DEDICATION
To Russell Frederick Roth
with borrowed regret
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
To Mr. William Lester McKnight and Mr. Walter N. Trenerry of the McKnight Foundation of Saint Paul, Minnesota, go my sincere thanks for providing me with funds while I wrote this novel.
–Frederick Manfred
… When you are actually in America, America hurts, because it has a powerful disintegrative influence upon the white psyche. It is full of grinning, unappeased aboriginal demons, too, ghosts, and it persecutes the white men like some Eumenides, until the white men give up their absolute whiteness. America is tense with latent violence and resistance. The very common sense of white Americans has a tinge of helplessness in it, and deep fear of what might be if they were not common-sensical.
Yet one day the demons of America must be placated, the ghosts must be appeased, the Spirit of Place atoned for. Then the true passionate love for American Soil will appear….
–D. H. LAWRENCE
Studies in Classic American
Literature
PART ONE • THE TORMENT
PART TWO • THE VISION
PART THREE • THE CHASE
PART FOUR • THE FATHERS
Conquering Horse
PART ONE
THE TORMENT
1
No Name waited until it was dark. Then he threw a white robe over his shoulders and stooped out through the door and quietly made his way toward his sweetheart’s lodge.
It was the Moon of Scarlet Plums. An autumn wind stirred the heavy leaves of the cottonwoods behind the Yankton village and ruffled the waters of the River of the Double Bend. The low murmur of Falling Water wavered on the brisk wind. High above, a frost of stars sparkled all across the skies. The evening fires made the pointed tepees glow like soft lanterns. A good fire jumped in the council lodge in the center of the village, and every now and then the silhouette of a warrior moved huge and flitting across its parchment skin.
Narrowing his eyes, No Name could just make out the level black horizon of the prairies to the east. He moved slowly, stepping like a bird, toe down first, then the heel, wary of where favorite ponies might be staked out for the night. The skunktails tied to his heels, which he wore only on special occasions, fluffed across the grass. Other nightwalkers moved about too, hoping to catch some maiden out on a late night errand. Mothers soothed their babies with lullabies. Fathers told stories. And in a far tepee, Moon Dreamer, his mother’s brother and the tribe’s holy man, sang in a hoarse voice over Wondering Man, his ailing grandfather.
No Name was a Yankton Sioux of seventeen winters. He was slim, with high wide shoulders, lean arms and legs, and hands as sure-fingered as a squirrel’s. His skin was a deep rose-brown, which at night looked almost black. His eyes were a brooding velvet brown. His lips were full, sensuous, somewhat tremulous at the corners. He was both very much in love and very sad at heart.
“Tonight,” No Name said to himself, “tonight I will ask Leaf to elope with me. We will fly across the prairies and visit my uncle Red Hail. He will protect us. Then after a time we will come back and her father and mother will forgive us.”
Leaf’s tepee stood under a single towering cottonwood at the open end of the camp circle. The fire in it had sunk to embers and he could barely make it out. Her father Owl Above was one of those who always went to bed early. Some months before, a raiding party of Pawnees had stolen all his horses and killed his son Burnt Thigh. Owl Above had been downcast ever since. His youngest wife had even left him because he had neither work nor food for her.
No Name stopped. He fumbled under his white buffalo robe for his flute. He placed his fingers over the four holes on top and his thumb over the hole on the underside and blew gently into the flat mouthpiece. A soft whooo trembled on the wind. Leaf would know what he meant. “I am here,” his flute said. “I am ready for you.” He blew again, gently. “It is cold. Come. I have something to tell you. Come quickly.”
He waited in the dark. The north wind threshed through the cottonwood leaves above him. Then the wind fell slowly away. The fires in the tepees dimmed. People still out doing late chores, old women securing ponies, warriors heading for the council lodge, brushed past him. He stood outside her lodge, rooted, patient as a tree.
A mare whinnied behind his father Redbird’s lodge. Far across the prairies where the night herder had hobbled his father’s many horses a stallion answered with a great shrilling. A falling star streaked in a wide arc across the skies.
