The Powder River

by Win Blevins

Smith felt peculiarly lucid. “Give me some alcohol on a compress,” he said in English. With that, he wiped blood off the outside of the wound. Antisepsis, he thought serenely.

  He was peaceful with it now. So he was an ass. He asked Twist and Medicine Wolf to get the canvas ground cloth from under the girl and hold it over her against the rain. When they were fully occupied, he said to Elaine, “Give me some chloroform on a compress.” He spoke without emphasis and again in English. She acted without expression. Twist and Medicine Wolf were unfolding the ground cloth.

  When he had the compress in his hand and smelled its familiar, sickly-sweet odor, he leaned forward onto his knees and clamped it hard onto Leaf’s mouth and nose.

  Twist seized Smith’s wrist and elbow and pulled hard. Smith resisted for a moment and then gave in. The child had taken a big breath reflexively when Smith covered her nostrils, and she was already out.

  Twist grabbed for Smith’s throat, but Medicine Wolf held him back. Smith was sure that if he weren’t needed to finish the procedure, the Indian would have killed him in that moment. Instead he cursed the goddamn veho vividly, mixing in the white-man word goddamn over and over.

  Smith met Medicine Wolf’s eyes over Twist’s shoulder—they brimmed with contempt.

  Smith simply pointed to the ground cloth and turned back to his work. In only moments he held the bullet in his hands. He put it on the child’s chest—she might want to keep it. She was asleep now, and he felt her peace.

  As he started to set the bones, the rain really came, hitting hard. The cloth seemed to cover all of Leaf, but not much of the surgeon. Smith smiled to himself about that.

  He set himself and pulled hard on the foot—it came. He eased off and slid the bones together—they went into place with amazing ease. He could feel that they were right. He was profoundly glad. He was proud.

  He put Medicine Wolf’s poultice on the wound and bound it with white cotton, his hands still sure.

  He asked Elaine to trade places with Medicine Wolf. Taking the hide out of the bucket, he asked the medicine man, “Will you help me?”

  Without a word Medicine Wolf took the hide and began to splint Leaf’s leg. Then he stitched it tight with sinew and cut a hole to give access to the flesh wound. In a few days the hide split would dry rigid, firmer than any wooden splint. In a couple of weeks Leaf would actually be able to walk on it.

  It was done. It was done well. Smith touched Medicine Wolf on the shoulder and smiled.

  “Thank you,” Smith said to Medicine Wolf. He had to resist shaking hands. “Thank you” to Twist without looking at the warrior, then “Thank you” to Elaine. They let the ground cloth down and covered Leaf carefully with it. She wasn’t stirring yet.

  The medicine man stomped off. So Smith had lost the support of the man of red medicine.

  Twist sat down at Leaf’s head stiffly, one hand against her cheek. Smith refused to look at his face. Elaine gathered up the tools and medicines and went to put them away.

  Smith knelt by his patient. He wanted to move up and hold her head, hold her until she came out of the anesthetic. But he could feel Twist’s fury radiating through the storm-blown air.

  So Smith just knelt there in the rain. In a few minutes Leaf would come around. He wanted to be there and speak words of reassurance to her.

  Already he was drenched. He smiled to himself a little. Drenched with pride. Drenched with humiliation.

  What an ass he was.

  Chapter 8

  Elaine felt Adam stir, and she came awake with a start. Calling Eagle was shaking him. Calling Eagle had found Elaine and Adam where they hid in the rocks, so their lovemaking would not be overheard. Half-awake, half-dreaming, Elaine imagined that the old woman saw everything and knew everything and understood everything—she was omnipresent and omniscient, like some sort of pagan deity. She doubtless would have communicated her knowledge of the future to lesser mortals if it would have helped them, or given them hope.

  “The people need you,” Calling Eagle said mysteriously. Adam picked up his parfleche of medicines and moved out, still pulling up his pants. Elaine was almost as quick behind him. They walked fast after Calling Eagle through the dark toward the head of the gully.

  “Hoka hey!” exclaimed Adam, and turned back to Elaine with a big grin. Beyond him Elaine saw Enemy, one of the two women who had led the lost group of women and children.

