Two in the Field

by Darryl Brock

  I was holding fast to Cait and Tim when we heard somebody sliding down the slope. Linc! He’d tried to bandage his face with a shirtsleeve, but blood still seeped from beneath the fabric. The bullets fired at him had sent stone fragments into his face and filled his eyes with blood. Stunned and disoriented, he’d tried to come down to help, but had trouble finding the rope and then hanging on to it once he did.

  Cait gently pulled away the makeshift bandage and stifled a gasp. Linc’s wounded eye was a mess, and it was instantly plain to us that he would not see out of it again. While Cait daubed at the blood, I told him what had happened.

  “You didn’t need me at all,” he said wonderingly.

  “Not with these two.” I nodded toward Cait and Tim. “And a little outside help.”

  While the tall Indian had hacked his arrows from LeCaron’s flesh, I’d seen that they bore the same design as those beside the murdered prospectors. I felt fairly certain that I was one of very few whites to have seen Crazy Horse close-up during a hostile confrontation and lived to tell of it.

  I described Goose’s tapping Brown Hair with his tomahawk handle and asked if he’d been counting coup.

  Linc nodded. “For a Lakota, it shows more courage than killing to deliberately risk yourself while dishonoring your enemy. Winkte or not, Goose became a warrior today.” He looked around with his good eye. “Where’d the soldier go? Was he one of Pollack’s troopers?”

  I looked at him. “Soldier?”

  “As I came down the slope I caught a glimpse of him heading away through the trees,” he said. “Blue Federal coat with brass buttons.…”

  Cait and I looked at each other.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I felt him leaving,” Cait said. She sat in her kitchen doorway, shelling peas, while I stirred laundry starch into water in a kettle on the stove. The starch was intended for bedskirts she had just washed. “I felt it, as sure as I’ve ever felt anything.”

  “When?” I asked. The subject of Colm had come up a lot between us in recent days.

  “As soon as I knew they were all dead and Tim was safe,” she said. “Only then did I realize how strongly he had been within me, Samuel, and for so long!”

  I was about to reply when Tim pushed through the partition to his room, rubbing his eyes sleepily. He’d gotten most of his weight back in the month since we’d returned to O’Neill City. But he was still pretty withdrawn, and he spent a lot of time sleeping.

  “Too late to go fishin’?” he mumbled.

  I caught Cait’s encouraging glance. Beyond the beatings and other privations he’d suffered, Tim had encountered the existence of evil in this world. He wouldn’t again be the same innocent boy, but he was slowly coming out of a protective shell. We hadn’t yet tried baseball or sparring, but contemplating the eddies of the Elkhorn and watching our lines bobs in the clear water seemed therapeutic enough for now. We went out together nearly every day.

  “Got to get ourselves spiffed up for the big shindig tonight,” I told him. “But maybe we could sneak in an hour’s worth.”

  The colony was about to celebrate a number of things, not least of which was our safe return. Two days after our showdown in the Hills, troopers had taken us to Fort Kearney, where Linc and Tim received medical attention—such as there was. With a military escort we’d proceeded safely through Red Cloud’s agency and returned to find things in much the same disorder here as when we’d left.

  Part of the reason was that John O’Neill had been stricken with recurring fevers and chest coughs. But now he was on his feet again and seemed to have turned the corner. New settlers had recently arrived, including some from the anthracite fields. Noola had made them feel at home. She was flourishing here, and so was Catriona, who’d been helping Kaija care for Lily. Building was going on everywhere, and stores of food were plentiful for winter. The settlement exuded a new atmosphere of confidence.

  “There’ll be a cornhusking bee later on,” Cait teased her son. “If you draw the red ear, you get to kiss the girl of your choice.”

  Tim shot me an indignant teenager’s glance, as if to say, Won’t she ever give up? While he busied himself spreading butter on a hunk of bread, I gave Cait a reassuring smile. Her boy would be okay. Seeing his dark head rise, I thought again of Colm. Once we’d asked Tim what he remembered of those moments when he’d tried to resist McDermott, but he’d only shaken his head and started to tremble.

  Cait and I were convinced that it was Colm who somehow had energized him. But I knew that the way Tim fought had not come from Colm O’Neill. He’d learned that sweet boxing move from me.

  In short, we were celebrating everything.

  One of the new settlers approached as I was busy helping set up tables outside Grand Central. “There’s an Injun here,” he said, “wants to talk to you.”

  “Another one?” Pawnees had been showing up, wanting coffee and sugar and anything else we had to spare. They were friendly but the timing always seemed wrong, and we’d already handed them a ton of treats.

  “This one’s different,” he said.

  I followed his gaze and saw Goose standing at the rear of the building. He was dressed in a beaded robe with elaborate borders of quills and fringes of dyed leather. The effect was definitely feminine, but his hair formed a warrior’s braid and held the feather of a golden eagle.

