The Holy Road

by Michael Blake

  Smiles A Lot had seen the same grand picture every day of his life and the enormity of its simple components never failed to stir his feelings. Unaware of any presence but his own in such vastness made him small and large at the same time, a combination that infused his spirit with an incomprehensible blend of fear and fearlessness.

  But on this day as he sat on his pony, gazing across the infinity that led to home, there was something amiss, something tiny but distinct that disturbed the picture before him. curling almost imperceptibly at the limit of his sight was a thin, black column of smoke. Pushed by the breeze it angled to one side as it rose like a wisp on the horizon.

  The smoke was so out of place that he studied it for several minutes. Smiles A Lot doubted that the grass was on fire. The weather had been too still to start something like that, and even if it had, a wildfire would have spread out across a wide swath of country. This smoke was rising into the sky from a single spot, and for reasons he could not decipher, it gave Smiles A Lot a bad feeling. Though the black funnel was several hours' ride away it lay in the general direction of the village and he pressed on, hoping that his feeling was wrong. His ponies were fresh and he jumped from one to the other as he rode, certain that if he forced the pace he could reach the village before twilight.

  The sun was dipping toward the horizon and the column of smoke had long disappeared when he finally neared the village, puzzled at the absence of lodge tips against the darkening sky. A natural berm he knew well lay in front of the village and as he crested it Smiles A Lot saw what had happened.

  At first sight none of it seemed real. The village was gone, its place taken by half a dozen still-smoldering piles of refuse. In the heavy twilight haze of dust and smoke, some people were moving without discernible purpose. Others were clustered in small groups at the fringes of camp, huddled as though they were shivering against the cold. Few took notice of him, and those who did regarded him without expression. He could see a handful of ponies near the stream behind the village. Like the people, they were bunched together still seeking safety long after the danger had passed.

  The blackened piles of debris were larger than he first thought, and, coming near, he understood that it was corpses, most of them now burned to ash, that had fueled much of the dark column he had seen hours before. Now there was nothing left but shards of bone, the tips of lodge poles, a cook pot or two, and the lingering heat of the recent conflagration. Only then did Smiles A Lot fully realize that the village and the people in it had been annihilated.

  He straightened on his pony to survey the survivors again and was struck this time at the paucity of men. Everywhere he looked he saw the bedraggled forms of women and children. The fired corpses were in the main unrecognizable, but the few he had seen which still resembled people were definitely women or children. Unable to believe that men had not been killed, he scanned the survivors again, more carefully this time.

  One of the forlorn groups of women was sitting in a loose circle and now he noticed a prostrate form, lying facedown. He rode closer and discovered the Owl Prophet family. The form at the center of their circle lay with arms and legs spread wide. The nose of its face was pressed squarely into the earth. It was Owl Prophet.

  “Is he dead?" Smiles A Lot asked calmly.

  Bird Woman turned her gaze to her husband and watched him awhile before looking once again at Smiles A Lot.

  “He's meditating.”

  “What happened?” Smiles A Lot demanded. “Where are the men?”

  “They were gone.”

  “Are any men here?”

  Bird Woman glanced around aimlessly.

  “Ten Bears is here . . . I don't know where. He's alive.”

  It was now too dark to see and Smiles A Lot rode about calling out the old man's name. A stirring in one of the shadowy groups drew his attention and a girl's mournful voice sent the word here through the stillness.

  Ten Bears was still being helped to his feet as Smiles A Lot slid off his pony.

  “What has happened?” he gasped.

  “White rangers,” Ten Bears replied. The old man was lucid as always, but he seemed winded, as if her were recovering from a blow to the stomach.

  “Where are the men?”

  “There were very few here. I was out of camp. And Owl Prophet.”

  “How many people are dead?”

  “Maybe half. I don't know how more did not die.”

  At this Ten Bears visibly winced and Smiles A Lot leaned toward him.

  “Do you have a wound?”

