Conquering Horse

by Frederick Manfred

  “My daughter, remember, we are a family which has not yet had one bad woman in it.”

  “I have that which no man has yet touched.”

  “No man?”

  “My mother, man has yet to put pestle to my mortar.”

  “It is good. Come, the sun rises. Owl Above will be hungry if we do not work. Fill your basket and then we will return.”

  “My mother, it is your basket that needs filling.”

  No Name watched Leaf’s slim tough fingers search along the vines. Swiftly they caught up handfuls of rose hips. He admired her nimble fingers. She worked with her back to him and all he could see of her was the painted part of her black hair and her moving plucking fingers. Watching her, his eyes filled with involuntary tears. He loved the round back of her head.

  At high noon Full Kettle said she was tired. “Let us eat a little of the pemmican we took with us.”

  “Father waits, my mother.”

  “We have picked many rose berries. Also, sometimes your father says I am a lazy squaw. Well, then I shall be a lazy squaw this once.”

  They sat against a pink boulder. The sun shone on them. It was suddenly warm after the frosty night. They nibbled at the pemmican. They brushed sweat from their brows. After a time Leaf loosened the thongs across her chest and drew her dress down over her shoulders and arms, exposing her breasts to the sun.

  Full Kettle sighed. “Me. Water. I wish.”

  “I will get you some,” Leaf said, springing up. “Also, I will take my bath for the day.”

  “Do that. I will sleep a little sleep.”

  No Name watched her slip light-footed down the slope toward the river. No Name smiled to himself. At last his time had come. He followed her silently down the other side of the ravine.

  He hid behind a fringe of wild plum trees. A few late plums hung dotted among the yellowing leaves. He watched her step out of her clothes on the golden beach. He had stroked her with her clothes on many times and knew her to be as lovely as mourning doves, but watching her now poised on her toes in the bright sunlight he knew her to be as lovely as tufted redbirds. Where the sun struck her thighs her flesh was exactly the hue of polished pipestone. Her tufty loins resembled a blackbird about to lift into flight. A torment of passion smoked in him. He watched her cup water over her redbird breasts. He watched the water stream down her belly.

  He slipped out of his clothes. He picked two of the dark ripe plums and tiptoed toward her. He held his fingers to his lips to warn her not to cry out. He was halfway across the soft sand when a pebble squeaked under his big toe. She flashed a look up and around. “Oo-ee!” she cried, low. Then she saw his fingers pressed to his lips and quickly clapped palm to mouth.

  He paused, ear cocked for the wild rosebushes above them, waiting to see if the little cry had awakened her mother. Both stood listening, he still on tiptoe on the pink-gold sand, she in water up to her knees. When no sound came from above, their eyes opened warmly on each other.

  He threw her one of the plums. She caught it and blushed a dusky red.

  He ate his plum. She ate hers.

  He desired her, openly. She wondered at his manliness, openly. The sun was warm upon them. He toed to the edge of the flowing water. “Are you looking for pretty clams?”

  She looked at the circles of vermilion painted around his eyes. She pretended the circles made him look very fierce. “Swimming in the river will wash them away.”

  “Looking at the maiden I want as my wife has made me forgetful.”

  She looked at him full again and then looked down. “I speak with my face the other way.”

  He took a step toward her. Water ran cold over his toes. “Your mother will sleep long. We have the whole day yet.”

  She stepped away from him into the water, until it rose doubling over her thighs, hiding her. “Remember, I have that which no man has yet touched.”

  He smiled thickly. “You have used sorcery on me. I cannot help myself. You have taken part of me and eaten me and now I desire to have myself back. I cannot help myself. I have said.” “Tomorrow you will sing about me.”

  He stepped deeper into the water, until a doubling wave also washed over his hips. “I have come to you.”

  “Have you?”

  “I have seen a young maiden who looks so beautiful to me I feel sick when I think about her.”

  “Do you?” She stood with her feet straight and close together, her palms pressed tightly against her thighs. “Have you brought ten horses?” She pretended to look for them up on the bank. “My father says he cannot let me go until he has seen ten horses before his door.”

