Blood Dance

by Joe R. Lansdale

  He turned to me, smiling. Blood was on his face, hands and arms.

  “We meet again,” I said.

  4

  I hadn’t brought any foodstuff, but Dead Thing had some jerky and we ate it down by the creek, washing it down with stream water.

  “So you killed the little man,” Dead Thing said when I told him about Mix. “You are sure it was him?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Dead Thing grunted. “I wanted to kill him.”

  “I’m afraid I also chalked up the big one, Taggart, and one of your tribe, as well.”

  “I would have liked to have had his hair. You should have saved him for me.”

  “Well, at the time it didn’t seem like the thing to do. ‘Sides, I had some help with those three. A man by the name of Honest Roy.”

  “It is a good name,” Dead Thing said seriously. “An honest man is hard to find these days in red or white.”

  I didn’t break his heart by telling him the truth about Honest Roy. “Listen,” I said. “We’re working toward the same thing. We want Carson, and I guess I want those Crow brothers of yours, too. They shot me up, and I’d like to return the favor. They killed my friend, along with Carson, Mix and the others. I don’t know that I can get them all, that I’ll even remember the others should I see them. But those I do remember, I want.

  “We ought to be working together. I say these men will show up in Deadwood Gulch, and when they do I intend to kill them.”

  “White men would not accept me.”

  “They accepted that Crow with Mix, least as good as white men accept Indians. You’d just have to cowboy up your dress some and hang around with me. I’m not bad company.”

  Dead Thing smiled. “No. Not bad. But no, I must do this thing alone. If you leave any of them for me.”

  “I’ll do my best not to, Dead Thing. I offer you this because you saved my life.”

  “We are even now.”

  “All right, we’re even.”

  Dead Thing grunted. It was his favorite expression.

  “What are you going to do now, if you’re not going into the Gulch?”

  “I will fast, and I will dance the Sundance. I will wait for a guiding vision.”

  “And I’ll wait for Carson.”

  Dead Thing smiled. “You think to do such things as I do are foolish?”

  “I think you do what you do, and that I do what I do.”

  “But you think it is foolish.”

  “All right, it strikes me as silly. But so does most religion. I’m not much of a Christian, either, and from what I’ve seen of them I don’t want to be.”

  “There may be more beyond what you can touch.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Dance the dance with me and I will consider your offer.”

  “I’m not sure I want your help that bad.”

  “And if your plan for finding Carson fails, how will you find him?”

  “I’ll find him.”

  “Dance the dance with me and we will find him together.”

  “Don’t you stick things in your chest and stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Through pain we have vision.”

  “I’ve had a lot of pain lately, and not too many good visions.”

  “It was not done right.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “This is the path to the spirits.”

  “If I do this, we’ll work together?”

  “Maybe. If the spirits say so.”

  “I’m not crazy about pain.”

  “I know you. You are fearless.”

  I wondered if maybe he knew someone else. “Where would this take place? When?”

  “It would take place in as safe a place as we could find. It would begin now.”

  5

  Ever do something just totally loco and not know why?

  That was me. I wasn’t all that fired sure I needed Dead Thing’s help, but for some reason I felt driven to get it. I figured it must have been due to the fact that we had the same grudge, and that carrying vengeance is a festering sort of job made easier by comradeship. Guess it goes back to the old saw about misery loves company. From what Dead Thing had told me about the Sundance ceremony, ackicirua, as he called it, I might have done better to brood alone. I also learned that I was greatly honored. The ceremony was almost a thing of the past now, even to the staunchest of tribesmen. It was just not practiced anymore. And certainly white men were not normally let into the ways. Dead Thing had distinguished me by his invitation. Maybe that made me feel all the more obligated. I don’t know.

  Actually, the Sundance wasn’t just a worship of the sun, like I thought. Dead Thing explained it some. Certainly the sun entered into it. It was a great Crow god, and the dance was a tribute to the sun. But among the Crow it was also a dance of vengeance, a painful prayer for revenge.