Stepping closer, No Name blew his flute again, this time very softly. “Come,” his flute said, “I have something to tell you.”
He waited. In the lull the smells of the camp wafted by him: meat drying behind Leaf’s tepee, a buffalo hide curing on a rack, a pipe spuming kinnikinick, sweetgrass and sage burning in the council lodge where someone was being initiated into a warrior society.
He moved up until he stood beside the door flap of her tepee. “I hear you,” his flute said, “my ears are as keen as a robin’s and I hear you breathing. You are there. Come. The rustling tree whispers above.”
He waited. A dog howled at the far end, setting off a long series of answering yowls from dogs all over the village. Moon Dreamer had taken to beating his medicine drum, slowly, t-thum, t-thum, still exorcising in a high chant over Grandfather Wondering Man. Nearby another nightwalker blew love notes on a flute.
A hand touched his elbow. It was Leaf. Her wide smile flashed up at him in the dark. She stood in the slanting door, her feet still inside the tepee, her thighs and body outside. Her head came up to his chin. In a loving manner he threw his white robe around her. They nestled together inside the fur.
“I have come to you,” he said.
“Have you?”
He stroked her arms from the shoulder down to the wrist. He had slim eloquent fingers and he caressed her again and again. Her snowy doeskin dress made soft ruffling noises under his fingertips. She slipped an arm around his middle. The musk smell of the robe enclosed them.
“There are many moccasin tracks before your door,” he said.
She smiled up at him. Her face was like a gently smiling brown moon. Her slanting eyes glinted like a pair of willow leaves.
“I have seen a young girl who looks so beautiful to me,” he said, “I feel sick when I think about her.”
She slipped her other arm around him. “Tomorrow you will sing about me and call out my name for the others to laugh at me. And I will feel ashamed and will hide.”
“Have I called your name before?”
She rested her head against his chest. She said, “A maiden does not talk to her lover until he has married her.”
He groaned over her. The perfume of coneflowers rose from her hair. There was also in her braids the smell of a tepee fire. “I am without a wife,” he said. “I am naked.”
“Your father has many horses,” she said.
With soft downward strokes he rubbed her firm well-muscled arms. He was sick. Her father and mother wanted many horses in payment for her. Yet he had no horses. And, until a vision had been given him by the gods, he could not ask his own father and mother for horses.
No Name sighed. Three times he had gone to a high hill in lonely fast to receive his vision, and three times nothing had happened, no protective spirit animal, no spirit wolf or spirit bear, had appeared to him to become his helper in war and peace. There had been only hunger, and very lonely nights, and much weakness after.
His father Redbird had said nothing, though it could be seen in Redbird’s manner that he was disappointed in his son. Redbird was very old and afraid he would die before his son received his vision of life and performed a deed of valor. The village knew this, and wondered, and that was why some of the younger braves, taunting, had taken to calling his son No Name. The older warriors meanwhile shied from asking his son along on their war parties or inviting him to join their warrior societies.
No Name sigh
ed for a second time, deeply. He held Leaf close.
Leaf guessed his thoughts. She looked up at his hair where he should have been wearing an honor feather. She asked, “Is not the fourth time the sacred time?”
“But my god will not come,” he cried.
“My father is restless,” she said. “Already he eats from the hand of Circling Hawk.”
“Ai! Then it is Circling Hawk’s footsteps I see in the dust before your tepee.”
“Circling Hawk’s breath stinks,” she said. “I do not favor him. Also he chews loudly.”
“He is a brave man. He has a coup feather.”
“He eats before my father has finished smoking the pipe. Also his face is rough. Like a toad’s back.”
“What does your mother say?”
“She looks in the pot and sees that it is empty.”
No Name stroked her arms, lovingly. “What should I do?” he cried.
“Have you spoken to your uncle Moon Dreamer?”
