Conquering Horse (31 page)

No Name jumped back, so hard, he knocked himself and Leaf backwards into the cave, falling past the embers of the fire in the entrance. No Name was sure the stallion, gone crazy, was coming into the cave with them.

There was a loud cry behind them, and suddenly the mare in the dark back of the cave lunged and tore loose her rope and made a break for it. She shot past them both, rawhide rope trailing for a second through the fire, and joined the stallion outside.

The stallion reared, suddenly whickered in a very low gutteral voice, and then, the fierce heat of desire coming over him again, forgot about the man enemy and his wife. With a great frolicsome leap, and a snort, he ran off with the mare into the dusk over the meadow.

The next afternoon, sitting high in his lookout cottonwood on the north side of the river, No Name watched the horses come down to drink again. The white one and his sister sentinels stood guard as usual on the bluffs.

He spotted the dun mare Black Stripe with the first bunch, submissive, no different from the other wild ones except for what was left of her lead rope trailing in the dust. Dancing Sun paid her no more attention when she went past than he did any of the other mares.

Later, when the second bunch came down, No Name once more saw Dancing Sun run over and nip his favorite, the light-gray mare with the twinkling feet, in love and play. She was
leading the second bunch with slow heavy dignity and as before accepted his show of affection placidly.

It was while he was looking at the pregnant mare, and also thinking of his heavy Leaf, that his helper finally told him something. “Take the sorrel gelding and ride slowly after the light-gray mare with the twinkling feet. Go mostly at a walking pace. Twinkling Feet cannot run very fast very long. Pretend to chase no one but her, not the white one. The white one loves Twinkling Feet and will always stay near her. Keep chasing her. The stallion will give the commands to the old buckskin his mother where they are to go. He will keep them circling and have them come back to this watering place. When they return to this place, do not let him or the mares drink, but keep them moving. Chase him until he is very thirsty and very tired. Even four days and four nights. Otherwise he will kill you. After he is very tired, make a loop in your rope and throw it and catch him.”

No Name thought to himself, “Four days and four nights without sleep? That is a very long time. Well, I must be brave. The time has come for me to be valiant.”

That night he made himself a short heavy whip from a leg bone and some extra thick bullhide. He added a thin piece of buckskin at the tip for the popper. The white one would never again catch him unarmed.

7

In the morning he told her.

“Today it begins. Listen carefully. The stallion drives his band slowly because the one he loves will soon have a colt. I will trail after them on our sorrel. Because of the one he loves, he will not run very far ahead of me. Well, after a time he will get used to me. Then it will be given me how to catch him.”

“But, my husband—”

“Woman, listen carefully. Each day he will try to come to his watering place under the bluffs. But I will not let him. I will chase him on. After he has gone by, I will come quickly to water the sorrel. Woman, have a parfleche of food and a heart-skin of fresh water ready for me at that time. I will eat and drink quickly and then go on.”

“But, my husband—”

“Today it begins.”

“My husband, I am afraid. My time is very near. Perhaps I cannot always have the food ready.”

“The birth of our son must wait. The fulfillment of the vision comes first.” His black eyes glittered.

She bowed her head. Her hands strayed over her belly. “I hear you, my husband.”

“Haho! In four days I will return in triumph with a painted face.”

“I will wait.”

“Hang the provisions each day in a certain tree that I will show you. Do it before the stallion comes. Do not try to meet me. The stallion will get used to my smell after a time and accept it. But the smell of another will scare him off. Do as I command and it will go well with us. This I know.”

“I hear you, my husband.”

He ate heartily and drank long and deep. He readied his lariat, his whip, his war bridle with its long rein, his parfleche of dried meat, and his new white buffalo robe. He filled a heart- skin with fresh water from their stream. He placed a skin pad stuffed with hair on the sorrel for a saddle. He showed Leaf the tree, a green cedar growing on the near side of the west bluff, where he wanted her to hang fresh provisions each day. He gathered driftwood from the river and piled it on the horse trail where it emerged out of the ravine on top of the bluffs. He scattered sacrificial pinches of tobacco along the trail in the ravine and across the tops of the bluffs. Then, ready, he waited on the middle bluff, sitting on the hard ground, holding the long rein of his sorrel in hand as it grazed.