  “Hoka hey!” Elaine answered her husband in his language. Her Cheyenne was reasonably good, and she smiled at herself for feeling self-conscious using the phrase.

  The lost women and kids must have slipped around the soldiers in the middle of the night. They were crowded around a couple of small fires, eating soup and fresh-roasted meat, half a dozen women and three times that many children. Probably fifty of the people were awake tending to them and talking with them—everyone had been so worried. Though no one said so, they all knew that if those who fell behind didn’t come in—if the soldiers turned them back, or they went back out of weariness—their families would have to go back to the agency. And that would make the group weaker.

  Elaine looked at the faces of the women, haggard from their nights of travel, but happy and animated now that they were with their families and being fed and would have a little chance to rest. The children looked worse. Some of them were barefoot, the soles of their feet raw and bleeding. Others looked truly exhausted, falling asleep as their relatives ladled soup into their mouths. Elaine supposed they were mostly orphans.

  A middle-aged woman clopped stiffly toward them, and Calling Eagle embraced her. “Brave One also led them in,” Calling Eagle said in introduction. A brave one for sure, thought Elaine.

  Adam stopped to look at the feet of a boy about eight and started to rummage in his bag for an unguent, but Brave One said, “Rain first.”

  Smith looked askance at Elaine. Then Elaine remembered. The girl named Rain was a relative—the wife of Adam’s cousin Red Hand. In fact, Elaine knew her a little. She used to bring her younger brother to the school and sit in the back and do beadwork during his lessons. She was a slight, shy creature, uncomfortable talking to Elaine, but endearing. She had a remarkably lovely oval face. She’d stopped coming to the school months ago, before Adam came to the agency. Elaine never knew why she stopped coming, but Adam did say later that Red Hand had died, and Red Hand’s older wife, who was Rain’s sister.

  The teenage girl named Rain was huddled beneath a blanket. She didn’t look so much asleep as half-dead. Elaine supposed she would recover, but her beautiful face was wan and pinched, suggesting fatigue beyond human endurance.

  Brave One drew back the blanket. A boy-child a few days old sucked at Rain’s left breast. The breast looked so withered the infant must have been starving to death.

  “Dehydrated, both of them,” said Adam to Elaine in English. “Water and a cup and rag.” His bossy mode, but Elaine didn’t mind. In a couple of minutes they had the child sucking on a teat of wet cloth, and Adam bathed Rain’s face and dribbled water into her mouth.

  “She fell behind us to give birth,” said Brave One. “She just caught up this afternoon. We didn’t think she would.”

  Adam nodded. “A little soup, too,” he said to Calling Eagle. “We thought she’d stayed behind at the agency,” he told Brave One.

  Elaine remembered. She’d said she couldn’t travel because the birth was so near.

  “What is the child’s name?” asked Elaine. She held the boy, feeding him.

  “There’s a story behind it,” said Brave One, glancing at the white woman curiously. Elaine knew she wondered whether a white person would understand.

  “Out with it,” prompted Adam.

  “She will tell you,” said Brave One, smiling.

  Elaine sat with Rain all night. Adam circulated among the children and juggled his ivory balls for the ones who were awake. Elaine felt touched by Rain, a fragile creature. The girl even had a fancy cloth dress, undoubtedly taken in a raid, to make her seem m
ore beautiful. Somewhere in the middle of the vigil Elaine realized that she had a new … sister?

  Rain was some kind of family. The last several years of warring and dying; sickness had killed her parents. She was wed to Red Hand because her sister was his first wife. Now they were dead, and Rain had only her dead husband’s family. That’s all the child had, too, a child so far nameless.

  Near dawn, after eating a little broth, she was able to talk. She spoke softly, sometimes hesitantly, often looking at the infant sleeping in her lap. Though she kept her eyes down, modestly, Elaine could see how intently she meant every word. “I was about to give birth in an open place, afraid the soldiers would find me. Perhaps kill me, and rip the child out of my belly with the long knives. Like Sand Creek.” Calling Eagle gave Elaine a hard look.

  “Just as he … came out, a big soldier did come. I couldn’t do anything—couldn’t run, couldn’t defend myself.” Elaine knew that Cheyenne women were very modest, and intensely private about childbirth—poor Rain must have been terrified.

