Conquering Horse (19 page)

Moon Dreamer stood up. He handed a specially decorated lance and a water dipper to Circling Hawk. He took up a feather-frilled crook for himself. Then, gesturing, he led a slow majestic walk completely around No Name. He held up the crook to the sun and cried, “Let the power flow inward! The people of the other world are greater than you!” Again he made a complete circle around No Name, with Circling Hawk following. “The power of your shadow soul is greater than the power of your flesh soul. Live inward. Grow inward. Be strong. Pass into that place where there is nothing but joy which makes life good.”

No Name danced in step with the slow booming pound of the ceremonial drum. The searing little cuts across his chest as well as the terrible pulling gradually became sweet pains.

Moon Dreamer relit the pipe and held its stem out to the six great powers, saying, “Circling I pass to you who dwell with the father.” He took a puff himself, then, removing the whistle from No Name’s lips a moment, allowed No Name to puff. Moon Dreamer said, “The gods walk on the road of man. The road of man is sacred. Be strong. Do not be afraid. Arrive at the place where they are waiting for you. Soon you will know. Endure the sacrifice of flesh. Become a brave man.”

Pretty Walker approached. A look of grave compassion was on her young round face. With wisps of sweetgrass she gently wiped off the blood flowing from the wounds made by the thorns. She was careful not to touch any part of the blanket of blood below.

Star sang a song in a low voice to encourage her son:

Moon Dreamer returned to his seat on the log. Shaking his dark buffalo head up and down, he said, “Obey the power. Let
it flow two ways. Alone you are weak. Soon you will see with the eye of the heart.”

The blanket of blood on No Name’s belly and chest gradually congealed. Slowly it turned black. He moved as if encased in hardened mud.

“Wakantanka, pity me,” he whistled through the wingbone, “henceforth for a long time I will live.”

Moon Dreamer said, “Wakantanka does not hate. He loves all his creatures, the twoleggeds and the fourleggeds of the earth, the wingeds of the air, and all green things that live.”

The sun passed by overhead. No Name followed it around, dancing a circular rut in the red dust.

Even the red babies snug in their cradles on their mother’s backs looked with big, solemn bluish eyes at the dancing man. Their little round black heads lolled with every move and shift of their mothers, their eyes always returning to the figure hanging from the rawhide thongs.

During the hot afternoon Circling Hawk and four male singers, with Strikes Twice at the drum, sang four songs for him. The first was sung in slow measure, low, plaintive, the drum and the rattle sounding gently:

The second was given in a slightly faster tempo, with bolder tones:

The third was rendered in a tight rhythmic unit of sound:

The fourth was sung in loud and joyous tones, the drum and rattle sounding vigorously:

Suddenly No Name let the whistle fall from his lips. He cried out, “I see it! I see it! The sky is terrible with a storm of plunging horses. They shake the world with their neighing. Only the Thunders dare to echo back.”

At that very moment the horses grazing across the river lifted their heads and whinnied sharply. The sound of it over the low pouring waters was as clear and as pure as the silvery call of meadowlarks.

“He is winning, he is valiant!” the people cried.

“U-hu-hu-hu!” the warriors grunted with intense satisfaction.

“U-wu-wu-wu!” the maidens intoned.

No Name strained against the thorns, leaning back with all his might. He set his feet in the rut in the dust to get better leverage. He hung so heavy that at last the flesh on his chest gave a little, ripping apart in narrow seams. Fresh blood began to flow.

Pretty Walker came up singing a low song of comfort, intending to wipe away the new blood with some sweetgrass.

Moon Dreamer waved her back, imperiously. He shook his dark buffalo head threateningly. “Do not touch him. It is coming.” He pointed at the lowering sun in the western sky. “Soon our shining friend will rest with his people in the region under the world. There he will commune with The Great Master Of All Breath. Beware!”

At the mention of the unspeakable name, Pretty Walker shrank away as if struck a blow. The people around the circle fell into a deep stricken silence. Hands covered mouths in shock. To mention Him Who Is Behind All by his big name was to touch the secret and sacred eternal fire itself.

No Name leaned back in a frenzy. He jerked his body from side to side, violently. He fought against the thong like a wildcat resisting capture. The two-pronged pain in his chest reached all the way up to his skull. A pair of working claws seemed to be mauling his brain.

Struggling, dancing, he kept his eyes on the sun. The world became a place of racing shimmers. Suddenly his eyes seemed to shoot upward into a single terrible blinding whiteness, a massive illumination into which blood and flesh and phallus and memory and love and day and red rock vanished. The eye became the sun and the sun the eye.

