Conquering Horse (41 page)

Then Moon Dreamer lifted his old eyes and fixed them glittering on Conquering Horse. “Are you ready to fulfill the vision that was given you?”

Conquering Horse groaned. He bowed his head. “I am ready. I must try to be a brave man and take things as they come. I cannot weep.”

“You are ready to see your father die at last?” A mysterious black lurked in the eyeholes of Moon Dreamer’s buffalo mask.

“I am ready.”

“Even if it must be by your own hand?”

“I cannot weep.”

“Ai, now the gods know that you fear them, seeing that you are willing to give up your true father to them. It is good.”

Conquering Horse shuddered.

Moon Dreamer brushed clean a small square of earth before the fireplace. Then he took up the leather case and opened it and removed the circlet of scarlet mane. Very carefully he divided
the mane into two equal parts, making a smooth round twist of each. He placed the two twists and the square case on the clean place of earth. He passed his hands over them, murmuring to himself, then let his hands fall to his doubled knees.

“My nephew, where is the piece of horse chestnut that was given you?”

Conquering Horse removed the bit of chestnut from the braid behind his left ear and gave it to Moon Dreamer. The chestnut had become cracked with age. It no longer had much odor.

Moon Dreamer looked at it, then, passing it from his left hand to his right hand, dropped it into the fire. It smoldered for a moment, then flared up brightly. A thin plume of gray smoke rose toward the smokehole. As the horse chestnut burned, Moon Dreamer said, “The new has come, let the old go.” Next Moon Dreamer picked up the two twists of mane and the square case and passed them from right to left and held them up over his head. “Wakantanka,” he said, looking up at the smokehole, “you see these. The two scarlet twists were taken from a wakan white one, one of yours, the leather case was taken from the buffalo, also one of yours. It was done as you commanded. Let your power enter them.” He waited a moment.

Of a sudden a breath of wind puffed down through the smokehole. The thin plume of smoke broke and turned aside. The fire itself darkened a moment, then quickly brightened.

Moon Dreamer looked at Conquering Horse. “My son, the power of Wakantanka has come. It has entered these things you have brought me. Treat them with the same veneration that is due Wakantanka.” Moon Dreamer picked up the red pipe again, filled it, lighted it, once more offered the stem to each of the six powers. He and Conquering Horse smoked until they had finished all of the tobacco.

Moon Dreamer folded one of the red twists into the square case. Then he handed the case and the other twist to Conquering Horse. “Take these. You know what they are. The square case
is your medicine bag. The twist in it is your medicine. The second twist is your fetish. When you wish to call on your medicine or on your fetish for help, remember to speak in the following manner: ‘Helper, you are my god. I am in trouble. Tell me the true way. My ears are open and my heart waits. I wish to be one with you.’ My son, always call on them in this manner and with these words. Now, my son, repeat the words after me.”

Conquering Horse repeated the words, slowly, distinctly.

“It is good.” Moon Dreamer got to his feet and reached into the dark back of his lodge and picked up a long horsetail. The horsetail had been dyed red. Moon Dreamer stood behind Conquering Horse and held the horsetail over his head. “My nephew, I have given you a fetish to hide in your hair. I have also given you a medicine to take to your lodge. The white mare told me how to prepare this fetish and this medicine. The white mare says that you should let yourself be controlled by their power. If you do this, she says it will go well with you in the life to come. You will provide for the women and children. You will be brave and truthful. The people will listen to you. You will never have to cut off the nose of your woman because of adultery.”

“I hear you, my father.”

“If you are lazy or a coward, the white mare says you will sleep with coyotes. Also no woman will gash her flesh for you when you die. If you tell lies the buffalo will laugh at you. Your women will suffer and your babes will have great pains in their bowels. But she says that if you listen to your holy man, the warm south wind will stay with you. I now wave the horsetail over you.” Moon Dreamer slowly flourished the red horsetail over Conquering Horse’s head, back and forth, four times, sharply, so that it whistled. “Go, my son. Take your new fetish and put it in your braid. Take your new medicine and hang it beside the armor that hangs on your tripod by the door.
Do this so that all may see you have gone down the long road of torment.”

