Conquering Horse

by Frederick Manfred

  Dawn burst over the horizon. It bloomed over him like an opening lily. It yellowed his buckskins. It yellowed the deep slough grass. It yellowed the undersides of the leaves of the rustling trees.

  He danced a short dance in greeting to the oscillating sun. He sang in a low voice:

  “I was lost in a wide place

  Where the wolf did not dare to come.

  Yet you found me, friend.

  I stumbled in a wide place

  Where the coyote slid away.

  Yet you showed me the truth path, friend.

  The world is very wide.”

  The pulling was still there. It drew hard on his flesh soul. It was as though someone had grabbed up a handful of flesh on his chest and were pulling him forward.

  He leaped across the stream. The pulling led him through the young cottonwoods, then south across a swale, then west over a low mound, at last back to the little cottonwoods again where the stream buckled sharply to the south.

  He saw a very tall cottonwood. It towered over the smaller cottonwoods like a father over children. The high cottonwood drew him. The pulling was now not as sharp. It drew only a little. Yet he went to the big tree.

  Then, level with his eyes, he saw a skull stuck to the cottonwood’s gray-edged bark. The skull’s eyeholes glowed darkly at him while its glittering teeth smiled a strange welcome. Looking closely, he saw an arrow in its right eyehole. His glance went down. With a gasp, he saw a jumble of bones at the foot of the tree. Sometime, a long time ago, some warrior had been pinned to the tree in battle. Later, wolves had come and ripped body from skull and cleaned off the bones.

  Quietly, with sacrificial reverence, he placed a pinch of tobacco beside the bones. Looking around to all sides, then up at the cottonwood leaves overhead, he said, “Stranger, you are gone. You are dead. We will never know what your name was. Do not turn back. Be happy with your new friends in the other life. My helper and I wish to fare well in this life.”

  In a half trance, he walked slowly and unhurried toward a low rise. The sun shone warm on his back. The west wind was cool in his face. The wingeds sang softly in the rustling trees along the stream.

  When he reached the crest of the rise the pulling was gone. He had come to the place. Dreamily he looked about him. A level meadow covered with pink prairie clover lay between the rise and the twinkling stream. It was the kind of meadow his father would have selected for a camp site. He gazed down at it, looking, half-listening. Then, young face calm, a gentle mask, he stepped toward the stream. Going around a clump of choke-cherries, he saw it. A set of bare tepee poles. Also many bare meat racks and rings in the grass where other tepees had stood. And a sweat lodge at the edge of the swamp. And two menstrual lodges standing well back in the grass. His eyes opened. He moved through the grass one slow step after another. The trail from the camp site to the water was fresh. The grass was scuffed but little, with here and there some tan earth showing. The human droppings around the outer ring of the camp were fresh too. Sitting on his heels, he gently brushed away the ashes of one of the camp fires, layer by layer, until he found a few live embers at the bottom. The earth was still hot beneath. The horses, he noted, had been tied close to the lodges. He kicked over their droppings and saw that as yet no colonies of bugs had collected under them. A pile of discarded ribs and cracked leg bones had just begun to stink and collect green blowflies. He found a castoff moccasin and examined it carefully. He noted by the marks made by the pins in the grass that the lodges had been quite small. He also noted that the pins had been hurriedly ripped out of the ground. He came upon a crushed eagle feather with a bit of scarlet plume glued to its tip.

  “It is the Pawnee,” he said finally, whispering to himself. “A few of them have been on a hunting party. Also, they have been angry with each other.”

  His feet moved under him. They took the path to the stream. Bobbing pink polls of prairie clover filled the air with cloying perfume. The perfume was so rich, so sweet, he was dizzy from it. He could almost see the scent wisping up as smoke.

  He passed through the fringe of slender cottonwoods and stood upon the sand beside the stream. He saw where someone had scraped the sand back and forth, as if in play, and at first, seeing the brown object lying on the rumpled sand, he thought it a child’s buckskin ball left behind in haste. His next thought was that it had a shape similar to the sacred stones he had found the day before, and about as large as the moon when directly overhead. But then he saw the hair falling away on one side of it, black, tangled, and long.