Moon Dreamer cried loudly. “Be brave, my son! Endure the torment! Give generously! Speak with one tongue!”

No Name felt a great inrush of power. He leaped up wildly. Then with a great cry he gave one final wrenching backward jerk, and at last the thorns tore out of his flesh, first on the right and then on the left. And losing his balance, staggering, he fell to the ground with a hard thud. The forces of the wild, the dark urges of the universe, had heard his cry and had taken dominion over him.

Circling Hawk and his four singers leaped to their feet and gave the sudden whoop of victory. A shout, a tumultuous roar, broke from the circle of watchers. Redbird’s cry was loudest of all.

No Name lay unconscious. The bleeding slits on his chest lay open and swollen as if they had just given birth to puppies. Sweat coursing down his chest caused the painted red sun to run. But the painted mare on his right cheek and the painted stallion on his left cheek remained as vividly white as when first put on. As his face convulsed, the two painted horses struggled to be released so that they might strike each other.

The people crowded in close on all sides, looking down at the prostrate form. Moon Dreamer waved the people back. Slowly, wonderingly, they retreated to their places again under the ring of shade.

Moon Dreamer whispered something in Circling Hawk’s ear.

Circling Hawk nodded, big eyes whirling up and around. Then he ran to get a heartskin bucket and filled it with water from the streaming red cascades.

Moon Dreamer took the water and splashed some of it over No Name’s face. After a few seconds, when No Name still showed no sign of reviving, Moon Dreamer threw some more over him.

No Name’s eyes slowly opened. A grayish purple haze lay over them. The pupils were almost obscured.

“I see you have returned, my son,” Moon Dreamer said gravely.

No Name’s eyes rolled; finally fastened on Moon Dreamer’s buffalo head. He seemed to recognize him.

“I see you have returned, my son,” Moon Dreamer repeated.

At last No Name’s eyes cleared some and he asked, “Where is Redbird my father?” No Name’s voice was greatly changed.

“He sits in his accustomed place. Why does my son ask?”

“I have been told the second part of the vision. Now I know.”

“Ei!” Moon Dreamer cried. His eyes began to glitter in the eyeholes of his dark buffalo head. “And what did they of the other world have to tell you?”

“The gods were reluctant to give me my vision for a reason.” No Name rolled his head from side to side. “Now I know.”

Moon Dreamer held No Name in his arms, lovingly. He gave
him to drink from what was left in the heartskin bucket. “What did they have to tell you, my son?”

No Name’s eyes fixed themselves on Moon Dreamer’s eyeholes. “Where is my true father?”

“Hi-ye. Did they speak of the fathers?”

For a third time No Name asked, rolling his head from one side to the other, “And my father, where is he? Does he live?”

Moon Dreamer stiffened. He waved Circling Hawk back with others under the willow shade. Then he removed his buffalo head and placed his ear near No Name’s mouth. “Speak, my son. I am your mother’s brother and I attend you. We lie alone. What did you see? What did you hear?”

No Name’s eyes closed. He whispered, “It was the mare with the silver tail again. She was as white as a snowgoose in the morning sun. Her lips were red. She flashed her sacred tail over me.”

“What did she tell you?”

For a fourth time No Name asked, “Where is Redbird my father?”

With a puckering of lips Moon Dreamer pointed in Redbird’s direction.

No Name looked at his father a moment, piercingly; looked at the copper-tipped lance shining above him; then looked up at the blue sky overhead. “It is fated,” he said sadly.

“Tell us the second part of the vision,” Moon Dreamer demanded. “What did the white mare have to tell you?”

“She flashed her tail over me. She said, ‘After you have returned with your white horse from the River That Sinks, your true father must die.’ ” No Name burned a look of anguish into Moon Dreamer’s eyes. Black centers had returned to his eyes. “I love my father dearly. I cannot kill him.”

Moon Dreamer began to cry. His old face broke up into jerking wrinkles. Tears ran down his face. He hid his face from the watchers. The dark shadow of the late afternoon sun reached across to the sacred place east of the sun dance pole.

“What shall I do?” No Name whispered.

“Nephew, the white mare knows best. Follow her words.”

“But I love my father dearly. I do not wish to kill him.”

Moon Dreamer groaned. “Follow her words.”

“Also, what shall I tell my father? He will wish to know what I have heard today. See, he sits waiting to hear. I do not wish to tell him that he must die at my hand.”

