Arrow Keeper

by Judd Cole

  Some nights, the young Indians gambled on wrestling matches, wagering with the bright beads they prized so highly. Other times, they talked and told stories for hours, and because Matthew was understanding more and more of the language, he could listen and learn. Black Elk described famous tribal battles and heroes. He told of the Cheyenne’s desperate flight west when driven from their original homeland in Minnesota. At times, Black Elk told them, their people were forced to eat dead horses and dig in the sand for water.

  During these sessions, Black Elk would boast not only about destroying the Pawnee, but about how easily the Cheyenne would drive the white man out. Then Matthew would realize with great wonder that the Indians had no concept of the white man’s actual numbers back east.

  When meat ran low, the warriors in training did not bother to ride back to the main camp on the Tongue. Instead, Black Elk led them to a lush grassland between the forks of the creeks the whites called Little Piney and Big Piney. Close to the pine-clad slopes of the Bighorns, the hunting was excellent.

  Black Elk taught his charges how to attract game merely by tying a bright cloth to a stick. They lay beside it in the tall grass less than an hour before Matthew recognized the large jackass ears of a mule deer. The curious buck was moving steadily closer to investigate the cloth.

  After he shot the deer, Black Elk showed the young Cheyenne how to slit it open from throat to rump. He cut away all the choice parts, including the liver, loins, kidney fat, and upper parts of the hams. That night everyone except Matthew feasted. The leftover meat was hung high in a tree to protect it.

  Permitted only the stringy thigh meat, Matthew ate apart from the others as usual. His stomach rumbled at the smell of the sizzling loin steaks cooking in kidney fat. That night all he could think of besides hunger was his family and Kristen. His misery was complete.

  Quietly, unobserved by the others in the dark, Little Horse walked past Matthew’s robe as if on his way to make water beyond camp. But Matthew felt something land in his lap. He reached down and found a succulent chunk of loin. He ate it greedily. The next day, he tried to thank Little Horse, but the youth turned his face away before the others could see.

  Occasionally during their hunting trips, Black Elk would carve signs on the bark of trees that would direct hunters who came after them to hidden salt licks or streams where game was rich.

  While leaving the Bighorn hunting grounds, they spotted a Sioux hunting party on a nearby ridge. The Sioux raised their lances high overhead in greeting. Though the main body rode on, they sent a word-bringer riding down to meet their Cheyenne cousins.

  The Sioux wore a captured Bluecoat blouse, and his hair was braided and wrapped around his head. A message from any red brother was always an important thing, Black Elk assured his younger charges. Therefore the word-bringer was greeted warmly, fed, and given tobacco to fill his clay pipe. Only after he and Black Elk had smoked to the four directions did the Sioux messenger deliver his speech.

  First he presented Black Elk a chamois pouch filled with choice white man’s tobacco. Then he spoke in the curious mixture of Cheyenne and Sioux, which both tribes had come to understand.

  “A gift from Chief Spring Dance of the Lakota people. We have heard of the tragedy at Yellow Bear’s camp on the Powder. We have fasted for three sleeps, crying in our hearts for our red brothers.

  “During the Snowblind Moon, when death stalked the Lakota people like a hungry wolf, it was Yellow Bear’s Cheyenne who gave us pemmican. The enemy of the Cheyenne is the enemy of the Lakota, and we will raise our battle lances beside yours!”

  Such talk ignited approving fire in the eyes of Black Elk and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. It was Sioux bravery, after all, that had saved Yellow Bear’s village from total destruction. Despite the way he was being treated, Matthew too felt himself caught up in the tribe’s urgent need to punish their Pawnee attackers. For he knew he could never forget the sorrow and horror in Honey Eater’s eyes as she prepared her dead mother for the final journey.

  Sometimes, in rare moments by himself, Matthew actually forgot his misery briefly. It might happen early in the morning, when the grass was still wet with dew and the sun newly risen on the horizon. While the others slept, he would lead the dun in practice gallops. Then, riding freely, his face into the cool wind, it was easy to remember Arrow Keeper’s advice to rely less on talking and thinking and more on his other senses.