  These days, as the dance was not performed in great rituals as it had been before, and since Dead Thing was ostracized from the tribe—or had ostracized himself—it was necessary to perform the dance on one’s own accord.

  There was quite a bit to be done before the pain began. We built a lodge for the dance, not very big, but it took time. Among Dead Thing’s possessions was a doll, a sacred thing that had been made for just such a ceremony. He would need it during the dance. It was his medicine. He informed me that I would need a medicine bundle as well, and I should make one.

  I cut away a piece of my blanket and put a bullet in it, along with a drop of blood that I coaxed out of my thumb with a thorn. I felt sort of silly about it, but I swore an oath over the bundle, tied it up, and that was my medicine.

  We went through some other rituals. Finally it was time to fast. We left the lodge and found a place deep in the woods. We fed up the horses good and made a small corral of little logs we chopped down with Dead Thing’s knife and tomahawk. The horses went inside of that with plenty of green stuff to eat and some bark that Dead Thing said would prevent them from getting the scours. I hoped it would be enough. Dead Thing told me that a fast sometimes lasted for a week.

  I liked eating regular and hoped to be ready with my vision a lot sooner than that.

  Dead Thing took my medicine, and the night before our fast began, he made it into a doll. The doll was made of hide and leaves dried over the fire. It smelled of cedar-leaf incense.

  Next morning the fast began and I was already wishing for breakfast.

  The fire had died and we sat near-naked, looking at the sun rise and stick its red nose through the boughs of the pines and swell until it rose high above us and dappled down through the trees and covered our bodies with blotchy shadow.

  We did not talk. I could hardly hear Dead Thing’s breathing.

  About noon my stomach started to growl like an angry cat. I tried to think about something else, but kept having visions of food. The flapjacks that I had eaten days ago, and had thought pretty nasty, seemed strangely inviting now, even if they had been buffalo chips. Pickle Nose Annie and her putrid, cooked horsemeat even sounded inviting, in spite of the fact that I had sworn off the place before ever eating there.

  By nightfall I was so hungry I could see cornbread dancing on the ground. I wondered if that counted as a vision. I sort of doubted it.

  Sun came up after a few centuries and no breakfast. Every moment now, my every thought was of food. Rest was important, too. But the thing I wanted most right then was chow. A raw turnip, a bug dipped in egg batter, would have been pretty nice.

  Dead Thing sat as silent as the trees, and the sun climbed toward noon again; an eternity that was only the second day.

  By nightfall I was tuckered and hungry as a broken-legged bear in a pen full of sheep.

  Sometime after that I lost track of time, and hunger seemed like a minor thing. I know I slept. I remember picking myself up from the ground and finding a sitting position again. I could still see Dead Thing sitting in his place. He did not appear to have mov
ed a muscle.

  Sometime after that, somewhere between a day and forever, I saw Bob Bucklaw.

  It’s kind of hard to explain. There I sat, pines all around me, Dead Thing nearby. Then I was alone. There was nothing familiar, just an eternal sweep of blue mixed with clouds that looked like tufts of pulled cotton. It made me think of the farm down in Louisiana, how it had been to pinch cotton from the boles and how it had looked stretching out of the plant and finally breaking free to be held in your fingers. Somehow, in that dream, that vision, that strange reality, my fingers became the bole, and the plant suddenly looked like limp fingers that had given me a prize.

  Then Bucklaw came walking out of the blue, slapping clouds away with either hand.

  I hung in that blue sky, sitting, amazed, but not responding.

  Bucklaw squatted before me.

  “Jim,” he said. “You were right, we should have went on and left Carson behind.”

  His face began to bleed. Half of it fell away, and for a moment I was on the ground by that train and Bucklaw was falling from his horse, slow as molasses. The blood was flying from his face and coming down in heavy globs, dancing against my body like rhythmic feet.