With an effort Moon Dreamer recovered his poise. “Nephew, you must go through with it. Terrible punishment awaits those who do not fulfill the vision. The Thunders seek them out and mark them for death. You must go through with it.”

No Name sat up. “But I love my father dearly. I love him even more than I love my mother.”

“Nephew, follow your helper. Do as she tells you. First go out and conquer the wild horse. Then, when you return in glory, your name will be given to you and it shall be told you what you must do about the second part.”

“But shall I tell my father all this?”

Moon Dreamer considered. At last he said, “Let us wait until you return before we tell your father. It will then be given you what you must do.”

“And what shall we tell the people? They also sit waiting to hear.”

“My son, if your father who is our chief must wait, the people must wait.”

No Name looked around at the people sitting in the shadows under the willow shade. Again his eyes sought out his father and his copper-tipped lance. He forced back tears. After a short struggle his face became impassive. “I must do as the white mare commands. It is fated. There is nothing I can do. I must try to be a brave man and take things as they come. I cannot weep.”

The virgin Pretty Walker approached shyly, hesitantly. “Did your helper give you a new song? We wish to sing it.”

No Name remembered her request. He smiled at her, slow, grave. With Moon Dreamer and Circling Hawk helping him, he
got to his feet. As Strikes Twice struck up the drum, gently, he sang in a low hoarse voice:

When he sang it a second time, Circling Hawk and his four singers joined in. Over them all, like a skylark drifting gently down, quavered Pretty Walker’s virginal voice.

Then Moon Dreamer faced the people. He lifted his hand and proclaimed to all. “Hahol let the people know this. No Name, our son, was valiant and dared to face the sun all day. He conquered the sky-horse before it could sink behind the earth in the west. He was valiant and he conquered. Also, the second part of the vision was given him. It will be told to all the people when he returns from conquering the great white stallion. I have said. Yelo.”

The people shouted tumultuously. The men sang wildly. The women’s speech became as the happy warblings of birds.

PART THREE

THE CHASE

1

It was the fourth morning after the sun dance. No Name was ready to leave. He had bathed in the streaming cascades. He had eaten a hearty breakfast of meat boiled with dried plums. He had bound up his braids under a tight wolf cap.

He stood alone with his mother inside their tepee. He watched her look him over to make sure he had everything: leather shirt and leggings, moccasins, bow and arrow and knife, several pairs of extra moccasins tucked under the belt, long rawhide lariat also caught under the belt, light pack over the shoulder stuffed with dried meat, pemmican, pipe and tobacco, awl and sinew thread.

She gave his sleeve a tug. “Son, the sun shines. It looks well for you.”

“I have seen, my mother.”

She gave his sleeve another tug. “Son, the thing you seek lives in a far place. It is good. Go to it. Do not turn around after you have gone part way, but go as far as you were going and then
come back.” Her old waxy eyes looked at him in love. “If you are to be killed, be killed in open air so that the wingeds can eat your flesh and the wind can breathe on you and blow over your bones. Also, be killed on a high hill. Your father believes it is not manly to be killed in a hollow.”

No Name waited. The long black lashes over his eyes held still.

“Son, keep this thought in your heart. The man who loafs in his lodge will never be great. No. It is the man who is tired from taking the trail who becomes great, the one who sweats, who works.”

“I listen, my mother.”

“Do not be afraid of the Pawnee. Some day you will be the head chief of the Shining People.”

“I will remember.”

Again she tugged at his sleeve. “My son, have you told your father the second part of the vision?”

No Name stirred. “I cannot. Also, our uncle Moon Dreamer says to wait until I return.”

“It is good. We do not wish to know it. Yet speak to your father of something before you go.”

“He waits at the red ford to walk with me for a short way.”

“It is good.” She reached up and with both hands stroked him, from his shoulder down to his wrist. “Go, my son. Be valiant. Earn your name.”

“I hear you, my mother.”

He ducked out through the door.

From behind the drying racks stepped Loves Roots. She was crying. Her oily hair hung unbraided and tangled. She clutched at his arm. “Do not go, Little Bird. I am afraid. The Pawnees will kill you. They will torment you at the stake with burning arrows.”

He suffered her touch. He looked more beyond her than away from her.

She hung onto his arm.

“Remember the fate of Holy Horse. He followed a white ghost horse into a deep cave. There the
middle-of-the-earth demons overcame him and he was never seen again.”

“I did not dream of a cave.”

“Remember also the fate of Wants To Be A Woman. He also was never seen again.”

