by Win Blevins
Crazy Horse only shrugged.
So they went against the Pani together. When they got back, bringing ponies, the news came. At the last Man-Whose-Enemies-Are-Afraid-of-His-Horses had decided not to go to Washington. But Red Cloud had gone, and several other Oglala, including Drum-on-His-Back, who had learned to read the whites’ writing.
“Your mothers’ brother, too,” said Worm, “and some other Sicangu.” Crazy Horse thought of his uncle Spotted Tail and Red Cloud negotiating with the whites, probably from their knees. Worm chose his words carefully. “They’re asking the ‘Great White Father’ to take pity on them.”
Worm smiled sardonically.
He Dog came to Crazy Horse and asked him to lead an old-time party for hunting and raiding, with several lodges along and women to do the cooking, the way the big parties had gone out before things changed. The young warriors wanted it, said He Dog. They would go against the Psatoka, as in the old days.
Crazy Horse was touched by the request. While Red Cloud and the other politicians tried to find honor at the house of The One They Use for Father, he and the young men would look for it at the frontier of life and death. “Hoye!” he said with grim enthusiasm. “Let’s go.”
Before they left, the leaders of Kangi Yuha, the Raven Owners Society, invited everyone to a big ceremony to make He Dog and Crazy Horse bearers of the short lances. The duties of these two men were strict. In battle, they had to drive their otter-wrapped lances into the ground and not leave that spot. Their companions charged and tried not to retreat. If they were driven back, the other warriors could pull up the lances and release the bearers from their obligation—if that was possible and if the lance bearers served courageously. Then they could retreat and later retire honorably as bearers of the short lances.
Normally the new lance bearers went immediately to war. But this time Crazy Horse and He Dog got a surprise—the Big Bellies wanted to perform another ceremony.
Two Big Bellies brought out the ceremonial weapons known as the lances of the Oglala. They were said to be hundreds of years old, older than two or three times seven generations. They were given to the people originally as a promise that the strength of the Oglala would always rise again, like grass in the spring.
Everyone had heard of these lances, but they had gone unused for as long as any but the oldest could remember.
Now the Big Bellies sang songs entrusting these ancient lances of the Oglala to Crazy Horse and He Dog, and with them the promise of strength and renewal for the people.
The two warriors led their big war party away toward Psatoka country carrying these emblems. The people walked them out of camp raising resounding cheers, once-in-a-lifetime cheers.
Worm worked his way to the front. He wanted to see his son’s face. His elder son had walked a difficult road, refusing to take scalps, to count coups, to wear the insignia of success in battle. Until now the Oglala with the most war honors had looked like a poor man of no accomplishment. But today Crazy Horse was achieving something his heart had yearned for, the zenith of honors, the highest war rank the Oglala could offer. His face was solemn, but Worm saw a rare lightness in the young man’s eyes.
Tears ran down Worm’s cheeks.
ONE ROAD
Black Buffalo Woman cut the moccasin carefully, more carefully than she usually did. She was not fond of sewing or cooking or other domestic tasks. In fact, she wanted No Water to take a second wife so that as sits-beside-him wife, she could supervise the domestic chores instead of doing them and focus on helping her husband make his way. There was plenty a clever wife could do.
She was cutting this moccasin carefully because it was for her Strange Man. Yes, he would always be “My Strange Man” to her. Now the Strange Man was one of the two most honored warriors of many generations of the Lakota.
She handed the two pieces of leather to Plum, the ancient one who was the woman of the sandy-haired man’s lodge. Plum was deaf and dumb and dull of mind, but she could sew if you cut the pieces for her and put the awl and sinew in her hand. And talked to her to keep her from drifting off into the daze she usually lived in.
Black Buffalo Woman’s eyes twinkled when she looked at Plum. She couldn’t help feeling that Plum was the great sign of her victory. The Strange Man wanted no other wife but Black Buffalo Woman. Having lost her, he lived with his grandmother, and a grandmother who could do almost nothing for him. All but the simplest tasks fell on him. That made Black Buffalo Woman smile.
