Conquering Horse (32 page)

No Name nodded. He slept. He awoke. With a start, looking, he saw them still ahead. “Ae, my sorrel has learned the game and now follows them without instruction.” He petted his sorrel over the withers. “Friend, you are my helper. After we have caught him, I will take you to my father’s meadow beside Falling Water where the grass grows very sweet. I will give you a long rest in reward. I give you the name of One Who Follows.”

He nodded. He slept. He awoke. And waking, he saw them all as white shadows, white silences, of the other world. Both he and his sorrel and the white one and his bunch were spirit ghosts. They were all gods together in the night. They had now no need of either life or death. They had need now only of song, of vision, of long white wings.

They drifted on. The bluish mist thickened. He slept again.

Waking, he saw a strange thing. Objects were continually changing before his very eyes. Sometimes Dancing Sun and his
band stalked along as tall as a grove of rustling trees. Sometimes they slid along the ground as lowly as a family of mud turtles. Sometimes they walked above the blue mist. Sometimes they walked under it. When the land dipped and the mist lifted a few feet he could see nothing but horse legs, many legs, like walking birches. When the land raised he could see nothing but flowing manes and alert ears. The horses seemed to be swimming across a lake of milk.

He slept. And waking, he saw that the horses had vanished.

Well, he did not care. The night was wakan and he was very tired. Besides, he now trusted One Who Follows.

He slept. And waking, he saw that the horses had reappeared. He smiled. He had known One Who Follows would never lose them. One Who Follows was a wise one and would keep quartering after them.

Two hours before dawn, he suddenly felt rested and wide awake.

“Ha-ho!” he said aloud. “It is good. It is as I planned. And now I must make sure that Dancing Sun and his band do not rest. I will keep them snorty, even a little wild, during their best hour of sleep.”

He pushed them hard. After an hour of it, Dancing Sun turned and came snarling at him. The horse resented being kept from his golden nap time.

No Name rose against him. He kicked up his sorrel and went after him in cool fury, cracking his buckskin popper in the stallion’s broad white face to remind him that man enemy now had the overhand.

Of a sudden, almost between steps, the moon vanished behind a silky web in the west. Then, the next moment, the sun was up. The sun came up as red as a blood clot from a slain buffalo’s lungs. It swelled, became huge. It too seemed to
roll straight for them for a time. Then, rising, oscillating, it ascended the skies.

No Name opened his parfleche and gnawed on some dried meat as he jogged along. He washed the meat down with a drink from his heartskin. He also gave his faithful sorrel a drink.

A light wind drifted in from the southeast, touching him on the right cheek. The wind had in it the smell of a robe freshly washed in rain water. Both horse and man snuffed it in pleasure.

No Name studied the western sky. A blue haze hugging the horizon made him wonder if rain was on the way. “Helper, it is not rain we want. Tell it to stay beyond the river. We wish to keep the ground hard and thus give the horses sore feet. Also, a rain will fill the little hollows with water and give the wild ones to drink.”

He kept them going, cutting across the inside of the stallion’s run, sometimes walking.

At mid-forenoon, Twinkling Feet the pregnant mare began to lag behind. Dancing Sun spotted it. Tail glowing like a down-flowing flame, he ran up and inquired with a wondering whinny. When she didn’t respond, he urged her up. Still she lagged. Finally, half in love, half in anger, he nipped her at the root of her tail. She turned heavily and snapped at him. He snorted, then nipped her again, this time hard. At last she gathered her huge belly into a rolling trot and rejoined the bunch, taking her place in the center again with the jolting yearlings.

At noon, hot, the earth shimmering under a white glaring light, No Name happened to throw a look up at the sun. As he did so, one of the rays of the sun broke away and became a winged one. Astounded, No Name watched it slowly form into the shape of a hawk.

“Ai!” he whispered, “the sun is sending a messenger. He wishes to tell me something. I will watch the shape closely to see where it will fly.”

Slowly, silently, in ever larger ovals, like a maple leaf drifting
down, the hawk settled toward him. Presently No Name could see its rust-red tail, then make out the ribs in the individual feathers of its wavering wings. Its claws worked spasmodically. Its eyes blinked down at him. At last it opened its beak and cried, “Kee-er-r-r!”

