Conquering Horse

by Frederick Manfred

  Hard Bones the widowed daughter broke into a low wail. She began to tear her hair.

  Wondering Man went on while Redbird held open his eyes. “It was my hope that I might see the issue of my thighs a brave man before I went on to that other place. I wished to see the sign of torment on my grandson’s breast. I wished to see his secret medicine help him bear himself as a man. I hoped for this very much because I did not wish to see Soft Berry’s son become the chief of our band.”

  “But my guardian spirit will not come to me!” No Name cried.

  “Have you prayed, my son?”

  “I have prayed, my grandfather, until I was dead for a little time.”

  A harsh sigh escaped Wondering Man. Gray lice began to move out of his white hair onto Redbird’s bronze thumbs.

  “Grandson, I have yet one wish.”

  “Speak, my grandfather.”

  “Carry me to the big red rock behind the camp that I may see the sun go down one more time.”

  “Yes, my grandfather.”

  No Name went over and picked up the fragile old man. Holding him as if he were a baby just born, he carried him out through the round door and across the camp circle. Redbird and Hard Bones and Moon Dreamer followed behind, single file. All the people sat silent in their tepees. No Name went up the pink path and at last came to the big red rock. It was the same one he liked to sit on. Gently he leaned his grandfather against the rock.

  “Open my eyes,” Wondering Man whispered. “I wish to see.”

  No Name lifted the dry eyelids with his thumbs.

  Wondering Man’s eyes slowly focused. Black pupils emerged out of gray milky deeps. Gradually his eyes came to glittering life.

  They waited. The sun sank very slowly. They waited.

  At last, after another long wait, the sun touched the long low horizon and then sank behind it.

  Wondering Man sighed. “I have yet one more wish.”

  “Speak, my grandfather.”

  “Bring me something to drink from the Great Smoky Water. It is wakan and full of medicine. It will give me strength for the long journey ahead.”

  “But the Great Smoky Water is a distance from here, my grandfather.”

  Redbird stepped forward. “We have some saved in a bladder, my son. I will get it.”

  Wondering Man took a little of the water. He savored it, making the noise of one chewing snow.

  Then, after he had gazed yet again upon the place where the sun went down, he sighed and said, “Let my eyes fall shut. Now I can die.”

  PART TWO

  THE VISION

  1

  Early the next spring, in the Moon of New Grass, a strange thing occurred. Not a single spotted colt was born to the Yankton mares. This was a grave disappointment to Redbird.

  No Name knew why. He decided to tell his father. He found Redbird meditating beside his fire.

  “My father, I have come.”

  “When you come I am glad.”

  They passed the pipe and sat smoking in silence for a time.

  “My father, I am miserable. My heart is cut into strings.”

  “Speak, my son. My ears are open and they listen.”

  “Leaf still does not return. She is dead. It is I who have caused her death.”

  “It is as the gods wish, my son.”

  “My father, I am sick. I took Leaf as a man takes his wife. She did not wish it. Afterwards she ran away. A Yankton woman is proud and often takes her life with her own hand.”

  “Ai!”

  “My father, thus I am no longer a virgin and will never dream. It is done. I walk at random. I wander without a purpose.”

  A louse moved along a single black hair across Redbird’s bronze brow. It touched his skin. Redbird felt it, caught it, and cracked it between his thumbnails. “Have you had a medicine dream?”

  “No. My mind is in the manner of a hard knot. It will not loosen.”

  “There is nothing we can do. We must wait.”

  “My father, it is my blame there are no spotted colts this spring.”

  “We need a new medicine for the mares.”

  “The gods are angry with me, my father,” No Name groaned. “I will go with the head down.”

  Redbird sat silent. He looked gravely at the fire. Presently Star came in and picked up a few dry twigs and mounted them over the red embers. Gray smoke gradually changed to tiny flames. She waited until the flame began to whip about like little wild mare’s tails. Then she put on the water for the meat and withdrew.

  “My father, the old ones tell us that a gifted man has powerful dreams. I am never given dreams. My father, your son is numbered among the dumb.”