  “But I was not afraid,” Rain went on. “I thought the birth would kill me anyway, and my child would die from lack of care. So I had given up on living. I just wanted to get him out into the air and hold him and lift him to the four directions, to let him see the earth and feel the powers while he breathed.” She touched her son’s head delicately.

  “But the big soldier just watched me. He didn’t say anything, or do anything.

  “Then I understood. He was not merely a soldier—he couldn’t be, he would have killed me—he was a spirit in the form of a soldier.

  “Such power frightened me a little. More than a little. But I knew everything would be all right, everything would be blessed.” Then the words came in a soft, quick rustle. “I pushed the child out, held him up to the four directions, the sky, and the earth, and he was alive and made special by this spirit and I was profoundly happy.” She was silent awhile.

  “But I couldn’t nurse him. My dress was closed.” She opened the blanket on her shoulders and indicated the bodice of her fancy dress, which was ripped open to the waist. She closed the blanket modestly. “So I asked the spirit to undo the buttons.” She used the English words buttons, since Cheyenne had no equivalent. “Instead the spirit cut open my dress the way you see. It made me feel … shaky”—she shivered just remembering—“to let the blade come so close. Shaky but grand.” She hesitated, and when she spoke looked transcendent. “Then I simply exposed my breasts in front of him and all the world, and nursed my son. I knew the spirit would not hurt me.

  “No, he helped me. He cut the dress open for me. And then went away. Without a word. He didn’t give me a song, or show me a dance, he just walked away.

  “I am awed at this appearance, this power at the birth of my son. A warrior took care of him. He will be a great warrior. I have named him”—she used the English words—“Big Soldier.”

  By noon the mother and child looked better, much better. Smith and Elaine had taken them to the family fire and were still keeping a close watch on them.

  A dog soldier, Calling Eagle reported, had stolen some cavalry horses during the night, and one set of saddlebags held a little ammunition, and another held lots of dollars. Now it would be easier to get horses and guns.

  At noon the soldiers were pulling out in the direction of the agency. Cheyenne warriors stood exposed within shooting range, but did not shoot. Elaine stood tremulously between Adam and Calling Eagle and watched them go.

  “Maybe the powers were with us here,” murmured Adam.

  “We are very lucky,” said Elaine. “All of us,” she said, thinking of Bain and Big Soldier.

  Calling Eagle looked at her piteously.

  The Tsistsistas-Suhtaio moved out to the north. Though they had escaped the soldiers once, though they were all together again, and though they now had more horses, their mood was caution. Everyone was worried about the Arkansas River, the next big obstacle. This rainy summer it would be high, and likely hard to cross. Worse, the railroad ran along the river, so maybe they would run into soldiers, maybe lots of soldiers.

  On Bear Creek they had a little skirmish with soldiers, but drove them off easily. But that night they got bad news—the first Cheyenne had been killed by white men. Black Beaver had gone to a ranch with some dollars to buy horses, but the whites shot him and took the money. The young men wanted to ride out and kill the whites and burn the ranch, but Little Wolf held them back with pointed words.

  And a couple of days later, farther up Bear Creek they exchanged a few more shots with soldiers. “They’re like goddamn gnats,” Smith told Elaine. “They’re not serious, but you can’t shoo them off.” He gave her an imitation of his carefree grin, but she didn’t smile back.

  That evening Smith saw Twist, Medicine Wolf, Bridge, who was another healer, and Young Eagle hurrying toward the other end of camp. Twist scowled at Smith as they went by. Medicine Wolf kept his eyes on the ground. Young Eagle carried his medicine flute.

  Smith’s throat clenched. Elaine touched his hand gently. So that was it. Nevertheless, he wanted to see, so he followed the medicine men.

  The victim was Sitting Man, brought in by other scouts on a litter, and he was shot on the inside of the thigh. It was bleeding profusely—Sitting Man would bleed to death pretty damn quick.

  Without thinking, Smith pushed through the family members around Sitting Man. Before Smith could squat beside the patient, Twist was there. His hand was on Smith’s chest, his face in Smith’s face, virulently bitter. He pushed Smith backward almost as much with his eyes as his hand.

