The great drum boomed twice, deep.
“Houw, houw, houw!”
Singers awakened. Again the drum beat swiftly. Dancers revolved around the fire. Involuntary yells burst on the night air. Rattles buzzed. Clam shells tinkled.
The drummers beat in an ectasy of exultation. The drum was a hollowed out cottonwood butt with a piece of stretched bull-hide for membrane and every time the drummer’s stick fell on it the cottonwoods along the river seemed to thresh their leaves in an agony of joy. Through the beating drum the cottonwoods at last had heartbeat. The drumbeat became the heartbeat of all living things: the rooteds and the wingeds, the twoleggeds and the fourleggeds. The drum beat the tempo of their common origin.
All the while the marshalls kept order. The marshall’s symbol of authority was a willow wand some four arm-lengths long, forked at the small end, peeled and dried. The tips of the forks were ornamented with quills from the golden eagle. All the marshalls wore a black stripe from the outer corner of the eye to the lower edge of the jaw. People feared them and always fell silent when they came near.
Presently a sudden whoop sounded from the council lodge. Out of the darkness bounded seven naked dancers, all of them tall, handsome, and members of the Foreskin Society. Each had a naturally long foreskin, from which dangled a red feather tied on with a buckskin thong. On each chest was painted the rampant figure of a buffalo bull. They were all known as brave fighters and were held in high esteem. The other dancers made respectful room for them in the circle. Only the little boys sitting along the edge giggled at the sight. All the women and the old chiefs, however, looked on with solemn gravity. These men were wakan. They had been born with a certain mark which set them apart.
The seven naked stalwarts had barely made two turns around the fire, dancing and singing their society songs, when another shout sounded from the dark. This time four more naked braves, members of the rival No Foreskin Society, sprang dancing into the circle of light. Each carried a crook; each had bared his part to show he had a natural right to his membership; each had painted his nose a bold red. The little boys tittered at the red noses, but again the women and the chiefs looked on with gravity. They were brave men who also had been born wakan.
Later, when No Name looked around for Leaf, he discovered that both she and her parents had vanished. One look at their tepee under the cottonwood near the horns of the camp and he knew that they had gone to bed. The door flap was lashed down for the night.
“Ae, their tepee is asleep,” he said to himself. “It is easy to see that Full Kettle did not like the celebrating.”
Their withdrawal made him melancholy. Brooding, he wandered away from the dance. He let his toes find a way. They took him west down a trail and climbed him onto a high rock over-looking the village.
He heard the guards on the hills behind him whistling bird calls to each other that all was well. Once a coyote yowled a falling cry. One of the guards immediately imitated it so clearly, so cleverly, that for a moment No Name had trouble making out it wasn’t a true call. A star fell. It streaked across the eastern skies like a giant firefly. “Ae,” he thought, “another of the Old Ones has fallen from his appointed place in the Other Life.” Cold settled down on him like a strong draft. The night was extraordinarily clear. The stars above and the fires below burned sharply. He snuggled against the fur inside his white robe. He watched the river wrinkling in the light reflected from the bonfire. The sound of Falling Water was faint. An owl hoo-hooed in the trees down river.
It was well after midnight before the dancing Yanktons finally went to bed. The bonfire slowly died away. It became still out. The low sounds of the night on the prairie, mysterious irregular footsteps, spirits laughing and whispering and chuckling overhead, moved around No Name.
Thinking that his father and mother might be wondering about him, he climbed down from the rock and slowly headed back to camp.
No Name brooded as he followed the path. Strikes Twice was now a full man. Ae. It was certain the gods did not favor the son of Redbird. Otherwise one of them would long ago have visited him in a vision and told him what he was to do in life. Standing at the door of his father’s lodge, in the dark, he could not find it in himself to go to bed. He felt lonesome. He had a need to be stroked. Not by his father and mother, but by someone else.
Abruptly he turned about. Slowly and softly he toed across the grass toward Leaf’s tepee. She would be asleep by now, bound to stakes for the night, with coils of rawhide around her thighs so no sly nightwalker could come creeping in and seduce her. He smiled to himself.
