Conquering Horse (20 page)

When the sun was directly overhead he paused beside a small stream. It was but a step wide and it was clear and trickled musically over round red pebbles. He kneeled beside it and
with his palm lapped up a long cool drink. He watched minnows no longer than his little finger come gupping up to lip his hands in play. Their gray bead eyes glowed up at him. As a boy he had once eaten a minnow and found it mushy sweet.

He took off his light pack and made a pillow of it in the deep grass. He lay down, belly up like a lazy puppy resting on the sunny side of a tepee. He watched the birds fly by. He lay so quietly he soon heard mice creeping stealthily through the little shadows in the grass. As long as the birds flew by and the mice moved near him he was safe from ambush.

He got out the dried skunk meat Loves Roots had prepared for him. He was so hungry he emptied both moccasins, even turning them inside out to lick them clean. The skunk meat was excellent. It lay filling and warm in his stomach. It made him think of himself as a sacred snake that had just swallowed a fat gopher. He knew Loves Roots had given him the meat and the moccasins because she hoped he would wive her some day. He remembered the night she crept in with him under his sleeping robe, how she touched him until, become so trembling rigid he thought he would break, he had at last pushed her away.

Thought of Loves Roots reminded him of the Yankton maiden who had performed a feat so great in the old time that men still talked of it, partly in awe and partly in laughter. The maiden’s father and mother had been killed in a raid by the Chippewa when she was but a child and so she had been adopted by a chief who had no children. Even as a young girl she had been a daring one, playing boy games with the boldest and roughest of the lads. One fall, after she had grown into a beautiful young woman, to make sure she would get the most manly of all the braves for a husband, she invited forty of the most valiant to a feast. She gave them as much buffalo meat boiled with wild plums as they could hold, then, afterwards, gave each a private treat behind a leather curtain. The young men were all eager to comply. Later, astounded by her generous gift of hospitality,
since virginity was highly prized among the Yanktons, all of them courted her eagerly. They thought she was surely of the gods to have given herself to so many men at one time. Otherwise it could not be explained. She finally chose one of the tallest braves and married him. It was told of her subsequently that she had great power over her husband and helped him in the wise rule of the tribe. It also was told of her that she remained his faithful and loving wife until death.

Two goldfinches swirled up. They hovered over and around a columbine bobbing nearby, then together settled on one of its slender purplish stems. They were male and female, the one sun-bright yellow with a black cap and black wings and the other a dull green-yellow with brown wings. The columbine bent under their combined weight and began to undulate gently. The male goldfinch looked at all the red flowers, then cocked a jolly black eye at his mate. “See-see-e!” he sang. “Tic-o-ree, o-ree, ree!” The female took him at his word. She lifted up one of the upside-down red flowers and poked her short beak into it. She found nectar deep within the slender spur. Tipping back her head she beaked it up. The male leaped to the next branch of the flower, again had a look around. “See-see-e!” Once more she took him at his word and had a sip of flower honey. At that, the sun-bright male seemed to tumble over himself for joy and with a blurr of wings mounted the air above her and filled the sky with ecstatic song. “Ter-chic-o-ree! Chic-o-ree!” She listened a moment, then, taken in, fluttered up beside him and joined him in wild abandon. They hovered above the red flowers for a while like light-hearted butterflies, singing madly, then, in a blurr of sun-bright yellow, winged off.

Watching it all, black eyes so intent they smarted, No Name whispered to himself, “It is a sign. That will be my life with a good wife. Perhaps Pretty Walker.”

He sat up. The sun had moved past the middle point overhead. With a guilty start he jumped to his feet and flung his bow and light pack over his shoulder and broke into a swift
dog-trot, still heading south. “I have loafed as my mother warned.” He ran lightly up the next slow incline. He had almost gained the next rise, when he suddenly began to puff and sweat broke out all over on him. Too late he remembered his father’s counsel never to drink more than four palms of water at any one time when out on the trail, especially if he wanted to cover a long distance quickly. Drinking too much water could founder a man as much as it would a horse.

Breath caught, he started in again, jogging steadily. The country gradually leveled off into long flat stretches. It was all upland, the grass was short, in some places dry and crackly. He came across occasional patches of prickly pear cactus. He ran two miles; walked a half mile; ran two miles. He tried to do the running on slowly falling land, the walking on gradually rising land.

