Beauty for Ashes

by Win Blevins

  The others looked at each other. “All right,” said Sam.

  “She is special horse, champion for Sam. Her name is Paladin.”

  The others checked each other with their eyes. “That’s good,” said Sam.

  “But Save Your Ass would have been more fun,” said Beckwourth.

  SO IN A March twilight, while the people were at their cook fires, Bell Rock sent Sam and the village crier around the circle of lodges. “This young man has a new name,” called the crier. “His name is Joins with Buffalo, which in his language is ‘Samalo.’ The crier boomed out the words “Joins with Buffalo” like a flourish of trumpets.

  Sam walked behind the crier slowly, ceremoniously. Coy traipsed behind. He looked hangdog, but he went everywhere Sam went.

  “This young man has a new name,” boomed the crier over and over. “He killed a buffalo cow and gave it to the elderly, who have great need. He is given the name Samalo, which in his language means, Joins with Buffalo.”

  Meadowlark and Blue Medicine Horse came out of their family’s tipi and stood at something like attention while Sam and the crier passed. Their parents, Little Bull, and Flat Dog all came out and stood next to Blue Horse and Meadowlark.

  Sam kept his eyes front. He felt like a fool, and at the same time giddy with pride.

  IT CAME TO him some time that very night, some time in the wee hours. It was not a cracked dream, nor was it a broth of lost blood and a thunked head. I can ask Meadowlark to marry me now. He was sure of it—a man who had won a name could.

  He pulled Coy close to his chest and belly. They liked to sleep cuddled up.

  And when Sam woke the next morning, in an empty tipi and under a gray sky, he was still sure he could.

  His neighbors said the other beaver men had let him sleep while they went to bring the meat back. They were worried about his injuries.

  I will do it today.

  He ate. He rested. He shook his head to see if anything felt loose. He fed the mare some cottonwood bark by hand, rubbed her muzzle, and called her repeatedly by her new name. “Paladin, want some bark? Paladin, you’re a good woman. You saved my ass.” He also laid his plans.

  That night he caught a break. Since Red Roan and the meat party weren’t back, Sam was the only man courting Meadowlark.

  After a gray day the sunset wiped the sky clear. The night was so crystalline it felt brittle. When Meadowlark came out, Sam opened his blanket and wrapped her into it with him snugly. She smiled at him like he was special. Coy rubbed against both their legs and lay down. Sam looked up into the dark sky and pretended to count a thousand of the million-million stars. On moonless nights in the high mountains many, many more stars glittered against the darkness, four or five times as many as you ever saw in Pennsylvania.

  He had to do it right away. He sucked a great, cold breath in. “Meadowlark, will…?”

  It wasn’t right. He took both her hands in his. Still wasn’t right. He turned Meadowlark away from Coy and got down on one knee. She giggled at this, but he said it was the way of his people, and she put on a straight face. It struck him that she knew what he was about to do.

  “Will you marry me, Meadowlark?” The actual Crow words were “share a lodge with me,” but Sam knew what he wanted to say.

  She pulled him up by the hands, raised him until she could look upwards into his eyes. “I want to share a lodge with you,” she said. More stars shone in her eyes than in the spangled sky.

  He heard a dreaded “but…” in her voice. He waited.

  “You will have to ask my brothers for me.”

  Blue Medicine Horse and Flat Dog, maybe Little Bull too. This will be a cinch.

  He stood up. He lifted her chin and kissed her. The kiss was so long, Sam was surprised the sky was still moonless when it ended. Then he told himself, well, maybe one whole moon passed during the kiss.

  “Every day now, will you teach me English?”

  They kissed a lot more, rehearsing the good times to come.

  Much later, when she saw Red Roan coming, Meadowlark slipped out of Sam’s blanket and back into her tipi. Then she stuck her head back out the door and gave him the shiniest smile he’d ever seen.

  Sam’s blood fizzed with happiness.

  “EIGHT HORSES,” SAID Blue Medicine Horse.

  “Eight horses,” echoed Flat Dog. Whatever Flat Dog said always sounded like a joke, somehow.

  “Eight horses?” Sam said slowly. As a gift for the bride’s family, it was out of line. A chief’s daughter wouldn’t bring such a price.

