Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)

by James Welch

  “If I had told Yellow Kidney about the dream before we raided the Crows, he would have seen the wisdom in turning back. These things wouldn’t have happened to him. If I had been smart enough to see....” The words trailed off and hung in the wet thick air.

  Rides-at-the-door looked down toward the river. It had begun to run higher the last several sleeps as the snow melted in the Backbone. Soon it would be off-color, rushing, rolling large stones in its powerful course down the valley. During these times one or two boys would be lost from the camps, never to be seen again. Rides-at-the-door used to worry about his sons, both White Man’s Dog and Running Fisher, but those concerns now seemed mild and far away.

  “You blame yourself,” he said. “You think by telling Yellow Kidney your dream all the bad things would have been averted. It is natural to feel this way. But what if you had told him? Men, even experienced warriors, do not always listen to reason when they are close to their prize. It is like a fever. The closer to the prize, the more the fever obscures the judgment. The world is thrown out of balance. Some things become too important, other things not important enough. It is true that you should have told Yellow Kidney about your dream, and it might be true that he would have turned back. But I believe that it would have been too late. Already the world was out of balance. You were too close to the Crow camps to see reason and so you proceeded, knowing the risks. No, do not blame yourself. At most, you made an error in judgment. I’m afraid your friend, Fast Horse, made this catastrophe with his hotheaded boasting.”

  “It shames me to say this, but I would have gladly blamed him. I did blame him. Now I am not sure.”

  “His actions speak for themselves.”

  “Mik-api performed his medicine on me to drive the spirit that caused the dream from my body.” White Man’s Dog studied the lariat in his hands. “It made me feel good to be rid of it. I felt free for the first time since the horse-taking. But Mik-api told me that the spirit was still out there, waiting to attach itself to another of our people.”

  “That can happen if the spirit is not completely understood.” Rides-at-the-door looked at his son. “But you must not think of yourself as the cause of this spirit. It was already out there and it chose to enter your body. Some spirits are too strong to eliminate. They pass from one body to another, and then another. They must be dealt with each time.”

  “What about Yellow Kidney? Could the same spirit have entered him?”

  “The same spirit that caused you to dream also caused him to enter that death lodge.”

  “And Fast Horse?”

  “No. I think it is the nature of Fast Horse to be loud and boastful and to hurt others. Some men are just like that.”

  “What will happen to him?”

  Rides-at-the-door was a head taller than White Man’s Dog, a big man with a broad upper body. But as he sighed, his shoulders slumped and his face fell. “I am going to see Boss Ribs now.” He stared, slack-jawed, somewhere over his son’s shoulder. At that moment he was much older than his forty-seven winters. “Three Bears would have him banished from the camp of the Lone Eaters. I am to deliver the message to Boss Ribs.”

  Rides-at-the-door stepped forward and embraced his son awkwardly.

  “I am glad in my heart that you have done nothing wrong. And I am ashamed of myself for thinking that perhaps you had. Let your heart quit this dream and its consequences, for you are as blameless as this river when it sometimes carries away one of our boys.”

  As White Man’s Dog watched his father walk back toward camp, he felt both lighter and sadder. He had grown up with Fast Horse, and now his friend would be banished. A part of himself would go with Fast Horse, never to return. But it hurt as much to see his father go to carry out his painful task. Rides-at-the-door and Boss Ribs had grown up together too and had remained close all their lives. Many times Boss Ribs and his sits-beside-him wife had feasted in his old friend’s lodge. Now, even if Boss Ribs understood the necessity of his son’s banishment, he would not forgive Rides-at-the-door for bringing the message. Fathers and sons would all suffer.

  Double Strike Woman handed her son a bowl of broth, then sat back and continued her instructions. She had a list of names that he was to greet in all the camps he visited. He was to deliver messages to several of them. He was to bring back messages, to listen politely, to speak with respect. And he was to collect as much gossip as he could.

