Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)

by James Welch

  Heavy Shield Woman stopped pounding and looked across the skin at her daughter. “It is the same as giving birth,” she said. “One expects a little change. Someday soon I will appear as I was before, but I will always be different—in here.” She thumped her chest.

  “I want you to be strong and happy.” Red Paint bent over the skin and began to work her fleshing knife over the surface, scraping away the dark meat. She wondered what the white people would make out of the robe. Once she had asked her father and he said they made big shirts and leggings out of them. He said they dressed like bears in their big towns because their skin wasn’t used to the cold. But he often joked with her, so she didn’t know if he was telling the truth. Yellow Kidney’s lodge had once been filled with laughter.

  “How is my father today?”

  “Better.” Heavy Shield Woman scraped a long thin strip of flesh from the hide and tossed it in the trampled grass behind her. A fawn-colored dog darted in, snatched it up and ran away. “Just this morning he made a harness for his right hand. He tied a short piece of skunk rib to it and is going to try to fire his gun with that. He can hold it, all right. He just needs a trigger-puller.”

  Red Paint sat back on her heels. A sudden breeze filled her nose with the scent of dry sage. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “These changes take time. Already you see he is trying to become the hunter he once was.” Heavy Shield Woman busied herself with a thick strand of meat. “He is a tough man, your father.”

  “But I mean—inside, in here, his heart.”

  Heavy Shield Woman did not look up. “He is not the same man. He no longer laughs, he doesn’t play with your brothers or instruct them”—she ripped the scrap of meat loose—“he does not touch me if he can help it.” She felt a stab of guilt, for she did not mind that part. Since becoming a Sacred Vow Woman—even before that—she had lost the desire to hold her man close. In some ways he had become a child to her. She looked after him the way she cared for Good Young Man and One Spot.

  “What can we do?” said Red Paint. Her voice was a wail. “My poor mother, we must do something for him! We must restore him!”

  “Do not weep, child. I have talked with Mik-api. You know his magic. He assured me that he can drive this bad spirit from Yellow Kidney, but he must have your father’s cooperation. So far your father prefers to dwell in his own thoughts, to pity himself as though he were the only one whom misfortune struck.”

  Red Paint almost flinched from her mother’s bitter words.

  But Heavy Shield Woman laughed. “At least he has his hair back. I have been rubbing his head with tonic from the sharp vine. Now it is almost as thick as it once was. But he does not eat. I can’t force the food down his throat, can I?”

  Red Paint looked off toward the lodge. The butterfly was gone. Soon it would be too hot to work, and she looked forward to going into her lodge alone, to lie down and listen to the silence. She was tired and longed for the cool breezes that whispered down the valleys of the Backbone. She longed to be there with her husband and to lie in the lodge and listen to the cold water rushing over the stones. “I think I am growing a baby inside me,” she said. She meant to add that she felt it only in her heart, but as soon as she said it, she saw the tears in Heavy Shield Woman’s eyes. Her mother dropped her scraping knife and scrambled across the skin to kneel before her daughter, hugging her in her thin arms. She hugged Red Paint and wailed to the sky. Red Paint felt the tears on her own cheeks and suddenly felt happier for her mother than for herself. Perhaps a baby would bring them all closer again. Perhaps laughter would again ring out in Yellow Kidney’s lodge. She looked again at the place where the butterfly had landed. If there was a baby. But she knew it in her heart, and she would tell White Man’s Dog when he returned that evening.

  The young warriors of Crow Foot’s band galloped their horses through and around the camp. They whooped and shot their guns into the air. The puffs of smoke from the barrels were carried to the north by a strong south wind. Most of them were shirtless and their bodies were painted with war paint. Crow Foot himself wore his flowing war bonnet. His face was painted red with three black crow tracks on each cheek. He pulled to a halt before the lodge of Three Bears. “Haiya! Three Bears! Are there any Lone Eaters brave enough to take to the war road? My young men say yours are puny and would do nothing but slow us down.”

