The Travelers 1

by Lee Hunnicutt

  Whistling Elk waited as long as he could and at the perfect moment began to speak. It was as if everyone, Two Feathers, Falling Moon Woman, the three white children and the whole tribe were hypnotized by his words.

  He told of how Beth was dying and of how he dreamed of his fight with the bear. When he came to the part of how the bear came to him and spoke to him and challenged him to combat, once again a collective gasp swept through the tribe.

  He told of how he and the bear charged each other over and over again. When he told of his wounds and of the wounds of the bear, cries rang out.

  At the end of his story his voice was weak and almost a whisper. Everyone was straining to hear his last words. When he finally finished, he appeared weak as if he had fought the bear all over again. He collapsed into his high back. The tribe went wild. Everyone was on their feet, hollering, chanting, screaming and dancing. The dancing went on until the wee hours of the morning.

  When the tribal members went back to their lodges that night, the talk was that no one could remember a better story than the one told that night by Whistling Elk. For the next few days it was all anyone could talk about.

  For the next two months Beth recovered. When she felt that she had fully regained her strength, she went to Whistling Elk and spoke to him about going on a vision quest. She wanted to know if the Great Spirit would talk to her and give her some clue as to why she had been chosen by the bear to carry his spirit within her.

  As with almost everything in her young life, she had already discussed this with the boys. Two days ago in their regular morning meeting by the river she told them what she planned to do.

  The boys were stunned.

  Jack was smarter than Sonny and kept his mouth shut.

  Sonny gave a nervous laugh and said, “You can’t be serious. You’re joking aren’t you?”

  “No Sonny,” Beth said with building anger in her voice. “I’m serious. You think everything is a joke. You take nothing seriously.

  There have been a lot of strange things going on that I can’t explain but I take them seriously.

  Our parents taught us to keep an open mind and for us to find our own way. That’s why they taught us about religion but never gave us any religious doctrine to follow.

  Well,” her voice loud and she emphasized the next words “I have found my way.”

  Beth’s face was flush and her fists were clenched. She had worked herself into a rage against her brother.

  Jack who was sitting next to Sonny moved a little away from him. In case Beth threw something at Sonny he didn’t want to be in the line of fire.

  She turned to Jack and said, “Well are you going to say something or are you going to sit there like a bump on a log?”

  Jack started to say something but Beth started up again before he could open his mouth.

  “What about you Sonny and the time we went deer hunting? Huh? What about that? How do you explain that?”

  She had pointed her finger at Sonny and moved so that her face and her finger were just inches away from his face.

  “That time with the deer was the most fantastic thing that I have ever seen. Wasn’t it Jack?” She spun her face towards Jack.

  “Well?”

  Jack opened his mouth to say something but she had whipped her face back around so that she was facing Sonny and started in on him again.

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She was on a roll.

  “This whole fucking experience has been so damned weird that I need something to hold on to.” her face was red and as she shouted she was spitting on her brother. To make matters worse she emphasized the words fucking and experience by jabbing her finger on to Sonny’s forehead at the beginning of each word.

  Her voice reached a crescendo at the end of the sentence.

  She stepped back. Her face was red and her chest heaving as if she had just run a hundred-yard dash.

  Sonny sat there for a moment too stunned to speak. And then he did something that shocked both Jack and Beth. He stood up, took a step towards his sister, put his arms around her and pulled her close. He put his cheek next to hers and stroked the back of her head with his left hand and said with sincerity, “You’re right, there is no explanation for what has happened to us and if you need to go through with this, Jack and I will help you in any way that we can.”

  Jack stood up and gently pulled Beth out of Sonny’s arms and hugged her.

  He said, “Sonny’s right. We’re here for you.”

  Jack reached out and pulled Sonny towards him and Beth. All three hugged each other.

  They stood that way for a few moments and then pulled apart.

  Sonny smiled and said, “Well, when do we get started?”

  Beth’s legs were cramped. Her back was sore and her butt had gone to sleep. As near as she could tell she had been sitting here not moving for about eight hours. The sun was just disappearing behind the mountains. There was light but it was going to be dark soon.

  She decided to get up and move around. She needed to get circulation back in her legs and in her bottom. Besides she had to pee.

  She had been sitting cross legged and when she tried to stand up, her legs wouldn’t support her. She put her legs out in front of her and began to massage them. At first the pain was excruciating as the blood began to flow back into the leg muscles, pain, tingling, numbness and then feeling.

  She slowly stood up and took a few wobbling steps. She thought, “I’m not going to sit that way again.”

  Everything that she had ever seen of an Indian on a vision quest had been in books. In all of these books that were written by white men, the Indian had some sort of goofy altruistic look on his face and was sitting cross legged. On one hand she wanted to be comfortable but on the other hand the whole purpose was to be able to inspire a vision and part of that, in her mind, was discomfort.

  After all, an Indian would go on a vision quest and would starve and deprive himself until a vision or hallucination would come to him. Comfort wasn’t exactly part of it.