  “How else am I to keep up? We don’t visit other camps the way we used to. When I was a girl we visited all winter long. We’d go from camp to camp and people would welcome us. My father was an important man among the Hard Topknots. We knew everything that was happening.”

  Striped Face, Double Strike Woman’s younger sister and Rides-at-the-door’s second wife, was braiding her sister’s hair and listening. “Our father was not an important man. He was not a chief and nobody listened to him,” she said.

  “You didn’t know him like I did. Wherever we went, people respected him. He was a leader in his own way.”

  Kills-close-to-the-lake sat on the other side of the fire making up White Man’s Dog’s sack of meat. She was a shy girl, slender, a year younger than him. She was also his near-mother. He had been surprised a year ago when his father took her for his third wife, but she was the daughter of a man who had been unlucky and poor all his life. Rides-at-the-door had taken her for his wife as a kindness to the man. Now she was little more than a slave to the two other wives. As he watched her finish the packet, some of the old mixed feelings he had about her began to rise and he tried to concentrate on the argument between his mother and her sister. On the one hand, he wished Kills-close-to-the-lake had never come to live with them, for she was unhappy in this lodge and had brought a tension to it; on the other hand, White Man’s Dog was excited by her and the tension that existed between them. Sometimes he caught her looking at him and knew she was seeing something in him. For his part, he spent most of his time avoiding looking at her, because it excited him and he was sure everybody could see this.

  Now his mother was addressing him again. “As you know, Crow Foot’s people are camped below the joining of the Two Medicine River and the Bear River. I want you to take this tobacco to him and tell him that his cousin, Rides-at-the-door, and his wife, Double Strike Woman, wish him and his wife well and hope that he will accept this pitiful gift. While you are there I would like you to take a good look at his daughter, Little Bird Woman. Talk with her, make jokes with her and, if you can arrange it, walk with her. You are my son and I think it is time you settled in your own lodge.” She smiled and added, “Crow Foot is a powerful man and would make a good father-in-law.”

  White Man’s Dog did not conceal his surprise. “But she was not even a woman the last time I saw her.”

  “That was two winters ago, the winter of the coughing sickness. I think you will find her much changed. She has good hips, that one. She would bear you many children.” Double Strike Woman winced when Striped Face yanked on her braid. “Oh, you no-good one! The way you abuse me. If you weren’t my sister I would throw you out and let you go live with the Napikwans.”

  White Man’s Dog listened to them fight but he was thinking about what his mother had said. She too wanted him to set up his own lodge! He felt his spirits rise at the thought of his own wife and his own family. But he wasn’t thinking about Little Bird Woman, or even such a one as Kills-close-to-the-lake. As he had so often in the past two moons, he saw himself seated in his own lodge, lying against a backrest, smoking. And across the fire, he saw the calm face of Red Paint as she bent over her beadwork. There would be no other wives in the lodge, only Red Paint and their son.

  The entrance flap opened and Running Fisher entered, followed by Rides-at-the-door. Running Fisher was soaked, his shirt and leggings dark on his shoulders and thighs. He looked at White Man’s Dog and grinned. “While you have been in here gossiping with the women, I have been out gathering the news.”

  “What news?” said Double Strike W
oman. She pulled her head away from her sister’s fingers. “Here, come sit here. Put this robe over your shoulders. Kills-close-to-the-lake, gave him some of that broth.”

  Rides-at-the-door shed his wet blanket. White Man’s Dog glanced at him, then held his glance, trying to read his father’s face. There was no expression to interpret, but the eyes seemed a little brighter than they had earlier that morning.

  “It is said that Fast Horse has quit camp,” said Running Fisher. “He took his things and left during the night.”

  “Oh, poor Boss Ribs! But why?” Double Strike Woman put her fingers to her cheeks in an expression of shock.

  Running Fisher looked at his mother. He was used to her overreactions, but his voice had a tone of disgust. “Haven’t you heard? Fast Horse is the cause of Yellow Kidney’s misfortune. It is Fast Horse who caused the Crows to discover him.”

