Conquering Horse

by Frederick Manfred

  He handed Circling Hawk his bow and quiver, and also his knife. “Friend, will you keep these until I return?”

  “They shall be as my own until you come.”

  “Also, will you keep the watch until I return?”

  “Do not fear. May the gods hear your prayers.”

  “Look. Attend. The red of the morning. The sun is almost here. It is my wish to begin the vigil on the mountain top at sun rise. Now I go to climb the hill my father spoke of.”

  “Are your hands clean? They are not defiled?”

  “I have taken the sweat bath. I have traveled a long way to get here. I have rubbed myself with the sacred sage. You have seen. I am ready.”

  “Go. Depart. Climb to where the eagles like to sit. Receive the vision.”

  “This is my fourth trip to a high hill. The fourth time is the sacred time. I am ready. Hoppo.”

  Erect, face up, holding his red pipe in front of him, he walked stiffly around to the east side of the butte and began the ascent. His naked body glowed a dusky red. “O great spirit,” he cried, “be merciful to me that my people may live!”

  It was cold. A gauze of frost lay over the ground. Under the pink dawn it sparkled like glazed blood. The cold ocher soil burned his bare feet. He let his bronze toes pick the path, around spine cactus, over clumps of sage, around red ant mounds, across shivered shale.

  The slope began to tilt up, then to steepen sharply. The morning rose as he climbed. Blackened face lifted, erect, gleams of red flashing down his black hair, he worked upward. The land behind him fell away. A clattering cricket jumped out of the short grass. It opened its wings and became a flying drop of blood. Still the slope steepened. It lengthened. What looked sleek green from a distance, close up was rugged terrain. More and more rocks, fallen from the eroding escarpment above, lay in his path. He skirted them, stepped over them. Some of the rocks had just broken off, their edges a fresh hard gray. Others had lain a millennium and were covered with light green lichen. He puffed. The escarpment began to hang over him like a looming cliff. The smoke-blue sky lowered slowly toward him. He could feel the horizons all around sinking and falling back. He climbed, dark glittering eyes fixed on the rimrock, up, up. The work of it warmed him. His heart struggled loud in his chest. His heart pumped him up the hill.

  Immediately below the rimrock lay even greater piles of freshly broken-off rock. There was no grass or moss or lichen to soften the footing. Twice he stepped on stones so sharp they cut his feet. Rich glowing pink surrounded him. It bathed all things. The sun was about to burst over the horizon. He hurried, holding his red pipe before him.

  A sheer wall towered above him. He looked along it to the south for a way up. It was unclimbable in that direction as far as he could see. He looked along the precipice to the north. There, not a dozen steps away, next to a jutting rib, was a large chimney-like opening. He scrambled over and found it to be full of good handholds, even a few step-like projections. Then he spotted some half dozen perfectly shaped round stones on a ledge. “Ae,” he thought, “wakan stones. Someone, perhaps my father, has carried them here in a ceremony. I have found the true way. It is good.”

  He climbed swiftly up the chimney. It narrowed. There was just enough room the last few feet for him to squeeze through. Grunting, lifting himself, his head finally popped out on the flat top above. He heaved up the rest of himself, and then, standing erect, turned to face the east.

  At that very moment the red sun began to show over the horizon. For a moment the edge glowed like a distant prairie fire. It shimmered, wavered, increased, at last became a full circle and lay on the far rim of the earth, a huge burning stone. Almost between the wink of an eye the whole of it lifted free and it began to revolve around and around. One furious flush after another raced across its face.

  “The sun is my father. I am ready.” Pipe stem pointed ahead, he began to look for a clean level place to lie down on. He paced completely around the outer edge of the butte top, now and then glancing down at the prairie far below. He found that the whole top was about as large and as round as their village circle. Most of it was covered with frost-shivered shale and eroding gray rock, with here and there some pockets of soil, a few prickly pear cactus, some clumps of grayish sage, and the pale green tufts of new buffalo grass. There were innumerable ant mounds. The butte top seemed to be a sort of heaven for them. Red ants, some crawling, some flying, swarmed everywhere in the warming sun.

