The Holy Road

by Michael Blake

  "Don't take the whole village."

  "No, Grandfather, I won't do that.”

  Ten Bears watched him walk away. Long after his form had blurred and disappeared, the old man was still thinking about Wind In His Hair.

  He thought about him so hard that Ten Bears, eyes began to run. He bent his head and, as his tears wet the dust next to his feet, he realized that he was mourning. Wind In His Hair would be killed, and his passing would take the strongest, most beautiful bloom of Comanche warriorhood. After Wind In His Hair, there would be no more.

  A few hours later Ten Bears was lying on his side, watching the afternoon shadows begin their long crawl through his open door when a pair of legs came into view at the lodge entrance and Dances With Wolves' voice floated inside.

  "Grandfather? Are you in there?"

  Pushing himself up to a sitting position, Ten Bears answered, “Yes, yes. Come in, Dances With Wolves.”

  The tall warrior ducked through the flap, followed by his two children, and for a moment they all stood awkwardly.

  "Sit down in my home," Ten Bears urged. Dances With Wolves said nothing to his boy and girl but indicated the ground with the flat of his hand and the three sat, the children just behind their father.

  "Do you have any tobacco?" Ten Bears asked. “Mine is almost gone. It seems everyone is coming to see me today.”

  "Of course, Grandfather, we can smoke my pipe.” Dances With Wolves slipped his pipe out of its beaded case and went about the business of loading it. In those few moments, Ten Bears had an opportunity to study his face and felt profound concern at what it told him.

  The whites of his eyes were stained red. The face was creased with lines and the lips gave the impression that they might be permanently pursed. His hair was unkempt, his face unwashed, and his fingers quivered as if seized with palsy as he pushed tobacco into the pipe's bowl.

  When it was filled, he passed it respectfully to Ten Bears, who lit it with a brand from the small fire he had built.

  “You've got two good children there," Ten Bears remarked, passing the pipe back across the fire.

  “Yes," Dances With Wolves agreed, "I'm lucky to have them'"

  The children stared mutely at their crossed legs. Dances With Wolves did not speak anymore and Ten Bears felt an unexpected shudder of pity for the sad trio.

  "Do you sleep?" he asked Dances With Wolves.

  The question seemed to stir the warrior's lethargy. He stared across the fire as if he had never heard such a question.

  "I don't know," he replied. "Awake, asleep . . . it's hard to know the difference."

  He gazed, trancelike, at Ten Bears and for a moment the headman thought Dances With Wolves' face was going to break apart.

  “'Oh, Grandfather . . ." he gasped, closing his eyes and letting his head fall until his chin touched his chest.

  “Snake In Hands . . . Always Walking," Ten Bears called in little more than a whisper. The children looked up. "You know that boy Rabbit, Smiles A Lot's little brother?"

  Snake In Hands nodded and his sister followed suit.

  "He's lonely for friends these days. He lives just across there. Why don't you go over and see if he's home?"

  Both children looked to their father. He hadn't moved.

  "Go ahead," Ten Bears prodded gently, "have some fun."

  Hesitantly the children began to rise.

  "Go ahead," Ten Bears encouraged. "Go."

  They turned and went out and Ten Bears looked once again at the downcast warrior with the closed eyes sitting across from him.

  Dances With Wolves still had not moved and it occurred to Ten Bears that the way he held himself, so still and defeated, told the full story of his suffering. He reached across the fire and laid a leathery hand on the pair hanging limply in his visitor's lap.

  "Dances With Wolves," he whispered.

  Dances With Wolves slowly lifted his head and stared dully at Ten Bears.

  "I'm glad you came to see me," the old man smiled. “What is in your heart?"

  "I am only waiting."

  "Waiting for what?"

  "I am waiting for Wind In His Hair to make his war on the whites. I will ride with him."

  "Hmmm," the old man grunted.

  "Then I will keep riding," Dances With Wolves intoned.

  "What do you mean?" Ten Bears was suddenly puzzled.