  Sam ran his eyes from brother to brother. As though to answer his skepticism, Flat Dog repeated, “Eight horses.” Blue Horse sounded uncertain, maybe embarrassed, but Flat Dog was definite. Sam eyed him and got nothing back.

  The Crow custom was that a young man seeking a girl’s hand made a gift to her brothers, or sometimes to her father. Sam was expecting such a request, but…

  I want to take Meadowlark with me on the spring hunt.

  “There’s no way I can get eight horses until summer.”

  The brothers nodded, as much as to say, “We know.”

  So maybe your parents are putting me off, he thought. But why?

  Maybe Gray Hawk and Needle are pushing her into Red Roan’s arms.

  Maybe she got carried away in the moment and has changed…. He put a stop to that line of thought.

  “I leave in a quarter moon.”

  They nodded.

  Everyone could see and feel the weather changing. Ice was off the river now. South-facing hillsides were clear of snow. Nights were less bitter. For the Crows this meant the coming of the sign that marked the change: thunder would soon be heard in the mountains. That would put an end to the season of storytelling, winter, and bring on the season of hunting and fighting. The village would join with other Crow villages for the spring buffalo hunt. Young men would gather into warrior clubs and plan what raids they would make against their enemies, Shoshone in the west, Blackfeet on the north, and in the east their most bitter foes, the Sioux, the ones they called Head Cutters.

  For the beaver men, it meant the spring trapping season was at hand. Sam, Gideon, Beckwourth, and Third Wing would leave in a quarter moon for the Siskadee, to join their brethren.

  Sam looked at the brothers, stupefied.

  “Tell him.” This was Flat Dog.

  “We want to go with you,” said Blue Horse.

  “What?”

  “We want to go with you,” repeated Flat Dog.

  “Trapping,” said Blue Horse.

  “With the white men,” said Flat Dog.

  Sam felt more stupefied, or maybe stupid.

  “On the way back to the village,” said Blue Horse, “we will get your eight horses and a lot more.”

  “If you take us,” said Flat Dog, “you get your eight horses. If not…”

  Cornered.

  Sam grinned.

  THAT NIGHT HIS friends’ attitude around the center fire of the lodge was clear enough.

  “Why not?” said Gideon, in a Gallic, it-makes-no-difference to me tone.

  “Six men are safer than four,” said Third Wing, ever the protective one.

  “Think they’ll still call us the white men?” asked Beckwourth.

  They looked at each other. Beckwourth, a mulatto. Gideon, a French-Canadian Jew. Third Wing, a Pawnee. Sam, the only white.

  And they were thinking of adding two Crows to the party.

  “I’m losing track of white,” said Sam.

  In his buffalo robes through the night, Sam pondered on all of it. He didn’t know. But he had to get the eight horses for Meadowlark.

  “FRIEND.”

  This was Blue Horse, with Bell Rock and Flat Dog right behind him, squatting at the open door of the tipi.

  Sam drained his coffee. Gideon, Beckwourth, and Third Wing were already out and about. Sam was lingering over the last of the coffee—he’d grown fond of the sweetness.

  “Welcome.”

&n
bsp; “We have an invitation for you.”

  They came in and sat.

  Sam waited.

  “Would you like to be a Kit Fox?”

  Sam really didn’t know what the Kit Fox club was all about, or the other two main men’s clubs, Knobby Sticks and Muddy Hands. They acted as police for the village, and in warm weather made war parties. He did know that almost every Crow man was a member of one club or the other. If you want Meadowlark…

  “Yes, thank you. I am honored.”

  “Then you must spend today in the lodge,” said Bell Rock. Sam knew the club lodge well, an oversized one. “First we must teach you a song.”

  The words were simple, but the feeling behind them was big:

  iaxuxkekatū’e, bacbi’awak, cē’wak

  Bell Rock’s voice was passion, with strains of melancholy.

  “You dear Foxes, I want to die, so I say.”

  “It is the way of the Fox,” said Blue Medicine Horse. “We are made to die.”

  “Old age is an evil, bedeviled by many ills,” said Bell Rock, in the tone of a ritualistic statement. “A man is lucky to die in his youth.”

  Sam suppressed a smile. He suspected that this ideal was like chastity, honored more in word than deed.