  He found a gap, or opening, in the south edge of the rim, where the rock had tumbled down. It looked upon their night camp. The size of the gap surprised him. It had not seemed that large from below. The gap was at least ten horses wide and four deep. He spotted Circling Hawk below rubbing down the horses. He was so high above them that Circling Hawk resembled a small turtle with hair, while the horses looked like small bloated boudins.

  The sun rose. Between him and the oscillating sun lay a vast valley, a pale blue prairie yielding at the horizon to a paler blue sky. He looked at the sun until it seemed to him two coals were slowly searing their way through the bone at the back of his head.

  From the sun’s position he marked out the four cardinal points. On each point he piled stones in pyramids of seven each. He intoned, in a low soft chant, “Here is the yellow east where the sun always rises. Here is the red west where the sun always sets. Here is the blue north where the source of purity lives. Here is the white south where the source of life lies.”

  He surveyed it all a last time, finally decided he would lie beside a different pyramid each day until the vision came to him. He chose the east side first. The source of all light might be kind to him on the very first day. He carefully placed his red pipe stem up on a small forked stick. He made a broom of sage stems and removed every living and growing thing from a space on the ground big enough to lie upon. Then, naked, he lay down with his bare feet to the east.

  He looked straight up, awaiting the vision.

  The rock under him was still cold and damp with night. He held himself against it. He fixed his thoughts on the sun. It would warm him when it came overhead.

  “Come, my god. I am ready. I await you.”

  Looking past the end of his blackened nose, he watched the great ball of fire rise. His back froze while his belly heated. He saw the sun as a vigorous forefather. It spilled fatherhood to all sides. It rose in the morning, it held high during the day, it plunged into the earth at night, and in so doing fathered many peoples.

  “Come, my god. Give me my name. I await it.” His song was a whisper, a sigh in verse, a soft exclamation sinking at the end.

  A single winged ant, a female, lighted on the point of his blackened nose. In the sun its small bulb tail was almost the color of the back of his hand. He watched it. To his amazement he saw its transparent wings were still growing.

  He spoke to it, crossing his eyes to get it in focus. “Tell me, little grandmother, have they sent you to give me a message?”

  The winged ant lifted its bulb tail and flew off.

  The sun lifted and the rock under him gradually warmed. He remembered the instruction to lie very still. Sweat formed between his toes. Hunger began to turn in his belly like a whimpering blind puppy.

  At noon he felt drowsy. Afraid he would fall asleep and so miss his god, he held his eyes up to the sun a while, until once again two holes began to burn into the back of his brain. He turned his head from side to side.

  His joints began to ache from lying so long in one position. He waited. He sang songs in a low voice, sighing. He sighed, singing. He drifted off into sleep. His body heated in the afternoon sun, his mind raced with fleeting dreams.

  Of a sudden he dreamed he had been caught by the Two Maidens. The Boulder With Wide Lips had him fast by the leg. Surprisingly it felt good. The gray lips sought to get a better hold of his leg and he did not prevent them. After a time he even helped them. The granite boulder began to sway from side to side, worrying his leg playfully like a friendly dog. The wide lips sm
iled at him. Then of a sudden a small sun raced in from the blue north, from where the sun otherwise never went, and it burst directly over his belly and became a golden stream, pouring, pouring. He was joyfully happy. Then he awoke.

  “Hi-ye! that was a good dream. It was not a bad one. Therefore I will not have to return.” Then he saw what had happened. “But I have defiled myself.”

  He broke out of his rigid posture and on hands and knees crawled to a clump of silver-gray sage and taking a handful purified himself with it. Whole again, groaning, he crawled back to his clean place on the rocks and lay down, this time with his head to the east and his feet to the west.

  “I will watch my father descend. Perhaps he will look upon me at last when he has seen how attentive I have been.”

  Late in the afternoon a wind came up from the west. At first it came softly, in irregular breaths. But after a time it began to come in rising gusts. The wild sage began to show first silver then gray. The winged ants flew up in protest and then cowered on the lee side of stones. Bits of dust hit the soles of his feet, tickling him.

  “Perhaps he will speak to me out of the dark center of a roaring whirlwind. I am happy. Let him come.”

