The Changing Wind (4 page)

“No one can come yet,” she announced as she spread the
warm cover over Bull Roarer. “Dove Woman says keep him warm. Someone will come soon.”

“How bad is it for the others?” Small Elk asked.

“Bad. Some are dead. Several lodges burning.”

“I saw mine burning,” Bull Roarer said. “Is my mother alive?”

“Yes. She is looking for your sister. Elk, your lodge still stands. Mine is gone, but my mother is safe.”

“But I saw my mother’s lodge fall on her,” Bull Roarer said.

“Yes,” Crow explained. “She hid under it, hoping the Head Splitters would leave before the fire reached her.”

“How did your mother and mine escape?” Small Elk asked.

“They were both in your lodge. The Head Splitters spared it because of its medicine, Dove Woman said.”

The lodge of Dove Woman and White Buffalo was painted with designs and symbols that marked it as the dwelling of a holy man. To confront an unknown medicine could easily be hazardous, just as walking into a dark cave could be, without knowing what dangers lay inside. The attackers had simply chosen to avoid the risk.

“Who all was killed?” Bull Roarer asked.

“I did not ask about everyone,” Crow said. “Sits-in-the-Rain is dead. I saw Otter’s mother mourning, but I do not know for whom. Cattail’s lodge is burned, but I saw her. Her family is safe.”

“Is my mother coming over here?” asked Bull Roarer.

“Yes, she said she will, after she finds what happened to Redwing. Dove Woman will come, but she is helping some who are wounded first.”

Before long, Dove Woman and Bluebird came across the stream. Dove Woman, who often helped her husband with his healing ceremonies, understood his work quite well.

“Aiee!”
she exclaimed. “This is a bad injury, Bull Roarer, but we will fix it. White Buffalo will soon return. He will want to bind the leg here, before we carry you across the river.”

Dove Woman had brought some strips of hide from an old robe and now began to cut splints from the willows along the shore. She was still occupied with this when the men returned, attracted by the plume of greasy black
smoke from the burning village. Songs of mourning rose again.

“Elk, go and bring your father,” Dove Woman instructed. “Tell him I have bandages and splints.”

Small Elk darted away and soon found his father near their lodge. White Buffalo, concerned for his family, had already learned that their daughter was alive, though her lodge had been destroyed. The family of their older son was unscathed.

“Is your mother safe?” he asked.

“Yes. She wants you to come and help Bull Roarer.”

“Where?”

“Across the river. He fell from the cliff.”

They crossed, and White Buffalo knelt to examine the injury.

“Bull Roarer, I am going to move your leg,” he warned. “Here, bite the stick.”

With one quick motion, he twisted the injured leg into a more normal position. The grating of the bone was quite audible as it snapped into place, and the boy’s scream was muffled by the stick in his teeth.

“There,” the medicine man said. “It will feel better now.”

He began to bind the strips of buffalo hide around the leg, incorporating the willow splints as he did so. Finally he rose.

“Now, I will carry you,” he announced.

He picked up the boy, whose pain in motion was not nearly so great with the splints in place. As they stepped out of the water, Bull Roarer’s mother met them.

“Is he all right?” she asked anxiously.

“A bad break, but it will heal,” White Buffalo assured her. “Where will you stay, Pretty Robe?”

“My mother’s lodge. Here, this way.”

Those whose lodges were destroyed were salvaging what they could and moving in with relatives for the present. It appeared that there were only four fatalities, though several more people were wounded or had suffered burns from fighting the fires.

Three children were missing. One small girl escaped and made her way home a few days later, but Redwing, sister of Bull Roarer, was never seen again.

I
t had been seven winters now since the attack by the Head Splitters, and there had been no further trouble. As usual, they had encountered traveling bands of the enemy each season. There was no direct reference to the incident, beyond the smug demeanor of the Head Splitters.

Of course, the band they encountered that next summer may not have been the same band that carried out the attack. One Head Splitter looks much like another. Still, both Small Elk and Crow felt that they recognized one of the subchiefs who came forward to talk.

“That is the one!” Crow whispered. “The one who was about to shoot Bull Roarer.”

“I think so too,” Small Elk agreed, “but they all look alike. What do you think, Bull?”

“How would I know?” Bull Roarer asked, a trifle peevishly. “I was lying in the water below.”

If the man recognized them, he gave no sign, but it was hard to forget the threat that day at the cliff The Head I Splitter had promised to return.

The stolen children were not seen, at this or any later encounter. It was assumed that they would be hidden, silent under threat of death if they made their presence known. Or, someone suggested, maybe they had been traded to some other band. Even some other tribe. Bull Roarer’s mother had mourned the loss of her daughter, as if Redwing had died in the attack, and then resumed her usual activities. Life was hard, and losses were to be expected. The period of mourning allowed relief from the pressure of grief, and life went on.

Those events seemed long ago now. The seasons had passed, and the children grew. Bull Roarer’s leg had healed, and in a few moons, he could walk again. But he
would never walk properly. The leg was too short by nearly a hand’s width. The boy walked with an odd rolling gait.

“Will it grow like the other?” he had asked White Buffalo.

“No,” the medicine man answered. “It will always be different. But you are alive, and you can walk. Does it hurt?”

“No,” Bull Roarer admitted, “but I am very slow.”

“It was a very bad break.”

It was difficult for the active youngster. Formerly one of the best, he could no longer compete in many of the games and contests. In such things as swimming he could still excel, but out of the water, his ability was limited. In time, even his swimming skills began to suffer. There was no way to keep his muscles in condition. He tried to remain cheerful, but it was difficult.