He stopped behind her tepee. Reaching up, he picked a few pieces of meat off their drying rack. These he fed to Full Kettle’s four dogs, making friends with them. Then, hanging his robe on the racks, he got down on his bare belly at the back of the tepee and quietly lifted its cowhide side and slid in. He listened. Full Kettle and Owl Above were snoring loudly. He hunched along like a measuring worm, in a looping manner. His hand touched a parfleche. He pinched it, felt giving pemmican inside. He crept on. He touched a leather case of clothes.
Then his fingers came upon a row of stub stakes. Cords rose from each one, and following them, he felt Leaf’s arm. He listened. She was breathing slowly, evenly, asleep. Peering intently across the lodge he tried to make out where Owl Above and Full Kettle snored. But the fire was almost out. Its center threw out but a vague light, pinkish. He touched Leaf’s shoulder, her neck, her bosom. His fingers moved gently, hardly touching her. As he expected, her belly and thighs were crisscrossed with rawhide thongs.
She stirred, restless, against the thongs.
He pitied her. It was not a good thing to sleep all night long bound against the earth in one position, with only the head free. He fumbled with the knots. He found them too intricate. He could not make them out in the dark.
No Name ran a finger along the cutting edge of his stone knife. It was sharp, like catfish teeth. Very slowly, yet with some pressure, he began sawing at one of the thongs over her thighs. It parted slowly under the rasping edge of his knife, finally snapped with a loud pop. Afraid that the sudden sound might have awakened her father and mother, he pressed his belly tight against the grass floor, hiding his head behind her hips. He listened. To his relief Owl Above and Full Kettle snored on soundly.
Then he noticed the rhythm of Leaf’s breathing had changed. Ai! she was awake.
He leaned close and whispered in her ear. “Someone you know has come.”
She lay still.
“He has a great ache in his heart.”
She took a slow deep breath.
“I have seen a maiden who looks so wonderful to me I feel sick when I think about her.”
Slowly she turned her head. Hardly audible she whispered in his ear. “My mother will hear.”
“I ache and feel very sick for you.”
“Tomorrow you will sing about me that you have wived me without giving the horses. You will call out my name for the others to laugh at.”
“I am without one to comfort me in the night.”
“Shh!”
“Even the horses when they feel lonesome at night stroke each other with their noses.”
“Shh.”
He slid his hand down to the next thong over her thighs. Pressing hard, sawing, he was suddenly through it. There was a loud snap and the end of the thong slapped him in the eye. He jerked back, and hit his head against a slanting lodge pole. A piece of smoked meat hanging from the lodge pole began to swing back and forth in the dark above him. He listened, hearing the smoked meat creak on its string. Presently something dropped from the swaying meat, falling exactly in the middle of the pink embers. There was a soft sizzle. Suddenly a single flame leaped up, white-yellow, lighting up the whole interior. A piece of fat had broken off and fallen into the live embers.
Leaf gave him a wild look. He returned the look. Then he ducked down, began sliding backwards. His buckskin leggings made a soft ruckling noise on the grass floor.
Full Kettle rolled over under her sleeping robe. She lay listening a moment. Then she gave Owl Above a bump in the ribs. “Old man, wake up. Someone is in the lodge.”
No Name flattened himself in Leaf’s shadow.
Again Full Kettle gave her husband a poke in the ribs. “Old man, wake up. Someone is in the lodge.”
“Waugh?” Owl Above whoofed, sitting up suddenly, long braids falling forward. “Who is here?”
Leaf pretended her father’s cry had awakened her. “What is it, my father?”
Owl Above stared at Leaf; rubbed his sleep-bleared eyes; stared some more. “There is someone with you, my daughter?”
“I have been sleeping, my father. Also I am bound to the earth.”
At that Full Kettle sat up, suspicious. Looking sharply, she saw the severed thongs. “Old man,” she cried, “someone has cut the ropes. See, the ends are freshly cut. Get up!”
Owl Above peered intently. “Ae, it is one of the nightwalkers again.” Groaning, stark naked, he reared his old bones out of his sleeping robes and staggered over to where Leaf lay. The flame of the spitting fat glowed a brilliant yellow. Hands hanging open at his bronze thighs, he glared down at her. “Who was it? Tell your father.”