He felt the touch of her hands. Her palms were like pads of leather. She was a hard worker and would make a good wife. He said, “My father does not much favor him.”
“Your father is perhaps afraid of his brother-in-law’s medicine.”
No Name trailed his slim fingertips over her wrists. “Oh, let us run away to my uncle Red Hail. Let us elope. Come.” He tugged at the fringes of her white tunic.
She hid her eyes. “My father must have the horses first. The Pawnees have stolen his horses and he remains a poor man.”
“Come. Let us run away. My uncle Red Hail will be kind to us.”
“Also my brother Burnt Thigh is dead.” She wept a moment in memory. “We loved him very much, yet he was killed by the Pawnees when they stole our horses.”
“I have seen a maiden who is very beautiful,” he said winningly, “and I feel sick when I think about her.”
“And I see a young maiden crying alone on the prairies, bitterly. Her heart is broken because her lover has used her and then has thrown her away.”
He tugged at her under his robe. “Come. Let us fly to my uncle Red Hail. He is a kind man.”
She said archly, “My father says when a young man has known a woman too soon his god will shun him.”
“What must I do?”
“I wish to keep that which no man has yet touched.”
“Has not Circling Hawk touched it?”
“No man.”
He saw stars reflected in her black eyes. He was almost beside himself. His nostrils flared on each breath. His shoulders, already high, lifted as if he were about to pounce. “What must I do?”
She touched his hands. “When you return with the center feather of an eagle in your hair I will dance and make a song for you.”
He brushed her arms downward, with free-flowing loving fingers. “Tonight, after your father and mother are asleep, I will come in the dark, silently, and slide under the back of the lodge and lie under the robe with you.”
Her white teeth laughed at him. “My mother and father know very well how to bind their daughter so she cannot move.”
“My father taught me how to loosen the tightest knots, silently, so that no one can hear.”
“Have you stolen a favorite horse from a Pawnee chief then?”
“Also my father told me that when one desires a maiden very much it is good to cut the ropes with a knife.”
She laughed. “I have a lover who sounds very clever. Yet he has no honor feather.”
He groaned.
Abruptly his white buffalo robe was jerked away and the head of an old woman appeared between them. It was Leaf’s mother Full Kettle. “Daughter,” Full Kettle said, holding her face averted to No Name, “your father cannot sleep. There is too much talk near his tepee.”
Without a word, crestfallen, No Name slipped away in the dark. The skunktails on his heels fluffed across the grass, erasing his trail.
2
When he returned to his father’s lodge the fire in the center had fallen to pink embers. He stole around to the right, careful not to step between his father and the fire, and in the back of the tepee settled on his knees beside his fur bed. He slipped off his buckskin shirt and leggings and breechclout. He stretched out, feet to the fire, then snuggled under his sleeping robe, pulling it up to his chin. The buffalo fur comforted his naked skin. The grass under the fur bedding made the earth feel soft.
“Son?” It was his mother Star That Does Not Move calling him. He could hear her stir beside his father Redbird. “Son?”
“I have come.”
The pink coals fell in upon themselves with soft sounds. His father’s favorite hunting pony, Swift As Wind, stomped in sleep outside. The wind rose again and moaned low in the smokehole above.
He lay waiting for sleep.
Hard fingers touched his throat. “Little Bird?”
It was his father’s other wife, Loves Roots. Loves Roots was one of those who fancied skunk meat because she had noticed skunks ate many roots. She was calling him by his baby name, Little Bird, the one his uncle Moon Dreamer had given him at birth. No Name wished Loves Roots would leave him alone. She was always seeking to ensnare him in a love embrace.
“Little Bird?” Her calloused fingers stroked his high nose.
He lay very still.
“Little Bird?” Her fingers moved down under his robe and touched his thigh.
“I am known as No Name,” he said bitterly. But even as he spoke desire moved warmly in his limbs. His body could not help itself. He pushed her away, gently, because he did not want her to be angry with him. An angry second mother was even worse than an angry father.