His problem had become even more apparent since the other boys had begun to hunt. Bull Roarer had participated in a few hunts, short forays near camp, carefully supervised by an older warrior. No one said anything, but it was not necessary. All could see that Bull Roarer could not keep up with the group. It was equally apparent that they could not wait for him while their quarry escaped. No, Bull Roarer would be unable to participate in the hunt.

It was even more frustrating for him because he was an excellent shot with the bow. But what good was that if he could not place himself in a spot from which to shoot? Often, he cried privately. He could hunt small game, of course, but one does not support a family on rabbits and squirrels. Neither can a lodge be made from rabbitskins. Bull Roarer feared that he was doomed to a life of poverty, unable to find a wife who would consent to share such a fate. He would always be dependent on the charity of those more fortunate, and when times were hard… He shuddered to think that in lean years, when the hunt had been less than successful, the Moon of Hunger took on an even more ominous meaning.

Supplies always ran low in the time just before the Moon of Awakening, when the earth began to green again. In the best of years, it was a time of hunger. In the worst, it became, instead, the Moon of Starvation. Some would not survive. Bull Roarer was aware that sometimes older members
of the tribe walked off into the night at such times, to die in the silence of the prairie snows. It was a heroic gesture, one designed to save desperately needed food for the children, who represented the People’s future. Regardless, those who would starve would be the poor and needy. Who could give them food when his own family was hungry?

Increasingly now, Bull Roarer felt that this would be his fate in life—existing on handouts from his friends or those who took pity on him. Eventually, he would come to the point where a hard winter or a scarcity of game would bring about his own starvation. Sometimes the young man had considered walking into the prairie as the old ones did, so as not to prolong the tragedy of his thwarted life.

It is probable that on these occasions, seldom though they had been, he had postponed the act because of his friends Small Elk and Crow. These three were almost inseparable as they grew. The others seemed to feel almost a responsibility for the accident that had made Bull Roarer a cripple. When he was dejected, one of the others was always near, to distract him and bring a smile to his face.

Now they had seen fourteen winters, and subtle changes were taking place in all their lives. As the other young men became more proficient at the hunt, Bull Roarer became more morose. Today, for instance. There had been a hunt, hastily organized, when someone reported a band of elk grazing a short distance north of the camp. The other young men, and some of the girls, seized their bows and ran to join the hunt.

Bull Roarer watched them go, lonely and dejected. It was not unusual for young unmarried women to participate in the hunt; after all, that was where the young unmarried men would be. Except, of course, for the lame and crippled, he reflected bitterly. He wandered along the creek, skipping stones and longing for the company of his friends. How useless I am, he thought. Small Elk and Crow were the only close friends he had left. The others had gradually drifted away as it became increasingly apparent that Bull Roarer could not keep up.

Now he felt completely abandoned. Even Crow had left him for the hunt. He resented this. Crow could have stayed behind with him. Probably, he decided, even she and Elk had remained loyal only out of pity. He could not
blame her for preferring the company of one who was able-bodied. He wondered how the hunt was going.

Small Elk gripped his bow with sweating hands, an arrow ready on the string. He glanced to his left, where Crow returned his glance, her face alive with excitement. Their good fortune was incredible. The animals had moved into a small box canyon and were still inside. Short Bow, the organizer of the hunt, had quickly deployed the youngsters across the entrance. More experienced hunters were posted between them at intervals. Short Bow himself was beyond Crow. Now he motioned them forward, cautioning quiet. They moved into the canyon, crouching to stay in the concealment of clumps of sumac, dogwood, and bunches of real-grass.

Small Elk was aware that the animals were up ahead of them in the canyon. It was not that he heard or smelled them, as sometimes happened. It was more like a feeling, a knowing without the use of his other senses. He should soon be able to smell or hear them. By sheer good fortune, the hunters were downwind of the herd.

Then he heard a muffled snort and froze in his tracks like a rabbit. Between the tall stems of the real-grass ahead, he could see the shapes of large animals. Most were still grazing, but one old cow stood, alert and staring. Her ears flared wide, and Small Elk was sure she was looking straight at him. The cow snorted again, and the others raised their heads to look. Then everything seemed to happen at once. The wary old cow leaped aside and struck the ground, driving forward.

Short Bow had explained to the young hunters how it would happen. The elk, trapped in the box canyon, would rush to escape and in doing so, would run past the hunters into open prairie. There would be a moment, the space of a few heartbeats, when they must pass between two of the hunters, and someone, perhaps everyone, would have the opportunity for a shot.

“Try not to hit each other!” Short Bow had cautioned.

It was a joke, repeated since they were small, but this time there was no laughter.

Now, as the herd came charging down at him, Small Elk was sure that he would be lucky to survive, much less shoot. A great bull, his antlers as wide as a man’s outstretched
stretched arms, thundered down on him. Small Elk stepped quickly aside. There was nothing graceful about it, he simply jumped to safety while the bull rushed past, its mind too only on escape. The animal brushed so close to him that Small Elk could see the thin strips of furry skin hanging and fluttering from the antlers. The bull would soon be polishing those antlers in preparation for the rutting season. Small Elk felt the patter of bits of dirt and grass thrown up by flying hooves, and the bull lunged on past him. He stood there in wonder, completely forgetting to shoot. There was another rush of hooves, and a young cow raced past, her eyes rolling wildly. Small Elk raised his bow and loosed an arrow as the animal passed. He thought that the shaft struck the cow’s flank but could not be sure. In the space of another heartbeat, the animals had dashed through the brushy mouth of the canyon and into the open plain.

Now there were shouts and yells of triumph and disappointment as the hunters turned to pursue the retreating herd. Small Elk ran, dodging among the bushes toward the open where the animals were rapidly outdistancing their pursuers.