So Wild a Dream

by Win Blevins

  At Third Wing’s lodge Sam got lots of stealthy glances from his wife and two small children, but they didn’t say a word. He sat down next to Third Wing outside and relaxed, like he was completely unconcerned. “How did you learn English?” he asked Third Wing.

  “I was raised mostly by traders,” said Third Wing, his face lighting up in a twisted way. Somehow this Indian seemed to think everything was funny-peculiar.

  Apparently Third Wing didn’t intend to tell Sam his fate—probably too black to tell. Sam wondered about Coy’s fate and looked around until he spotted the pup across the circle, tied to a lodgepole with a rawhide rope around his neck. Children were yelling words that sounded like commands, but Coy was having none of it. The pup was busy making yelps of protest at the rope and trying to bite it. Sam was damned sorry for Coy.

  He cast his eyes around subtly until he identified the lodge of the young man who took his rifle and shot pouch. It was a brush hut, and the rifle hung from thongs at the back, parallel to the ground. If he got out of here, he had to get the rifle. Not just any rifle, The Celt.

  He marked the brush hut in his mind—a paint horse was tied outside.

  After they ate dinner, Third Wing took Sam inside and told his family to leave the two of them alone. “Now I’ll explain. Tomorrow morning you’ll be offered the choice of dying brave or dying quickly.” Third Wing seemed to think this was curiously crazy too. “Everyone thinks you look like a real man, one with warrior spirit, so they’re sure you’ll choose to die brave—they’re looking forward to it.” Now Third Wing started a nutty cackle and cut it off. “This means the women will kill you as slowly as they can, thinking of every possible way to inflict pain. And if you’re brave, you’ll endure it all without protest, and for sure without begging for your life, or even the mercy of death.”

  Third Wing shook his head madly. Like, Gee, what a compliment, the chance to die brave. “Afterwards you’ll be greatly admired.”

  Sam’s mouth wanted to grin at this guy. His feet wanted to run like hell.

  “Maybe I got a better idea,” Third Wing went on. “I like you, I want to see you live. So maybe tonight, when I am supposed to be keeping you under close watch, we’ll sneak out of the village.”

  Third Wing waited, a crazy expression on his face.

  “Suits me,” said Sam, keeping calm as he could.

  “Not one person can know, not even my family. When we get to the river, you must go fast and leave no trail, or some of our young men will catch you.”

  “Thanks,” Sam finally ventured.

  Third Wing held up a hand, as if to say stop.

  “I want something in return.” Now his eyes took on a little madness. “I want your hair.”

  Sam gawked at him.

  “Not your scalp. Your hair. I like your white hair. I want to keep it, a way to remember you.”

  Sam was stupefied. He couldn’t speak. He felt of his hair, which hadn’t been cut since he left home more than a year and a half ago and hung below his shoulders.

  “Thank you,” he forced himself to say. “You honor me.”

  Third Wing hooted and slapped his thighs.

  He took his knife out of his belt and reached for Sam’s long locks. Sam flinched. Suddenly his mind whooped like a calliope, and the tune was terror. This is a cruel trick. This damn Third Wing is about to take my scalp.

  But Sam’s new friend started hacking an inch or two away from the skin.

  Sam slowly tamed his terror. Deliberately, he lowered his head toward Third Wing to make the cutting easier. It took a long time, and gave Sam plenty of time to get himself calm and figure out what he needed to. Sometimes it seemed like his hair was being pulled out by the roots, but in the end Third Wing got it all. He held it up proudly and admired it. Then he tied a leather thong around it and hung it from a lodgepole. Way too much like a scalp for comfort, Sam thought.

  Third Wing gave a queer grin. “You lost your hair but saved your scalp.”

  Sam made himself speak up. “One thing,” he said. He considered one last time. He’d been figuring hard. It was between his father’s rifle and Coy. “I have to take the coyote pup with me.”

  He’d thought it through. Coy would probably be tied outside, easy to get at. The rifle would be hanging in the thief’s hut. No Indian would give up a rifle willingly.

  Third Wing shrugged and said, “Impossible.”

  “That pup is my medicine,” said Sam. This was the only approach he thought might work. Unable to think of anything else to say, he repeated lamely, “The pup is my medicine.”

  Third Wing looked at him seriously for once.

  “Better to die than go without him,” Sam added.

  Third Wing pondered and finally gave a delighted smile. “Then we’ll steal it.”

  A hand shook his shoulder gently. He opened his eyes without starting and saw the big, dark hulk that must be Third Wing. It was time.

  Third Wing and his woman slept at the back of the tipi, children on each side of them. Sam had been put in blankets nearer the door. The two had to be very quiet.

  Third Wing knelt, cut a long slit in the lodge cover, and peered around outside. After a moment he slipped out and held the cut open for Sam. Thinking that the slit was a good trick, Sam slipped outside.

  A slender quarter moon gave the camp a faint light. Tipis here and there were lit with a fire glow from inside, like lanterns. The night was evidently young.

  The big man handed Sam a sack of some kind. He felt what was in it. Parched corn, felt like. Food. Sam put his hand on Third Wing’s shoulder in a thank-you gesture.