  Medicine Wolf said lightly, “The family wants the medicine of the Human Beings, not the whites. Bridge is going to stop the bleeding.” Bridge nodded.

  Smith thought, He’s going to die. Then he yelled at himself in his head, It’s up to him—he’s got a right to decide. For a moment Smith felt like brain cell ground against brain cell while he forced himself to a decision. Then he spoke with a thin edge of control. “I want to watch you do it.”

  Bridge hesitated, and then nodded.

  Bridge gave Sitting Man something red to drink—Smith couldn’t guess what it was. While Young Eagle played his flute, Medicine Wolf sang and shook a rattle. Sitting Man was quickly asleep.

  Anesthetic, Smith said to himself, taken aback. But the patient could have passed out from loss of blood, too. Smith’s hands were quivering with frustration.

  Bridge passed a painted gourd across Sitting Man’s chest, over and over, more and more slowly. All the while he sang his chanting song, and sometimes snorted or bellowed. Smith’s eyes were on the wound. At first the blood still welled out. Gradually, it slowed. Finally, it turned to a trickle.

  Everything was hushed except for the flute—it seemed to Smith the world itself was hushed.

  Bridge had stopped the bleeding.

  Or the bleeding had stopped on its own? Smith asked himself.

  To the accompaniment of the soft tones of the flute, Bridge cleaned the wound with silver sage, sprinkled it with tufts from a puffball, and bound it with cloth.

  Bridge glanced up at Smith—only a brief glance, but there was pride in it, Smith thought. Justified pride.

  Twist stepped around the unconscious Sitting Man and came toward Smith, glaring.

  Smith turned and walked away quietly. He wanted to think, and recover. He would juggle for a while.

  The next day they traveled during the daylight—sometimes they chose day, sometimes night, depending on whether they needed to keep the soldiers from actually seeing them.

  That night they had a good feed. The young men had run off a few cattle from some ranch, and there was meat for everybody. Elaine was so hungry, she didn’t care that they had no vegetables—she wolfed down the beef.

  “Meat is good for Big Soldier,” Adam told Rain. Elaine knew he worried that the girl didn’t eat enough. Big Soldier had been premature, and needed lots of nourishment. He seemed plenty hungry. Even now, while Rain
ate, Big Soldier sucked away. Rain had on a Cheyenne-style dress of deerskin now, one that had huge arms that were laced underneath, so she could slip the child in and out without compromising modesty.

  “Next summer maybe we will have a brother for Big Soldier,” said Calling Eagle.

  “That would be good,” said Lisette.

  Elaine saw Adam start to agree and then back off, eyeing his mother.

  “A cousin,” said Elaine. Rain put her Big Soldier on her shoulder to burp him, but Elaine rose and picked him up.

  “No, a brother,” said Calling Eagle. “Or sister.”

  “I never have gotten the ways of speaking of relationship straight,” said Elaine. She began walking back and forth, patting Big Soldier on the back.

  “One father, two mothers—brothers,” Lisette said cheerfully.

  Now Adam had a glint in his eye.

  “One father—Adam is considered the father because he has taken Rain and Big Soldier in?” Elaine felt her innocence and began to feel something more. Big Soldier’s stomach growled.

  “Yes, sort of,” said Lisette. She smiled. Elaine had seldom heard Lisette talk so much.

  “Mostly because Vekifs is now the husband of Big Soldier’s mother,” said Calling Eagle. Big Soldier’s stomach growled.

  Elaine saw Adam look a warning at his grandmother. Was there something going on here she didn’t know about? Some sort of conspiracy?

  She approached it cautiously but firmly. “Adam is my husband.”

  Calling Eagle nodded and smiled wickedly. “And Bain’s husband now.”

  Elaine lost her balance for a moment and nearly fell. Adam grabbed her, and she clung fiercely to Big Soldier.

  “What?” Elaine snapped at Calling Eagle.

  The old woman shrugged. “It is our way.”

  Elaine suddenly felt sure she’d sold herself into barbarism with this marriage.

  “That’s enough,” said Adam.

  “Adam Smith Maclean, you haven’t—”

  Adam cut her off. “They’re teasing you.” Big Soldier’s stomach rumbled again.