No Name remembered. Wants To Be A Woman had dreamed that a white ghost had come to sit at his side while he lay asleep in bed. Wants To Be A Woman got up and tried to run outdoors, away from it, but the ghost followed him and jumped on his back. Wants To Be A Woman did not feel weight but he knew the white ghost was there anyway. He ran for the river and jumped in, yet the ghost stayed with him. Then he ran to his friend and begged him to destroy the white ghost. His friend saw nothing. He began to laugh at him. “The heat makes your head spin, friend. There is no white ghost.” Wants To Be A Woman ran out into the night again, wild with fear. At last he climbed a cliff and got set to jump. At that moment the white ghost spoke to him. It said, “Do not jump, friend. I am not a harmful ghost.” But Wants To Be A Woman was very afraid and he jumped off the cliff anyway.

No Name said in young sullen dignity, “What has this to do with me?”

“Did you not dream of a white thing?”

She tried to stroke his arm from the shoulder to the elbow as his mother Star had done, but he pushed her brusquely aside.

“You will not listen?”

“I must go. A certain horse calls from a far place.”

She handed him a pair of moccasins. They were packed tight with food.

“What is this?”

“Dried skunk meat. Eat it when you have hunger. It will make you strong because the skunk eats many good roots.”

“It is good.” He looked down at her bowed head. He looked at the stripe of bright red paint in the parting of her hair.
He recalled the night he was tempted to use her. Then he said, “Be kind to my father.”

He walked out through the horns of the camp. It was a fresh spring day, the Moon of First Eggs. The sun glowed big and yellow across the river. Mist rose golden off Falling Water.

Next to bid him good-bye were the young braves lounging naked on the red rocks after their morning bath. Among them was a wild youth whom the maidens had nicknamed Bull All The Time. Bull and his rowdy friends had been successful in a horse-stealing raid and since then he had gone around preening himself like a fox with a dead gopher in its jaws. Bull laughed at No Name. “Ho! I see that an old mare in a dream has you chasing a white ghost horse.”

Before No Name could retort, a heavy raw voice let go from a large red rock on the other side of the path. “Look who mocks. Is it not the one who only yesterday was begging his mother for more ma-ma?”

It was Circling Hawk speaking and he was referring to something the entire village used to wonder about. Even at eight, Bull had sometimes run after his mother and beseeched her to give him suck.

Bull swelled with sudden hate. His black eyes slowly reddened over.

No Name laughed with the others. Then, with a smile at Circling Hawk, he moved on toward the red ford. “Some day,” No Name said to himself, “after I have become a father to my people, I shall make Circling Hawk a chief second only to me.”

Another to bid him good-bye was Pretty Walker. The slender virgin stood under a stunted ash. Her easy gestures and the manner in which she held her head to one side reminded him of a shy puppy. She called out, “Have a new song when you return. I will sing it.”

He smiled at her. “And I will dance it.”

“I did not speak in jest.”

“And I did not answer in jest.”

“I will wait.”

“And I will come.”

He took the red stepping stones across the river with easy grace, leaping lightly, sure-footed. Water whorled green at his feet.

He found his father sitting on his heels on the sunny side of a huge boulder some distance out on the prairie. The color of his father’s skin was almost exactly the color of the boulder. No Name blinked his eyes at the wonder of it. He saw now how true it was that the Shining People had been formed out of the red bones of the earth.

His father saw him and his face lighted up. He smiled in gentle dignity. “It is a good day to leave on a horse-raiding party, my son. The gods favor you at last.”

“It is my helper who does this.”

“Have you given your mother a last word?”

No Name smiled. “She spoke of a hill on which I might place my bones so the birds would find them and pick them clean.”

Redbird’s smile deepened. “Ae. Do not die in a hollow where no one will find you. Also bones will rot in the wet.”

No Name looked at his father and again was full of admiration at the manner in which he carried his sixty-one winters. Soon even Loves Roots would appear to have caught up with him in age. No Name said, “I am ready, my father.”

For a brief moment a shadow lurked in Redbird’s eyes. Then it was gone.

No Name remembered his mother’s instruction to speak to his father about something before he left. “My father, what is the way? Can you tell me?”

Redbird took up a stick and leveled a patch of red earth between his knees. He drew some lines on the level patch, a big flowing S for the River of the Double Bend, with a tail which went down until it joined another line, heavier and deeper. The heavy line was the Great Smoky Water. It came out of the northwest, and after joining the River of the Double Bend,
went straight south to another line wriggling in from the west.

Redbird pointed at the last line. “Here is the River That Sinks. The Pawnees live four sleeps west of where it joins the Great Smoky Water. In this place.”

