Conquering Horse (4 page)

Presently the moon became as bright as a little sun. It shone with such dazzling silver inside the tepee that the quillwork on the parfleches and saddlebags began to glow in warm luminous colors: red, yellow, white, blue.

Bright moonlight also fell on his father’s copper-tipped spear standing against the tripod. No Name’s eyes fixed on it. As always he saw it as a magic thing. It was wakan. Watching it, he saw the copper tip begin to glow like a long golden tooth.

He had once seen the copper tip give off little sparks after his father had rubbed it some. His father explained why this was. Long ago when Redbird was a young man he had been told by the Thunders in a vision that he should go to the Porcupine Mountains far in the Chippewa country. There under a certain pine on the north side of the Lake of the Clouds he would find a round green ball. He was to take this green ball and return home with it and polish it until the copper shone through and then hammer it into a lance tip. The Thunders told him that as long as the copper tip was kept shiny, the Yankton Sioux would thrive. When it was not, the Yankton would wither away as the red leaves of autumn. The Thunders told him they favored shining copper because it gave off little sparks in imitation of their great sparks.

No Name knew it as a truth that the Thunders liked the copper tip. Once, as he and his father and mother were eating their evening meal, a big thunderstorm came up. Suddenly there was a sound of “Thun!” and lightning came through the smokehole and struck the fire, scattering ashes and firebrands all around. Everyone sat in shock for a moment, then began to spit
and vomit. When they looked at the copper-tipped lance standing against the tripod, they saw a ball of glowing green fire hovering over it. The green fireball hung there until heavy rain, coming in through the smokehole, caused it to fade away.

No Name watched the moon move up the sky. Soon a shaft of silver touched him. It came straight at him from the Old Woman In The Moon herself. Her haunting eyes were fixed sharply on him. He hoped it meant she was going to give him a dream and tell him he would soon have his vision.

He waited. The moon’s rays made his eyes glow like a wildcat’s. Then, remembering a remark of his father’s that too long a look at the moon-being might addle his soul and make a woman of him, he turned his head aside and closed his eyes.

He stirred on the soft musky bedding. His flesh was still aroused from Loves Roots’ visit. He thought of Leaf. He considered stealing across to her tepee. He had heard his mother say that Full Kettle not only bound Leaf up for the night but also tied her to some stakes driven in the ground. Full Kettle was making doubly sure that Leaf would remain a virgin until she had been safely married. A young virgin was worth ten good ponies.

Of a sudden No Name thought of his older brother, a brother he had never seen. His mother often talked about him. The telling always made her weep, and afterward she would be extra kind to No Name, giving him special treats from the parfleches of dried fruit she was saving for winter.

His older brother’s name was Pretty Rock and he had come to Redbird and Star within a year after they were married. Pretty Rock was born lively, mischievous, loving, and Redbird had high hopes for him. Redbird indulged the boy, and early gave him a toy bow to shoot at mice and small birds. When Pretty Rock was eleven he asked to go along with a war party against the Omaha to the south. His mother, however, said he was too young. When Pretty Rock was twelve he asked to go along on a horse
raid against the Pawnee to the southwest. Again his mother said no. When he was thirteen he asked to go against the Ree to the west. Once again his mother said he was too young.

When Pretty Rock was fourteen he at last had his vision and was ready to go on the warpath. But before he could leave, the village moved to the place where the sacred pipestone was quarried. Redbird thought his son needed better horses for the raid and so had decided first to make a few redstone peace pipes and
offer
them in trade to their tribal cousins the Teton Sioux. The Tetons were known to have the swiftest of all horses.

So they went to the Place of the Pipestone where the flesh of their ancestors had been hardened into stone. They pitched their camp near a patch of red kinnikinick, west of the quarry. Across the stream were the Two Maidens and the Rock Split By Thunder. Redbird, Moon Dreamer, Owl Above, and certain other braves who had refrained from intercourse and were worthy, took the sweat bath, rubbed their limbs with silver sage, offered an incense of burnt sweetgrass to Wakantanka, and then, purified, delved into the earth. The other braves, meanwhile, hunted buffalo, and the women cut and dried the meat.