  “But I cannot have my father’s horses until my guardian spirit has come to me in a vision.”

  A smile moved across her brown moon face. The pink of her lips was exactly the pink of her fingernails. “You will tire of me soon and put me aside. Thus I want some property for the day when you do.”

  He stepped closer. Gliding threads of water tickled the inside of his legs. “Marry me. When father dies we will have many horses.”

  “You will marry without a vision?”

  He placed his hands on her welling hips. Under the water her skin was as smooth as waterworn stone. “Come.”

  She laughed at him. “My lover has wings.” She trembled under his hand. The urging water pushed them together. “My lover flies into the rustling tree like a crow when danger approaches.”

  “I suffer patiently until my anger goes off.”

  She leaned away from him, still laughing. “Did you find a place to sleep in a bird nest?”

  “It is sometimes good to rest in the great space between heaven and earth.”

  He trembled in love for her. Her breasts slept on her chest like curled-up squirrels. She turned her head. Her braids swung with it and settled over her breasts, partially hiding them. The brown eye of each breast peeked out at him. “You will tire of me soon.” “Come, let us fly to my uncle Red Hail. He will be kind to us.”

  “Where is your feather?”

  “Come, let me use you like a good wife. I wish it. Come.”

  “Where is your new name?”

  He groaned.

  “Sometimes I am glad when I see you. But not always.” She glanced at his naked chest. “When will you torment yourself?”

  He groaned. “The torment I have is already great.”

  “Afterwards my father will say to me, ‘Go, sleep again in the holes of the young unmarried men. My daughter, you are not worth an old horse now.’ ”

  He looked at the glowing rust of her hair where the sun shone on it. Vermilion lay a deep dusty red down the parting. The smell of wood smoke still lingered in her braids. His right hand stroked her smooth hollow back while his left hand spilled water over her belly. He groaned. “Come. I am naked. I need a wife.”

  “My father says that a man should suffer and see a vision first before he lies with a woman. Otherwise he will not become a great man. When he remains a virgin he smells good to the gods. When a man has used a woman he smells bad to the gods.”

  “But my guardian spirit will not come to me!” he cried.

  “Perhaps your god does not like it that you have the name of No Name.”

  “Come, let us fly!”

  “Perhaps your god does not like it that you desire me as a husband desires a wife.”

  He placed his left hand where no man had touched her before. “Come. I only want a sign from you that you are in earnest that you love me.”

  “Ooee!” She cried, startled. Then, with a wild little laugh, she cupped her hands full of water and splashed him in the face. Turning, she dove for the deepest part of the channel. Her black hair lashed back and forth in the water. He stood momentarily blinded; then dove after her. Both swam swiftly. She saw him coming and headed for the other shore. They reached it at the same time and emerged with water spraying golden to all sides. Some of the vermilion around his eyes had washed off. She ran up the bank, shrilling a low wild laugh, one
hand over her mouth. He bounded after her, one hand reaching for the wet tail of her hair. She sped for a thicket of red willows higher on the bank. She flew into them. The red withes parted before her as if by magic. He was but a step behind and the red twigs whipped his red belly as they swung back into place. The red willows deepened and thickened. Her skin blended with the red bark. He watched the tail of her rust-black hair lash back and forth through the yellowing leaves. He caught her by the hair just as the willows opened on a bare patch of glistening pink sand. “Ooee!” she cried, laughing, falling back against him. She quivered when she felt his urgent pressing. “I have you!” he cried. Together they fell to earth. They tumbled over each other a moment. Then he rose over her and pushed his knee between her legs and held her very tenderly. He saw her eyes softening under him. Gleams of black velvet laughter slowly changed to a look of soft red-brown love. Her thighs gave way. Her eyes half closed. Blood rushed to his head. He hardened to the game of love. He thrust at her. “Ooee!” she cried. Her head turned from side to side. She tried to double up under him. Then, again giving way, she abruptly joined with him in a rolling rhythmic rocking. He remembered her holding the small land turtle and his eyes closed and he began to swim under ebbing blood.