  Three Bears stood in his finest regalia. He too wore the flowing headdress of the Parted Hairs. His war shirt and leggings were of soft elkskin decorated with quillwork and beads. He raised his long-pipe. He was as excited as his young men. “Ah, Crow Foot, your braves are children against mine. I myself, old as I am, stand over your strongest man. If it weren’t for the length of the ride, I would accompany you and count coup on those insects myself.”

  Crow Foot laughed. “Where’s my friend, Rides-at-the-door? I suppose he is too old too.”

  Again the warriors galloped through camp, shouting insults and making fierce faces. But by then several of Three Bears’ men had started beating on a communal drum with sticks and singing wolf songs. The songs had no words, only the attacking cries of the bigmouths. Some of the Lone Eaters had spears and shields and feinted at the riders as they galloped by.

  Rides-at-the-door trotted toward the two men, wiping dust from his eyes. His war paint was simple, a blue streak from his forehead to the tip of his nose, but his blackhorn headdress made him look big. The curly hair of the topknot had been dyed gray.

  “Welcome, Crow Foot. I see you do not teach your young ones to save their shooters.”

  The two men embraced. “It is a good time,” said Crow Foot. “Tonight we make noise. When the sun rises we will join the others who assemble at the camp of the Small Robes. Does your son ride with us?”

  “Both of them. Running Fisher hasn’t slept for three nights. He lies outside the lodge and watches Seven Persons take the night journey. As for White Man’s Dog, he looks forward to many war honors. He is no longer a boy.”

  “I saw him dancing from the Medicine Pole. He acquitted himself well.” Crow Foot looked at his friend shrewdly. “I hear he is married too.”

  “Yes, sometimes these things happen. He is married to Yellow Kidney’s daughter, Red Paint.” Rides-at-the-door glanced into Crow Foot’s face. He hoped his friend wouldn’t feel dishonored because White Man’s Dog had rejected his daughter.

  Crow Foot watched the mock attacks for a moment. Then he laughed. “You know that crazy daughter of mine, Little Bird Woman? That nothing-girl is going to marry into the Grease Melters. Three Suns’ oldest boy. I tried to talk her out of it, but she told me Three Suns is a great chief. I don’t know about her.”

  Rides-at-the-door smiled. He felt relieved, for Little Bird Woman was going to marry into a very important family. Three Suns was next in line to become head chief of the Pikunis.

  “This talk of women depresses me. My sits-beside-me woman gives me nothing but trouble these days,” said Three Bears. “Now gather up your important men and bring them to my lodge. We will smoke the pipe. I myself do not see anybody out there worth smoking with.”

  The booming of three different drum groups carried far into the night. Wolf songs, scalp dances and honoring songs competed with each other. The girls of the Lone Eaters sang celebration songs. Then they sang a love song that broke up into giggles. Inside the men’s society lodge, the older warriors feasted and counted war honors. Before the group broke up, Three Bears passed the ceremonial pipe and offered a prayer for the party’s safe return. He burned a braid of sweet grass and fanned the purifying smoke through the lodge, then declared that the pipe was empty. The men filed out, some to sleep with relatives or friends, others to stretch their soft-tanned rolls out under the stars. From one of the lodges came the last sad notes of night song. Then the camp was quiet beneath a yellow half-moon.

  Red Paint lay beside her husband, her right arm and leg slung over his wide body. His right arm lay beneath her, his hand stroking the small
of her back.

  “Are you happy for us?” she murmured against his chest.

  “Yes, very happy.”

  “You have been quiet these last days. You think of the war trail.”

  “I think of many things, but making war on the Crows is uppermost in my mind,” he admitted.

  “You will be successful, I think. You are the strongest of the Pikunis.”

  White Man’s Dog slapped her butt and laughed. “Yes, but am I stronger than all the Crows?”

  “You are the strongest man I know,” she said. “Stronger than the blackhorns too.”

  “You speak with the tongue of crawls-along-the-ground, nothing-woman.”