It was well past noon before he saw them coming. He waited until he could make out individual horses, then went over and set fire to a pile of driftwood. Soon white smoke rose in a high billowing plume, straight up, like an enormous ghost tree. The fire made such a crackling noise he had trouble keeping the sorrel quiet. He jumped on his horse and waited in the shadow of the cedar tree, whip dangling from his wrist. He watched the band come on.

Presently Dancing Sun came pacing from behind, where he
usually ran, and took over the lead from the old buckskin mare. Dancing Sun called up his white sister sentinels. It was only then, as he wheeled them all for the bluffs, that he spotted the bonfire and its high floating plume of smoke. He let go a warning snort. Instantly the band stopped dead in its tracks. All stood with raised heads, ears shot forward, wild and roused, looking more like alert deer than horses. Dancing Sun whistled again and they quickly bunched into a tight knot. He approached alone. He came up to within a hundred yards of the fire before he saw No Name on his sorrel under the green cedar. Again Dancing Sun trumpeted a command. The knot of mares and colts tightened even more. Dancing Sun looked from the fire to No Name and back again. He moved around to his left, then around to his right, trying to get No Name’s scent. But the wind was northeast and he couldn’t quite get around far enough to pick it up. He snuffed. He clapped his tail in irritation. He stamped. The band behind waited in a close profusion of raised heads and whistling tails.

No Name watched him. He sang a song of self-encouragement in a low private voice:

Then, strong in the knowledge that the gods had nothing but good in mind for him, No Name touched heel to flank and he and the sorrel moved out of the shadow of the green cedar.

Dancing Sun snorted. Haughty head up, snuffing loudly, he ran forward a few steps. He sniffed. He pawed the earth like a bull. He took a few more steps. Then, at last getting wind of the man enemy’s scent, with a scream of rage, he charged.

No Name waited until Dancing Sun was almost on top of
him, until the sorrel under him tried to double away, then suddenly he sat up very straight and with a quick hard sweep of his arm snapped his new whip in the stallion’s face. The buckskin popper at the end cracked, loud, directly in front of the stallion’s eyes. Astonished, Dancing Sun skated to a stop on all four legs. He reared, staggered backwards. Then, before Dancing Sun could collect himself, No Name raised his big white robe and snapped it vigorously around and around, yelling “Oh-ow-ow-ow!” at the top of his voice. He dug his heels hard into the sorrel’s flanks, forcing him toward the stallion. The sorrel bucked, again tried to shy off. No Name brought his whip hard across the sorrel’s flanks, both sides, again reined him toward the stallion. Dancing Sun staggered back some more. Then of a sudden, abruptly, he spooked. He raced off toward his band. With a blood-curdling yell, No Name followed them.

Dancing Sun bugled piercingly. Instantly the whole bunch ahead of him wheeled and broke into a wild thundering run, stampeding west. Up front, galloping as wild as the wildest of them, ran Black Stripe, Leaf’s dun mare, her dragging line raising a little snake of racing yellow dust.

No Name went after them furiously for a short way, still howling, still snapping his white robe around and around. The white one and his bunch and their following dust were soon out of sight. No Name reined in his sorrel and let them run, content to go along at a slower pace, certain that the stallion would not let Twinkling Feet run very far.

No Name found it easy to track the bunch. Dancing Sun ran his band from the rear, and as a pacer, not as a galloper, left a characteristic track that was always easy to pick out. No Name followed the fresh tracks for an hour, then headed his horse almost straight south, quartering across the stallion’s run.

He rode naked except for a clout. The sun sank down a brassy sky. In its raw light his body glowed a blackish brown. The air on the high barrens was so dry it made the nostrils crack. To keep breathing he sometimes had to lick the inside
of his mouth. The sorrel’s hooves kicked up minute dust storms. The little puffs of light-gray lingered in the air behind them for a long time. Every now and then he checked to see that the long rein of his war bridle was securely tucked in folds under his belt. He had long ago learned that, somehow thrown from his horse, he could always catch hold of the rope as it payed out along the ground. On the prairies a man was no man at all unless he had four feet.