  He narrowed his eyes against the wind and flying dust. The wind moaned over him. It chilled. It crooned in the wide gap on the south edge of the rimrock. It whistled shrilly in the chimney on the north edge.

  The sun set. The wind died away. No god came to him. No voice from above spoke to him.

  The flat top remained warm for a long time after dark. He lay very stiff. He watched a great throw of stars slowly spread across the heavens. He knew the stars to be supernatural people. He watched them move off toward the west. Just before moon-up, a cloud cover swept in from the northeast, hiding the stars and the dark bulky horizon. After a time he could not make out if he were lying high or low. The wind, also coming out of the northeast, whooed in the chimney like a hoarse owl. The whooing reminded him that his mother used to scare him with owl talk, telling him that if he did not behave an owl would come and get him. He whispered to himself the song she used to sing:

  “Hi-ye, hear the hooting owls

  In the passing of the night.

  They sit in the trees

  And scare naughty little boys.

  Hi-ye! hear them.

  Hooooooting owls

  In the passing of the night.”

  He remembered the time too when he boasted he was too old to be frightened of her stories. He even laughed at her when she began telling them. But then one night, as he laughed, a big ghost leg suddenly came poking in under the tepee wall. In terror he ran to his mother’s arms. “Ai!” she said then, “see, you have been very naughty and a ghost has come to take you underground with him.” A long time later he found out that the ghost leg was his father’s arm dressed in a legging and a moccasin.

  He lay still. To fight sleep, he filled his mind with stories his old father used to tell him, stories of bravery, of manly behavior, of kindly giving. His father in telling the stories would take up one of the fringes of his sleeve and describe a certain trail he had taken. When his father picked up a long thick fringe, the trail told of would be an arduous one, when he selected a short thin fringe the trail told of would be an easy one. He also recalled certain brave acts performed before his very eyes. Once his father got rid of a black headache by digging a black nerve out of his forehead with a knife. Another time his father tied a sinew to one of his rotted teeth and to the tail of a horse and then gave the horse a whack on the rump. The horse had to drag him twice across the camp circle before the bad tooth would let go. Then there was the awful morning when his father gashed his thighs, so that a scarlet blanket of blood slowly trickled down his legs until sunset, because Buffalo Woman, the protecting goddess of their band who lived behind Falling Water, had in anger drowned two of their most comely virgins. All these brave things he remembered. It comforted him to remember them. Thus he endured the night.

  When the sun came up the second day, he rose with it, uncracking his joints and releasing his stiff back muscles. He was so happy to see the revolving oval of the warm sun again that he broke into a dance and chanted a song:

  “The sun is my father.

  He is my begetter.

  He rises a great tree in the morning.

  He warms me all day with his loving arms.

  He soothes me at twilight with his colors.

  As long as he shines I shall not want.

  He is my father.”

  His stomach, rebelling at the fasting, growled inside him like a surly dog. Twice involuntary belches broke from it, so that he had to speak to it. “What, can you not endure a little hunger for the sake of a calling and a given name?”

  He found another soft stone dark with fired ash. He repainted his face carefully, painstakingly, well up into his hair, then down on his chest to the nipples. He also painted a long, black zigzag line down his left side and groin. Then, having prepared himself, carrying his pipe, stem forward, he sought out the pyramid of stones on the north edge of the butte top. With a broom of sage stalks he brushed out a level place, clean of dust and pebbles and insects, exactly diamond square. He knelt and lifted his hands, palms up, toward the sun, saying, “I walk in a remote place. I pray as I cry. I have neither eaten meat nor drunk water. I am poor. Great father, this day bring me the joy of a new name and the power of a new destiny.” He followed the prayer with a passage of hands to the ground, four times. Then he lay down in the square, his feet to the north. He folded his arms over his belly. He worked his tongue, bringing up wetness, so that gradually his hunger subsided.

  The sun rose and warmed his right side, from his ear to his toe. There was no wind. It was very quiet. Behind him he heard the winged ants buzzing. He looked past his nose and saw the points of his hipbones and the square mounds of his kneecaps and the tips of his toes. The north sky was very blue. To the right of his toes, through a fault in the rimrock, he could make out very clearly where the yellow-green land touched the sky. He lay outstretched, patient.