Sweat broke out on him again, though this time his breath held. He slipped off his buckskin shirt. His chest gleamed a warm brown. The sweat made the sun dance scabs turn a light purple and softened them so that they lifted a little around the edges.

He delighted in the powers of his body. The longer he ran, then walked, then ran again, the more he saw that he too, like his old father, had a runner’s endurance. He would make a fine warrior. Like his father he would travel on foot to the place where the enemy lived, make the raid, and then return riding the enemy’s horses.

The sun was almost down, and he had come upon the last rise in the land overlooking the River of the Double Bend, when he spotted brown-black beings moving in the valley below on the other side of the river. Instantly he dropped on his belly in the grass. His heart began to pound and for a moment his vision blurred over.

Inadvertently he had flopped down on the edge of a large ant hill. In a few moments they were swarming all over him, red ones with eager stingers. “Ai!” he cried low to himself, and rolled away from the ants, then brushed them off.

When he looked below again, the black-brown beings had vanished. Pawnees on horseback? Omaha? Had they ducked out of sight when they saw him rolling in the grass?

Then he saw them again, emerging from a fringe of trees on this side of the river, their hides dripping and shiny with water. They were buffalo, some two hundred of them, all males. They were heading into the wind, coming almost straight for him in a long grave procession.

A thought struck him. The buffalo, if they kept heading into the wind, would eventually wind up near the Yankton village. He knew from old woman talk the camp was low in meat. And while bull was tough and not as tasty as cow, it still was meat and would carry them until the hunters found a herd of cows and calves. He looked around, to the right, to the left, for a place to hide himself and his sweat smell. He spotted a small washout in the brow of the rise some dozen steps away. Quickly he crawled on hands and knees through the grass, around another ant hill, across a bare patch of rough gnarly gravel, and dropped out of sight. The washout was about twice the length of his body and a good arm’s length deep. He pulled down some of the overhanging grass along both lips to cover himself. And waited.

Presently he heard their measured tread coming up the slope. Grunting shortly, bowels whumpfing strangely on each step, shaggy undersides dripping water, the old bulls trudged past him on both sides. They swung along in stupid dignity. Tongues lolled along the edges of slobbery lips. Little eyeballs glared out at a grassy rolling world through a tangle of long black hair. Short tails switched futilely at clouds of flies. Now and then one of the flies shot up a black nostril, only to be blown out again by a humpfing snort.

At last they were by. As always, behind them ran ghost-gray predators, wolves, jagged mouths laughing, eyes alert to cut off a laggard.

He waited until he could no longer hear their tread through
the ground, then sat up, head showing over the lip of the washout. The sun was just setting. Only the tips of the bluffs across the river still glowed in yellow light. Below the valley had already begun to blue over with coming darkness.

After a little thought, he decided to make the washout his camp for the night. The bottom was soft brown earth. It was deep enough to hide him from prowlers. It was also a good lookout.

With a rod fire-drill and a piece of spunk for tinder, he lighted his pipe and had himself a leisurely smoke. He ate a portion of dried meat and some pemmican. He crept down the hill and had a drink in the river.

As he let down his braids, he had a talk with his fetish. “Friend,” he said, holding the piece of horse chestnut in his cupped hand, “I have traveled far this day. You have brought me here.” Eyes sparkling, he gave it his most winning smile. “My helper, tomorrow I must travel even farther. Will I have a good day? Tell me.” He tossed it up, thinking that if the freshly cut end landed right side up it would be a good day, and if the natural end landed right side up it would be a bad day. He caught it and opened his hand. The freshly cut side was up. “Hi-yu-po! it will be a good day. I will travel very far.”

He worked his shoulder into the soft brown earth until he felt comfortable. Then, as he was about to drift off into sleep, he whispered, “I want to strike an enemy. If he is to wound me, let the wound be but a slight one. Also I wish to capture a horse.”

2

Late the next day, running, walking, he approached the flowing together of the River of the Double Bend and the Great Smoky Water. Remembering from his father’s dust map that the Omaha lived opposite the mouth of the River of the Double Bend, he decided to cross it and go down the east side of the Great Smoky Water until well past them. He inspected the horizons to all sides for sign, then advanced down a deep wash toward the river. Slough grass grew head-high, its blades sometimes a good two fingers wide, with edges that cut like duck teeth. The damp bottom of the wash gradually became an oily trickle.