  Falling, falling, so slow… and finally Bob engulfed me…then once again I floated alone in the high, blue sky.

  Johnston’s face seemed to rip the fabric of blue and his nose and beard—massive, so massive—jabbed into view and his lips worked but nothing came out. It was horrible to see; his mouth moving and looking like very old, flexible leather, but no words.

  Then a voice exploded from him and thundered into my head like a bullet: “… them that died on the Greasy Grass.”

  Melting away like candle wax, Johnston’s face was gone, and now I lay on my back looking up at the sky. A horrible face with horns hung over me. It was a demonic face with white mustache and thin lips, and I knew it was Carson. The Carson demon opened his mouth slowly, and it became the bore of a revolver. I was being sucked up inside of it, into the darkness, and suddenly the dark went red and I was spinning again.

  Around me, like trees fresh cut and going down, women, men and children were falling stiffly and so very slowly.

  A sheet of darkness, then I remembered nothing until the call of a bird.

  I awoke and looked up into Dead Thing’s face.

  “I have had my vision,” said the Crow. “And I know you have had yours. It is time.”

  6

  I walked as if in a dream to the Sun Lodge with Dead Thing.

  There was no one there but us, yet I thought I heard music; shrill pipes and drums, and finally chanting. The lodge was full of smoke and the smell of juniper.

  There was a trough made from half a log. It was filled with white clay. I could just barely remember Dead Thing and I mixing ashes with the clay to make it that color. I didn’t know if we had done that yesterday or a moment ago. Time was lost and confused.

  We rubbed the white clay on our faces and bodies. Then we sat and smoked a pipe, passing it back and forth. I kept hearing the pipes, the drums, the voices, but could see no one. My eyes ached from the smoke.

  We did many other ceremonies that I could not remember afterward. I think we ate, but I could not be sure. I remembered only that I was no longer hungry. Maybe I had reached the point where it no longer mattered.

  On a pole in the lodge hung our medicine, our dolls. Now it was time for the pain.

  So the next thing I knew I was standing up facing Dead Thing. The world seemed to be made of smoke, dark smoke. I could still hear the pipes, drums and chants. Dead Thing took a sharp piece of wood and jabbed it into my chest, twisting and skewering it through until the stick was held in place by a band of flesh. I don’t remember the pain much. It was not as bad as I had expected. Dead Thing did the same to my chest on the other side.

  Then it was my turn. Dead Thing did not even flinch.

  Earlier, before the fast, Dead Thing had gone to a lot of trouble to pick special trees with which to construct the lodge. From a certain pole he had suspended long strands of rawhide, two on each side of the post. We looped these at one end and fastened them over the skewers in our chests, tightened them.

  Then we began to dance. It felt natural. It was as if I knew what to do. We danced until the thongs pulled tight and the blood ran down our chests, like fast-flowing rivers on the way to the sea.

  Dancing in the smoking darkness, I lost all sense of Dead Thing. He seemed to hover on the other side of a thick, fluffy cloud. The music went on. The pain became real for a few moments. I began to hum some song from my youth.

  The cloud parted and an old Indian wearing a Buffalo head and horns stepped forward, and very much in a white man manner, he took my hand and said, “Greetings. I am The One Who Makes the Buffalo Fall Down. I am your guide.”

  I think I might have laughed, but I can’t be sure.

  The One Who Makes the Buffalo Fall Down and I sat on a ledge overlooking the world, and the world pulled in close as if we were drawing it up on a string. I saw this great expanse of grass and there was a river or creek there. The grass turned red and screamed.

  “The grass will scream from the thunder of the horses, from the pain of the dying,” the old man said.

  I nodded.

  I hung alone from the rawhide thongs. My flesh was ripping. My legs were tired, no longer able to hold my weight. I hung by the skewers, my flesh stretching out as if pinched by giant hands.