  Redbird looked at the wrinkles over his old knuckles. “You must have patience, my son. Perhaps the gods are testing you.”

  “But I am too old to play with stick horses. Where is my guardian spirit?”

  Redbird pulled his heavy buffalo robe over his shoulders. “My son, the Yanktons do not wish to hear much said on the same thing. Let us wait until the gods change their minds.” Then Redbird looked up through the smokehole and addressed the skies. “Oh sun, make this boy strong and brave. May he die in a raiding party and not from old age and sickness. It is good to die young.”

  2

  Four mornings later, as he was about to awaken, No Name had a terrible dream. Supine in his sleeping robes, he dreamed he began to play with Loves Roots, his father’s other wife. He threw her a light thing; she threw it back. When he threw it, the thing was a stick horse. When she threw it the thing was a grass doll. Back and forth. Stick horse and grass doll. This was fun. He laughed. She laughed. They were very far apart and could not touch each other. Suddenly a feeling of doom hung over them. It came creeping in through the tepee door. It hovered over the fire. After a while, mingling with the gray smoke it turned into the head of a white mare. It had terrible teeth, like those of a grizzly. It had terrible eyes, like those of a madman. Then it was given two hands, calloused like a woman’s. It went over to the women’s side and picked up his mother’s butchering knife. Quickly he crossed his arms over his chest. He placed his hands in such a way that his fingertips protected his mouth hole and his nose holes and his ear holes. Suddenly the white mare began to rush around. She changed into a fox and ran straight across the tepee for him and stabbed at him. The point of the knife struck his wrist, into the bone, making a slicing noise. He tried to awaken and could not. He choked. He was fixed upon the ground on his back. He screamed.

  A warm hand touched him. It shook him. It was his father.

  Slowly he awakened. He lay gasping. His heart galloped like a wild horse, trying to get out of his chest. Cold sweat filmed him from head to foot. His hands and feet lay stiff, as if dead.

  “My son, what is it?”

  No Name spoke as one awakening from a seizure. “I—dreamed —of—a—white—mare—my—father.”

  “Ai! And what did she say?”

  “She—tried—to—kill—me.”

  “Were you afraid?”

  “She—took—our—mother’s—butchering—knife.”

  Redbird placed a hand on No Name’s brow. “Son, you are cold.” He slipped in beside him under the sleeping robe. “Come, I will warm you. You are very cold.” He held him in his arms as in the old time. The tobacco smell in his father’s hair was comforting.

  When No Name had warmed up some, he said, “Is the white mare my guardian spirit, my father? Has my protector come at last?”

  “No, my son. It did not come to you after a fast. It was a nightmare.”

  “Did it come to tell me a thing?”

  Redbird got up. He dropped a twig on the sleeping embers. A little flame licked up, giving off a vague blue light. Redbird next mixed some tobacco on his chopping board. Solemnly he lit up. Then with a glance at the sleeping forms of his wives Star and Loves Roots, he said, “My son, tell me the dream. What was it?”

  No Name told him.

  “It is as I thought.” Redb
ird puffed on his pipe a moment. “The gods have at last decided on a good thing. Tomorrow you must take a gift and a pipe to Moon Dreamer, our holy man. He will tell you what to do.”

  No Name suddenly felt very good. He sat up. “They will send me a vision?”

  Redbird held out the pipe to his son. “Smoke, my son. We will know in the morning.”

  After breakfast, after Redbird had sent the horses to the hills, Star and Loves Roots prepared a gift. The day before No Name had killed a juicy buffalo cow. The two women took its fresh tongue as well as the leaves of well-cured tobacco and wrapped them up separately in corn husks and placed them in a handsomely decorated parfleche. Redbird meanwhile unrolled a leather pack and got out his best pipe. The pipe had been cut from the purest red pipestone, carved to represent a wolf chasing a buffalo, with the wolf serving as a handhold and the buffalo’s mouth as the bowl. Redbird used the pipe only on special occasions.

  Redbird said, “Carry this pipe to Moon Dreamer. He is a wise and good man. He will speak true. His tongue is not split like a snake’s.”