The River of the Double Bend flowed silently and green under tall rustling cottonwoods. Its banks were headlong, steep, of black earth with pale gravel showing at the water’s edge. He took off his moccasins, leggings, clout, shirt, and holding them in a bundle over his head, stepped naked into the river. The bottom shelved down slowly. Some twenty feet in, gravel gave way to sticky mud.

He remembered his father’s counsel about wading in mud
bottoms. “Always slide your feet along,” Redbird had said, “or a channel catfish will poke out its spines and stick you. Catfish like to live in the mud because that is where the dead bugs drift. The wounds the catfish make are very bad. Sometimes they are poisonous. I have known men to die from them.”

He slid his feet along one at a time, big toes down and wary. The river kept deepening. Mud oozed between his toes, whelmed heavily up around his ankles.

He was exactly halfway across, up to his neck in the sliding green water, when his big toe hit something. He knew it wasn’t a log, because it first gave way and then pushed back, like someone who resented being nudged in sleep. Catfish. He stood stock still.

He licked his lips. Catfish were good eating. “Ae,” he thought, “there is hardly enough dried meat left for tomorrow. Why not eat the fish?”

Holding his leathers and bow out of the water, taking a deep breath, he slowly sank under. He groped down with his free hand, easy. Water flowed between his fingers. At last he touched the catfish with a forefinger. He could make out the edge of one of its bony plates. He inched his finger along, next felt the edge of a fin. At that the sluggish catfish slowly awakened and slowly a spine in the fin came erect.

A rush of blood exploded in No Name. Suddenly he was a lurking predator in shadowy waters. His forefinger took on eyes. He struck. And had it, forefinger deep in the vulvalike gill. With a powerful lifting lunge, he hauled it up to the surface. He came up gasping.

The catfish lashed once, twice, like a huge bough snapping in a hard wind. It began to gasp for water. Its long, gray cat-like feelers bristled in animal rage. Again it shook itself, mightily, almost unhooking itself from his finger.

He whirled around and around in the water, staying ahead of its lashing movements. The weight and the power of the catfish, the resistance of the water almost threw him. He kept bearing
for the opposite shore. The struggle stirred up mud from the bottom. Gradually boiling brown whirlpools began to stain the softly flowing green current.

When he reached shallow water, he saw what a whopper he had caught. It was larger even than a grown man’s leg, with a head as wide as his mother’s wooden bowl. Grunting, lunging, he heaved it out of the water onto the bank above. He climbed up after it, threw his bundle aside, and got a club. Two well-aimed blows on the flat head, hollow, sodden, and the huge fish lay quivering still.

He leaned on his club, puffing, naked brown body glistening. Never in all his life had he seen a fish like it. Ilis father would have been very proud to see him land such a monster alone. There was enough meat in it to feed a war party.

He found a tall cottonwood, built a fire of dry sticks under it. He kept the fire small and low. Smoke from it dispersed up through the leaves and vanished before reaching the top.

The catfish, broiled, and eaten with a few stalks of wild onion and some crystals of alkali, was delicious. Eyes watering over, he downed one sweet flake of boneless flesh after another. He sucked and gorged. He wished his rough friend Circling Hawk had come with him. “Ae, it is good, good,” he murmured, mouth full. “Not as good as buffalo hump, but good, very good.” After eating all he could hold, he jerked a small portion of what was left and hung it over the fire. Smoke would preserve the piece for breakfast.

After a cautious look around to make sure no one had spotted his little fire, he lay down on the grass, brown-naked, tender-skin phallus touching his thigh to one side.

Buffalo had recently passed through the glade and had cropped off the grass, short, and all the leaves of the trees to shoulder height. He could see north and south, either way, to where the river meandered out of sight. East behind him towered wind-honed bluffs, a deep vivid green in the dusk. A soft wind moved down from the north, stirring under the leaves, rippling the
silently sliding warm green waters. Occasional pike jumped, sometimes rising out of the waters like rearing colt heads, then fell back with a flat splash, ever widening circles moving across the surface afterwards.