Her hand touched him again and she tried to slip under his sleeping robe. She too was naked. “I am still young.”
“I cannot defile my father’s house.”
Her hand stroked him. “They are old and will not hear us.”
“Go. I love my father.”
“Your father is old and sometimes neglects his wives.”
“Go.” No Name’s flesh burned for her. It would be an easy thing to wive her. “My father is a great chief.” Again he pushed her away, this time more firmly.
“Son?” It was Star That Does Not Move calling suspiciously from beside Redbird. “Son?”
“I am trying to sleep, my mother.”
Loves Roots slid back to her bed. She lay across the lodge from Redbird.
No Name sighed. Tomorrow Loves Roots would give him covert glances while pretending affection for his father.
The moon came up outdoors. Its rays slowly began to bend into the smokehole. Gradually they filled the cowhide lodge with silver light. He could make out the meat curing over the fire. A stone ax hung caught behind a lodge pole. His father’s medicine bag and war gear dangled from a tripod just inside the door. Two forked sticks beside the fire held his father’s redstone pipe. Kettles and baggage and parfleches of food stood against the wall behind the inner tepee lining. He could even make out the muffled forms of his father and mother, and Loves Roots, under their sleeping robes, feet to the fire and heads away, like petals of a coneflower radiating from a common center.
Presently the moon became as bright as a little sun. It shone with such dazzling silver inside the tepee that the quillwork on the parfleches and saddlebags began to glow in warm luminous colors: red, yellow, white, blue.
Bright moonlight also fell on his father’s copper-tipped spear standing against the tripod. No Name’s eyes fixed on it. As always he saw it as a magic thing. It was wakan. Watching it, he saw the copper tip begin to glow like a long golden tooth.
He had once seen the copper tip give off little sparks after his father had rubbed it some. His father explained why this was. Long ago when Redbird was a young man he had been told by the Thunders in a vision that he should go to the Porcupine Mountains far in the Chippewa country. There under a certain pine on the north side of the Lake of the Clouds he would find a round green ball. He was to take this green ball and return
home with it and polish it until the copper shone through and then hammer it into a lance tip. The Thunders told him that as long as the copper tip was kept shiny, the Yankton Sioux would thrive. When it was not, the Yankton would wither away as the red leaves of autumn. The Thunders told him they favored shining copper because it gave off little sparks in imitation of their great sparks.
No Name knew it as a truth that the Thunders liked the copper tip. Once, as he and his father and mother were eating their evening meal, a big thunderstorm came up. Suddenly there was a sound of “Thun!” and lightning came through the smokehole and struck the fire, scattering ashes and firebrands all around. Everyone sat in shock for a moment, then began to spit and vomit. When they looked at the copper-tipped lance standing against the tripod, they saw a ball of glowing green fire hovering over it. The green fireball hung there until heavy rain, coming in through the smokehole, caused it to fade away.
No Name watched the moon move up the sky. Soon a shaft of silver touched him. It came straight at him from the Old Woman In The Moon herself. Her haunting eyes were fixed sharply on him. He hoped it meant she was going to give him a dream and tell him he would soon have his vision.
He waited. The moon’s rays made his eyes glow like a wildcat’s. Then, remembering a remark of his father’s that too long a look at the moon-being might addle his soul and make a woman of him, he turned his head aside and closed his eyes.
He stirred on the soft musky bedding. His flesh was still aroused from Loves Roots’ visit. He thought of Leaf. He considered stealing across to her tepee. He had heard his mother say that Full Kettle not only bound Leaf up for the night but also tied her to some stakes driven in the ground. Full Kettle was making doubly sure that Leaf would remain a virgin until she had been safely married. A young virgin was worth ten good ponies.
Of a sudden No Name thought of his older brother, a brother he had never seen. His mother often talked about him. The telling always made her weep, and afterward she would be extra kind to No Name, giving him special treats from the parfleches of dried fruit she was saving for winter.
Conquering Horse Page 3