  When she had talked to Whistling Elk three weeks ago about this he smiled and said, “I have been on many vision quests and when I was young I thought as you. I thought that I had to prove something to not only the Great Spirit but also to myself. I thought that if I punished myself, I would prove myself worthy of a great vision.”

  He stopped and smiled at her.

  She looked at him and waited for him to continue and when he didn’t she said, “Well, grandfather, did you get your vision?”

  He chuckled and said, “Yes, but I learned something in the process. You should not try for a vision. You must let the vision come to you.

  Not everyone has a vision. There are many great warriors among the Cheyenne and among the other great tribes who have never had a vision.

  And then there are others, like myself, who have visions many times. I do not need to go on a vision quest to have visions. Sometimes I do go away to speak to the Great Spirit but that is because at times I need the solitude.”

  “Does the Great Spirit always speak to you, grandfather?”

  He smiled “Not always. He speaks to me only when he needs to speak to me.

  I believe that he will come to you. I believe that in your lifetime the Great Spirit will give you guidance and speak to you many times.”

  Beth walked around for a while to stretch her legs. She walked about fifty feet away to relieve herself. She didn’t want some critter wandering around in the dark coming across her urine and sniffing around too close to her.

  She went back to where she had been sitting. It was bitter cold and she had begun to shiver. She smiled as she rearranged the buffalo robes to give her more cushioning against the rocky ground. The boys had insisted on bringing on what she thought was an excess of buffalo robes. They had said that she had barely survived the infection from her wound. Jack had said, “Now that you are back among the living, I sure as hell don’t want to see you freeze to death just because you are too dumb
to carry enough clothing and wraps to keep you warm.” She was glad that they had insisted on the extra robes. It was cold and getting colder.

  She sat down on a double folded robe and she pulled the other skins around her. After a while she found that she was not only comfortable but she was quite warm.

  The sun had gone down behind the mountains and it was now completely dark. There was no moon.

  She looked up through the trees. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was so clear that it looked like she could reach up and touch the stars. Tears welled up in her eyes. The night was beautiful beyond description and she felt a sense of wellbeing and great peace. Even though she came from a loving family, she felt a love and belonging like she had never felt before. The tribe had completely accepted her and the boys. There was the love and tenderness from Whistling Elk, Falling Moon Woman and her sisters and the powerful, strong and protective love of Two Feathers. She felt closer to the boys than she had ever felt before and although the boys would never admit it she knew that they felt the same way towards her. Their camaraderie had strengthened. She felt a strong bond between herself with Tall Boy and Stone Fist.

  They lived in violent changing times and she knew that they would die for her and that she would do the same for them. Their love and wellbeing meant more to her than life itself.

  It was a feeling that was hard to describe. It was a feeling that overwhelmed her.

  She was in the mountains about a mile and a half from the tribe’s encampment It was late November. The first snow had yet to fall.

  The boys had hauled two Buffalo robes up to where she was to sit and wait for her vision. Tall Boy and Stone Fist had helped and had carried the skin of the bear that Jack had killed. The skin of a large Buffalo could weigh as much as one hundred to one hundred fifty pounds so it was no mean task getting the skins up the mountain.

  She was wrapped in buffalo skins and on the advice of Whistling Elk, the boys had placed the bear skin over the buffalo robes with the head of the bear on top. Beth thought at the time that the boys were wrapping her up in skins, “I probably look like the Teddy Bear from hell.”

  Whistling Elk had gone with them into the mountains and had found the perfect place for her to sit. He placed her in a large rock alcove, a few feet off the trail, that was facing west looking up at the mountains.

  Whistling Elk placed her there for two reasons. The view was spectacular and her rocks protected her on three sides from the wind. Like Jack and Sonny, he didn’t want her to freeze to death.

  So there she sat nestled against the rocks, comfortable, warm and content. She went to sleep.

  She was awaked just before dawn by the sound of voices. At first she thought she was dreaming and then as she awoke she was confused and didn’t know where she was. The voices grew louder and she remembered where she was.

  She pulled the robe open just a crack and looked out. Over the night it had snowed, dropping three inches of powder over everything. There not ten feet from her were two painted Crow warriors deep in animated discussion. They were apparently arguing. As they talked they also signed in the graceful rhythmic sign language of the plains Indians. This added emphasis to their words. Finally, one of the warriors ended the conversation with a sharp guttural exchange, slamming his right hand down in a sliding motion on to the palm of his left hand. The other warrior snorted in disgust and took off down the trail. The last warrior waited a few seconds and then followed his companion down the trail.

  Beth froze. Her first thought was “Oh my God, they will see me.” When they didn’t see her, she realized that she was covered in snow and probably looked like part of the landscape.

  Her next thought was “This is a war party. Lord knows how many more of them there are.”

  She had recognized them as Crow from the descriptions that Two Feathers and Whistling Elk had given her. In the books that she had read, mountain men had called the Crow the most handsome of the Plains Indians.

  Her mind was a whirl of thoughts. “This is a war party. My God, my God, what’ll I do. What’ll I do. What’ll I do!”