  "I mean to get my family back."

  "But that is not possible."

  The simple act of talking seemed to refresh Dances With Wolves. Color was returning to his face and little explosions of light shone in his eyes as he spoke.

  "I alone can move among the whites and not be seen.”

  "But you are a Comanche."

  A small, sly smile spread across Dances With Wolves' lips.

  "That is true," he said, "but the color of my skin has not changed.”

  Ten Bears' face tightened in concentration. He had never heard such a wild idea.

  "But how will you talk? How will you eat?" He looked Dances With Wolves up and down. "You cannot look as you do now.”

  "I won't look like this."

  Ten Bears dropped his gaze to the flickering fire. That men could turn into animals or animals to men was not unheard of, but such a thing as Dances With Wolves spoke of now – this he could not imagine. To think that a Comanche could turn into a white person was beyond him.

  The children suddenly burst through the door. Rabbit was with them.

  "Father," Snake In Hands started breathlessly, “Rabbit knows where to find snakes near the stream – lots of snakes. He wants to show me.”

  "Go then," Dances With Wolves said. "Take your sister.”

  Snake In Hands pushed Rabbit and Always Walking through the door and they hurried off to the stream, shouts of excitement fading in their wake.

  “Have you spoken to your children of this? " Ten Bears asked.

  “No."

  "What will you do with them?"

  "They will stay in camp."

  Ten Bears shook his head.

  "I always thought that one parent is better than none," he said.

  "There will be two when I return. That is the best."

  "I cannot see how that can happen," Ten Bears said stubbornly. “All I can see is two Comanche children with neither mother nor father.”

  “But, Grandfather . . ." Dances With Wolves leaned forward a little, with more life in his voice and eyes than Ten Bears had seen since the ranger attack. “They are alive. If they were dead we would continue. They are not dead, but speaking their names only brings sorrow. No one can live like that. I know the whites. I can do this thing. I can get her back. I can get Stays Quiet back. Maybe I will die, but we cannot live as we are living now."

  Again the sly smile flitted across Dances With Wolves' face. "Maybe I will succeed, Grandfather . . . maybe we will all be together again.”

  For a moment Dances With Wolves looked like a mischievous boy and Ten Bears chuckled at his audacity.

  "Maybe you will,” the old man said, "maybe you will. Who am I to say you won't? I am not the Mystery."

  Chapter XXII

  When Kicking Bird departed, taking the staunchest advocates for peace with him, Wind In His Hair's war agenda, having nothing to blunt it, became the single topic of discussion in Ten Bears, village. As always there was debate, but the open, free-flowing talk of war with the whites seemed to invigorate everyone's spirits.

  Talk alone, however, was not enough to pull people out of the stagnancy they had become accustomed to. A spark of ignition – some sign or event that would set off the frenzy necessary to take the war trail – was missing. There was nothing inside a village laden with grief to provide combustion, and the likeliest possibility for such impetus lay to the north. That was where White Bear would be coming from. But a week after Kicking Bird had gone, there was still no sign of them and war talk began to flag.

  Wind In His Hai
r grew more and more frustrated. Though most warriors agreed that a war must be made, the majority had assiduously avoided the kind of blazing commitment that would galvanize the village, and seeing that his zeal alone would not be sufficient to move men out of their lodges, Wind In His Hair curtailed his advocacy of war. If he kept on and the talk did not boil into action, the idea of war would never amount to anything more and his standing would plummet.

  The great warrior seemed to become more sullen with each day the Kiowa did not turn up. His conversations were curt and acerbic, and instead of spending his evenings calling on fellow warriors, he withdrew to his lodge. There he chewed bitterly on his fading prospects, wondering if the Mystery was abandoning the Comanche. It had been almost a moon since he had sent his runners north, and Wind In His Hair began to think that if he had stayed in the becalmed camp much longer his smoldering frustration might catch fire and consume him.