“My father, I was asleep.”
“The thongs are cut, my daughter.”
“Perhaps it was Circling Hawk come to steal what I would not let him purchase.”
Full Kettle snorted from her bed. “Hah! I say it is that No Name. He thinks to take a thing for nothing.”
Owl Above knelt beside Leaf. He examined the parted ends of the thongs. “This has been cut, my daughter. Did you not feel his knife?”
“My father, I dreamed and did not know if it was real.”
Suddenly Owl Above spotted No Name’s eyes glittering in Leaf’s shadow. He let out a roar. “Hi-yu-po! Where is my lance? Where is my bow? Old woman, give me my warclub!”
Full Kettle leaped to her feet, eyes wild, braids tousled. “Where is he? Where is he?”
“Woman, my warclub!”
The four dogs outside came alive, roaring. In a moment all the dogs in camp were howling with them.
Like a brown cricket springing backwards, No Name flipped himself under through the leather side of the tepee and then up on his feet. But it was too late. Even as he turned to run for his father’s lodge, he found himself surrounded by what seemed a thousand dogs, all of them snarling mad. He clawed up and around, trying to find the meat racks, thinking that a few handfuls of dried beef might shut them up. Just then Owl Above came flying out the tepee door, warclub in hand. Behind him came Full Kettle. Full Kettle quickly threw a piece of buffalo fat into the live embers of the cooking fire outside the door. A flame shot up like a leaping red fox, lighting up both horns of the encampment. No Name saw instantly that the best thing for him to do was to scramble up on the meat racks. He made it in one flying leap. He grabbed up his white robe that he’d hung on the racks earlier and caught it around his shoulders. The meat racks swayed under his sudden weight. Crouched, looking up, he saw a cottonwood limb hanging just above him. Quickly standing erect, he got a good hold on the limb, chinned himself on it, swung a leg up and over, and in a flash vanished into the leaves above. The dogs below, frustrated, sat down on their haunches and yowled up after him.
Owl Above appeared in the midst of the dogs, still naked, angrily waggling his maple knurl. He saw where the dogs looked. He too stared up into the cottonwood. Light from the flickering fat flames gave his eyes the glowing sharpness of a bobcat.
Full Kettle ran up. “Where is he?” she cried. “Where is this thief who would rob a maiden of her trading goods?”
Braided heads began to poke out of the door flaps all around the camp circle. “What is it?” some cried. Most eyes were pink with sleep. Some looked on with open mouths.
Full Kettle saw them. “There is a hymen thief in the tree!” she shrilled. “He tried to steal our daughter’s price!”
“Woman, hold thy tongue!” Owl Above commanded. “There is already enough shame in our lodge.”
Full Kettle looked at a certain tepee on the west end of the camp circle. “I see that our old chief sleeps through all the noise. Perhaps he is very tired from having given a new name to the son of Speaks Once.”
Owl Above roared, “Woman, hold thy tongue! Dogs, be silent! Someone is in the tree, yet how can he be heard in all the noise?”
Just then the fat in the fire gave out, and darkness, more intense than before, swooped in again.
“Ai!” Full Kettle wailed. “Now he will get away.”
Owl Above cursed. “Woman, back to thy bed. I will bind our daughter again. I will tie the dogs to the tree to hold the thief safe until morning. Go.” And grumbling, throwing aside his warclub, he lashed the four dogs to the roots of the cottonwood. Upon that all the doors around the camp circle flapped shut again.
No Name sat very still in the tree. He trembled like a squirrel waiting for a hunter’s arrow to find him.
The dogs slowly quieted down. Presently No Name heard the mutter of low talk in the tepee below. He guessed it was Owl Above busy repairing the cut thongs and retying Leaf to the stakes.
He heard Leaf protesting. There was a low sibilant reply. Then Leaf said, loud and clear, “My mother, my father will not let me go outside and sit a moment.”
At that Owl Above let out a roar again. “Woman, stay in thy bed! Daughter, wait until morning! I have said.”