  No Name took the gift in his left hand and the pipe in his right hand.

  “You have taken the morning bath, my son?”

  “I was the first again today, my father.”

  “Good. Now go. We will await your return.”

  No Name stepped across to Moon Dreamer’s lodge next door. The skunktails on his heels erased the trail behind. He held his shoulders high under his white robe. He looked straight ahead. Boys playing stick horse stopped to stare at him. Women working on hides clapped hand to mouth. The eyes of old men sitting in the sun narrowed to black gleams.

  No Name stopped before the door of Moon Dreamer’s lodge. He looked a moment at the painted symbols on the outside, the rising white ball and its thirteen rays. Then he coughed politely to let his uncle know that company had come and stooped through the doorhole. “I have come,” he said. He stood a moment in front of the fireplace.

  Moon Dreamer sat huddled under a robe. A small fire smoked in the center. The lodge smelled of old people, of sour sweat and urine-stained clouts. It did not seem to help much that Star sometimes came in to clean up and cook for her brother. In a day or two the bad smells were back.

  Still stooping, No Name moved around toward Moon Dreamer. He placed the gift of tongue meat and tobacco at the holy man’s feet. Then he held out the pipe and said, “Obey the pipe.”

  Moon Dreamer turned his face away.

  Again No Name held it out. “Obey the pipe!”

  Moon Dreamer held up his hand against it.

  “Obey the pipe!”

  Moon Dreamer refused yet again.

  “Obey the pipe!”

  It was the fourth time and Moon Dreamer could no longer deny him. He accepted the pipe and said, “Sit, my son.”

  No Name took a seat on a folded robe to the left of Moon Dreamer. Wisps of smoke curled upward out of the fire.

  In patient ceremony Moon Dreamer opened the packet of tobacco. He filled the pipe and lighted up with a hot coal from the fire. He presented the pipe in turn to the powers of the sky and earth and the four great directions. He puffed gravely a moment to himself. Then he handed the pipe to No Name.

  No Name also presented the pipe to the great powers and puffed solemnly to himself.

  When they finished the pipe, Moon Dreamer stood up. He slipped off his buffalo robe and put on a buckskin shirt worked with many porcupine quills. Tufts of sweetgrass protruded from holes in his shirt front. The smell of the old dried grass was suddenly sweet in the lodge. Moon Dreamer next put on his ceremonial buffalo-head mask.

  “Father, the old ones tell us that a gifted man has powerful dreams. I am never given dreams. Father, I am numbered among the dumb.”

  “You must have patience.”

  “Father, I have seen that one must have a true vision first before one can be well-to-do. I shall be poor because I have not had such a vision.”

  “It is for the gods to decide.”

  “Father, in the night I dreamed of a white mare. My father tells me it was only the nightmare. My father sends me to you.”

  “Ai! And did the nightmare speak to you?”

  “No. She tried to take my life.”

  “Ahh.”

  No Name then told him the dream.

  Moon Dreamer’s dark eyes burned in the eyeholes of his buffalo-head mask. Then, looking down at the bare ground between his knees, Moon Dreamer said, “O earth, hear. This son has had a strange dream. What shall he do?” Moon Dreamer held his head to one side, listening attentively as if to some far voice.

  No Name held himself in rigid check.

  Moon Dreamer next looked up at the darkened smokehole above. “O Moon, hear. This son has had a strange dream. What shall he do?” Again Moon Dreamer held his head to one side, listening.

  No Name waited.

  At last Moon Dreamer said, “My son, this is what the dream means.” Moon Dreamer’s voice was grave, even awesome, inside the buffalo mask. “In your dream a certain spirit mare wished to speak to you alone. You would not listen. You played childish games with one who was neither your true mother nor your sister. Also, you took a thing from a young girl which she wished to keep. You would not listen. Therefore the white mare became angry with you. That is why she took your mother’s butchering knife and stabbed you. The white mare loves you and wishes to tell you something. Therefore it is at last time for you to go to a high hill. There you must fast and await the true vision.”