That’s why the women of the village sat with Plum and helped her sew moccasins and the like. That’s why Black Buffalo Woman, while her band was camped with the Long Face people of Crazy Horse, could seem to be helping Plum while waiting for her Strange Man.
He would be back soon, probably with lots of Psatoka horses. Though not any scalps. She sighed. Well, he would find her making his moccasins.
When she thought of the elk teeth and the other gifts, and his face when he handed them to her, her heart ached.
Turmoil. Black Buffalo Woman always put him into turmoil. She had come to him the first time on the day of Spotted Tail’s supposed hanging and helped him learn love and death together. Whenever he saw her after that, his only awareness was of her. When a smell is that sweet and strong in your nostrils, you suck it in deep and maybe start dreaming, or live as though you’re in a dream.
Crazy Horse touched Grandmother Plum on the shoulder. Though she didn’t seem to recognize him, he was sure she did. He stood there awkwardly before the two women.
“Thank you for helping our unci,” Little Hawk said politely.
Crazy Horse was glad his brother had remembered decorum. His heart beat fast—was she making moccasins for him?
“Plum needs to rest now,” said Black Buffalo Woman. “I’ll help her.” She assisted the old woman to her feet and led her toward the lodge.
Was Black Buffalo Woman arranging for them to be alone in the lodge together? Then he took thought. It wouldn’t do for them to be seen entering at the same time. “I’ll be back,” he murmured, head down. “I have something for you.”
The beads were in the parfleche he was carrying, but he needed time.
He walked away from the tipi as though he had a task. He turned his attention inward to Hawk. He felt nothing.
Strange, always strange: When he was around Black Buffalo Woman, he never could feel Hawk. He never knew whether Hawk was comfortable or agitated in her presence. He didn’t know why.
He came back without his brother, as she knew he would. She had built a center fire.
They talked idly for a while:
“How are your children?”
“Very well. Yourself? Your brother? What is the news from the Holy Road?”
“Nothing ever changes.”
This was an intimate remark, coming from him. They traded news and gossip a little, as though they talked to each other often and comfortably. She slipped in the information that No Water was away just now.
Her Strange Man mostly kept his head down, as though he were the one obligated to avoid a meeting of the eyes. She smiled to herself—even smiled openly—and looked him straight in the face, telling him something.
At last he came out with it. “I have something for you. From one of the posts on the Holy Road.” He handed her four strands of beads. White, always useful. The color called chief blue. Sahiyela rose, a muted version of the hue of wild roses. The yellow called fatty yellow. She held them up in the light shafting down from the center hole. “They’re beautiful together,” she said truthfully. “I will make something and wear it in your honor.”
This was brazen. He offered no response. Finally, he glanced sideways at the old woman and said, “I miss you.”
She touched his forearm. He sucked in his breath and drew it back.
She smiled at him, not quite certain. Did he think the old woman saw? Or heard? Everyone knew better. She had a moment’s misgiving. Maybe he was too strange, lived too much in a private world. Maybe he would e
nd up like his grandmother.
No, she told herself, no danger. Her presence gave him strong feelings, she knew, nearly made him intoxicated. He was one of the most honored men among the Oglala. He was a hero, a naive and foolish hero, perhaps, but a hero. And she could make him feel intoxicated.
So she plunged in. “I must tell you something.”
Crazy Horse was horrified. He could scarcely believe it, even of No Water. To steal the bag of her first flow, her offering to the powers of fecundity. To follow her to the plum tree, defy all the spirits, and steal it.
Then the truly incredible part: To use it to have a spell cast upon her. Use it to alter her mind, though not her affections. Use it to manipulate her, control her, dominate her, take over her will.
He had given No Water credit falsely. He thought No Water loved her. But no Lakota usurped the will of a loved person.