“But, my uncle, when must I kill my father?”

Moon Dreamer looked gently down at Conquering Horse. Carefully he reached a finger under his buffalo mask and wiped away a sliding tear of yellow matter. “My son, tomorrow, at dusk, it will be given to you.”

“My father is greater than I. Yet I hear you, my uncle.”

“My son, do you feel the power of the white mare?”

“It is entering me.”

“My son, do you feel the power of the white mare?”

“Ai, it is warming my belly.”

“My son, do you feel the power of the white mare?”

“Aii! it is making me a mighty man.”

Yet a fourth time Moon Dreamer asked it. “My son, do you feel the power of the white mare?”

“Hi-ye! Yes, yes, I am a great man! I am happy! Thank you, thank you.”

“Return to your wife. It is now past the middle of the night. She awaits you.”

He stole into his tepee. Quickly he lashed down the door flap. He stepped out of his buckskins and slipped naked into bed beside Leaf.

He trembled with exultation. He quivered from head to foot. Little shivers stirred in the muscles all over and inside his body. He could still feel the power of the white mare throbbing in him. He now saw all life as one huge flow, with himself a streaming part of it. And being a part of it he felt the whole of it. The huge flow included the lives of the wingeds and the fourleggeds and the twoleggeds, and also his life and the life of his father. One part of the flow was exactly like any other part of it. It was all one and the same. Therefore he no longer needed to think about how his father’s life would end.

Leaf said suddenly beside him, “My husband, you tremble as one who has been seized with a madness.”

“I have at last become one with the great flow.”

“Did Moon Dreamer speak of what you must do with your father?”

“Ae, woman, he did. Tomorrow is the day. I await it. I am ready.”

She lay silent a moment, then said, “My husband, I have something to ask you. Yet I am afraid to ask it.”

“Speak, my wife. Are we not alone in our lodge? Neither the child nor the colt yet have ears of understanding.”

She paused again, then in a hesitant voice asked, “Has your uncle ever shown jealousy of your father?”

Conquering Horse popped straight up in bed. “Woman, why should he?”

“I do not know. Though I have seen that both your father and your uncle loved your mother very much.”

“Woman, why should they not love my mother?”

“I do not know. Though I have often heard my mother wonder why it was that your uncle never took a wife.”

Conquering Horse’s ire rose. “Woman, you have been married but a year and already gossip like a common magpie, chattering of little things.”

“Is it a little thing when a great man does not take a wife to himself?”

Conquering Horse’s mouth hung open in the dark. He puffed oddly. This wife of his, this Leaf woman, what a gift she had for speaking of troublesome things. Just when he had become reconciled with what had happened so far and with what was yet to happen, she came to him with a question that chilled him to the bone. He drew in a great breath, let it out again. Then he lay down.

The fire at his feet was almost out. It no longer smoked. Only in one place did a pink ember show. It peeked at him like the partly opened eye of a sleepy gray dog.

Leaf seemed to guess that her husband’s sense of well-being had been disturbed. She placed a firm calloused hand on his belly, then after a moment stroked him, from the arch of his chest to his groin. Her stroking was like running fire.

Conquering Horse almost leaped off the fur bedding. “Woman,” he said, trembling, “why was this done?”

For answer, she took his hand and placed it on her belly.

Moving his finger tips a little, he discovered that she too lay naked, that she had removed her doeskin nightdress. Sniffing, he also discovered that while he had been with his uncle she had perfumed herself with the juice of the purple smartweed. “Woman,” he said, “when we went to bed, did you not tell me it was but the forty-fourth day?”

“Husband, it is long past the middle of the night. The morning of a new day is almost here.”

He cried aloud in surprise. “Ho, I have forgotten.”

“Can you now forgive me for denying you?”

“Ai,” he cried.

And like clouds, his anger passed off and once again power surged through him. He found himself suddenly throbbing with love. Mating with a woman had been denied him a long time, almost another lifetime ago. An ardor like the sweet, sweet honey of the bumblebee moved through his veins.