“Have you seen this river?”

“A long time ago, my son, when a few of us went on a horse-raiding party. The river is very thin and very wide. It flows in some places as after a rain on flat ground. In other places it flows not at all. It is all sand.”

“Did you catch many horses?”

“The Pawnees had none to steal that spring. But we saw the tracks of many wild ones.”

“It is good.” No Name stared intently at the map in the dust. “I see it all. I will remember.”

Redbird pointed at a spot on the west side of the Great Smoky Water, below the mouth of the River of the Double Bend. “Here live the Omaha, they who went against the current. The Omaha have come to hate us. They have stories which tell them they were once the keepers of the Place of the Pipestone. Their stories tell them that we defeated them in a great battle and chased them away.”

No Name started. He had never heard of this. “Is it true, my father?”

Redbird smiled. “Our old ones did not speak of it. I do not know.” He shifted his weight, still squatting on his heels. “Another of their stories tells them it was one of their maidens who found the quarry. Their stories say that she was living with us as the wife of one of our braves. It is said she was digging for prairie turnips when she struck upon the pipe stone.”

“Is this true?”

“I do not know. Our old ones did not speak of her either.” Redbird mused in reverie. “We have always known it as a place of brothers, where the warclub was put aside and the red pipe smoked in peace. We have never seen it as a place where a battle was fought or where women were captured.”

No Name stood back on one leg, considering. He suddenly saw his father very clearly as one of those who could tell much about old things. His father’s memory was like a bullhide covered with the pictographs of a long winter count.

“You have your charm, my son?”

“Moon Dreamer gave me a thing to wear. It will be my mystery power until I catch the wild horse. Alter that there will be another.” No Name wondered why his father had not noticed the fetish on him. Late the night before, over a pipe, as the white mare had told them to do, Moon Dreamer had given No Name a piece of horse chestnut to wear in the fat braid behind his left ear. He was to wear this until he returned with the scarlet plume. The grayish black piece of gristle had a powerful odor. No Name decided that his father’s sense of smell was failing a little. No Name added, “Also I feel the power of the sun dance in me.” No Name touched his shirt where the wounds still stung him when he moved too quickly.

Redbird sighed. His son still had not told him the second part of the vision. Then he stood up and he raised his hands and stroked his son from the shoulder to the wrist four times. “Go, my son. Do not return until you have caught the wild seed stallion.”

“I am going.” No Name broke away from his father and began to walk south.

The morning continued fair and the vast and blooming prairie was as a land of dreams. The grass looked so sweet to him in the broad forenoon sunshine, so fresh, so crisply green, he envied the horses their grazing. He stalked through deep grass. A dew had fallen in the night and soon his moccasins were sopping wet. The sound of wet leather brushing through wet grass was like the vigorous flourishing of horsetails.

The land sloped gently down, leveled off to a bottom through which flowed a slow grass-tressed creek, then sloped gently up toward a wide level rise. From the bottom the country resembled
the inside of a cupped hand; from the rise it resembled a rising shoulder. The growth differed too. Ripgut grass grew in the lowlands. If a walker was not careful his moccasins and leggings were soon cut to shreds. Soft green buffalo grasses grew on the upland. The soft carpet made for easy going.

He found a patch of wild honeysuckles growing on a south slope. They belled softly in a gentle breeze, orange petals glowing in sharp contrast to the pale grass. He settled on his heels and picked one and did as he had once done as a boy. He sucked a single drop of clear honey from its throat.

He threaded his way across a meadow of creamy beardtongue growing as high as his hips. Without having to bend he could peer into individual flowers to see if the wild bees had beaten him to the nectar. The air was so sweet with the smell of the flowers that his eyes watered and his nose became stuffy. He put it down in his memory as a place where he would some day take the new spotted colts.

Birds lifted ahead of him as he went along; settled again behind him. Bluebirds momentarily deepened the glowing blue of the sky. Tufted redbirds shooting from one wolfberry bush to another reminded him of bloodied arrows. Redwings chirred at him from the wet lowlands: “Friend! we alone know joy.”

He knew when it was almost noon by the way the yellow primroses began to close up. His mother Star had once told him the reason. Their silky blossoms were open all night because they wanted to please the spirits of the dead who lived on the stars. “They of the other world are pleased to see flowers too,” she said. “Therefore the primroses bloom best when it is darkest at night.” When he protested that he had often seen them open in the morning, she said, “They also bloom in the forenoon for a little while to let us see what we will have to look at when it is our turn to pass on.”