No Name looked up in awe. “Take care? Will the fierce white one attack me again?”

“Kee-er-r-r!”

Then the hawk, dipping its wings, lifted up, up, finally blended off into the sun, becoming one of its rays again.

He leaned forward and whispered in the hairy earhole of his horse One Who Follows. “Something is coming. Get ready.”

One Who Follows twitched his ear, then shook his head, trying to get rid of the tickling words.

“I am ready,” No Name said. “My helper is near me.” He placed his hand over the charm hidden in his braid. “It is good to know the gods approve and are willing to warn me.”

Out of the shimmering heat waves along the northeast horizon a faint line gradually appeared. No Name stared at it a while, then recognized it as the valley of the River of Little Ducks. Presently the tops of the cottonwoods began to show. The stallion’s watering place was at hand.

Just as he was beginning to wonder how he should spook the wild ones past the place, Black Stripe the dun mare accidently helped him out. Tiring the last while, she had taken to jogging along at the rear. All of a sudden her lead rope, still trailing from her neck, got caught on the stump of an old wolf-berry bush. It tightened, stretched, abruptly hauled her up short. She reared. There was a loud snap and the rawhide broke, with what was left of it coiling up and lashing after her. The snakelike lashing of the rope scared her. She bolted. The faster she ran the faster the trailing rope raced after her. With a scream of terror she charged straight through the bunch, scattering them in all directions.

Dancing Sun was instantly on the job. Trumpeting loudly,
he raced back and forth, up one side and down the other, try ing to turn them into a compact unit again. By hard running, and vicious biting, he did manage to get them bunched. But not until they had all run well past the watering place. They headed west, starting around the circle a second time.

No Name waited until they were almost out of sight, then turned his sorrel for the cedar tree on the near side of the first bluff. He found the provisions hanging from a limb just as he had ordered, with Leaf herself nowhere in sight. Using some big leaves from wild hemp as gloves, he transferred the dried meat and fresh spring water to his own parfleche and heartskin, very carefully so as not to pick up her scent.

He headed his sorrel for the river. One Who Follows instantly picked up his head and trotted down the trail between the two bluffs. One Who Follows was so happy at seeing the water again he ran halfway into the river and stuck his head under all the way to the eyes. In his eagerness to drink he almost drowned himself.

No Name laughed. “My brother, you behave like a foolish colt.” No Name removed his moccasins and slid off into the water, stumbling stiff. He gave the bridle a jerk and held the sorrel’s head out of the water for a few moments. “Friend, patience. Drink little by little or we will never catch the white one.”

One Who Follows nuzzled against No Name’s belly as if he understood, then lowered his head again and drank slowly and steadily. Soft swallows chased up the underside of his neck one after another. The hollow between his belly and hips slowly filled out again.

No Name was overjoyed at seeing the water too. He bathed his limbs, he splashed his chest, he refreshed his face and neck. He drank long and deep from the ocher waters.

The sun was almost down when he picked up the trail on the barrens again. The white one and his band were completely out of sight, even their dust. No Name set his course straight south,
knowing for certain this time that he would run into them again on the far side of the circle.

Long after the round red ball of the sun had halved itself out of sight, a glory of scarlets and golds continued to reach far across the skies. The colors suffused the land, transforming it into a vast plain of rich reddish earth covered by golden grass. The sorrel became a red-gold horse and he himself a red-gold god. For a little while he forgot his quest, and where he was, and where Leaf might be. The scarlet and gold flowed into him and he conceived himself as having a scarlet soul and golden blood. Later, in turn, the moon rose out of the east. In the gradually thickening haze, it came up a deep red, almost like a morning sun. It remained red until halfway up the heavens, then slowly turned into a flying yellow pumpkin.

“The sun is my father. He shines upon me. The moon is my mother. She shines upon me. I am strong when they look upon me in love. I am happy. Hoppo! May this continue for the rest of my life. The earth hears me.”

He let the sorrel take its own gait. Hoofbeats falling into the soft dust were the only sounds in the dreamy yellow light. He hooked his foot under the belly band. He looked heavy-eyed at the flat and endless world for a while. Then gradually he drifted off, rocked to sleep by the swaying walk of the sorrel. He dreamed of a white sun with a scarlet mane.