  A cry broke from him and with broken knees he ran toward it. “Aii! it is Leaf!” He knelt beside the moon-like head, made a gesture as if to pick it up, then retreated from it. “She who is lost! Yet it cannot be.” His hard black eyes became milky with grief. Cold tears blinded him momentarily. “Thy flesh still has its bloom. A day sooner and I would have found thee alive.” He tore his hair. “They of the other world let me see two crows and then two eagles and then two sacred stones. Then they began to pull me. But I did not come quickly enough.” He shuddered. “They have beheaded you.” He made a noise as of one chewing pebbles. “Sister, I have done thee much wrong.” He wept. “But I have also suffered much from it.”

  A sigh broke from the brown head. Then the lips moved and a broken voice said, “I am suffering very much.”

  He sprang to his feet in astonished terror. A sheet of fear moved under his scalp. His black eyes flashed white.

  Again the lips moved. “I am suffering,” they said. As the head spoke the round chin touched the sand under it. “I have lived but a little while. Too little.”

  He leaped back a full step. “Can a head speak without breath?”

  For answer a deep sigh broke from the head, then it tilted to one side on the sand.

  He stared down at it wild-eyed. His glittering eyes took it all in. The moon-like features seemed fuller than he remembered them, as if they had been bitten by mosquitoes. The wide lips were fat and the pink inner edge was cracked and glazed. There were black bruises over the cheeks and under the ears. The parting in the middle of the hair was crooked, with the usual stripe of vermilion almost worn away.

  Then the dark eyes opened. They were bloodshot. A grayish haze lay over them. Rolling, showing pink where they should have been white, they fixed on his feet, then lifted up, lifted until at last they looked him straight in the eye. They looked at him a long time before the haze in them began to clear. Recognition gradually began to shine in them. “Help me,” the lips whispered. “They have buried me in the sand.”

  He stood trembling violently, not knowing whether to fly or to help her.

  “The sand is very cold. Yet my body cannot shiver. Help me.”

  “B-b-but are you not in the other world?”

  An infinitely sad smile, yet also an infinitely kind smile, moved over the bruised face. “I have not yet gone to the place so that I might be in it.”

  “Then you are the daughter of Full Kettle? Your shadow soul and your body soul have not become separated? You are alive? You are not a spirit living in the head of one who has been beheaded?”

  Again a deep sad smile came over the brown face. “Dig here with your hands and you will discover my body.”

  He dropped his bow and fell beside the head on his knees. He began to scrabble furiously. Sand flew in all directions behind him. He was like a dog digging in fury after a retreating squirrel. In a few moments he had dug below the breasts, then down to the waist.

  Leaf heaved a huge sigh. “At last. The sand pressed so tight against me. It was very hard to breathe. Also they jumped on the sand to make it firm.”

  “Was it the Pawnee?”

  “Ae.” She rolled and swung her body around from the hips up. Sighs of relief kept rising from her.

  When he had dug well below her hips, he saw that she was swollen with child. He repressed a terrible impulse to strike her belly. The child would be a Pawnee’s. Already he hated it.

  At last he open
ed a hole wide and deep enough for him to lift her out. He took hold of her under the armpits and gently heaved up and back. She was heavy. The wet sand let go of her feet with a sucking sound. Puffing, he stretched her out on dry sand. Yellowish wet filmed her brown nakedness.

  She sighed and sighed. She could not get enough of free breathing. Shudders kept shaking her from head to foot.

  He cupped palms of water over her. He washed her until her limbs shone a bright rose-brown. The water was warm but tremors of chills still shook her.

  “We must make a fire,” he said, looking around, wary. “Yet I dare not.”