It was very early in the spring. The fresh tips of new grass were still a pointed yellow, like sharp gopher teeth, and the wild crocus had just come to bud. The tall bluestem, red and musty from long winter drying, clogged the feet. Robins scurried for worms on the warm hills to the north.

The Yankton bird, the meadowlark, cried to them: “Spring is here! cheer up! Spring is here! cheer up!” The meadowlark’s whistling was irresistible and presently the maidens answered it, singing, “The meadowlark is my brother, friend! The voice of fidelity is in the air.”

The lynx-eyed boys, Pretty Rock among them, played games. They found some dried rose hips and pelted a fleeing cottontail with them. They went to Leaping Rock and dared each other to make the jump across the chasm. It was Pretty Rock who finally tried it and made it. He stuck an arrow into a crack of
the red rock, then teased the others, saying he was now a true brave while they were but cowards, and when they still didn’t jump, leaped back to show them he was twice brave. Next the boys played at the foot of the double Falls of Winnewissa. Here all the boys dared to leap across the chasm and show their valor. Next Pretty Rock picked up a piece of defective pipestone and dared the boys to touch their lips to it. All knew that even the bad piece of pipestone was wakan because it was the flesh of their ancestors turned to stone. No one took him up.

Next the boys went across the meadow and dared each other to touch the Rock Split By Thunder, the place where a Sioux brave had been struck down because he refused to offer the usual sacrifice of tobacco before pitching his tepee. The place was so wakan, however, that even Pretty Rock was afraid.

Then they went to play near the Two Maidens, or the Place of Six Strange Boulders. Here Pretty Rock was once again daring. He challenged the others to play follow-the-leader and climb with him onto the cluster of mysterious mossy granite rocks and see if they could keep off the ground by leaping from one rock to the other.

At this Pretty Rock’s friends became very frightened. They knew the six boulders were greatly wakan. Under them, in a hole, lived the Two Maidens who liked to catch young boys. “Something will happen,” they cried.

Pretty Rock laughed. “Cowards!” He leaped from the largest moss-green boulder on the east end to the one with the wide lips, then to a small boulder, to another small one, to yet another small one, and finally to the big boulder on the west end. “See,” he cried, “they do not harm me.”

His friends backed away into the tall grass, their eyes rolling in fear. “Come down, come down! Something will happen!”

Pretty Rock only laughed more. “The Two Maidens won’t hurt me. They like me. See?” He leaped across the little boulders again, all three, and then up on the Boulder With Wide Lips.
“Besides, if the Two Maidens don’t like it, I’ll marry one of them.”

His friends clapped hand to mouth and looked from side to side in fright. “Aiii!”

Just then Pretty Rock’s moccasin slipped on green moss, and the wide lips below grabbed his foot. Scared, he scrambled to jerk free. But the Two Maidens had heard him and they caused the Boulder With Wide Lips to keep a tight hold.

His friends ran crying to his mother Star. “Aiii!” they cried, “the Two Maidens have grabbed Pretty Rock.”

Star came quickly. She saw that her son had been caught around the ankle. Trembling, for she was very much afraid of the medicine of the Two Maidens, she ran to get a travois pole. Standing on her toes, she tried to push him off.

Finally, poking desperately, she managed to pry him out of the grip of the Two Maidens, and he rolled to the ground. Still shaking all over, Star picked him up in loving tender arms and carried him home to bed.

He became very sick. All night he saw balls of fire come streaking across from the Two Maidens to his brain. And at dawn he died.

His mother wept, and gashed her breasts and legs. His father covered his head with ashes, and chopped off a finger. Next his father and mother gave away all their possessions. And they placed the body of Pretty Rock on a tree scaffold beside the six strange boulders under which the Two Maidens lived. “Because,” they said, “he had made a promise to marry the Two Maidens and belonged to them.” Later, when his bones fell out of the scaffold, they buried his remains under the Boulder With Big Lips.

Recalling it all, No Name stirred restlessly under his sleeping robe. Sometimes he dreamed about his brother. In these dreams Pretty Rock always managed to beat him to his mother’s
breast. Sometimes No Name fought like a wildcat with him for her breast. Yet always he lost.