  On a day when his restlessness was near the breaking point a runner appeared with the exciting news that the Kiowa were coming. A powerful line of horsemen from the north were sighted that afternoon, and an hour later the Comanche band that had suffered so terribly was in a delirium as nearly eighty solemn Kiowa fighters, led by the formidable White Bear, entered the village.

  The heavily armed warriors were painted, many of them from head to toe, in the brilliant reds and blacks of war. Their ponies were decorated with symbols of hail and lightning and, as Ten Bears' people swarmed around the procession that snaked its way through the village, the Kiowa maintained the bellicose expressions of men determined to meet and vanquish any enemy.

  For the remainder of that day and long into the night, fear and doubt were suspended as the village recalled the unchallenged supremacy they had enjoyed for generations. A huge group of women and children, carrying all that was needed for a temporary camp, had traveled in the van of the great procession, and a large Kiowa camp was erected adjacent to that of Ten Bears'.

  Feasting and visiting were conducted almost as an afterthought as the combined camps exulted in a feverish daydream of a war against the whites that would bring honor to individuals and retribution for a whole people – a blow delivered straight to the heart that would send the enemy reeling, wounding him so vitally that all thought of further incursion would be forgotten.

  Women worked with revitalized spirit as they made sure their men would lack nothing when they went into battle. Gangs of children staged mock battles all over the outlying prairie, and cells of warriors met constantly to trumpet their worthiness and compare strategic experience in fighting whites.

  Toward twilight, women and children put finishing touches on the huge fire that would blaze in the center of the village while the war party's leaders, Wind In His Hair, White Bear, and a dozen others including Dances With Wolves, paid a visit to Owl Prophet.

  The prophet handed out pinches of mole dirt to each man, instructing them to sprinkle the grains of freshly excavated earth over the withers of their ponies before engaging the enemy. Then he had them wait outside his lodge while he consulted with the Mystery.

  Silhouettes of owl and man glowed behind the skin of the medicine man's tent and a long, indecipherable conversation commenced. Though they understood nothing, the warriors hung on every word until at last, in a cacophony of unearthly screeching, the outlines of man and bird fell out of view.

  A few moments later, Owl Prophet emerged to give a short, exhausted account that told the warriors what had transpired.

  "You will meet two forces of white men. The first you must let pass. Attack only the second. Attack the first and disaster will befall you. Attack the second and you will kill many whites. Attack the second and you shall have victory."

  A chorus of unruly cheers erupted and, as Owl Prophet stumbled back into his lodge, the excited leaders hurried back to their homes to prepare for the great dance of bravado that was to begin shortly.

  As darkness fell, the populace watched Ten Bears pause in silent prayer before applying a glowing faggot to the tinder at the edge of the great fire. At the same moment, as flames licked upward and sparks spewed into the blackness of the night sky, four Kiowa musicians sitting cross-legged around a drum began to beat out an ominous cadence that reverberated through the village like approaching thunder. The deliberate cadence grew stronger and stronger, its insistent pulse gradually insinuating itself into the bloodstreams of the waiting warriors.

  Hears The Sunrise and a young Kiowa named Trotting Wolf, unable to resist the power of the drum, entered the empty circle first. The men alternated from one leg to another, lifting and dropping their feet in perfect unison with each ringing vibration of the echoing drum.

  Many other warriors stepped methodically into the circle and it was soon crowded with dancers moving as one body to the irresistible, repetitive beat.

  Imperceptibly, the rhythm picked up speed, gradually animating the dancers and driving some of them to utter spontaneous cries which seemed to spill not from their mouths but from hidden recesses of their viscera.

  At a signal not so much seen as felt, the Kiowa drummers suddenly ceased and a waiting Comanche cadre took over, the new arms and hands and hearts seamlessly lifting the concussive rhapsody to new heights. Several drum groups had assembled and as one flowed into another, the furious climax of the last was carried to new heights by the next.