Silence.
No Name sat crouched inside his fur robe. His thoughts were as black as the night. In the morning the lynx-eyed boys would help Owl Above spot him in the leaves. What laughter there’d be. The whole camp would go into a laughing fit over this son of a great chief who as yet had no name and who was foolish enough to get caught in a tree. Ae, and the loudest to laugh would be Circling Hawk.
He sat very still in the rustling tree. A wind moved down from the north bluffs. It stirred the outer leaves, finally touched his brow. There was the smell of a far-off place in it, of ice and snow. The white giant of the north was at last awakening out of his long summer sleep. Slowly No Name stiffened up. Gradually he fell into a stupor.
Just before dawn, suddenly, as if startled in sleep by a bad dream, a certain she-dog gave an agonized yelp. The yelp awoke her and she broke into a prolonged yowling cry. The cry then awoke the other dogs around the camp circle, and before the echo of it came back from the hills, they joined in, one by one, soulful, piercing. It was a crying from a dark time, all of it discordant. It rose to such a pitch that No Name’s ears began to bellow with it. It roused him out of his stupor.
After a moment, blinking, shivering, he decided he ought to take advantage of the horrible clamor and do something about getting down out of the tree.
Carefully, somewhat stiffly, he crept along the limb. Bark broke off in his hand. Once a soft-center twig snapped in two.
He came to the main trunk, a massive corrugated bulk. He felt around it for another limb higher up. In so doing his hand came upon a thick grapevine. It was only then that he remembered how late in the Moon of Ripe Corn he and his friend Strikes Twice had climbed the cottonwood to pick wild grapes. The vine reached almost to the top of the tree. Quickly, while the yowling still owhed and owhed in echoing waves below him, he climbed the gnarled vine until he found where it divided in two. He broke off the smaller of the two branches, jerked it free of the bark and twigs, then going out on a limb on the west side, away from the four dogs, fastened one end to the limb and let the other down to the ground. He knotted the robe around his waist, then eased himself off the limb, catching at the dangling vine with his legs. He let himself slide down, slowly, surely, letting his toes, then his hands, find their own way. Hand over hand he lowered himself down through the rustling leaves, down into the howling darkness.
The moment his toes touched ground he ran leaping for his father’s lodge.
The old she-dog was the first to quit howling. In a moment, the other do
gs fell out after her, one by one. The raucous concert gradually died away. A strange unearthly silence followed.
6
The next morning when No Name saw Leaf and her mother heading down the valley with baskets on their arms, he painted two red circles around his eyes and stole after them. The two women followed the path by the River of the Double Bend. The path curved north away from Falling Water, went through a thicket of red willows, climbed a bench of grassy land, and descended into a narrow ravine coming down out of the north bluffs. The ravine was the place where many fat rosebuds grew.
No Name followed them into the tangled bushes. The two women sometimes had to creep on hands and knees to get through, going down tiny narrow paths made by grouse and gophers. Full Kettle glanced back several times, but on each occasion No Name managed to duck out of sight in time, once in a washout and another behind a red stone.
The two women picked along, talking. Every now and then their talk erupted into laughter. No Name knew what they were laughing about. And he understood why Full Kettle might make merry about his undignified flight up the tree in the dark cold night, but not Leaf.
He stole after them, eyes glittering.
The sun rose slowly.
He heard Leaf exclaim about something. Carefully he parted the tangled brush, pushing until the furzy pricks stung him through the buckskin shirt.
Leaf was holding up a turtle by its stub tail. It was about the size of a man’s full hand. The turtle’s knob head kept poking around while its feet clawed air.
“It will make good soup,” Full Kettle said. “Owl Above will like it.”
Leaf laughed at its antics.
“Why do you laugh, my daughter?”
“It reminds one of how men are, my mother.”
Full Kettle looked down at the turtle a moment, then laughed too, her face wrinkling on either side of her pocked nose. “My daughter knows too many things for a maiden.”
Leaf gave her mother a wise look. “Thy daughter was given eyes to see with, my mother.”
Conquering Horse Page 8