  “How.” He lifted an open hand to me in peace. “Kola.”

  “How, kola,” I echoed. Hello, friend.

  I made eating motions, inviting him to our feast, but he didn’t respond.

  “Linc!” I yelled, and saw him emerge from his soddy, the crimson patch he wore over his blind eye giving him a piratical look. He’d been working hard to finish his outlying house before winter, often taking Kaija and Lily along. But today everybody was on hand for the celebration.

  “Ain’t he the dandy!” Linc chortled when he spotted Goose. “He says he has gifts for us, but first we must smoke.” He grinned. “He’s asking for your squaw, too.”

  Cait joined us in sitting cross-legged on the sod in the public square, a phenomenon that caused settlers’ heads to turn in astonishment.

  “Tell Goose,” she said, “that he looks quite lovely.”

  Linc relayed it and Goose nodded solemnly.

  The pipe passed among us.

  “Goose says he’s pleased that his wound healed, so he could visit during the Moon of the Yellow Leaves—that’s his way of saying September.”

  “Ask if the Lakota who took him away was Crazy Horse,” I said. “I’ve got to know for sure.”

  “Goose says ‘Lakota’ is a white man’s term—same goes for ‘Sioux’ and all the rest.”

  “Who are they, then?”

  “He says Ikce Wicasa, which, near as I can tell, means the natural people, free humans.”

  “Okay.” I tried to pronounce it, and Goose nodded approvingly.

  “He says it was indeed Crazy Horse you saw, something few wasichus can say.”

  I remembered the trail of mangled flesh that ran down from one nostril and asked what had caused it

  “It is a sad story.”

  “Well, let’s hear it.”

  It took Goose a while, especially since we stopped twice to smoke, but finally we got it: Since boyhood, Crazy Horse had loved a woman named Black Shawl. Although she loved him too, she married and had children by a brave named No Water. Still, Crazy Horse continued to hang around, and eventually they went off to be together. No Water burst into their tryst and shot Crazy Horse in the face; the bullet entered below his nose, followed the line of his teeth, and smashed his upper jaw. It was only because Crazy Horse’s medicine was so strong that he didn’t die.

  There was a pause while we smoked.

  “Crazy Horse confirmed Goose’s taking coup with that touch to LeCaron’s knee,” Linc related. “He reported it to their tribe, so Goose is entitled to his eagle feather.”

  “Shouldn’t Crazy Horse get credit?” Cait asked. “His arro
ws did most of it.”

  Linc explained that whoever first touched an enemy received top honors, whether or not the touch was lethal. For that one was entitled to wear an eagle feather as Goose was doing, straight up, in the rear. Second touch on an enemy entitled one to a feather tilted to the left; third touch earned a horizontal feather. Even if Crazy Horse’s arrows had killed LeCaron without any help from the tomahawk, he’d been beaten to the touch by Goose, who first dared close combat. In any case, Crazy Horse had counted coup so many times that he could drape himself in feathers, but wore only one.

  The pipe passed a final time.

  “Since we last saw him, Goose has had a vision,” Linc said. “There’s a big struggle coming, and his people will need him. He will not follow the warrior’s path, though he has proven he can. He is preparing to be a nurse.”

  Goose sat very straight while Linc relayed it.

  “He’s going off now to gather healing medicine and he may not return. Therefore he’s brought gifts to thank us for helping him find his path to the Great Spirit.”

  “It was Goose who helped us,” Cait asserted.

  “Before the gifts, though, he wants to see Lily.”

  Linc returned with Kaija and the baby. Goose’s blue blanket, washed and patched, was wrapped around her. He made no move to hold the daughter of his akecita brother, but looked at her for a long moment, then at Kaija, standing tall and regal. Linc stood close to them, which I imagine wasn’t lost on Goose.

  “It is good,” he pronounced, then laid his gift over the baby: a little robe identical to the one he wore. He had made it himself. The finely tanned hide felt almost like silk.

  “Beautiful,” Kaija breathed. “Onen iloinen!”

  “She says she’s very happy,” Linc reported.

  “Maybe you should hire on with the U.N. as a translator,” I remarked.

  “What’re you sayin’?”

  “Never mind.”

  To Kaija’s pleased astonishment, Goose gave her a pair of shell earrings he had fashioned. She put them on and turned to Linc with a quizzical look.

  “I guess I mentioned you to Goose,” he admitted.

  The Lakota handed his father’s tomahawk to Linc, who tried to refuse, saying it was too valuable. Goose repeated that he was traveling no farther on that path. Linc, though, was a warrior in every way except for ornamentation—and so Goose had brought him a necklace of bear claws. Linc put it on. It worked well, I thought, with the eye patch.

  For Cait there was a pungent concoction of spruce shavings and oils with which to massage me, as any good wife would. Goose also presented her with chewing gum made of sweet grasses and resin, with instructions for her to share it with me during love-making, so I would taste better.