And he thought he had lost her. Not so. She had loved him all along, helplessly. He thought she had betrayed him. Not so. No Water had victimized them both.
A picture came to his mind: Black Buffalo Woman being topped by the man she despised, being dominated, being coerced. He obliterated it. Unbearable.
He looked into her eyes. They shone back at him, open, vulnerable. She was telling the entire truth.
He felt shattered.
“I want to show you something,” she said. Now she was taking the big risk. Her breath came tight, but she went ahead. She pulled on a buckskin thong around her neck. Slowly she drew out the ring of carved bone he had given her nearly ten winters ago. It glowed from the time she had spent rubbing it with fat.
“I wear it always between my breasts,” she said. “No one knows but No Water. I never take it off. Ever.”
She held his eyes.
She got up. “Tonight I will send the children to my sister’s lodge,” she said softly. She glanced up at him and back down, feeling shy now. She left the lodge quickly.
Walking home, she felt giddy. She thought she had done it. Yes, he would come to her tonight. Surely. She knew his heart. Didn’t she?
He told himself it didn’t matter. Red Cloud was taking many of the Oglala to live at an agency, where they would need no warriors.
He told himself that after thirty-one winters his real life was over and he should take whatever comfort he could find.
He told himself that No Water would not mind, that it would cause no trouble.
He didn’t truly believe any of this.
He admitted to himself that he had never wanted anything or anyone as he wanted Black Buffalo Woman. His body, his guts, his bones, even his skin yearned for her. If he walked across a desert without water for half a moon, this was how his body would ache for water.
Uncertain, he stepped outside the lodge. The night sun was approaching night-middle-made. He looked at the vast sky of stars, some making clouds of misty light, some separate, isolated, brilliant, cold. It was as though he heard a drum. The plunk of the drum lifted his feet and set them down, lifted them and set them down. The throb of the drum put his hand on her door flap. He himself lifted it.
She slept with her head on his shoulder and a bare leg thrown across his. He did not see how she could sleep. He wanted to hold every moment of their being together, to feel every touch and hear every whisper again in memory, to kiss her for a week, to be inside her forever.
She stirred, moved her body against the length of his, then kept napping. Twice already she had taken short naps, then waked to rouse him again.
He put a finger on her cheek and felt her warm breath on his chest. Out and in, very slowly, out and in, warm and moist. That breath, her life, touched his skin and grew in him an awareness, a presence. In his mind were no words for that presence, but in his body and in his memory he recognized the solace, the comfort, the succor.
He felt whole.
In the morning light Black Buffalo Woman looked into his eyes, and they were different. She wasn’t sure what had changed. His face was unpainted and wasn’t so grave that it made him look forty winters instead of thirty-one. But that wasn’t it. His mouth, maybe—it was sober, but for once had an edge of humor. The twin vertical lines between his eyes were gone, a difference for sure. He had wrapped his braids in strips of beaver she had given him last night, the fur a little darker than his hair.
The eyes were it. She had seen Crazy Horse in every light, every time of day, every circumstance, every mood, but she had never seen him playful, truly playful, as his eyes looked now. They were lovely.
She was sorry this was the Moon When the Chokecherries Are Ripe, which had the shortest nights of any moon.
He was taking food in her lodge at dawn. When he left, everyone would see. They would also see No Water’s moccasins, which she had set outside the door. She was happy.
When they woke this morning, Crazy Horse said the fateful words: “We are taking women on the raiding party tomorrow. Will you come with me?”
She heard what he left unsaid: I want you for my wife. She answered, “Yes.”
No Water was gone to the Rawhide Buttes to trade. So she would tell the children they were to stay with relatives until she got back, in no more than a quarter- or half-moon from now. Someone would pick up No Water’s moccasins where she had left them, and tell him.
Crazy Horse finished eating and set the bowl aside. “Come outside.” He led the way out of the lodge, where the whole village would see them, and sat on the side of the door away from the moccasins. “Put your back to me,” he said gently, and patted the earth in front of his crossed legs.