  Red Paint smiled in the darkened lodge. From far off, she heard the barking and howling of Kis-see-noh-o. Soon he was joined by his brothers, and the night was pierced by their mournful howls. “The little-wolves cry to us, my husband. Are they afraid?”

  “They cry to Night Red Light. She shows half her face and they want to see the rest. They are only happy when she smiles down on them.”

  “And you—are you afraid?”

  She felt her husband’s hand go rigid against her back. He sighed and said, “Yes, I am afraid.”

  “Of the Crows?”

  “Yes—no, not of the Crows. My medicine is strong. My luck has not been better, but—”

  “Then you fear nothing?”

  “There is always a chance that a Crow shooter will find me. I do not fear that, for I will die an honorable death. I have spoken with Old Man and he will guide me to the Sand Hills if I am killed. No, I do not fear for myself—Old Man knows the way.”

  White Man’s Dog shifted and held his wife in his arms. Red Paint smelled the sweet tobacco on his breath and thought they were the closest they had ever been. She began to tremble.

  “I am afraid for you—and for our infant inside of you.”

  “I’m not certain—”

  “I have never had such responsibility, and it makes me cry to think of you alone. You are a brave and good woman, Red Paint, and you work as hard as a woman twice your size. But without meat and hides you will suffer. And I must think about your family—Yellow Kidney and your mother and brothers. They too depend on me for their meat. Your brothers are a couple of winters away from hunting for their family.”

  “Do not go, then.” Red Paint raised herself to her elbow. “Your father will understand. He is a kind and wise man.”

  “Ah, if only it were that easy.” White Man’s Dog looked away and studied his pemmican sack hung from a lodgepole. He could barely make out the red and blue designs on it. “You see, I have chosen the way of the warrior and so I must take that trail, wherever it leads. If I were to stay behind, the others would lose respect for me. For an older warrior to say his medicine wasn’t good and he must not go, it would be understandable. None would question him, for that is the way. But I am a young man and my power is good.”

  Red Paint rolled away and looked up through the smoke hole. She could see a few stars but they were indistinct, far away. She knew he would have to go on the war party, but for the past two days, since telling him she might be with child, she had held on to the faint hope that this knowledge would make him stay. But no. He would be thought of as a coward, to be shunned by the people he cared for, perhaps even his family. Red Paint sighed.

  “I think you want a boy. Yes?”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “Would you want a boy named Sleep-bringer?”

  “Sleep-bringer! But why?”

  “Because I saw a butterfly at the very time I was thinking of a son growing inside of me. It was white with black tips on its wings. It sat and watched me, and soon I fell asleep and dreamed wonderful dreams of a proud young man who looked like you.”

  “Sleep-bringer. It is a fine name.”

  “We shall have a naming ceremony when he is born. We will ask my father to do us this honor, but just you make sure you whisper ‘Sleep-bringer’ in his ear.”

  “Kom-i-os-che is more like it.” White Man’s Dog laughed as he patted Red Paint’s belly. “Soon he will be struggling like a worm.”

  “He will want to be born so he can stand on the ground-of-many-gifts and look around. He will be just like you, only shorter.”

  They laughed and hugged and gradually the happiness wore off and they hugged each other tighter and listened to the coyotes sing their songs to bring the moon around.

  All the war chiefs were there with the exception of Tailfeathers-coming-over-the-hill. His horse had gotten too close to a blackhorn bull and the bull butted the animal, causing it to fall on the chief’s leg. Someone said the leg had turned around backward and that Tailfeathers-coming-over-the-hill would not walk again. He had sent his only son, Badger, in his place and there was concern for the boy’s safety, for if he were killed there would be no one left to carry on the chief’s tradition. But the boy insisted, and after a brief council, Fox Eyes, the head war chief, called him over.

