by Mike Blakely
“My father,” Horseback said, at the height of the celebration, “have you ever seen a scalp dance like this one?”
Shaggy Hump thought for several long moments, his face drawn and serious. He would have enjoyed this more with River Woman. “No, my son. Never have I seen so many scalps on the poles. I hear no women mourning dead husbands or sons. We have seen a great victory on this day. And we yet have a captive.”
Horseback smiled. His father was going to be surprised at what he would do with this captive.
As they feasted on pieces of hump that had been suspended above the fires on sticks jammed into the ground at a slant, Horseback kept his eyes moving for a glimpse of Teal. He saw Trotter moving away into the dark with Slope Child and felt a measure of regret that he had not secured her for himself, for she had made him feel good several nights in his lodge that was now given away. But she had made many a young warrior feel good, and so Horseback also felt a measure of relief that Trotter had taken her on this night. She was no longer a mystery to him. Teal was.
Anyway, his mood was not completely given over to celebration, though it was his duty to join the dance and feast. Not until he knew whether his mother would survive could he give Teal the attention he wanted to give to her. She was different from Slope Child. He felt a longing for Slope Child in his loins. His lust for Teal came from his heart, and it welled up in him in pangs that tormented and pleasured him all at once.
Perhaps she was waiting for him in the dark somewhere. Perhaps she was wise not to show herself at all, knowing that Horseback should be more concerned with his wounded mother than his own pleasures. When it came to Teal, it was difficult to know what to do. He would wait for guidance from the spirits.
He felt eyes upon him and looked toward the timber to see Bad Camper staring at him. This warrior was brave. His head had been thumped soundly with Horseback’s pogamoggan, yet he continued to keep his feet under Mm, and his head raised, though his arms had been hoisted up high behind his back. He had to be battling much pain now, yet he still possessed the fight to glare at the warrior whom he knew had the right to decide how he would be tortured.
Horseback walked toward Bad Camper and sat near him on the ground. He watched the scalp dance, listened to the good cadence of rattles and drums. He thought of letting the captive down from the tree so he could rest, but decided against it. His people deserved to see this invader suffer.
* * *
As the light of the waking sun began to lift the robe of stars away from the sky, the people tired of the scalp dance and went to their lodges. Horseback was left alone with Bad Camper. He borrowed a horse from Echo’s string, borrowed a lance from a friend’s stack of weapons. He used the lance to cut the rope holding Bad Camper’s arms up behind him. When he cut the rope, Bad Camper fell face-forward in exhaustion.
Prodding the captive with the butt of the lance, Horseback made him rise, which he did with difficulty, for his wrists were still bound tightly behind him. Horseback made him march toward the river. There was a sandbar there where the river was easy to cross on foot, and he forced Bad Camper to the south bank, knowing that the captive intentionally fell into the water to refresh himself and drink. Horseback was alert. The captive was likely to try to kill him to affect his escape.
Going up the south bank, Horseback would not walk his mount behind Bad Camper for fear the captive would jump down on him. He walked to one side, making his own trail. At the top of the bank, Bad Camper suddenly broke into a sprint, jumping clumps of sage and running as fast as he could go with his hands tied behind his back. Horseback loped along behind, remaining alert with his weapon. They ran until Bad Camper realized he could not outrun the horse, and he wheeled on his captor, snarling like a snared badger.
Horseback remained a safe distance away, laughing.
“Come kill me!” Bad Camper finally said. “My hands are bound! You have the only weapon! If I must die this day, may my killer prove his skill with the lance! Are you a girl or a warrior?”
Horseback took no glory in the fear he saw behind Bad Camper’s mask of courage. He knew it was a more powerful thing to face a sound enemy in battle than to torment this beaten foe. “If this was your day to die, you would be screaming at the coals heaped upon your pecker,” he replied. “Today you will return to your people and tell them how we danced under the scalps of your slain brothers.”
The desperate fear flew from Bad Camper’s eyes, and his face became laughable with surprise. “Why? Why do you release me?”
“It gives me more power than you can understand because you are less than a True Human. Now, go, before the spirits decide I should let the women slice and burn your flesh before your own eyes. Go back to your mountains and tell your people that you were defeated in battle by a Noomah warrior.”
Bad Camper took a few cautious steps backward, then stopped. “What will I tell them when they ask me the name of this warrior?”
He rested the shaft of the lance across his thighs and sat tall. “I am Horseback.”
20
River Woman’s wound did not heal easily. She lay in a trance through many suns. Though Spirit Talker wrapped her in a sacred robe and made long prayers over her, she would flinch as if fighting evil shadow things and call out in tongues grotesque and unintelligible. Sweat would drench her, and Looks Away, who kept her clean and wrapped in dry skins, feared she would shrink up and die, for she would swallow very little of the water, milk, or blood poured into her mouth. Her skin felt as hot as a stone under the summer sun.
As soon as the buffalo meat had been dried, pounded, and made into pemmican, the council decided to move the great camp-together north, for the Yutas were sure to return with more warriors, seeking vengeance if the True Humans did not retreat deeper into their own country.