  Such moments, however, were few and far between. His sworn enemy Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was relentless in making his existence wretched. Though he feared the ferocious Black Elk, Matthew sensed it was Wolf Who Hunts Smiling he must fear most. The young hothead’s sharp-featured, wily face befitted his name. His eyes were as swift as minnows and missed nothing. He was large for his age and showed a brash, sometimes even reckless, courage of which Black Elk approved.

  Back at the Tongue River camp, Matthew had noticed how the blooded warriors showed a certain dignified restraint around the women and children. It was their way to keep their eyes straight ahead and appear uninterested in the proceedings around them. After all, they had trod the warpath. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling aped their mannerisms. He avoided the youths who were his own age and tagged after Black Elk and the other braves.

  Early one morning, Black Elk instructed his group in the important skill of throwing a tomahawk from horseback. Three times he rode past a cottonwood at full gallop. Each time he leaned far off his horse and sent the tomahawk flying with deadly accuracy. After his final throw, it took both Swift Canoe and his brother True Son together to pull the embedded tomahawk free of the rough bark.

  Then it was time for the others to try their skill. Little Horse rode first, barely missing on his first two passes, but hitting solidly on the third. Swift Canoe and True Son did nearly as well. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, however, sank the blade two inches into the wood on his first pass.

  “Now,” Black Elk said, “let us see how Woman Face would cut down a Pawnee!”

  His face flaming at the insulting name, Matthew accepted the tomahawk and wheeled his dun around. He paced off the approach as the others had, then turned his pony again. The others sat their horses twenty paces back from the cottonwood, watching him with cold scorn.

  Nervous sweat beaded in his unevenly cropped hair like crawling insects. Matthew nudged the spirited pony’s flanks with his heels. A moment later, he was flying at a full gallop, bearing down on the tree. He knew the throw was wrong even before he finished it. Not only did he miss the tree completely, but the tomahawk bounced sloppily off a second tree and ricocheted back across his path. Quicker than the blink of an eye, it struck his own pony in the right flank, cutting her.

  It was not a serious injury, but the awful significance of his blunder wiped the amused jeers off the faces of the others. Their hateful, mocking stares said clearly that a pony warrior who carelessly injured his own mount was beneath contempt—on a level with the stupid white men who would ruin a horse’s flanks with sharp-roweled spurs!

  That night, to punish him, Black Elk assigned Matthew to a double watch. Night sentries were always necessary because most Indians slept soundly—so soundly that, on important occasions such as nights before battle, they drank great amounts of water so their aching bladders would wake them early.

  As he stood his watch, Matthew hoped for no trouble, but that day’s humiliation was still not complete. A few sleeps earlier the young Cheyenne had encountered another group of Cheyenne from a camp on the Rosebud. Both groups had gambled on pony races, and Swift Canoe and True Son had won a calico shawl as a present for their mother Gentle Wind. That night, as Matthew knelt beside the fire to tend it, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling rose quietly behind him. A moment later, Matthew felt a light weight drape itself over his shoulders, and suddenly everyone in camp, except Little Horse, howled with derisive laughter.

  Matthew stood back up, his face flaming with shame as he pulled the shawl off and threw it down. Among the Cheyenne, there was no graver insult to manhood
than to dress a buck in woman’s clothing. Clearly the others considered him an unmanly coward.

  When the rest slept, Matthew could not fight back the hot tears of rage and loneliness and frustration that rolled down his cheeks. He would never be accepted—never! If only he had his own weapon he would kill himself and end his intolerable suffering.

  By the time the moon was sinking low in the sky, he was numb with exhaustion. His eyes burned from forcing them to stay open. But he knew if he fell asleep, he would not wake in time before Black Elk caught him. And falling asleep on sentry duty meant sure, slow, agonizing death.

  Suddenly a shape materialized out of the darkness. Then Little Horse was crouching close by, whispering in his ear.

  “Sleep now. I will wake you before Black Elk comes.”

  Grateful, Matthew tried to thank him. But Little Horse only turned his face away. In no time at all, the weary and thoroughly dejected Matthew fell into a sleep as deep and dreamless as death.