  Sitting on the pink sand, she said, “Now you will sing about me.”

  He turned away from her. He gouged his heels in the sand. “I must go.”

  “Will you give my father the ten horses after you return from the vision?”

  “I must go.” He wondered why it was he now felt sudden disinterest, even disgust, for her. The fathers had never told of this.

  She covered her face with her palms. “You have deceived me,” she cried. “You will never bring the ten horses. Oo, oo, I am lost.”

  “I have already given you something. I have given you some of my strength. Part of my soul has passed into you. We have passed through one another and I am weak.”

  She wept. “I will dream of snakes. They will devour me.”

  “Well,” he said at last, getting to his feet, turning his back on her, “I must try to be a brave man and take things as they come. I cannot weep.”

  “You will always smell bad to the people of the spirit world.” He began to walk away.

  “I have nothing to live for,” she cried after him. “I will take my own life and give it to the wolves. They will like it.”

  “I must take things as they come.”

  The red willows parted and he was gone.

  That evening there was a sudden wild cry in the lodge of Owl Above.

  “Aii! my daughter has lost a horseshoe! Aii! my daughter has lost a horseshoe!”

  The whole camp was awakened by it. Redbird got up from his bed, put on his chieftain’s robe, picked up his copper-tipped spear, and went out to have a look.

  Presently he came back and rejoined his wife Star in their sleeping robes.

  “What is it?” Star asked.

  “Full Kettle says Leaf did not return.”

  “Ai!”

  “She looked for her but found nothing but her clothes on the river’s bank.”

  Star sat up in the darkness. “She has taken her own life.”

  “Well, they cannot find her picked bones.”

  “She has taken her own life.”

  “Full Kettle believes the Pawnees have captured her. She thinks they still lurk near the river. To please her I have sent out extra guards. In the morning when it is light we will send out a searching party.”

  “She has taken her own life. Oo, oo.”

  “But why, my wife?”

  “Leaf did not like Circling Hawk. She liked our son. But our son cannot get the vision. Ai, she has taken her own life. The Yankton women are proud.”

  There was a long silence. Finally Redbird murmured, “There is nothing we can do, my wife. Either the Pawnees have taken her or she has taken her own life as you say. Besides, it is they of the other world who decide these things.”

  Star slowly lay down again. “Ae, there is nothing we can do. Tomorrow I will join Full Kettle in her lament. It is a sad thing to lose one’s last child. First, the boy, Burnt Thigh. Now the girl, Leaf.”

  Redbird and Star rustled together in their sleeping robes. After a time Redbird began to snore, and then Star also.

  No Name lay quietly, his eyes glittering up at the smokehole.

  The next morning No Name joined the searching party. The men circled the camp four times. No Name also led them as far as the pink sand across the river. They found no trace of her. Nor did they find any trace of Pawnees lurking near.

  Leaf had disappeared without leaving so much as a footprint.

  7

  The next afternoon his father thrust his lean head through the door and said, beckoning, “Come with me, my son.”

  “Yes, my father.”

  Together they stepped across the circle toward the horns of the camp. The cottonwood towering over Leaf’s tepee had turned into a pillar of gold in one day and the sky was like a bluebird and the red rocks under Falling Water glistened in the sinking sunlight. Yet there was sadness in the village and the children were out of sight and the women were quiet in the lodges.

  No Name was sure his father was going to show him the body of Leaf. With the new day love for her had warmed him again and he felt sick about her. No Name did not dare ask how she had come to her end.

  He was greatly surprised, however, when Redbird passed by Owl Above’s lodge and instead stopped in front of Grandfather Wondering Man’s lodge. Only then did he notice that Moon Dreamer was no longer beating his medicine drum for the ancient man.

  Redbird coughed lightly in warning to give those within time to prepare for visitors, then stepped inside, No Name following, their two quick shadows darkening the interior. They stooped around behind those near the fire and found themselves a seat in the place of honor opposite the door.