  “I taste okay,” I protested as Cait blushed and examined the ground, Linc grinned and Kaija giggled. Lakotas are straightforward about sex, Linc told me later. Generally they find it pretty hilarious.

  Goose also gave Cait earrings he’d made of horse hair, symbolizing that she would always have a choice in life—that is, a horse to carry her away. A hell of a choice, everything considered. He was giving Cait the gift of independence.

  Or maybe just acknowledging it in her.

  For me there was a buckskin shirt with quills and beads and dyes representing a sunset below towering clouds. By happy coincidence, the clouds on the shirt resembled those building over us at that moment: thunderheads preparing for the daily shower.

  The shirt fit perfectly.

  Goose said he’d given us names to remember us by. In translation, Kaija was “Moon Hair.” Cait was “Eyes of Lion.” Linc was “Shows No Fear.” He pointed to my shirt and said, “You have come from the western sky, a long, long journey. I call you ‘Man of Two Worlds’.”

  I stared at him in wonderment as Linc translated.

  “Goose allows that he’s straddled two worlds himself, but you’ve done it beyond his reckoning.”

  Cait looked at me and smiled. Linc’s eyebrows were raised. I shrugged modestly. All I knew was that I was here where I was supposed to be. And I didn’t plan on leaving again. Ever.

  “Where is the boy?” Goose asked.

  Cait and I exchanged a guilty glance as we realized we’d grown accustomed to Tim secluding himself in the soddy. She hurried off and reappeared with him; as usual now, he moved with tentative steps and looked mostly at the ground.

  Goose’s gift to him was a ball of the kind he had prescribed: buffalo hide with the hair intact. His name for Tim was Anptá Niya.

  “What does it mean?” Cait asked.

  “Literally, ‘Breath of day’,” Linc said. “I can’t think of English to match it. It means vapors set off by the sun—the earliest signs of morning.”

  “It’s lovely,” Cait said, squeezing Tim’s arm. “The promise of a new day.”

  “Thanks,” he said softly to Goose.

  He had been hefting the ball in his hands and rubbing the hairy surface. With no warning he threw it to me. Some premonition must have prepared me, for my hands were in place to close over the ball. For an instant I saw a happy glint of mischief in Tim’s eyes.

  “Thought you’d get me, didn’t you?” I said, and flipped the ball to Linc, who sent it on to Cait and back to Tim.

  Goose said something in an agitated tone.

  “He says no, no, that’s not the way to—”

  “I know,” I said, suppressing a laugh. “Tell him we’ll do the ball-tossing ceremony right next time. Okay, Tim?”

  “Okay,” he agreed.

  Cait whispered to Kaija, who went to fetch Noola and Catriona. They returned with a quilt they had been working on together. I hadn’t realized till then that it was finished.

  “A gift from us,” Cait said, handing it to Goose. “To warm you on your travels.” She added, “We want Lily to keep your blanket forever.”

  It was a patchwork quilt. I looked at it closely. No fabric from Cait’s yellow dress. Not the quilt I’d had as a boy. Nor the quilt that had come to me in San Francisco.

  Another quilt to spin through time.

  Goose accepted it with no show of emotion but draped it over his shoulders, which I knew expressed gratitude and acceptance. From his saddlebag he took a small hoop made of twisted leather; within it was a network of reeds into which feathers were woven. He handed it to Catriona.

  “Goose says to hang it over where you sleep,” Linc translated. “It will catch dreams for you. Pay attention to those dreams.”

  He left us all standing there without saying more.

  With heightened emotion I watched the bandy-legged, quilt-draped little man mount his pony and set off across the prairie. I hoped that we would see him again. The odds, I suspected, were against it.

  Rain began to fall. The others ducked inside Grand Central but Cait took my hand and led me to a rise that looked out on endless miles of grassy plains.

  “Man of Two Worlds,” she said softly.

  Suddenly the immensity of what we had done, she and I, hit me, and my heart was in my throat.

  “Cait,” I began, my voice breaking.

  She glanced at me quickly and sensed what I was feeling. Stepping close, she wrapped her arms around me. The rain fell harder, beating on us. A flock of doves lifted from bushes nearby, a sudden thrashing of wings, and for an instant I was gripped by a dark apprehension.

  “They’re only birds,” Cait said. “Nothing more now. He’s gone, Samuel. I felt him release me. I’m free for you now, if you’ll have me.”

  Even as she said it, I knew that Colm had released me too. He had done his work. He was gone.

  She lifted her face and brought her lips to mine and our bodies molded together. We kissed as the rain washed over us and dripped to the ground, the urgency in me quickening with the same force that stirs the seeds in the earth beneath us.

  It is the autumn of 1875 and I am here to stay.

  I am home.

  I can feel it.

  r />
 

  Darryl Brock, Two in the Field