  “Do they say where Fast Horse has gone?” said White Man’s Dog.

  Running Fisher grinned again at his brother. “To join Owl Child and his gang. He is going to kill Napikwans and steal their wealth. Owl Child has been waiting for him.”

  “How is this known?”

  “The Marrow Bone saw him leave. He was riding night herd, and he talked to Fast Horse.”

  White Man’s Dog looked at his father.

  “It is true,” said Rides-at-the-door. “I talked with Boss Ribs. It seems Fast Horse has banished himself.”

  “Then he is no longer a problem to the Lone Eaters. We should be happy that he is gone.” White Man’s Dog didn’t feel happy.

  Neither did Rides-at-the-door. “I’m afraid he will be a bigger problem than ever if he joins Owl Child’s gang. They’re no good. They think that by killing Napikwans they gain honor. All they will do is bring the blue-coated seizers down on all of us. These seizers will rub us out like the green grass bugs.”

  “Some day we will have to fight them,” said Running Fisher. “Already the whitehorns graze our buffalo grounds.”

  “Perhaps someday that will come to pass, my son. But for now it is better to treat with them while we still have some strength. It will only be out of desperation that we fight.”

  “I know you are right, my father. But I am afraid for the Pikunis. Last night I dreamed that we had all lost our fingers like poor Yellow Kidney.”

  “It is good for you to be concerned, White Man’s Dog. But you must remember that the Napikwans outnumber the Pikunis. Any day the seizers could ride into our camps and wipe us out. It is said that already many tribes in the east have been wiped away. These Napikwans are different from us. They would not stop until all the Pikunis had been killed off.” Rides-at-the-door stopped and looked into the faces of his sons. “For this reason we must leave them alone, even allow them some of our hunting grounds to raise their whitehorns. If we treat wisely with them, we will be able to save enough for ourselves and our children. It is not an agreeable way, but it is the only way.”

  “You bet it is not agreeable,” said Double Strike Woman. “Soon those stringy whitehorns will drive our blackhorns out of the country. White Grass Woman says they are mean and will eat anything, even children!”

  “I think it is White Grass Woman who would eat anything,” said Running Fisher. “She is as fat as the real-bear when he goes to sleep in the winter. I’ll bet she could eat a real-bear too—at one sitting.”

  “You nothing one! You mock my best friend and now you come dripping all over. Go sit over there. Give him some more of that broth. It’s bad enough that this one”—she pointed to White Man’s Dog—“is going out in this weather. We don’t need two sick sons.”

  Running Fisher laughed and moved away to his sleeping robes. He leaned back and picked up some arrow shafts he had hardened over the fire. He selected one and felt its waxy smoothness with his fingers. Then he sighted down its length for straightness, his eye traveling on until it came to rest on his brother. He studied his brother’s face as White Man’s Dog listened to some final instructions from Rides-at-the-door. There was a calm intelligence there that Running Fisher had not noticed before. It was not the face of the young man that Running Fisher had once pitied for his bad luck. At that time Running Fisher was the lucky one, the one who had stolen two horses and a musket from the Cutthroats. He was the one who would one day become a great warrior. But now White Man’s Dog seemed the chosen one and Running Fisher had come to envy him. As he watched White Man’s Dog fill his rawhide sling pack, he couldn’t help feeling that his brother’s successes somehow diminished him. He would have to do something to gain much honor, but what? He could join a horse-taking party; there would be many parties going out now that winter was over. Or he could wait for the war party against the Crows. But that would not occur until after the Sun Dance.

  He watched Kills-close-to-the-lake skirt the fire to hand White Man’s Dog the sack of meat. Rides-at-the-door and his two other wives were talking among themselves on the far side of the fire. Only Running Fisher saw the girl touch his brother briefly on the shoulder. Only he saw the quick glance and the quick looking away, the flush on White Man’s Dog’s face. But when he looked back at the other group, he saw Striped Face looking directly at him, a small grin on her face.