  “We know your father wishes you to accompany us, and so you shall. But you must stick with some of the experienced men and learn all you can from them. You are young and will no doubt attempt something foolish. I will keep my eye on you and on the other young ones. The first sign of foolishness, I will turn you around and you will have to explain to your father why.” Fox Eyes looked around at the assembled warriors. Some were sitting on their horses, others lounged in small groups. There were over three hundred of them. Most were proven fighters. They would have to look out for the young ones. “Good luck to you, Badger. If you listen and do as you are told, you will bring honor to your father’s lodge.”

  The camp of the Small Robes, where all the bands’ warriors had assembled, was on a grassy flat near the point where the Yellow River joined the Big River. It was here that the first big treaty was signed, nearly thirteen winters ago. Fox Eyes could remember sitting almost on the exact spot where he now stood, listening to the Napikwan chief spell out the conditions of the treaty. One of the conditions was to cease making war on the enemies. But how was that possible when the enemies continued to insult the Pikunis? Were they not justified in earning the enemy’s respect once in a while? And, too, the Napikwans did not honor the treaty. They spoke high words that day, but they proved to be two-faced.

  Four wolf scouts sat patiently on the bluffs to the south. Fox Eyes signaled to them and they galloped off. Then he called to his war chiefs to gather their men. It had been three winters since the last such party, the winter the Entrails People and the Crows were made to cry. Fox Eyes had been a war chief then and he had killed White Grass, the famed warrior of the Entrails People. He had brought back his enemy’s head on his lance, and the Pikuni women had kicked it around before roasting it on a fire. From that time, Fox Eyes became known and feared among his people’s enemies.

  Now as he looked down at the faces, he prayed silently to the Above Ones to make him wise and correct in his role. He wished to return these husbands, fathers and sons to their lodges. He needed no war honors and was concerned only with his leadership, for on that would their fortunes depend. He stepped forward. The brass buttons on the tunic he had taken from a slain seizer chief glistened in the high sun.

  “Hear me, warriors of the Pikuni people! Sun Chief smiles down on this spot where the Small Robes choose to summer and causes all of us joy and excitement. But he also knows that a great wrong has been done to one of his children and he wishes us to punish those who would laugh at the Pikunis. For this reason we now take to the war trail. Our brother, Yellow Kidney of the Lone Eaters, is not among us, for the Crows have mutilated him and shamed us all. In his place, White Man’s Dog, son of the war chief and leader Rides-at-the-door, will count the first honor against our enemy. It has always been so with our people, and so it shall be.

  “There are many among us who go to war for the first time. Let them follow the counsel of their chiefs, and no harm will come to them. If their hearts are not in this, now is the time to turn back. T
here is no dishonor in wisdom. For those who would be foolish and seek to gain glory only for themselves, let them also turn back. In that way there is no profit.” The war chief paused and stared at the groups of young men. His eyes seemed to find each of them and look directly into their eyes. Then he lifted his head. “Now I pray to the Above Ones, to the Below Ones and to the four directions to grant us success against the Crow dogs and return us safely to our families. The war chief, Fox Eyes, is heard.”

  The old men, women and children watched the warriors ride away. Even the dogs did not bark or try to follow. They sat silently in small packs, tongues hanging from the midday heat. Some of the men in the rear sang a riding song as the party climbed the bluffs. The horses were all painted on the shoulders and haunches, around the legs; some in the face. Fox Eyes was the first to reach the plain. He kicked his roan horse into a faster walk, not quite a trot. His feathered shield bounced against his left arm. Made from an old bull’s neck skin, it was the same shield with which he had fended off White Grass’s arrows. He had hated White Grass then, and it had been this hatred which gave him the strength to kill him. Now he felt a mild regret that his old enemy was no longer around. With his victory, Fox Eyes had lost something, the desire to make his enemies pay dearly, to ride among them with a savage heart. He had lived forty-three winters, and he wished to live forty-three more in peace. Two of his sons were in the party, and he worried about them. The youngest was only sixteen. Like the other youths, he would gladly follow the counsel of the war chiefs, but when they closed upon the Crows, he would ride blindly among them, seeking to kill them all, to count war honors enough to last a lifetime. This was how the young ones were killed.