  He remembered the live embers he had found in the deserted Pawnee camp site. The earth under them would still be warm. Quickly he picked her up, one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees, and staggering under the double burden, carried her tenderly through the fringe of trees and along the path. Her near breast rode soft as a bladder of water against his chest. The nipples were already spreading and he knew then that she would soon be a mother. She kept shuddering against him.

  He cleared away the largest pile of white ashes and then placed her on the warm bare ground. He gave her his shirt to wear. He smiled grimly when he saw how it barely covered her hips. He dug out an extra pair of moccasins from his pack and slipped them on her feet. He pulled the thongs out of the pack and opened it to its full width and placed it around her hips.

  He kneeled beside her and stroked her arms from the shoulders to the wrists. He rocked her from side to side, gently, firmly. The fire-heated ground gave off waves of warmth.

  She moaned in gratitude. She let her head be rolled from side to side. Presently a rush of dark warmth suffused her bloodied eyes. “Now I see you clearly,” she whispered. “I am better.”

  “The lost one has been found,” he said. Beads of sweat rolled off his back. “Sister, my heart is glad.”

  The sun rose to almost midday before warmth returned to her limbs. It wasn’t until she suddenly broke out in a strange slippery sweat that the tremoring chills finally left her.

  He helped her sit up. “When have you eaten?”

  “Not since they quarreled. It is now two nights.”

  “I will hunt us some meat.” He stood up. “The animals are our friends. The wolves will lead us to the game. They will take care of us.”

  She clutched him by the leg. “Do not leave me.”

  He placed his hand on her head as if she were a child. He smiled down at her. “Sister, would you eat?”

  She flinched, then sat away from his leg. Her lips quivered, her nostrils flared on each breath. She tried very hard to show forti tude. Then she said, “We are alone in enemy land and we eat out of the same dish. Go. Bring the meat.”

  He cupped his hand over the fat braid where his charm hung secreted. He listened. He looked within. Gradually a faint bruising sound arose in his cupped hand. Then he looked without, dark predator eyes roving to all sides, searching the pink meadow and the gray-green prairie beyond.

  “Ahh,” he cried, starting at what he saw. On a low rise south of them two gray prairie wolves were skulking along. “My medicine is working. He is helping me this day. The wolves smell a down buffalo. Perhaps even a young red calf.” He strung his bow, got out an arrow, and darted swiftly after the wolves.

  Coming over the rise he saw them, a young cow and her red calf. She had a broken front leg and her bunch had left her to die. Already a dozen other wolves sat in the grass around her waiting for her to fall. Occasionally one of the wolves set up a barking to one side while another from the other side sneaked in craftily to slash at her hocks. Despite the dangling front leg, she always managed to get around in time to ward them off with her sharp black horns. The wolves saw him first. Sullenly they gave way, flashing their teeth at him. Coming closer, he saw from the number of her droppings and from the worn circular groove in the trampled grass that she had kept her tormentors at bay for several days.

  The brown cow first smelled him, then saw him. She snorted, lowered her head as if to charge. The calf, a male, lifted its bare little tail and circled her once, running wild; then abruptly it stopped, let out a yelp of a bellow. The young cow bawled in answer in a strange flat voice. She turned clumsily, and licked her young.

  He approached her on soft feet. He scattered a pinch of tobacco in her direction in sacrifice. He said, “Grandmother, my sister is hungry. She will soon have a child and needs meat. You were made for that. So I must kill you.” With one motion he lifted his bow and shot her in the heart, just behind the left front leg at the edge of the long hair. She shuddered, she breathed hard, blood foam formed on her lips, then she fell heavily to the ground. Slowly her eyes glazed over and a gray-black tongue lolled out. Almost immediately flies began to whiz about her fallen head.

  The bull calf bellowed at the sound of her fall. He staggered back a few steps, made as if to charge No Name, held. He looked around bewildered. At last he fell to suckling her slack teats, nudging her roughly when the milk did not flow to suit him.