A terrible squealing awoke him. He came to with a start, one hand instinctively seeking his bow and the other an arrow over his shoulder. Directly in front of him, rampant, teeth flashing, stood Dancing Sun. Behind the stallion stood his mares and colts, alert, in the posture of the hunted, ears shot forward. For a moment No Name could not understand it. Hair raised on his scalp. “Is this a nightmare, my helper?” Then the sorrel under him shied, almost unseating him, jerking the leg he had caught under the belly band. “Ai, it is a true thing. Also I have hit upon them again as I planned. But I have done so in my sleep. Well,
that Dancing Sun was a smart one to see that his enemy was off guard.”

No Name let go his bow, instead grabbed for his bone-handled whip. He swung with all his might. This time, instead of cracking loudly, the buckskin popper hit flesh, cutting the white one over the nostrils. Dancing Sun screamed. He reared higher; struck. His flashing hoof hit the sorrel a glancing blow high on the withers, just missing No Name’s thigh. Then No Name raised in wrath himself. Again he lashed out, this time with redoubled might. His whip caught the stallion squarely across the broad forehead, cutting him over the eyes.

Dancing Sun wheeled. Bugling, falling into his ceaseless swinging pace again, he sent his bunch roaring away, their manes flying, tails popping, dust following in a high slow-moving cloud.

No Name watched them go, curving off to the east. He set his course accordingly. He hooked his foot under the belly band again and relaxed.

He slept. He dreamed. He was in a canoe riding across choppy waves. He dreamed a second time. A hawk swooped down to lift him from his horse. He dreamed a third time. His father Redbird came to take a red bull-baby away from Leaf.

Near dawn he awoke. Ahead of him walked the bunch. “My brother,” he said to One Who Follows, “twice now you have followed them while I slept. When we return to Falling Water, I shall give you a year without labor on its sweetest meadows.”

He ate a little of the dried meat. He refreshed both the sorrel and himself with spring water.

The sun came up an ugly red, resembling a buffalo cow that had not cleaned well after a birthing.

He rubbed dust out of his eyes with a knuckle. He examined the band ahead. It seemed to him they somehow looked different. Most of them hoofed it along dead tired. Somehow too there did not seem to be as many. He counted them. “Ho! a third is missing.” He turned sideways in his saddle and looked back. There,
against the red horizon, stood some twenty horses, head down, exhausted, motionless. All would soon be wolf bait.

“They lack the water. Soon even the strongest will drop out. Then it will be given me what to do.”

It came to him then, like a blow on the head, as he studied the bunch in front of him, that Dancing Sun was not among them. Twinkling Feet the light-gray mare heavy with young was still there but not the white one. Then he understood why the horses had been drifting along in such a hangdog manner. Dancing Sun was not there to keep them bunched up and on the alert.

Again he turned sideways in his saddle and looked back. He could still see those that had dropped out clearly against the horizon, head down, motionless. Some were mares, some were colts. But Dancing Sun was not among them.

“Horse,” he cried down at One Who Follows, “what have you done? I trusted you to follow him while I slept. Yet now I awake and find him gone.”

The sorrel under him stopped dead, as if in disgust, and began to crop at dry spears of buffalo grass. One Who Follows did not even bother to flick his ears at the words.

No Name’s eyes filled with wonder. Was One Who Follows trying to tell him a thing? No Name looked at the grass underfoot. He could not imagine a horse enjoying it, much less eat it. It was thin, as sparse as the solitary hairs on an old dog’s nose.

His eye happened to catch sight of some fresh droppings. He saw immediately they were hard and dry, not shiny and ripe as they usually were when a horse had enough to drink. Ha-ho, the hard droppings meant the band was about dried out.

The dry droppings next reminded him that Dancing Sun had his own private places for dunging, four of them, marking the corners of his empire. No Name remembered that one of these corners was nearby, beside a deep washout. He turned his sorrel toward it. To his surprise, the sorrel readily gave up his grazing.

They were almost within sight of the curious pyramids of dung, when of a sudden from behind them came a rolling snort
and then the furious oncoming beat of horse hooves. No Name jerked viciously on the reins, wheeling his horse around.