No Name groaned. He knew his father expected him to take the place of Pretty Rock. At the time of Pretty Rock’s death Redbird and Star had given up all hope of having another child. There had been only one in fourteen years and it looked as though that was all they were destined to have. Twice Redbird married likely maidens with Star’s consent, in the hope that another wife might bring him a son. When no son was born, he sent the maidens back to their parents. It was when he took Loves Roots as his fourth wife, because she was so lively, that at last Wakantanka looked down upon them in favor. But it was Star who conceived, miraculously, not Loves Roots, and so No Name was born.

No Name’s place awaited him. He needed but the proper vision.

Otherwise, failing, his cousin Circling Hawk would become the tribal chief. Circling Hawk had not only had his vision, but already had placed his coup stick on sleeping Omaha braves on three different occasions without waking them, had conducted two successful horse raids, had slain four Pawnees. Because of these exploits Circling Hawk had the right to wear nine eagle feathers in his hair. Worse yet, when he became chief, Circling Hawk would have the power to compel Owl Above to accept ponies for Leaf.

The Yanktons were eager to have No Name become a valiant one. They liked him. Circling Hawk they respected, and were glad he was on their side, but they were worried that he would someday lead them into doing something rash.

The Yanktons were proud of their name among the Dakotah Sioux. They were known as the peaceful keepers of the sacred Place of the Pipestone, a Shining People. They were also proud to be known as They-who-live-in-the-center-of-the-world, in proof of which they had only to point to a place just a day’s journey
to the north where all the rivers began: the River of the Double Bend, the River With Red Blood, the River of Milky Water.

The moonlight became dim in the smokehole. Gradually the lodge darkened. And at last No Name fell asleep.

And, sleeping, he dreamed. In his dream he too had been caught by the Boulder With Wide Lips. The Two Maidens would not let him go. The one named Loves Boys was especially eager to keep him. When at last his mother Star came and poked him free with his father’s copper-tipped lance, he also fell sick on the ground. All night he lay dying on his sleeping robe. Streaks of fire came burning across from Loves Boys, touching him in two places on his chest. The streaks of fire were like long burning thongs tied to thorns thrust through his skin. He pulled, and hung back on them, and danced against them, but they would not let him go. He screamed in pain.

“Son?” Someone was shaking him. “Son?”

Slowly he broke out of the grip of the terrible dream, bathed in sweat.

“Son?”

At first he was afraid it was Loves Roots again. She sometimes called him “son” too. But then his breath returned to him, and he smelled, and he knew it was his father. Also, the hand was soft.

“Son?”

He could just make out his father’s high shoulders against the smokehole. “I dreamed, my father.”

“Ai! And what did they of the other life have to say?”

“I cannot remember, my father.”

“Was it an evil shadow?”

“It was, my father.”

“Sleep again, my son. The next dream will be a happy one.”

“I will try, my father.”

He was glad it had been Redbird who had shaken him awake. When he was a boy of seven he had sometimes run crying to his father’s bed after a bad dream. “Father, let me lie under your
folded robe.” And always his father had taken him in his arms and held him until morning. His father was always warm, his arms always strong. His father smelled of a windy day on a high dusty hill. This was because his father was one of those who worshiped the Thunders and often sat on a high place waiting for them to come.

3

In the morning he was awakened by the soft scuffing of moccasins on the beaten grass floor. He opened an eye a crack. It was his mother Star stirring the ashes. He watched her, unmoving.

She found a live ember deep in the gray ash. She pressed down a tuft of grass and blew softly. On the fourth breath a flame like a puppy’s tongue licked up. Yellowish smoke wisped about and slowly lifted to the opening above. She threw on a few twigs, then a dozen small branches, placing them in a circle with the small ends up like the poles of a tepee.

Watching his mother between barely parted lashes, No Name felt compassion for her. She was as faithful as the morning sun. She was always the first to get up and start the day with a fire. He saw how gray her braids had become, how wrinkled her cheeks, how thin and pursed her lips. Whitish films had lately grown across the black pupils of her eyes so that she had trouble seeing. She said she saw best now at twilight. Her doeskin tunic, new and freshly decorated with red and yellow and blue quillwork
as became the wife of the richest man in the village, failed to hide her wasting body. She was still strong, could still set up a tepee as quickly as any woman in the band, but she did it now with an effort of will rather than out of the vigor of hardy flesh.