  No Name looked at the dozen wolves waiting in the grass around them, looked down at the calf, and said, “Where are your fathers? You will be killed here.” Then he looked up at the sky. “Sun, I am doing this for you. May we live until next winter from it. By then we shall be returned to our lodges by the River of the Double Bend.” He took a second arrow from his quiver and shot the red calf too.

  Swiftly he skinned both mother and calf. He offered a piece of meat to the sky and the earth and the four directions. He withdrew the two arrows and cleaned off the blood with a handful of grass. He cut out the choice meats, the kidneys and liver and hump and leg bones for marrow, and scooped out the brains for tanning purposes. He wrapped up the meat and the calfskin in the cow’s brown hide and flung all of it over his shoulder. He spoke to the waiting wolves, saying, “The remainder I give to you because you led me to the game. Take it. I thank you.”

  When he came back to camp, he was pleased to see that Leaf had been grooming herself. She had washed and combed her hair and it now hung in a long glossy waterfall down her back. The hint of rust he remembered so well glowed in it. She had also salved the bruises on her cheeks and neck with the white juice of milkweed. Except for her swollen body, she was almost the Leaf of old again.

  He threw the skinful of meat at her feet. “Sister, let us have a feast in celebration.”

  She gave him a wonderful smile. Her hands flew over the bundle as she untied the folds of fur. Spotting the calf liver, she tore off a lobe, and with a swift apologetic throw of eyes at him for being so wolfish, spiced the liver with gall squeezings and began to eat it.

  He held himself as if he had not seen her ravenous hunger. He got out his tobacco and with his knife chopped up a handful on an old log and filled his pipe. He lit up with a small coal from one of the fire sites. He offered his pipe to the great directions in thanks, then settled back on a stone for a peaceful smoke.

  She found a good bed of coals under the largest pile of ashes. Quickly cutting some green sticks from the cottonwoods, she hung some of the hump meat over the coals to broil. Heat soon made the fat drip and the coals burst into low talking flames.

  They ate heartily together. The meat was tasty, rich. The bone marrow was especially succulent. They smacked their lips, they licked their fingers.

  Much later, after many sighs, she finally told him what had happened after he had used her and left her on the pink sand beside the River of the Double Bend….

  She lay crying on the sand. She felt so miserable she was beyond even tearing her hair or gashing her legs. Her shadow soul shrank until it was very small. And at last, exhausted, she fell asleep in the red willows.

  Then something touched her. She rolled over on her back and opened her eyes. There, ringed around her and staring down at her, were seven strangers. Six of the strangers were young and dressed for war; faces garish black and white and red, each carrying a warclub, and naked except for a clout. The seventh, older and v
ery tall, was dressed in buckskins. He had on three red-tipped feathers and carried a war-decorated shield. All seven wore a scalp lock stiffened with fat and paint and made to stand erect like a curved horn. It was from the horns that she knew them to be Pawnees.

  One of the youngest made as if to strike her. Deftly, quickly, the tall older Pawnee held the blow. Then to her great surprise the older Pawnee spoke to her in good Sioux. “My daughter, are you alone?”

  She remembered her mother sleeping across the river. Her mother must get away to warn the band. “I have been swimming alone.”

  The older Pawnee’s brows came together in what seemed to be an apologetic frown. “Tell me, daughter, are you a virgin?”

  “Ae, I am.” She spoke from habit, until that day having always thought of herself as one.

  Eyes glittering, all seven faces looked at each other. Then the six younger Pawnees looked directly at her naked thighs, while the chief looked at her face.

  She got to her knees and bowed deep at the feet of the older Pawnee. “You are they who are merciful.”

  “Come, my daughter,” he said, “already we are missed in our village. Let us hasten.” He gave a signal and two of the burly youths took her by the arm and lifted her to her feet. The older Pawnee took off his shirt and gave it to her to cover her nakedness. Then two other youths, using switches, carefully erased all sign of footprints in the sand.

  They took her to their horses hidden in the willows. An extra horse stood ready for her. From this she gathered they had come especially to capture some enemy virgin.