  Chapter Eleven

  Soon after Yellow Bear’s tribe moved to the Tongue River camp, a Cheyenne word-bringer arrived. He had been sent by Chief Catch the Hawk, whose clan circles were gathered near the Rosebud. Catch the Hawk’s people had learned that the surprise Pawnee raid was led by a renegade named War Thunder. War Thunder and his marauding braves had since split up into many smaller bands to avoid detection while waiting to launch their next raid.

  The Rosebud River Cheyenne knew these things because their hunters had encountered several isolated groups of Pawnee—all driving stolen Cheyenne ponies before them. They sent in spies who overheard the Pawnee’s campfire boasting.

  Matthew learned the news during his first brief return to the main camp. Black Elk’s band of warriors-in-training had returned to let their ponies graze and rest. Arrow Keeper eyed Matthew’s protruding ribs without comment. He and everyone in the camp knew full well what Black Elk and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling were putting the youth through. They had all noticed the glances exchanged by Honey Eater and Matthew—and the murderous jealousy in the eyes of Black Elk when he saw them. And though Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was young, he was strong, and his need to avenge his father’s death ran deep into his marrow.

  So old Arrow Keeper wisely held his silence. The boy was in a dangerous position and surrounded by enemies. Talk was no good to him. Only manly strength and courage to endure suffering would save him. If he was his father’s son, he would survive. If the warrior instincts had been lost to the white man’s ways, however, he didn’t stand the chance of a sick buffalo set upon by wolves.

  Either way, Arrow Keeper was powerless to affect the predetermined outcome of a medicine dream. Only time would tell him if the youth was truly the warrior of his vision at Medicine Lake— or if that were even a true vision. It might have been strong magic placed over his eyes by his enemies.

  Unable to bear Matthew’s misery, Arrow Keeper did what he could to comfort the youth.

  He made sure to keep a fat, juicy buffalo or elk steak constantly sizzling on the tripod outside his tipi entrance while the warriors-in-training remained in camp. The boy divided his brief respite between deep sleeping and ravenous eating in the hopes of restoring himself for the next grueling period of warrior training.

  Matthew rallied during the rest in camp.

  Thoughts of Bighorn Falls and his former life lost their luster as he renewed his determination to gain acceptance by Yellow Bear’s people. But even when his spirits were at their highest, he would spot Wolf Who Hunts Smiling or Black Elk watching him from a distance, and doubt and homesickness would assail him anew.

  Soon, however, Matthew earned a measure of revenge against Wolf Who Hunts Smiling— though his victory was brief and left him in greater danger than ever. His triumph came on the first night after Black Elk’s band rode out again. Back at the main camp, Black Elk had learned a simple gambling game from a visiting word-bringer, and while Matthew tended the fire and filled the water skins, Black Elk taught it to the others.

  He heated two stones in the glowing embers, then rolled them free and let them cool for a few moments. After finding a challenger and arranging a suitable bet, each contestant was to pick up a hot stone and grip it in his fist until one or the other threw it down and lost.

  Black Elk first challenged his cousin. It was close, but he won a fine kidskin pouch. From Little Horse, he won a handful of bright beads; from the twins, a cavalry jackknife and a hemp wallet.

  Wolf Who Hunts Smiling sulked over the loss of his favorite pouch. To recoup his loss, he bullied the other boys into playing against him. He easily outlasted the twins. But he and Little Horse threw their stones down at the same moment. Despite the draw, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling claimed the bet. He argued hotly that Little Horse had cheated by spitting into his hand first.

  Matthew observed the argument as he knelt beside the fire and slid the unburned ends of the logs closer to the blazing middle. He was about to rise and return to his spot beneath a cottonwood ten yards away when Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s mocking voice, speaking in English, froze him in place.

  “And what about How-Do-You-Do? Does the brave wounder of ponies wish to challenge a more worthy opponent than his own horse?”

  The reminder of his failure with the tomahawk made warm blood creep up the back of his neck. Instead of ignoring his enemy, as usual, Matthew matched his mocking stare and nodded. Little Horse heated the two stones while the bet was arranged. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling offered a new pair of beaded buckskin leggings against the red blanket Arrow Keeper had given Matthew.