  “No,” answered Ten Bears and he stared suddenly into his questioner's eyes with a look so pitiful that Smiles A Lot felt a startling, unfamiliar impulse to cry.

  “Where did they go, the men?” Smiles A Lot asked.

  “Kicking Bird took some people north to the Kiowa. There are white soldiers up there.”

  “Yes, I saw them.”

  “Wind In His Hair has a large party in the east, looking for scalps. Dances With Wolves is hunting in the west. . . . Do you have any food? Everyone is hungry.”

  “It isn't much,” said Smiles A Lot, turning back to his pony. “I'll give you what I have.”

  He pulled his little bag of jerked meat off the pony and, lifting the flap, offered its contents to Ten Bears. As the old man's hand disappeared into the bag other hands reached out of the darkness to join it and Smiles A Lot noticed that one of them belonged to Hunting For Something.

  It had been a long time since he had turned his thoughts to her but the realization that she had survived threw open the door to his heart. The old feelings that rushed in were as intense as before, yet strangely different.

  He still thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. The shape of her lips, the way she carried herself, the slender frame, the timbre of her voice – all these attributes and many more had retained their full power. But he viewed her differently now. Perhaps it was his experience at Medicine Bluff or perhaps it was the sobering effect of catastrophe. Whatever the reason might have been, the fact that something had changed inside Smiles A Lot was indisputable. He felt straighter, taller, stronger, self-contained, and at peace. The fat of his emotion had been miraculously pared away, and, if anything, he loved and admired her more deeply than before. However, this was no time to be lovesick.

  “Are my mother and father here?” he asked Ten Bears.

  The old man swallowed what he was chewing. “I think they are dead,” he said.

  Smiles A Lot didn't gasp or cry. Ten Bears had confirmed what he already sensed, and though his heart sank with the knowledge that they were gone, loss was a part of life that every Comanche understood. As he stood over the crouching survivors, the sole sign of grief Smiles A Lot displayed was silence.

  A small voice, made tinier by the stillness, spoke up.

  “I'm here, brother.”

  The voice belonged to Rabbit, the youngest of his brothers and sisters. Smiles A Lot bent at the waist and peered forward.

  “Rabbit . . . where are you?”

  A little hand reached out of the darkness and Smiles A Lot took it. He dropped to one knee and placed a hand on each of Rabbit's this shoulders.

  “How did you get away?”

  “I hid in the grass like a coyote,” Rabbit said proudly. “The took Stands With A Fist. I saw the,. They took that little girl, Stays Quiet, too.”

  “But they didn't take you.”

  “No, they couldn't see me. I disappeared.”

  Smiles A Lot cupped a hand behind the boy's head and pulled his brother's cheek to his own.

  “You did well, little brother.”

  “Can I stay with you?”

  “Yes,” Smiles A Lot answered, “you stay with me.”

  Settling his other knee on the ground, he turned his attention back to Ten Bears.

  “We should get away from here, Grandfather.”

  “Yes,” the old man agreed, “everyone will be
safe in the west. The canyons will hide us. But you will have to be the leader, Smiles A Lot. We have only you to help us.”

  The boy who was good with horses spent the rest of a long night walking the killing ground, making a head count of the survivors, and found that remnants of almost every family survived.

  Three women and two children had serious wounds, but Owl Prophet was still prone and likely would have remained there had Smiles A Lot not resorted to dousing him with a pot of cold water. The medicine man did what he could for the wounded but one of the women and one of the children passed into the shadow world before dawn.

  When the sun finally came up Smiles A Lot forged what was left of the village into a force for action. Rabbit and the other boys were split into two groups: one to catch the remaining horses, the other to scour the surrounding prairie for small game. Rabbit's group succeeded in gathering seventeen horses and the other boys returned with six guinea fowl and almost a dozen wild hares, enough to give everyone in camp a few mouthfuls of food.