  “Sing with us,” said Bell Rock.

  All four men lifted the song to the smoke hole and up to the sky.

  You dear Foxes, I want to die, so I say.

  The three Crows sang the words as though they were sacred. Sam did his best to bring conviction to them. He was willing to risk his life for his family, but he damn well didn’t intend to die. The words “I want to live” rolled over and over in his head, tumbling with “I want to die.”

  They sang the song, and sang it again, and again.

  At last Bell Rock was satisfied. “When you’re finished with Paladin come to the Kit Foxes lodge.”

  Sam led Paladin to water first thing every morning.

  “It’s a big day,” said Flat Dog. For once the joker seemed excited.

  Lots of men milled around outside the lodge. Blue Horse, Flat Dog, and Bell Rock came to Sam immediately. “You may come in,” said Bell Rock.

  And just like that, without ceremony, it was done. Sam’s mind teetered a little. Am I becoming a Crow?

  He corrected himself. When I marry Meadowlark, our children will be Crow. And white. Both. So I must be Crow and white.

  The inside of the lodge looked ordinary, but the men did not. Red Roan and others wore the gray or yellow-brown hides of kit foxes as capes. Younger men carried long staffs, either straight or hooked, wrapped full length in otter skins, and otter skins also hanging from the shafts as decorations. Some of them had painted their faces, one side red and the other yellow.

  “We’ll explain everything,” said Blue Horse. “For now just go with Flat Dog.”

  Instead of the usual seating pattern, a main circle around the fire pit with others seated behind, there were three clusters of men in the big lodge. Bell Rock went to one, Blue Horse to another, Flat Dog and Sam to the third.

  They sat with the youngest group of men. Several looked at Sam oddly. He was the one man in the lodge, he supposed, who hadn’t been born Crow.

  “Blue Horse sits with the Little Foxes. They’re second oldest. Bell Rock is a regular Kit Fox.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “That either means they’re too old, too lazy, or too smart to do the fighting. They pick us young guys for that.

  “We are the Naughty Ones,” Flat Dog went on. “We’re younger, and we’re not supposed to be able to think for ourselves.” He smiled slyly. “They actually assign older men to us to do the thinking. To humor them, sometimes we act like kids and play games. It’s fun. Until it turns serious.”

  Sam watched for a few minutes. Some of the older men were consulting. Aside from that, everyone just seemed to be gossiping. “No meetings all winter?”

  “The clubs get going in the spring.”

  “What’s the purpose of today’s meeting?”

  “To choose leaders. For the summer action.”

  As though Flat Dog’s words were a cue, two of the oldest men got up, carrying tobacco-filled pipes in their left hands. Some younger men joined them. These groups went to two young men of the Little Foxes, particularly good-looking fellows, each of them. An older man presented each of them a pipe. Each chosen man took the pipe and smoked it ritually, first offering smoke to the four directions.

  “Those two will be the leaders until cold weather comes again,” Flat Dog, “or as long as they live. In war they go first.” He sighed. “Luckily, neither of them refused the pipe.”

  Sam soon saw what this meant. Next two old men approached other young men with pipes. “They are asking these men to be the straight staff bearers.” Flat Dog nodded at a man carrying a straight staff, also wrapped in otter skins and about three feet long.

  Since one of the two was a Naughty One, Sam could hear what was said. The older man spun the pipe in a full circle and offered it to the young man.

  Instead of taking the pipe, the young man looked the older full in the face and said, “Please do not bring me this responsibility. I’m afraid I’m weak. I might flee.”

  “The bearer of a straight staff,” whispered Flat Dog, “is expected to plant it in the ground at the first sight of an enemy. Then, no matter what happens, he must make a stand there and not run away. If a fleeing friend pulls the staff up for him, then he may run. Otherwise he has to stay and fight.”

  The older bearer of the pipe then offered it to another young man.

  This man also declined the honor. But the pipe bearer did not take no for answer easily. He presented the pipe again and was again refused.

  Now a younger man began to harangue the honoree. “Smoke the pipe,” he urged. “You’re a brave man—smoke it.”

  “That’s his brother,” Flat Dog said softly.

  A third time the pipe was presented, and a third time refused.