  After Little Horse rolled the stones free of the embers with a stick, Black Elk nodded, each youth seized a stone and wrapped his fist around it.

  The first sensation of blistering heat almost made Matthew drop the stone. But he clenched his jaw and resisted the urge. His lips were pressed straight and tight with determination. Each youth stared into the other’s eyes and refused to look away.

  The wily, mocking light in Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s eyes transformed itself into surprise when the youth he considered weaker than a woman continued to hold out. Sweat broke out on his brow and gleamed in the dancing firelight.

  “Drop it, White Man’s Shoes!” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said, his teeth grinding together in a mixture of pain and determination.

  In the past, Matthew would have dropped the stone quickly. But surviving his recent torture by fire had tempered his nerves against the searing pain that night. He recalled the grueling ordeal with Arrow Keeper at Medicine Lake, and the old man’s words rang in his head and urged him on: If you cannot endure this small thing here today, how will you stand and fight when the war cry sounds? His eyes narrowed to dark, piercing points, and he put the terrible burning sensation outside himself, focusing only on the hatred he felt for his enemy.

  With an involuntary cry of pain, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling threw his stone down on the ground. Matthew deliberately waited a full ten heartbeats longer, trembling with pain all the while, before dropping his.

  In that brief moment, he enjoyed his first and only triumph since joining Yellow Bear’s tribe. Little Horse looked at him with open admiration for the first time. Even the twins were shocked enough to lose their surly stares. They watched the stranger with a new curiosity. Black Elk did not look at him; rather, he aimed a contemptuous glare at his young cousin.

  Wolf Who Hunts Smiling rose in fury. He snatched his leggings up off the ground, then turned accusing eyes on Little Horse. As usual, he avoided using names in front of Matthew.

  “You! Everyone saw how you deliberately made my stone hotter than the spy’s. You are still angry at my earlier victory! The bet is called off!” The next moment, quite deliberately, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling stepped between Matthew and the fire.

  Everyone there knew what the gesture meant, and they fell silent at the gravity of the message. Although Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had just announced his intention of killing the intruder, Matthew recalled that Arrow Keeper had said that once he had been warn
ed it was up to him to kill his enemy first.

  However, Black Elk had much to teach his band in the next few sleeps, and everyone was too busy to settle any personal scores as they learned the secrets of the buffalo hunt. Black Elk led the youths along an ancient buffalo trail that wound south from the new camp on the Tongue River. They followed the trail and crossed the vast plains between the Bighorn Mountains on the west and the Black Hills on the east.

  It was shedding season and thick buffalo fur lay everywhere. It covered the dry riverbeds and rose higher than the ponies’ fetlocks. Near the rivers were thick cottonwoods with deep-ridged bark. The herds had backed up against these to scratch and had left them wearing thick fur coats. The huge buffalo wallows were so thick with fur Matthew couldn’t see the water.

  One morning, they crested a ridge and spotted a vast herd of the bearded monsters running below them. Buffalo always moved in a stampede, Black Elk explained. A few antelopes were running with the herd to seek safety from wolves.

  Black Elk opened the ball-and-powder receiver of his side-hammer rifle and loaded it. Then he drew a bead on a straggling cow. Always shoot for the gut, he told the youths. A ball in the rib cage had to hit a vital organ like the heart. But a gut shot bled more and always killed.

  And to prove his point, Black Elk dropped the cow with one shot. When the herd had thundered on and the cloud of yellow dust had cleared, the Indians rode down to gather around the carcass. Black Elk taught them the tough job of skinning a buffalo as well as how to stake out the curly hide in order to cure it. Knives and stone chisels were necessary to scrape off every last gobbet of fat or flesh. When it was dry, the skin would be flat and hard, easy to lash to a travois.

  The liver was the tenderest and most prized morsel. Black Elk had cut it out first, even before the skinning, and eaten it warm and raw. The other delicacies, including the tongue, the youths cooked and ate immediately. The bulk of the leftover meat would be cut into thin strips and jerked.