  At the same time, Smiles A Lot put Hunting For Something in charge of her surviving peers and the girls scavenged the ruined camp for anything that could be salvaged to use on the trek west. The girls were successful, retrieving much useful material for the trip.

  The rangers had not been as thorough as first appeared, and by noon Hunting For Something and her friends had collected almost twenty good lodge poles, a large pile of cooking utensils, enough buffalo hide to stitch together two lodges, and even a few weapons, including two working rifles that had somehow escaped attention.

  By mid-afternoon the horses were loaded with what had been gleaned from the camp's ashes, several travois had been constructed for Ten Bears and the wounded, and they were ready to march out. Everyone was relieved to get away from the scene of so much pain.

  Ten Bears lay on one side, rocking atop his movable bed, his gray head propped on an elbow. His chance escape from the hands of the rangers had already ceased to prey on his mind, and the ugliness of butchery and burning which resulted in the destruction of his community was beginning to recede. What would be referred to in the future as The Place Where The Rangers Burned Hearts was no longer a part of the present. Distance had diminished its impact enough to be guided toward memory as the long dark line on the horizon which marked the beginning of the canyonlands was sighted.

  The simple act of moving had given purpose to people who had lost everything. Curiously, Ten Bears himself felt a welcome surge of renewal as he sat up on the travois to greet the coming twilight.

  A beautiful day, this day, he thought to himself. How could it be so ugly? Nothing can be explained, old, worn-out man.

  Better stop thinking like that, he admonished. Listen to your lungs. Hear them? What if your eyes are filling with night? What if your ears are getting smaller? Listen to those lungs! No rasping, no wheezing. They are working. Old or not, the Mystery wants you to live. Rejoice in that.

  Deciding to give thanks for the good coming out of the bad, Ten Bears drew out his pipe and packed it before he realized that he had no way to light it on the bumpy travois. He held the pipe anyway, thinking, What does it matter whether or not my words travel to the Mystery on smoke? This is a special time. My heart is true. The things I'm thinking will get where they need to go.

  He craned his head for a look at the women and children spread around him.

  These are all good people, he thought. They know how to live when life is hard. They don't give up. Hunting For Something is up ahead somewhere, trying to find Dances With Wolves' trail. I'm glad that boy went with her, that Rabbit. He's tough like sinew. A very useful boy.

  For a moment he thought he saw movement up ahead and hoped it was Hunting For Something coming back. But his old eyes were betraying him again. No one nearby showed any sign they had seen anything and Ten Bears reclined to face the sky, resolved that his granddaughter would come back when she would come back. No one could manipulate fate.

  The clouds were laid out like bands of smoke against the deepening purple of nightfall and Ten Bears briefly wondered if he might be looking at the residue of the boiling pillars of black he and Hunting For Something had watched the day before from their hiding place in a stand of willows. Weary of heartache, he consciously turned his thoughts to the more pleasant subject of his only surviving grandchild's attributes. He was the only family she had now but it made him glad to think of her determination and bravery in the face of having lost her father, mother, brothers, and sisters.

  She doesn't complain, he thought, she doesn't think of herself. She insisted on scouting the trail ahead. I don't doubt she'll pick up Dances With Wolves' tracks. She can do all of a woman's work and sit tall on her pony, too. The girl looks to be a warrior, she carries herself straight up and down. Now she's doing a warrior's work. She's just what a Comanche woman should be. She can do anything. And she's a good-looking girl, too. Any young man who puts his eye on her bad better be a good one.

  Ten Bears looked over his nose at the last light in the east and thought of Smiles A Lot. Here, too, was something to make his heart glad in the midst of dejection.

  A young man all by himself, thought Ten Bears, traveling into hostile country on an urgent mission. That boy has changed overnight. No one thought he could do anything. I didn't think so. But here we are, getting safer every mile because a boy who couldn't do anything stood up and took charge. How could I have been so wrong about him? I didn't give him credit because I couldn't see. I didn't hear his blood because I didn't bother to listen.

