Conquering Horse (29 page)

The sister on the east bluff whistled sharply. Up came the stallion’s head, with a jerk, tossing high in wondering query.

For a moment No Name was afraid the sister had spotted him moving in the cottonwood.

The stallion stared up at her, then stared and snuffed around to all sides. Finally, finding nothing amiss, he fluttered his pink nostrils in irritation, then went back to drinking. No Name decided she hadn’t called him so much in warning as to show her impatience that her lord and master, and brother, presumed to take so much time.

Presently, tossing his mane, arching his tail, the stallion walked out of the river and trotted slowly up the hill and mounted the middle bluff. With a rolling snort, he dismissed his sister sentinels. He had a last regal look around. Then, bugling suddenly, in a flash of white, he charged his bunch. The old wise mare jumped into the lead, the white sisters took up positions on the flanks, and soon the bunch was gone.

No Name was still trembling with excitement when he returned to his cave.

Leaf saw it. “You have seen him?”

“Ae, and I am afraid of him. Were it not fated that he is to be mine, I would not try to catch him. He is wakan.”

“Is he not but a horse, my husband?”

“His mane and tail are like the rays of the sun. His white body is like the center of the sun. To look at him one must look a little below him.”

“I have cooked some meat. I have gathered sweet tipsinna from the meadow nearby. I have found some wild potatoes from the bottom across the river.” Moving heavily, she set the food before him.

“Well, I must eat to be strong so that I may catch him.” Suddenly he shivered. “But my belly is not very hungry.”

“Then he is a very good horse, my husband?”

“He is greatly wakan. He goes too fast for a horse that is only walking. He moves like a ghost horse, covering much ground with but a few steps.”

Only then did she catch what he was trying to tell her. She clapped hand to mouth. Her eyes swung from side to side as if she could not bear to look at the thing he told of.

“Even when he stands very still he seems to be dancing.” Then No Name added, “I shall call him Dancing Sun. It is a good name for so great a stallion.”

6

During the next days, No Name made a close study of Dancing Sun. Packing food, he managed to walk completely around the stallion’s range. Hiding in tall trees, he observed him early in the morning, at high noon, and late at night.

One thing soon became apparent. Dancing Sun never galloped. Dancing Sun was a gaited horse. No matter how fast the others in the bunch might run, Dancing Sun never broke out of his pacing gait. Always he ran along easy, serene, head up, legs stroking lightly. He took twice the stride of the best pacing mare in his band. As he ran, his long red tail brushed along the tops of the grass. From a distance he seemed to skim over the ground like a low-flying white eagle.

In all, Dancing Sun had a band of some forty mares and some thirty colts. Rare was the male colt over a year and a half old. Twice No Name saw Dancing Sun drive a two-year-old stud from the band, cutting one of them, the more reluctant of the two, to ribbons with his hooves so that he died. The two young studs
had been caught in the act of trying to corner themselves a bunch of mares. Only he, Dancing Sun, was going to be king of the females.

Dancing Sun could be merciless. Once a tall noisy whirlwind came racing toward them. Dancing Sun, ever on the alert, saw it coming. He whistled a warning and set the whole bunch in motion at right angles to the whirlwind. He circled his bunch at full speed, nipping laggards here, charging drifters there. Then a mare dropped back because her freshly born colt had trouble keeping up. Instantly Dancing Sun dashed for the colt, seizing it by the neck with his teeth, and smashing it to the ground. The mare whinnied shrilly in anguish. In a fit of frenzy she lay down beside her broken colt. Ears laid back, Dancing Sun drove at her, bit her cruelly over the back and neck. Finally, when she still would not get up, he ran off a short ways, then whirled and made for her, teeth bared, head so low he resembled an enraged wolf. So fierce was his aspect that the mare leaped to her feet in panic and raced off to join the rest of the flying bunch. Looking back over his shoulder, Dancing Sun saw that the whirlwind had not only gathered in size and speed but had changed direction. He shot swiftly after his band, pacing up one side and racing down the other, ramming his bluff chest into the ribcase of one mare, whirling around in full flight and kicking another, raking still another with his bared teeth, biting into the flesh of still another. Gradually, squealing his commands, he turned them in the direction he wanted them to go, at last drove them out of sight of the whirlwind where all was safe.