He saw the horses again just as the sun set, far to the south, circling out of the west. They were grazing quietly along. He had cut across at exactly the right angle, and thus had saved his sorrel miles of running. He reined in. He let the sorrel graze quietly toward them. He guided him toward the pregnant Twinkling Feet.

After a while Dancing Sun saw them. He came racing up, snorting a challenge, then checked himself as if remembering the buckskin popper. He wheeled, and with a single high whistle set his band in motion, this time at a good walking pace.

No Name smiled. He urged the sorrel up and followed them.

The sun set. A coppery light slowly suffused all things, the sparse grass, the prickly pear cactus, the occasional tufts of gray-green bunchgrass. The grazing wild horses with their prevailing cream colors resembled rolling balls of pounded copper. The brassy sky changed to gold, then to gold and purple, at last to purple and pink. There was no wind. Raised dust, after hovering a while, fell back into place again.

The moon rose before dark. It came up round and full, a globe mallow, flowering huge and orange out of the horizon. It came up turning, and for a little time it seemed to be rolling toward them. Dancing Sun wondered about its strange rising too, and challenged it with a sharp rolling snort. Then gradually the great globe mallow parted from its stalk, floating free of the earth, and became the moon proper.

No Name pushed the band along at a steady gait. The band sometimes trotted, sometimes galloped, while he kept his sorrel
to a good walk. He quartered across the stallion’s run at every opportunity. Dancing Sun hated the pushing and often bugled his displeasure. His snorts kept the bunch in a jittery state. Every now and then his imperious neighs sent them dashing ahead, going hard, with thundering sound.

“Are you angry, great white one? I am happy. It is good. You are twice the horse that my sorrel is. Therefore I want you to cover twice the ground. We will tire together. Perhaps after that I will get off and walk. I will be fresh, you will be tired.”

The moon lifted. It became smaller, became silver. It cast a smoky ghostly light over the dry barrens. Dust became yellow smoke. The occasional tufts of bunchgrass resembled the gray feelers of a catfish. The white stallion became a silver stallion. His scarlet tail became a pink tail.

After one of their spurts ahead, No Name found the bunch standing in sleep. Even the white one slept. In the silver night they reminded No Name of immobile snowmen.

No Name became sly. He readied his lariat, setting the loop, tying one end to the belly band of his pad saddle. He gave his horse the heel.

One of the white sisters on the flank awoke. She looked around, saw them, whistled sharply in warning. Dancing Sun awoke with a jump. He too looked around, then trumpeted loudly. He gave his head a certain shake to one side and sent his mares and colts crashing away in the soft delicate night.

No Name rewound his lariat. “Wise white ones, I will wait until you are very tired and very thirsty. Also I shall try to keep you from some of your sleep. It will be the worry and loss of sleep that will make you mine.”

Horses, both tame and wild, usually napped three times a night: shortly after sunset, at midnight, and just before dawn. The final nap was the soundest, the most refreshing. No Name decided that he might let them have one of the earlier naps,
if it meant he himself could get some sleep, but he would never let them have that last nap.

They moved on, gradually circling around to the east, then to the northeast. Dancing Sun ran behind his bunch, keeping himself between them and the man enemy. The old buckskin mother and the two white sisters remained alert to his every command. If he lifted his head higher than usual, they hurried the band along. If he lowered it, they slowed the horses down. If he ran sideways, head to the left, they turned the bunch to the left. If he ran with his head to the right, they turned the bunch right. Occasionally one or another of the mares or colts would drop out of place, on the right, or left, or behind, and Dancing Sun would promptly move up, showing his teeth, bugling, to put them back in place. Occasionally too he would run beside his favorite, Twinkling Feet, and nip her in love, and seem to whisper to her that all was well.

A high white haze began to move across the moon. Soon a bluish circle appeared around it. Later the same kind of haze, a mist, began to slide across the land close to the ground.