  "Nobody knows anything,” the old man muttered out loud. He allowed himself a self-deprecating chuckle and gazed back down the trail again.

  Why am I surprised at the strength of these two? he thought, shaking his head. Comanches are strong. Comanches can get through anything. The proof is in our children. That Smiles A Lot – he's proof. He'll find Wind In His Hair and the other men and bring them back to us. The boy has everything. All he really needs is a wife. Hunting For Something . . . Hunting For Something and Smiles A Lot. Could there be a more perfect match? Oh, what do you know anyway, old man? You don't know if they like each other. Stay out of it. Why are you dreaming like this? Well, anyway, I hope he doesn't get killed. I don't care what anyone thinks or says. I don't care if it's not my business. I can think what I want to think, and I think they would be a couple to make people proud!

  Chapter XVIII

  The Kiowa country was not as mysterious as that of the Comanches. Nothing equaled the drama of Comanche grasslands flat as the sky. Or plunging canyons that stretched into labyrinths on a scale so great as to be capable of containing entire civilizations. There were waterways of every length and breadth, from rivers that men routinely risked their lives in crossing to tiny hidden springs in terrain where the presence of water seemed inconceivable.

  Still, Kiowa country was magnificent, blessed with water of every miraculous form, oceans of rolling grassland,, and a sense of self-containment not usually found in other worlds. Like its southern neighbor, the Kiowa country, by virtue of its size and variety, could have qualified as a continent.

  Kicking Bird always felt as easy as if he were at home when passing through Kiowa land, especially on this trip at the head of a large delegation.

  That the Kiowa seemed to hold him in greater esteem than his own people was a poignant irony. To be sure, there was variety of opinion among the Kiowa, too, but in comparison to the Comanches they were far more worldly. Their contact with the whites in recent years had been much greater than that of their powerful yet isolated allies to the south. And not all of it had been bad.

  White scalps hung in the lodges of many Kiowa warriors, and there were many Kiowa women who no longer spoke the names of fathers, husbands, and brothers, men who had been sent on the long journey across the Milky Way by white bullets. But the Kiowa had traded with whites. They had attended big councils where they talked with hair-mouthed men called commissioners. Kiowa warrior
s had taken the hands of white soldiers whom they had already met in running fights or would meet in the future.

  None of them cared much for the plentiful white-skinned people from the east whose behavior was so perplexing, but at least the Kiowa knew something of them – no one more than Touch The Clouds, who had attended almost every plains meeting the whites had asked for and had fought with distinction through every conflict. It was the village of this warrior, made legendary by his extraordinary height, that Kicking Bird sought.

  On reaching the camp of Touch The Clouds, Kicking Bird and his delegation settled in as honored guests. The Kiowa insisted they pitch their lodges in an enviable spot adjacent to their own community with easy access to water, fuel, and forage. At once the Comanches were treated to the predictable orgy of visits and feasting. Interspersed with gorging and talking were rounds of horse racing – dominated, as usual, by the Comanches – gambling games that floated from lodge to lodge, and, because a large herd of buffalo had recently appeared just north of camp, daily hunting trips that kept the village supplied with fresh meat.

  Yet amid this seemingly constant swirl of activity, Kicking Bird remained focused on the reason for the visit. Room had been made for his lodges in the center of the village, a few steps from Touch The Clouds' home, affording the two warriors the opportunity to conduct their meetings with neighborly ease.

  Both men took full advantage, and through the first two days of Kicking Bird's stay, they were rarely seen but in each other's company. At any hour of the night or day they might be found talking over pressing matters of the moment with prominent warriors of both tribes.

  The subject of the whites was never tabled for long and Kicking Bird quickly found that the sentiments of the Kiowa closely mirrored those of his own people. Some, like himself and Touch The Clouds, were open to more contact, while others were staunchly opposed.