River Woman had to be moved on a pony drag. Not until the people reached the canyon of the River of Bighorn Sheep, did the evil spirits leap out of River Woman’s soul. Spirit Talker said that he saw them leap out, and they looked like flames in the form of little people, running down into the ground. Spirit Talker had powerful medicine that allowed him to see such things.
When River Woman woke, she asked for food. She was given a stew made of boiled meat, flavored with wild onions and lily bulbs. She said nothing for a day, then began to speak of her vision.
In the strange world of her vision, River Woman was taken up into a cloud. She had to fight evil beasts in this cloud, which was so dark that she never knew the demons were upon her until they had bitten her. River Woman could not say how long she battled these cloud-beasts, but it seemed like four suns.
When the fighting was over, she fell out of the dark cloud and found herself flying over a beautiful country. “There are mountains there where all kinds of four-leggeds run,” she said, “and trees grow tall. There are many lodge poles standing as straight as the stars that fly. There are plains where no sage grows, only grass. Much grass. There are rivers flowing from the mountains, onto the plains, giving water to many deer, antelope, and elk. But, especially buffalo. Oh, you have never seen so many buffalo! The herds were like great clouds that come in the spring.
“But there is danger from many strange people there,” she continued. “Along the rivers on the plains, our ancient enemies, the Na-vohnuh are living. They make peace with strange white men and make war with all others. There are people who live in lodges made of mud. There are white men who wear shirts of iron and carry Fire Sticks. There are women and children who are also white. There is much killing and war—much slavery among all the people there. But there is trade, as well, for it is a rich country—not like our country at all.
“And…” she said, pausing for effect, “there are horses.” She looked at Horseback. “My son, if you want to see more horses than your father has seen of antelope and buffalo and bears, you must find this country. The horses there have many colors and travel in herds like elk. The hair from their manes and tails would make a rope as long as this river!�
� She made a motion toward the River of Bighorn Sheep.
“When I came back to our country, I believe I was flying north, for the sun passed from my right to my left. I saw myself lying on the pole drag behind the pony, and I was very sad. Then I fell into my own body and woke up here.”
River Woman would never be the same after this vision. Never again did she boast of being Shaggy Hump’s sits-beside wife. Never again did she carry Shaggy Hump’s shield when the True Humans moved. Never again did she lie with Shaggy Hump, except to stay warm in winter. She continued to work and serve the True Humans, and her husband, and especially her son, but she would not laugh, nor watch games, nor listen to the men in council, nor gossip with other women. When she was not working, she spent all of her time praying and chanting and courting dangerous powers. In seasons to come, some would call her a sorceress. But she was only a woman with a vision.
21
With his sixteenth summer behind him, Horseback’s band, the Burnt Meat People, decided in council to break camp and move away from the Corn People. When the Corn People heard of the Burnt Meat People holding a council without them, they knew the reason and quickly called their own council, their peace chiefs deciding to break the bond with the Burnt Meat People, pretending they knew nothing of the Burnt Meat People’s decision. This was well for both bands, as neither would take offense to the other’s wanting to break away.
The two bands had camped, traveled, hunted, and fought well through the moons of summer, and so they had remained together longer than two bands might. Now several young men of the Burnt Meat People had found wives among the Corn People, and young warriors of the Corn People had taken Burnt Meat People wives. It was time to go different ways and remember the summer of the great victory over the Yutas, when Horseback counted his first battle strokes and set the captive, Bad Camper, free. Few understood this release of the captive, but none spoke against Horseback, for even in his youth, he was known to possess medicine of such remarkable power that he could charm wild horses.
After the councils, Spirit Talker moved the lodge Shaggy Hump had given him to the Burnt Meat People’s side of the camp-together. No one questioned why he would stay with the Burnt Meat People, for he was the naming father of Horseback, who would need Spirit Talker’s advice to shape his medicine.
On the last evening of the great camp-together between the Corn People and the Burnt Meat People, Horseback found himself sitting against the warmth of a boulder over-looking the River of Big Horn Sheep, just downstream from the lodges. The horses grazed here in a narrow floodplain lush with grass, its rich green texture so inviting against the hard rock of the river valley that he could taste and smell the color, as if he were himself a grazing horse.
Some of these horses would go with the Corn People tomorrow, for Horseback and his father had given many mounts to Corn People warriors in the great giveaway celebration. Even now, Horseback’s feet were sore from walking without moccasins the many sleeps from Two Rivers to this place on the River of Bighorn Sheep.
He heard a pebble roll behind him and twisted his neck to see Teal coming to him with her water bag. Her eyes met his only briefly before she sat beside him, making herself invisible to the camp behind the large boulder. Though Father Sun had gone beyond the canyon walls, his warmth was still with this boulder, and it felt good, as a cool wind was streaming down from the mountains.
“The Corn People go west tomorrow,” she said.
“I know.”