  At noon he turned on his right side to give his back a rest. He lay stiff, anklebone resting on hard anklebone, ear and elbow on hard cold rock.

  He cried as he prayed. “It is the second day, my father. I am waiting. Send my guardian spirit to me that I may be named and become a brave man. I wish to hear the shouts of the little children when I return from the hunt with meat for the camp.”

  Then to the right of his nose, close up, he saw a strange thing. Attached to a bending stalk of buffalo grass was a speck like the egg of an insect. His eye caught the hint of movement in it, as if the tiny speck were hatching. At once very wide awake, he watched it. After a few seconds the speck began to crack open at one end. He thought he could hear it opening, like the soft cracking of a milkweed pod in autumn. He forgot himself and his agonies. He watched it enraptured. At last the speck flipped open, in halves. Something glimmered in the opening. A second later a very tiny fly, a toy fly, emerged. It sat on the edge of one of the halves and flexed its fragile wings. The wings gleamed brilliantly in the sun, a strange bluish green. The little fly’s wings began to lengthen, and widen, and glow like the tender gossamer of spider webs. And even while this happened, the fly’s body also enlarged, the wriggling head becoming a tiny flat shield with a magic design on it, the tail rising and falling like a tiny bloated waterskin in wind. Blinking, watching amazed, he next saw the growing fly, a male, take a few trial flights, from the edge of its egg to the top of the blade of grass, from the blade tip to a small stone, and then, most astonishing of all, to the inside of his right elbow.

  “Well,” No Name said then, softly, “so it is you they have sent, is it?”

  The fly flexed its wings. It balled its belly up and down. It cleaned its pig snout nose with its forefeet.

  “Ai, it is the blue fly of death. It wishes to tell me of Leaf.”

  The fly dipped, took a nip of No Name’s skin, and then, in a quick curving blue fl
ight, was gone.

  “Ai, she is dead.” And exhausted from the close-up watching, he turned slowly on his back again.

  Again that afternoon his stomach balked in protest. It not only barked up belches at him but bit him inside. Once it bit him so ferociously he had to press down on it with his fists to subdue it.

  His tongue swelled fat in his mouth. He could no longer bring up wetness. He had trouble crying his prayers. His lips cracked. Running the tip of his swollen tongue over the cracks, he pried up flaps of peeling skin. These he chewed, and ate.

  He waited, patiently.

  Again a strong wind rose late in the afternoon, this time from the south. It soughed up through the gap. The wind blew bits of chipped rock against the top of his head, sprayed them against his toe tips. Sometimes certain of the winged ants flew too high, became too daring, and despite desperately beating wings were blown out over the abyss, coasting away into nothingness.

  Again, at sunset, the wind died away. It became very still. The sun sank, a yellow ball falling out of a light blue sky into a yellow-blue horizon. It disappeared like a spirit stone thrown into spirit waters. There were no after-ripples. Night raced out of the east. Stars lowered into sight.

  The high rock cooled. Cold air breathed over him, coming straight down from the stars. He opened his mouth and drank of the cold air. He thought it wonderfully sweet, better than spring water. He opened his hands and gathered it up and washed his hot face with it. He felt faint.

  “I do not wish to sleep, but dream, so that I can at last have a name and know who I am.”

  Of a sudden he fell asleep and dreamed. In his dream he saw a light sweep over him. It came from the blue north. Looking very carefully he saw that it was a prairie fire. Its huge flames raced toward him like wild red horses. The flames became as tall as the tallest rustling tree. The prairie fire finally swept up the sides of the butte, its flames so eager they licked over the edge of the rimrock and warmed the soles of his feet. “This is very wonderful!” he murmured in sleep. “I am warm, I am warm. The night is cold but the fire you have sent me is like a big lodge fire. Give me a fur robe and I shall sleep well, my mother.” Then he saw that the whole butte was on fire. He heard it melting under him. Presently it began to incline more than usual to the south. “Ai! save me, my father. The fires are eating me.” And crying aloud, terrorized, he awoke bathed in sweat.