  The dancers followed as the drummers led them unerringly toward a sublime oblivion where no pretense is brooked in the abandonment of self. Warriors transformed themselves into namesake animals. They unsheathed their knives and raised their lances and strung their bows and stalked the enemy. Always in time to the drum, they lifted war clubs and smote the enemy. They slashed and scalped and pierced him over and over and over with the points of their spears. All the while their battle cries grew louder and sharper as each warrior played out his destiny in what was more a dress rehearsal for war than a dance.

  At unscripted intervals the drums would suddenly fall back to the single grave beat that had marked the beginning. Then the cycle was repeated, again and again.

  After several hours, a few warriors began to withdraw. Others collapsed and were dragged, senseless, from the circle by their relatives. The majority danced on, stretching the limits of their stamina to unknown realms, surrendering every measure of energy they possessed in hope of achieving an unconquerable purity of purpose.

  The stars were beginning to fade when the outpouring reached its climax. Comanche and Kiowa drummers, ignorant of fatigue, had mingled, feeding off the competitive power in limbs whose muscles were driven by indomitable will. Guided by like forces, the dancers had become a turbulent sea of gyrating bodies whose voices ruled the night with a tumult of howls and moans and cries and shrieks flying heavenward in a single, thunderous, rolling roar.

  High-pitched trills of encouragement from the swaying women massed in a huge circle around the warriors joined the gigantic eruption of sound and motion that fused each heart and mind, creating a force free of earthbound constraints, a force straining with all its spiritual might to coalesce with the supreme power of creation.

  Chapter XXIII

  Smiles A Lot was a member of the great congregation dancing around the fire that night.

  No one had questioned his joining the warrior ranks, an action that, considering his lack of standing, would have been unthinkable in the past. But times were different now. Very young boys like Snake In Hands had gone among the warriors. Every soul was more precious than ever and every soul was welcome.

  It had taken courage for Smiles A Lot to move his feet forward to the call of the drums, but once he was in the circle his steps grew stronger with each one taken, and by the time the first round of dancing reached its climax, his body, fixed in the grip of music and fire and the blackness of night, was moving without thought.

  Smiles A Lot had been one of the exhilarated warriors left inside the circle when the drums finally ceased. He had danced for hours, but his b
ody had crossed the narrow threshold that normally separates exhaustion from renewal. Far from being tired, Smiles A Lot felt positively airy. His feet were light, his blood flowed unimpeded, and his head was clear as a cloudless day. It was natural that such rapture would guide his gaze to the face in the surrounding circle which brought him incalculable joy, and a few moments after the drums ceased he looked in that direction.

  She had been watching all night and when she saw him look her way she flashed the shy, closemouthed smile that had marked the start of his lovesickness. Yet in a subtle way the smile was different. Its shyness was newly tinged with a familiarity that made it knowing, and the effect on him was more entrancing than ever.

  Smiles A Lot and Hunting For Something had touched but only in the accidental way people living under the same roof often do. They had not slept together or embraced or nuzzled, or even held each other's hands. They had talked of many things, but only obliquely about their feelings for one another. To surmise, however, that theirs was a union of convenience would have been wrong. No young couple was ever happier than Smiles A Lot and Hunting For Something. That they had not touched was of no importance, for reality had supplanted their mutual, despairing dreams of being together with a magnificent new dream, a dream that floated them through each day and laid them down each night in an inconceivably effortless way. Night was the most difficult part of existence because thoughts of each other circled so furiously in their heads that both shuddered at the thought of making a physical overture.

  But while she watched him dance, a curious feeling crept over Hunting For Something. She wasn't sure what it might mean, but the sensation was intoxicating. All she knew for sure was that she had never imagined that such a feeling of pride could exist within her for a man. He had danced until the end, but long before that he had begun to attract attention for the compelling way in which he moved. He was so committed and animated in his actions that he had danced all night on the narrow edge of disaster. But he had never gone over, and to Hunting For Something he distinguished himself as one of the few who abandoned themselves to the dance with the relentless, unstoppable bravery a true warrior exhibits in battle.