One day No Name discovered a male colt more than two years old in the band. The male was brown and quite fat. This surprised No Name and after watching a while he decided it was because the brown one was not much of a stud. The mother of the fat son indulged him much, often neighing him over to where she had found some specially luscious sweetgrass, and letting him get the first drink while the water was still clear, and shielding him from the sharp teeth of jealous mares. Mother
and son were always together, often standing side by side, head to tail, switching flies off each other. Sometimes they leaned across each other’s necks, nuzzling each other affectionately. Dancing Sun had his eye on them as they roamed and grazed together but did nothing about it. But then one fine morning the brown one found himself a stud at last, and after some nuzzling together with his mother, mounted her and made connection. The white master spotted them almost immediately and with a great scream of jealous rage was upon them. He drove at them so hard he bowled them both over. He sent the mare off galloping for dear life, then leaped for the slow stud. He fastened his teeth into the slow stud’s withers and with one great jerk ripped off a piece of hide all the way to the rump. The brown stud rolled over backwards from the force of the jerk and hit the ground so hard his neck broke. He was left alone, gasping in death.

Dancing Sun controlled a range some twenty miles across. To make certain that interloper stallions understood just where his empire lay, Dancing Sun made it a practice to leave cones of droppings at each of the four corners. Every few days he made the circuit, checking his pyramids of dung to see if visitors had left notices around. Occasionally he would find one and then would carefully smell it over. Usually what he found did not disturb his regal calm much.

The great white stallion also had private staling spots along his run. When some of the young male colts tried to approach these hallowed grounds, Dancing Sun chased them off. From these spots No Name saw more evidence that the stallion was wakan. The white one’s stalings caused deep green rings to jump up in the grass. It was as if his watering of the earth prompted springs to burst forth, even on high dry ground. His whitish-yellow stream was of Wakantanka himself, a supernatural fluid.

Occasionally Dancing Sun was stand-offish, moody. When a fresh wind came out of the north, bringing with it the cool sweet
scent of the snow country, or when the prairie was all aflower with pink peas, or when the wild clover made the air thick with its lush aroma, Dancing Sun would run off by himself. He would take his stance on the highest point of land, head lifted into the wind, inhaling with great gusto. Sometimes he would point his nose at the blue sky and grimace as if about to break out into godlike song. And sometimes he would even whinny to himself, his lonesome cry floating on the wind as pure and clear as the morning call of the cardinal, full of elation and joy at being alive in the midst of the flowering plains. The white one reminded No Name of Sounds The Ground and his lonesome pondering of flowers.

Later, breaking out of the pensive mood, Dancing Sun would round up his band and bunch them up into a tight knot, so tight there seemed to be nothing but raised heads and whistling tails. With a fierce and terrible mien he would pace around and around them, close-herding them harshly, and would keep at it until he had worn a trail in the grass. Every mare and colt betrayed the greatest fear of him during these times. Not one would dare to stray out so much as the length of a neck or the breadth of a rump. Then, having kept them standing tight together in fear and trembling for an hour or more, the harsh disciplinarian would suddenly lift up on two legs, whirl completely around, then cut through the middle of them, squealing fearfully, scattering them all over the prairie.

No Name wondered about the stallion’s strange whim of close-herding, until the morning he witnessed an attack by a pack of lobo wolves. Some forty of them came streaking out of a ravine, gray sliding shadows. No Name was sitting high in a tree on the edge of a lookout at the time, so missed being hunted down himself. The moment Dancing Sun spotted the wolves, he let go with a deep full-chested roar. To No Name he suddenly sounded like a combination mad bull and raging lion. Without even looking around, or wondering what it was all about, the mares called in their colts, “Euee! agh-agh-agh,”
and immediately formed a circle around them. The mares stood facing out, teeth bared. Meanwhile the white master paced around and around his bunch, mane lifted, teeth bared too, heels carefully kept away from the wolves to keep from being hamstrung.

The wolves were somewhat startled to run into a stallion with such a defense, and they withdrew to a prairie knoll to reconsider. They sat on their haunches, tails whisking, every now and then glancing over at the dancing stallion and his tight knot of fierce mares.