  On the third day of his journey, White Man’s Dog stood on a bluff overlooking the trading house on the Bear River. It was built in the shape of a rectangle, a series of squat buildings arranged around a central trading area. The log structures looked heavy and dark to White Man’s Dog. In the dusty yard five men stood around a pair of horses laden with robes. He recognized Riplinger, the trader, and Old Horn of the Grease Melters. Another Napikwan, a young one in a black hat and dark clothes, squatted a few feet away. Two young Pikunis, perhaps Old Horn’s sons, stood with their arms folded.

  An arrow’s arc to the east lay the camp of the Grease Melters. In the late morning sun the lodges looked as white as doeskin. Most of them were made of the white man’s stiff cloth. White Man’s Dog knew that some of the Lone Eaters would trade robes for the cloth. It was easier to piece together, would shed the water well and was lighter than the blackhorn hides. He had smelled the cloth once and it reminded him of unclean bladder. It made him smile to think of these Grease Melters living in their bladders on the edges of the trading forts. He would not want the Lone Eaters to live this way.

  He had visited three bands, the Black Doors, the Small Robes and Crow Foot’s people. He had not talked to Little Bird Woman but he had looked her over at the evening meal. She was chunky, attractive and lively. Her round face seemed always to be split with laughter. When she saw White Man’s Dog looking at her, she would lower her head and play shyly with her puppy. Then, a moment later, she would be laughing and joking with her brothers.

  She would make a good wife, thought White Man’s Dog as he looked down on the trading house. She is cheerful and strong and handsome in a stout way. He knew that she had worn her elkskin dress just for him, and he wondered if his father and Crow Foot had already talked of a union between their families. The idea didn’t exactly displease him, but it added a complication he was not prepared for. If his parents had their minds set on her, he would dishonor them by not obeying their wish. And he had his heart set on Red Paint. But he had only seen Red Paint from a distance and in his imagination. It was as though she had no substance, no life other than her work. I have not even heard her voice, he thought. Had she spoken that time he had delivered the meat and she surprised him? Even if she had, he wouldn’t have heard the words. Kills-close-to-the-lake had more presence in his mind than did Red Paint. Even now, he could see her body, the way she moved, the expressions on her face, her voice, even the scent of her that made him light-headed. For a year they had lived in the same lodge and had almost avoided each other, yet he knew her as well as he knew any woman. In spite of the shame he felt, he smiled ruefully. I don’t know any woman, he thought, not the way a man should. I am a nothing-man and all the women see it. They think I am only lucky to take the horses from the Crows.
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  As he swung up onto the gray horse’s back, he thought of the vow he made to Sun Chief, the vow to sacrifice at the Sun Dance if he returned from the raid safely. He had returned and so he would fulfill that vow. But perhaps Sun Chief would favor him in another way, would allow him to become a good man to be trusted and respected by all the people. He was sick to death of being the puny wretch who desired the touch of his father’s wife, his own near-mother. And he was sick of himself for thinking these thoughts while he had a duty to perform. He kicked his horse forward, and the horse was surprised by the force of the kicks.

  By the end of the fifth sleep, White Man’s Dog had visited all the bands but two. He camped alone this night, for he was tired of feasting and talking. He lay in his robe beside the small fire and studied the stars. It was a clear warm night and he could see the Seven Persons, the Poor Boys, the Person’s Hand and Big Fire Star. He looked at them and felt better. He was not even hungry. But he was disappointed to learn that day that Mountain Chiefs band had crossed the Medicine Line into the Real Old Man country, for he had wanted to see if Fast Horse was among them. Owl Child and his gang, when they were not out raiding, lived with the Many Chiefs. And Crow Foot had said that Owl Child had killed two woodcutters on the Big River near the Hole-in-the-wall. If Fast Horse had joined the gang he would be in trouble, as would all of Mountain Chief’s people. Perhaps that was why the Many Chiefs had slipped across the line.