  “You’re the right age to die,” the brother went on. “You’re handsome. All your friends will cry. Your family will mourn, they will fast, they’ll cut their hair. Everyone will remember your courage.”

  The pipe bearer offered the pipe the fourth time, holding the stem directly in front of the honoree’s mouth.

  “This is the last time they’ll ask,” Flat Dog said.

  The honoree looked at the pipe but didn’t take it.

  “He’s afraid to die,” said Flat Dog.

  Abruptly the brother reached out, pulled the young man’s head down and forward by his hair, and forced his lips to the stem.

  “Now he must smoke,” Flat Dog said.

  The young man smoked.

  “He thinks that if we encounter enemies,” Flat Dog said, “he is sure to die.”

  Another young man, one of the Little Foxes, had accepted the pipe and was smoking.

  “Ten altogether. Two who go in front,” said Flat Dog, “two straight staff bearers, two crooked staff bearers, two who come at the rear, and two who must be the bravest of all.”

  During the smoking, which took a lot of time, Flat Dog explained the duties of each of these club officers. The front and rear men weren’t marked by any special insignia, and their jobs were simply to lead and bring up the rear. The straight staff men had to sink their staffs into the ground the moment they spotted the enemy and make a stand there, not retreating. The crooked staff bearers had the same duty, except that they were allowed to run back a little before making their stands. “Those who are the bravest of all,” Flat Dog, “must throw their lives on the ground. Because of that, they get to pick their food first at any feast, and eat before others begin.”

  Sam knew that among the Crow, warriors got killed far less often than their stories suggested. Even one death was a cause for the whole village to mourn extravagantly. He itched to know the odds of survival of a season as a club leader, but dared not ask.

  Suddenly the pipe was put in front of Flat Dog. He looked up into the face of the p
ipe bearer, then quickly across at his brother. Blue Horse nodded.

  “I am a Kit Fox,” Flat Dog said in a tone of sincere recitation. “I want to die. But I must say no to this pipe for this season. Blue Horse and I plan to go with the white men on the beaver hunt.”

  A murmur swept through the Naughty Ones.

  The pipe was proffered a second time, a third, and a fourth. It seemed the bearer held no expectation of a positive answer. Each time Flat Dog said a quiet no.

  The Naughty Ones buzzed with the news, and many of them looked at Flat Dog and Blue Horse with surprise or amusement, admiration or disapproval.

  Flat Dog didn’t look at Sam.

  Sam didn’t know what to think.

  During the next couple of hours two or three young men did refuse the pipe successfully. As far as Sam could tell, this was no great shame.

  At last all ten leaders were chosen. Each of the staff bearers now carried a bare stick as a symbol of his leadership to come. The straight staffs were peeled poles of pine tapered to a point. The hooked staffs had the same body, with willow limbs tied to the top and curved.

  Finished choosing their leaders, all the Kit Foxes marched out of the lodge. First came the two who go in front, then the straight staff bearers, then the drummers. The rank and file, including Sam and Flat Dog, came next, then the most brave of all, the crooked staff bearers, and the rear ones.

  They paraded through the camp, singing several Kit Fox songs. People came out of their tipis to watch. The families of those chosen darted back into their tipis to fetch otter skins, or offered their neighbors something in trade for the skins.

  Flat Dog told Sam, “We can’t quit dancing until they come up with one whole skin to cover each staff.”

  After many songs had been sung, they sang the one Kit Fox song Sam knew—

  “You dear Foxes, I want to die, so I say.”

  He joined in enthusiastically, sending the words up to the sky over and over. He wasn’t sure what they meant, but he swooned into them, and in a certain way meant them.

  Then everyone went to their lodges. Blue Horse fell in with Sam and Flat Dog. “The men honored with staffs, at their parents’ lodges a man will come who has carried that staff in the past. He will sew the otter skin on. Then they will all come back out dressed in their best clothes. Kit Foxes who have done well with the staffs in the past, they’ll come up to these young bearers. Maybe they’ll take the staff and smoke with it. Then they’ll say something like, ‘When I carried this staff, I killed an enemy,’ or ‘When I carried this staff, I went straight through the line of the Head Cutters and they weren’t able to touch me,’ and wish the new bearer the same good fortune.” “Head Cutters”—that was the Crow name for the Lakotas, the ones the white men called the Sioux.