“Trotter has promised to return to the Burnt Meat People to take your sister, Mouse, for his wife when it is her time to serve a husband.”
“Hah. Trotter is my brother. He gave two horses to my father as his promise to return for Mouse, and now I will ride with my father to the mountains to cut lodge poles and trade them for more horses.”
“It is dangerous in those mountains. The Northern Raiders live there.”
“My medicine is strong. I do not fear the Northern Raiders.”
They sat in silence and watched a young colt run around his mother.
“Echo-of-the-Wolf tried to take me,” Teal said. “He offered my father all three of his horses. My father wanted to take them, but I begged him not to.”
Horseback looked at Teal’s face. He had not heard this about Echo. “I will go to your father tonight,” he said. “I will promise to bring one hundred horses in the spring.”
“You should promise ten,” Teal said.
“Do not doubt me. I have good power. I will get one hundred horses.”
“I do not doubt you, Horseback. But my father will doubt you if you promise one hundred horses. He will give me to someone else. Promise ten, and he will believe you. Then you may give one hundred if you wish and that will only make my father prouder.”
Horseback saw that this was wise, so he did not argue. He sat watching the horses. Shifting, as if to sweep a pebble out from under his thigh, he moved closer to Teal, and remained closer to her even after sweeping the imaginary pebble aside.
“My father and I have been talking,” he said, watching a colt drink from a pool at the edge of the river. “After we get our lodge poles from the mountains of the Northern Raiders and trade for more horses, we want to go to the south to find the strange country my mother has seen in her vision.”
“Everyone is talking about it,” Teal said. “Why do you want to go there? It is so far away.”
“It is my duty, according to the vision my spirits showed me on my quest. I cannot explain it to you, for this vision is too powerful for a girl to know about. The magic would destroy you, Teal.”
Teal sighed. “If you do not come for me in the spring, my father will give me to another warrior. It is time that I took a husband. My father and my mother wish for a young warrior to bring much meat to them.”
“If I do not come for you, Teal, you will see me in the Shadow Land, for it will mean that I have died bravely. Death is the only thing that will keep me away from you.” He felt well upon saying this and looked at Teal’s face. Her beauty only grew with each passing day, and he could not imagine how wonderful she was going to look to him by the time he came to claim her.
Teal let her eyes rise from the ground below and search, as if looking for something, until the magic powers that streamed from her soul and gave her sight joined with the powers of Horseback, linking the throbs of their hearts through the air. They shifted, moving closer together, shoulders now touching. Horseback felt as if he were spinning, so he looked back down to the valley of horses.
“Why do you watch the horses here?” Teal asked. “You watch them all the time.”
“They teach me how to talk horse.”
She looked at him and smiled. “They do not speak.”
“They speak in many ways.”
“Tell me.”
Horseback looked over the herd for a moment, until he saw two young studs tossing their heads as they came together. “See those two warrior horses,” he said. “The spotted horse has three winters and much power among the young horses. The brown horse has only two winters, but he wants to fight and be a war chief. Now the brown is saying, ‘I will hurt you and make you run, and have all the mares! You are spotted like a molting ptarmigan, and no more brave!’
“And the spotted horse is answering now, with his ears back on his neck, saying, ‘You are brown like the dirt you will join when I step upon you! Do not come near me, or my hooves will take hair from your hide!’”
The brown stud reared and menaced the spotted horse with forehooves and bared teeth. But the spotted horse quickly wheeled and kicked the brown in the stomach just ahead of the tender flank.
“There!” Horseback said. “That is how to talk horse! Now, when I am trying to ride a horse and he bites me or strikes with his hooves, I kick him hard in the stomach that way and he knows that I am more powerful.”
The young brown stud was running away from the spotted champion.
“Do they only speak of battle?” Teal asked.
“Now, Teal, when I wish to tell a horse that he is good, I use my hand and fingers upon the shoulder of that horse, the way those two sisters are talking to each other there.”
Teal smiled, for it pleased her to hear Horseback talk. She made her eyes sparkle starlike at his for an instant, then looked back across the river. The sunlight was gone from the canyon rim to the east, and the sky had turned the color of a blue heron.
“There,” she said, now feeling warmer against Horseback than the boulder behind him. “Those two…”
Horseback looked and saw a stallion, a five-year-old who had made good colts, walking toward a fine young filly who waited, head high, ears perked forward. As the stallion slowed, she made the last few steps with him, the two of them coming together, muzzles touching.
“What are they saying, Horseback?”
Horseback watched, then he translated as well and as truthfully as he knew how. “The stallion breathes these words into the nostrils of the mare: ‘When I see you, I want to come near to you. Only my duty takes me away from you. When I breathe in the sweet smell of your breath, I think of all the grasslands we might run over, and all the little four-legged children who might follow us.’
“And the filly breathes these words into the nostrils of the stallion: ‘Now your spirit lives within me, and my spirit lives within you, for we have taken breath, one from the other. And now we will know each other’s heart, and suffer each other’s pain, and live each other’s joy.’
