and White Bear, men who had fought the enemy a hundred times and survived, the emotions were much the same, though years of combat in every imaginable circumstance had reduced the mysterious trembling they felt before battle to a barely perceptible palpitation. Experience had taught them that the death they courted with every engagement was a thing so sudden and random that to fear it was an unaffordable indulgence.