  “Do you see the high hill? Where is it?”

  “When the moon spoke to me I heard the sound of great thunder.”

  “Houw!”

  “Your father is one of those who has seen the Thunders.” With a twig Moon Dreamer drew a picture of a great twolegged thunderbird in the dust between his knees. “Therefore you must go to the far hill where the Thunders like to come.”

  No Name’s eyes lighted up. “I have heard my father speak of such a hill. It is very high and is known as the Butte of Thunders. It is beyond the country of the terrible Rees. I shall ask my father to tell me the way.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Father, it is only the vision I lack, not the bravery.”

  “Good. Go there. You will be given the revelation of your calling. Now listen to me.”

  No Name bowed his head and listened.

  “When you are there, do not swallow any rain water that may fall. Do not eat. Lie very still and await patiently the thing that will happen. Otherwise you will have to wait yet another year.”

  No Name trembled with joy. “Hoppo! At last I shall be as strong as the grizzly. Ae, and as swift as the deer and as majestic as the eagle and as cunning as the fox. I shall be a great man.”

  “Ae.”

  “After my father has departed, I shall be a bold leader, a good and valiant man. I shall be a firm wise father to my people.”

  “May it be true.”

  “My people shall be known to all, to friend and enemy alike, as the Great and Shining People, keepers of the Place of the Pipestone. We shall be a people of glory, as many as the stars.”

  “The moon is our mother. She does not lie.”

  “And I shall be given a new name.”

  “My son, it is time for the vapor bath. You have wived with a woman and must be purified in a sweat lodge.”

  “I am ready, father.”

  “Also, you must choose a companion who shall go with you to the Butte of Thunders.”

  “Shall it be my friend Strikes Twice?”

  “His name shall be given you in the purification.”

  Moon Dreamer then went out and called Redbird. Together the two old men went down to the river and cut fourteen willow branches, each no thicker than the butt of a thumb and no longer than a war lance. Selecting a bare spot behind the village, they drove the branches into the ground in a circle, then bent them down and tied them together into a round frame. They covered the frame with buffalo hides, leaving an
opening for a door on the east side. They dug a pit in the center of the floor to the depth of two hands and to the width of three hands and took the loose earth from the pit and piled it in a little mound four steps from the door. They also spread a little of the loose dirt in the path from the door to the little mound. The little mound stood for the earth; the path for the good road. Moon Dreamer got a weathered buffalo skull from his lodge and set it on the little mound, facing it toward the door. The buffalo skull stood for the great herds of buffalo which Wakantanka sent them each year so that they might have plenty to eat and a long life.

  A crowd gathered to watch the ceremony: rosy naked boys and wondering little girls and idling braves and grave-eyed maidens and solemn old folks. Most sat in a circle on the ground; a few climbed up on the red rocks above the sweat lodge.

  After scattering fresh tufts of aromatic wild sage on the ground between the little mound and the door, Moon Dreamer next selected four young virgins and sent them to the hills to collect twelve stones, each stone to be no larger than two fists placed together. He instructed them to bring only those that had the mark of volcanic firing in them. Moon Dreamer next told the four virgins to find a cottonwood sapling of about the thickness of a man’s wrist. They were to chop it down carefully, removing the branches and sharpening the butt to a good point. This became the sacrifice pole which he thrust into the ground near the door. Redbird brought out four brilliant redbird tail feathers, a package of fresh tobacco, a ball of treasured horsetail hair, and tied them to the pole as a sacrifice to the sun. From among the young men in the crowd Moon Dreamer chose two to be his helpers: thick-lipped Strikes Twice and scowling Circling Hawk, the first representing friendship and the second rivalry. The two were sent out to get firewood from the cottonwood grove down the river.

  When all was ready, Moon Dreamer placed four lengths of wood side by side on the ground, pointing them east and west, then put on a layer of kindling, then four more lengths of wood, crosswise. He took up the twelve stones one by one and set them on top in neat rows. More firewood was placed around the sides, starting on the east side and going around with the sun. From his own lodge he got a red coal. Then in hushed silence he started a fire on the east side.