  No Name crossed his legs at the ankles, knees out. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the dusk inside. Hard Bones, his widowed aunt, sat with her head bowed on the women’s side. The top of her head was covered with gray ashes. Her braids were undone and hung like writhing snakes down her neck. Grandfather Wondering Man’s lance and bow and quiver hung in their accustomed place on the tripod.

  No Name heard rustling on his left. Flicking a look, he saw his uncle Moon Dreamer. Moon Dreamer also sat with his gray old head bowed. Except for clout and buffalo mask, he was naked. Around him lay the contents of his ceremonial bundle—a small age-blackened drum, a rattle made out of a buffalo bull’s scrotum, a parfleche of wakan herbs, a bag of bone powders, a sacred crook decked with red feathers, a suction tube to draw out evil spirits. Moon Dreamer was not as well preserved as Redbird. He was quite wrinkled over the belly, and the skin over his thighs had the parched look of old age.

  No Name and his father sat very still, eyes fixed ahead. The fire burned quietly under the smokehole.

  As No Name’s eyes continued to clear, he finally made out the form of his grandfather. Grandfather was lying on his side, partially curled up on his sleeping robe. Even where he sat, in semi-dark, No Name could see gray specks swarming in the roots of his grandfather’s snowy hair. No Name remembered his mother saying that when people became very old, lice stirred to life under their skin and came out on them. Grandfather’s skin was almost black and the veins over the backs of his hands were sun-empurpled, as if smoke-dried for a century. And his sunken cheeks and shriveled temples made his great nose seem larger than ever. No Name recalled the time when as a little boy he had asked Grandfather how he got such a big one. Sitting back in dignity, Grandfather looked past his nose and said that every night after all had gone to bed he used to go to the fat pot and rub his nose with grease. That’s why it got so fat. No Name remembered the last time he had seen Grandfather out in the sun. He was bent over, leaning on two sticks, big nose sniffing the air, resembling a dog more than a man. Ae. It was a bad thing to think such a thought about one’s own grandfather. But how cou
ld one help it? Grandfather had always seemed more of a relic to him than a relative. Grandfather had rarely shown any interest in him, had sat out his old days in the sun, passive and wordless, seemingly paying little attention to either his family or his tribe.

  No Name was presently startled to see his grandfather stirring. No Name clapped hand to mouth. “Ai, he still lives,” he whispered to his father.

  “Yes, my son.” Redbird spoke in a low grave voice. “He asked to see you. He wishes to speak to you for a last time.”

  No Name sat straight up. His eyes began to glow. Truly it was a strange thing that his grandfather should finally wish to see him.

  Wondering Man moved again. A stalk of a hand fumbled with his great nose, then fumbled with his eyebrows. His skin cracked.

  No Name waited.

  The ancient’s mouth opened, wide and ghastly. A hoarse whisper came out of it. “Is there not someone here who will hold open my eyes? I wish to see my grandson for a last time.”

  Redbird went over, and kneeling, gently drew back his old father’s eyelids with his thumbs. “There, Grandfather. Can you see?”

  Wondering Man’s eyes rolled slowly, at last came together and focused on No Name. “My grandson.”

  “Yes, my grandfather.”

  “Grandson, you have not yet had the vision?”

  “No, my grandfather.”

  “Have patience, my grandson.”

  “Yes, my grandfather.”

  “I look upon you and remember my youth. I am very old. I will die at last. Well, it is a good thing. My back aches. The little children walk on my spine but it does not help. I am without teeth and must be fed like a baby again at a mother’s breast. My age has at last made me helpless. I have been rendered womanish by my many winters. It is time to go on. Moon Dreamer your uncle has tried his medicine and it does not help. He has sung all his songs and they do not help. The people of the other world want me to come. Well, I shall go to them.”

  Moon Dreamer lifted his head. His mouth was drawn from all the chanting. “Our grandfather’s body is of the earth,” he said, voice cracked and dry. “No one lives long in this world. Even for such an ancient one as our old grandfather it is very short. I am sorry for this.”