He rolled on his side. He thrust his right hand under her head and with his left hand made love. He touched her. Her breasts were like well-fed puppies curled in sleep. He touched her. The cleft of her thighs was like a red melon split with ripeness.

“Woman, let me lie between thy breasts.”

She moved eagerly under his hand. “It will be as you wish when you will it, my great one.”

“Woman, do you feel the power of it?”

“Husband, your power is as the head of an eagle and I await it.” She took hold of him. “It is also as the turtledove. Has not the time for the singing of birds come?”

“Open to me, my sister, my dove.”

“My husband, ravish me. Love me as you once loved me by the river long ago. I have dreamed of it many times since.”

“You have sweetened your breath with the juice of rose hips.”

“Your head is sprinkled over with the drops of night.”

“I have seen a maiden who is very beautiful. I feel sick when I think about her.”

“O, my husband!” she cried, leaping under his hand, “feed among the river lilies. Be as terrible as a war party with flying pennons!”

“You have used sorcery on me, woman. I cannot help myself.”

“O, that you were as my brother Burnt Thigh, who was lost, who sucked the breasts of my mother with me. If I should find you standing without, I would lead you inside and give you to eat of our valley, even unto the scarlet plums.”

“Woman, you have eaten a part of me and now I desire to have myself back.”

“Make haste, my beloved, be as the young male deer are. Come leaping upon me.”

He rose as one riding a horse. With his right hand he held her head and with his left hand he caressed her hips. He thrust down at her. She thrust up at him. She clasped him around the small of his back and drew him closer and deeper. Their hips danced together. Soon his toes curled in the fur. Her heels touched behind his back. They cried in joy together. Power flowed from him and he strengthened her. She accepted it eagerly. All life flowed as one.

4

Conquering Horse sat on a red rock just inside the village circle.

As evening came on, a fall chill moved in from the northeast and all the tepees began to spume slow pennants of smoke. The smoke, drifting across the river, gradually formed into a low veil of fog. Most of the little children had been put to bed, though a few of the older ones still played on the tumble of red rocks beside Falling Water. A mother at the far end scolded a son to come in, telling him that if he did not hurry she would send the Owl Man after him. Two guards armed with society spears sat on their heels before the door of the council lodge, warming their hands over a small stick fire. Frogs grumped beneath some cattails in a nearby swale. While off in the southwest a scattering of puffy clouds gathered slowly into a thunderhead.

Conquering Horse sighed. He crossed his legs and closed his eyes. It had been a day of waiting. Dusk was upon them and yet it had not been shown him what was to be done about his father.

Then, as he sat musing to himself, he heard a tepee door flap open.

Looking, he saw his father Redbird step outside, first stooping, then slowly straightening up. His father had on his ceremonial clothes as chief: headdress of eagle feathers falling in a beautiful crest down his back, a black glistening Buffalo bull horn set on either side of his forehead, braids long and fur-wrapped, leather shirt covered with intricate quillwork, leggings trimmed with dried scalps, a pictured robe thrown gracefully over his shoulder, and his treasured copper-tipped lance in hand.

Conquering Horse sat up. The moment had come at last.

Redbird turned toward the southwest where dusk lay like a band of rusty gold under the thunderhead. The evening light gave his lined face a momentary look of glowing youth. He stood looking fixedly at the long dark cloud.

The thundercloud began to gather in size against the wind. The already sunken sun caught it for a last time, fringing its jet-black deeps with a lace of silver. It threw a huge shadow toward the village. The sky to the north took on an eerie green cast.

Redbird’s lips moved, shaping some private prayer. The expression on the whispering lips revealed neither sorrow nor happiness. Only the eyes gleamed, lighted up as if by an inward fire. A ghost sun seemed to have risen in them.

Gradually the soft northeast wind fell away. Almost at the same moment the plumes of smoke from the tepees veered and began to rise straight up, each remaining single and inviolate until they vanished into the high-thrown shadow overhead. Then, imperceptibly, the wind swung around until it came out of the southwest. At the same time the thunderhead began to move in. Its sides widened, spreading off to the north and the south. Its silver fringes slowly changed to bloody edges. The wind became warm, became soft and caressing. Shadows rustled across the green grass.