She lowered herself to the ground and felt his strong hands take hold of her hair. She dared not look up at all the eyes on them. “I want to braid your hair,” he said. “Then if you have some vermilion,” and he knew she did, “I will paint a red circle on your cheek.”
She felt a pang in her heart. This circle was the sign of a woman greatly beloved.
She looked back at the many inquisitive eyes. She felt triumphant.
They rode out of the village together ceremonially, in everyone’s view. She had the right to choice, like every mature Lakota woman. She was making her choice for all to see.
She knew what the women were saying. Some said that when Crazy Horse turned out to be the bigger man, she simply switched. Others talked about what No Water and Red Cloud might do when they found out. Some, though, were smiling at her. They knew she was marrying for love.
Actually, she herself wasn’t sure much of the time. She felt giddy, topsy-turvy, her emotions thrown every which way. She couldn’t explain it. Her mother accused her one morning of being enamored of the drama of throwing off one man and taking another and all the attention, even the furor. She wasn’t sure about that. But she knew the fledgling woman of all those winters ago still wanted Crazy Horse. She had discovered that last night. No Water made her want to be taken, which was exciting and frightening. Crazy Horse made her want to give, which was fulfilling.
She looked sideways at her Strange Man as they went over a rise and out of sight of the village. She was committed now. She studied his face—slender, and for once in his life, the face of a truly young man. He looked at her and smiled, and she felt his passion. For this moment she was sure. She loved him.
HIS PEOPLE’S HANDS
Standing Bear wrist-whipped his pony into camp, not caring where the pony stepped or what droppings it made or what dust it whirled up. If it was about to collapse, so was he, and he didn’t mean to slow down for the sake of politeness now.
A woman glared at him.
“No Water,” he growled at her. She look alarmed—his ferocity would frighten any woman, he thought—and ducked into a lodge to tell someone.
He’d been sickened by the spectacle. He’d watched them flirting with each other outrageously. Standing Bear knew it wasn’t simply that the woman fascinated the Strange Man. Their flirtation had ended nine winters ago when the woman had made a good marriage. That infatuation was meaningless anyway—every fool f
elt that way for a little while as a teenager. No, it was more. The Strange Man cared only moderately for the woman. Anyone could see that.
Strange Man, Standing Bear thought. What he and Pretty Fellow called the Strange Man in private was “the misfit.” The other name was making something obnoxious into something glamorous.
The Strange Man didn’t want the woman—he wanted to insult No Water and the Bad Face people.
A man he didn’t know came out of the lodge. “I am Standing Bear,” he said to the fellow, “and I want No Water.”
The Strange Man despised the Bad Face people. Pretending to advocate peace and goodwill between these factions of the northern Oglala, he had in fact taken every opportunity to oppose them. Now he was throwing dust in the faces of No Water and Red Cloud.
Standing Bear had never forgotten the day Crazy Horse had kicked his brother in the face—the face!—and broken his nose. That day Standing Bear held poor Woman Dress’s head in his lap and swore to get even with the misfit.
This was his chance.
No Water came running.
“My friend,” said Standing Bear, “His Crazy Horse …” He’d intended to tease and mock No Water, to inflame him about this betrayal. From No Water’s expression, he saw that wouldn’t be necessary. “His Crazy Horse has run off with your wife.”
No Water slipped into camp. He had come at a hard run, nearly killing the mule. Now he needed some discretion. The last thing he wanted was for Crazy Horse to find out too soon that he was here. He needed a gun. He meant to leave nothing to chance. Where could he get one? Where, where, where?
A dog growled at him. He kicked at it and it slinked off. He looked around the lodge circle. Who was here? Who had come on this war party? Who were all their hosts?
Bad Heart Bull’s lodge—he knew it from the painting on the hides. Bad Heart Bull was the man who painted the winter counts. He was related to both sides, No Water’s and the misfit’s—a problem.