  And then the first band of flesh broke and the weight of my body was too much for the second. I lay on my back, looking up at the top of the lodge. It was open, and the sun looked in at me like an eye.

  7

  “The one the Liver-Eater calls Red Spot, wake up.”

  I opened an eye. “Pretty formal talk, don’t you think?”

  Dead Thing smiled. “We have had our final visions. We must do what we must do.”

  He sounded a lot like some of the trickier pages in my old law books. “Profound,” I said.

  “I leave you now, but we will have our union.”

  “But you said we’d do this together.”

  “It shall be, in time. I have my own path, a short one. Yours is much longer. Our spirits entwine.”

  My eyes were heavy. I closed them. When I awoke it was night and cold and Dead Thing was gone.

  I sat up and looked about. Dead Thing’s horse was gone. There was food on leaves beside me, jerked meat. I ate it a little at a time to keep from being sick.

  I wondered what Dead Thing had meant.

  Next morning I saddled up the rented horse. The lodge was gone, not even a trace. I rode back toward Deadwood Gulch.

  I had been invited into a strange new world, one beyond men. I didn’t feel any closer to Christianity or the Sun God, nor did I believe in them any more than I had before. But I did know now that there were strange things that lay beyond the eye. Things that came from within. Doors in a man’s mind that gave him access to wonder.

  Were they true visions?

  What did they mean?

  I had no idea. But I felt certain that I’d had a close look at those things man has come to call by many names. Among them, God and the Great Spirit. They were labels men used while trying to understand his own complicated nature.

  Dead Thing had not come with me as I had hoped. He had seemed satisfied enough with the results of the dance, but his last words to me had just been gibberish as far as I could see.

  But even though my chest hurt like hell beneath the dressings—Dead Thing had attended my wounds while I’d slept—and he would not ride with me, I had no regrets. For Dead Thing’s introduction to the Sundance, I was grateful.

  Chapter Six

  1

  Riding back into the Gulch, into its stink and noise, after those days with Dead Thing, was like riding in to meet the devil.

  It wasn’t pleasant.

  If I had not belonged before, I certainly did not belong now. Here was a world of “What Counts Is What You Can Touch,”
and I had just come a-riding from “A World Beyond Touch.”

  After returning the horse and paying for his overdue rent, amidst yelling and such, I set out to find Honest Roy. With saddlebags slung over my shoulder and a rifle in either hand, I went from saloon to saloon, asking and looking.

  Finally I found him at a card table in one of the flashier saloons. I didn’t recognize him at first. Roy was wearing a bowler hat and a too-tight dude suit. He’d even cleaned up, and that floored me more than anything else.

  I walked over to the table and pulled up a chair. Roy looked up.

  “Well I’ll be a smashed-in polecat if it ain’t Red Spot. I reckoned you dead, son. It’s been nigh a week.”

  “Just out riding,” I said.

  “Now that’s a crazy thing to do. Horses are made for gettin’ places, not for fun. Least, my old butt feels that way.”

  I laughed. “You winning?”

  “Naw. Losin’ my ass.” Roy looked at the others around the table. “I’m cashin’ in, boys.” He got his money together and got up. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  We went over to the bar, leaned on it and had a few beers. I told Roy a little about Dead Thing, and he just looked at me like I was crazy.

  “I think maybe that Injin’s name don’t refer to his puncher. I think they must have been talkin’ about his brain. And you don’t sound so smart, neither, lettin’ some Crow poke sticks through your hide. Gives me the willies just to think about it.”

  “All right,” I said, “that’s a rundown on me. But what about you and those duds? You even look to have washed and shaved a bit. I thought it was against your religion.”

  “Was. But that was before I became a wealthy man.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Gold. I went to prospectin’ again, only this time I hit it. Accident, really. I ain’t no miner. Beat this guy out of his claim in a card game. Next morning when I got sober I felt stupid as hell. Fellow been workin’ that blasted mine out for a year and hadn’t hardly made enough to buy him a bottle of whisky.