After a short wait, two of the wolves approached the stallion in a playful manner, as frolicsome as puppy dogs, rolling on the ground in front of him. They frisked about as if they had always been his friends and meant him no harm.

Dancing Sun resorted to a stratagem of his own. First whickering a low warning to his band to keep tight, Dancing Sun pretended to be taken in by the playing wolves. Slowly he grazed toward them, cropping grass one moment, rearing his head in inquiry the next. Finally, just as the two wolves had maneuvered themselves into position, one at his head and the other at his heels, just as they were about to spring, Dancing Sun made a great leap for the nearest wolf. With snarling teeth he caught the wolf by its ruffed neck and tossed it high in the air. The moment the wolf hit ground, Dancing Sun leaped on it with both front hooves, crushing its skull. Then, before the other wolf could collect its wits, he seized it too with his teeth and trampled it to death.

Howling at the skies in disgust, the rest of the lobo wolves gave up. Toothy jaws flashing a last time, they drifted off one by one, over the edge of the ravine.

Two mornings later, No Name saw for a second time why Dancing Sun trained his bunch in close-herding. Perched in the same tree on the edge of the lookout, No Name saw Dancing Sun lift his head and look off to the southwest. No Name looked too. Over a rise came a small band of horses,
running straight for Dancing Sun and his bunch. What surprised No Name was to see that the small band was all male. They were bachelors who had been driven out when colts. They were of almost every color: blood bays and dark bays, light chestnuts and dark chestnuts, rust roans and strawberry roans. At their head ran a powerful black. His mane and tail glowed like the shine of a black grackle. Bluish streaks kept racing over his coat as he turned and wheeled in the sun. There wasn’t a mark on him. He too had the swift gait of the pacer. He and his male chums came on with a rush, manes raised, ears shot forward, tails arched high.

Dancing Sun trumpeted piercingly. The glory of his nostrils was terrible to behold. His neck seemed clothed in thunder. A chill of terror shot through his mares and colts and instantly they bunched up into a tight knot. Head held low like a predator, snarling, Dancing Sun began to circle his herd around and around. His growl was like that of a monster wolf, deep, primordial. Then, sure they understood that he was their mighty king and dominator, that he would permit no dallying with any of the visitor bachelors, he turned and went for the intruders. He had made up his mind to fight them all, to the death. He went straight for their leader, the black one.

The big black had watched Dancing Sun close-herding his bunch, had seen him whistle his mares and colts into submission, had even seen how half of his own bunch of odds and ends had backed off a way. But for himself, the black one was not afraid.

Black One bared his vivid white teeth, laughing scorn both at Dancing Sun and at the craven cowardice of his comrades. He reared, whistled a shrilling challenge. Then he dug his forefeet into the hard ground as far out in front of him as he could reach, waggled his head furiously, stopping only to see what effect his mad antics had on Dancing Sun, then jumped gracefully around in the air, swapping ends like a frisky dog snapping at flies.

Black One’s show of haughty defiance enraged Dancing Sun.
He raised on his hind legs too. Eyes flashing blue lightning, teeth glinting like a grizzly’s, ears laid back tight to his head, he shrilled and shrilled. His gray forefeet cut the air as if he were a dog digging a hole. Rampant, thighs stretched like massive white birches, he closed on the other in towering majesty.

Black One shrilled loud too, came on terrible and black, his blackness making him seem almost taller than Dancing Sun. They squealed at each other until white foam ran dripping from their jaws. Their started eyes blazed with primal hate and rage.

Suddenly they lunged for each other, lunged with all their force. They hit with the sound of colliding cottonwoods. They raked each other with slashing hooves, from front to rear. Their hooves beat a tattoo on each other’s barrels. Teeth caught hold of skin and ripped until flesh bled black. Sometimes, when their bite slipped off, their teeth clicked together with the sound of hammers hit on rocks. They went after each other like mad lions. Once they got a good grip with their teeth, they hung on until flesh pulled away. They rolled on the ground like wrestlers, over and over. They screamed. Mouths open, teeth glittering, they dove for each other’s throats. They whirled around as quick as cats. Kicking at each other, rear to rear, their flint-hard hooves hit together with the sound of crackling chain lightning.