  She was in a panic. Her breathing was fast and shallow. Her heart was racing. She kept saying the same thing over and over in her mind “What’ll I do. What’ll I do. What’ll I do!”

  Then, all of a sudden, as if a switch had been thrown, she stopped. Her breathing came back to normal and her heart slowed down. She willed herself to stay calm. She knew what she had to do.

  She listened for a few moments for any sounds of more Crow. She heard none. She slowly stood up, shook the snow off her and shrugged herself out of her robes. They made a muffled sound as they slip to the ground. The air was dry. The humidity was crackingly low and as the fur slipped off her head, the static electricity made her long blond hair stand out from her head.

  The ground gradually slopped away from her stone alcove down to the trail.

  She took a few steps and then knelt and dug around in the snow for a while until she found what she was looking for. When she stood up she had three roughly rounded stones a little bigger than golf balls. She put two stones in her left hand and the third stone in her right hand.

  She then turned and took off at a run down the trail following the footsteps of the Crow warriors.

  In the trees, forty feet down the slope from Beth, another Crow warrior was making his way down the mountain towards the Cheyenne village. His name was Weasel Tail. A movement caught his eye. He looked through the trees to his left just in time to see Beth stand up.

  What he saw made his blood turn cold. It appeared to him as if a large Grizzly had just walked out of a stone wall. The bear then magically transformed into a young woman. She was unlike any woman he had ever seen. The sun was cresting just behind Beth as she slipped her robes off. To Weasel Tail with the sun shining through Beth’s hair, it looked like her head was encased in gold. She was dressed in a magnificent Cheyenne white buckskin dress with elaborate bead and porcupine quill work. She was in white fur lined calf length moccasins.

  Weasel Tail was a warrior of some note among the Crow but this vision that he had just witnessed froze him in his tracks. He knew the coppery fear that proceeded battle. He had always overcome it. In the past he had turned that fear into courage for fierce battle. But this? How does one combat the supernatural? This was like nothing he had ever experienced. He felt a fear that he could not conquer and a fear he did not understand.

  He watched in stunned silence as Beth knelt in the snow and searched for something. He prayed to the Great Spirit that she would not look his way.

  To his great relief, she finally left without seeing him. It took him awhile to compose himself but he knew what he had to do. He had to find the war party’s medicine man and tell him what he had just seen. Weasel Tail was convinced that nothing good could come of this adventure and that the war party must break off and leave as fast as they could. If they didn’t, they were all doomed.

  Beth ran as fast as she dared through the snow. The snow muffled her footsteps so that as she ran she heard no sound. It had a free surrealist feeling about it. The ground and the trees were all white. The trees seemed to fly by her. She felt like she was flying. It was strange but she felt great joy in her heart and she felt invincible.

  The trail became steeper and there were more turns. As she came around a turn, twenty feet away was one of the warriors that had been talking in front of where she had been sleeping.

  The warrior must have felt something or maybe he had heard Beth’s muffled footsteps. He turned to see what was behind him. For a split second, he saw something. Then everything went black.

  Beth was ten feet away from the warrior. Her right arm cocked to throw the stone in her hand. When her right foot came down her arm came forward and she threw the stone with all her might.

  She saw the Indian spin around and she saw his face as the stone caught him above the left eye. There was a crisp cracking sound as the stone hit his skull. The blow snapped his head back and he
began to fall backwards down the trail. As his body fell backwards, his arms shot out in front of him. In his right hand was a war club, a foot and a half long stick with a large egg shaped stone tied to the end with raw hide.

  As Beth passed him on his right side she snatched the club out of his hand, much as if he were passing a baton to her. She didn’t break stride.

  Down, down, down the mountain she continued. It was steeper and she was now running as fast as she could. She soon overtook the first warrior that had awakened her. She was on him in an instant. He turned to face her. He saw her but what he saw puzzled him. He paused. That was all Beth needed. She swung the war club up and brought it down right between his eyes. His head exploded like a melon spraying her with blood, brains and pieces of skull.

  Beth never paused or looked back. She had to get off this mountain and clear the trees. She had to warn the village. That was the only thought in her mind.

  As soon as she burst out of the trees she began to cry over and over again at the top of her voice “HaiYaa, HaiYaa, Crow, the Crow are coming.”

  Jack hadn’t slept well all night. Knowing Beth was alone on the mountain had made him uneasy. He knew that she would be all right but it just didn’t sit well with him.

  He sat bolt upright in his buffalo robe bedding. He heard a dog barking in the distance. In his heart he knew something wasn’t right.

  He reached over and shook Sonny awake.

  He said, “Come on get up. Something’s wrong.”

  They were both on their feet. Two Feathers who was a light sleeper woke up and said, “What’s wrong?”

  All Indians slept with their weapons nearby. Both boys had their bows and arrow quivers in hand.

  “Something’s not right,” said Jack.

  Another dog had begun to bark.

  Two Feathers felt it too. All three ran out of the tent with bows and quivers in hand. Falling Moon Woman followed.

  The four of them stopped and listened. In the distance they could hear a faint cry.

  Two Feathers turned to Falling Moon Woman and said, “Wake the Village!”