  Third Wing moved off quietly, and Sam did the same. No mistakes, he told himself. No trips, no noises. This is not a game. He placed each foot gingerly, surely.

  Good luck. Coy was outside, still tied, sleeping.

  As they approached, Sam could see several dogs stretched out asleep. Step on one by accident and die, he thought.

  Third Wing stopped and motioned for Sam to go ahead. Must think the pup will make less noise if his master wakes him.

  Sam bent and stroked Coy’s head. The pup woke up and sniffed his hand. Sam felt a pang of relief at touching his friend. Coy went back to sleep.

  Sam got the little patch knife out of his gage d’amour. The extras he kept in that flat pouch, beneath his tobacco, were a very sharp patch knife, flint, and fire steel. A mountain man survival kit.

  Carefully, he cut the rope around Coy’s neck. Then he picked the pup up.

  Coy yelped. A dog growled. Another barked hesitantly.

  The two men stood very still. The barker approached. Third Wing bent and petted it.

  The dogs quieted down.

  Third Wing gave Sam a wild look and slipped outside the lodge circle. Sam followed, carrying Coy.

  After a score of steps they started up a little bank. They weren’t headed for the creek, evidently, and not for the river either. Sam followed without a question.

  They made a big circle away from the bank. Halfway through, Third Wing pointed across the creek and whispered, “Horses.” Sam understood. That was where the pony herd was kept, certainly under guard. They had avoided the sentries.

  They walked parallel to the creek until they came to the river.

  They faced each other, and Third Wing gave Sam a kind of offhand wave or salute.

  “Wait,” said Sam softly. “I want to know. Why is your name Third Wing?”

  “Ask me,” the Pawnee said, “next time you see me.” Without another word, he disappeared back toward the village.

  Sam said to himself, “He saved my life, and I’ll probably never see him again.” In that moment he made up his mind to come back someday.

  Then he thought, We did it.

  He set Coy down.

  But, he thought, the hard part is still to come.

  Chapter Seventeen

  He splashed along the edge of the river for at least an hour. In the darkness he kept stumbling and falling in above his
knees. Coy followed along the bank, yipping. Poor pup couldn’t figure out why Sam didn’t walk on dry ground.

  Sam thought about Coy’s tracks along the river. But what could any Pawnee make of another set of coyote prints?

  At one place a sandstone bluff shelved into the river. (Sam was amazed at how well he could see in the dark, once his eyes got used to it.) He drank deep, not knowing when he might come back to water. Then he climbed up the shelves, picking Coy up when he had to and setting the pup above him.

  Luckily, the bluff turned into a ridge and meandered to the north. They walked for an hour or so on stone, no tracks. They stopped to drink out of a depression in the rock. Sam wondered how old the water was, and what creepy-crawlies were in it. Maybe from a very recent rain, maybe not. Good thing he couldn’t see what he was drinking. He took a long look toward the dark line of trees to the west, where he knew the creek and the village must be. No lights at all. He hadn’t been missed.

  Sam decided to go on for another hour. At last he found a likely spot with shade from a single cedar. He wedged himself into a crack where he would be in shadow during the afternoon, put Coy on his lap, and slept.

  When dawn came, he watched the prairie. Well across, maybe two miles and in the fringe of trees, stood the Pawnee lodges.

  From time to time he saw riders along the creek and along the river, weaving in and out of the trees. One by one, three enterprising trackers even wandered out over the prairie in Sam’s direction, studying the ground. Nothing to find, fellows. Sam sat quietly in his crack, ate parched corn, petted Coy, and waited.

  By midmorning thirst was talking to him loud. Did he dare move around? He spent several minutes eyeballing in every direction, especially the east. No sign of any human beings. If he hunted on the east side of the ridge, and was careful, and kept watching, it might be all right.

  It was Coy, after maybe an hour, who found water. When Sam got there, the pup was already lapping it up fast. It was a foot and a half across, maybe, and only saucer-deep. Sam lost his squeamishness in an instant, dropped to his knees, and slurped.

  When they had drunk the saucer dry, Sam looked into Coy’s eyes, thinking, We have a lot in common.

  Watching hard, he eased back toward the crack. If he was spotted, he damn well needed to know it. When they topped the ridge, Sam slipped quickly into the crack and studied the prairie to the west. No sign of anyone.

  Toward late afternoon Coy got interested in two ground squirrels. Not seeing Sam move, the squirrels evidently felt safe enough. Coy started to jump at them without a sound, but Sam held him. Maybe they would both profit from watching the creatures.

  The squirrels came and went several times from an underground burrow, where they must live. Once in a while they chirruped. Sam couldn’t guess what this meant, if anything. At first they seemed to nibble on dry grasses. Then Sam saw they were taking the seeds off the stems of these grasses. For a while they fed on these seeds—Sam saw them swallow. Later, though, they held the seeds in their cheek pouches, darted underground, and came back with empty pouches. Sam didn’t know whether they were storing food for the winter or feeding their young.

  After an hour or so of watching, Sam reflected that Coy was hungry and probably wouldn’t eat the parched corn. While both squirrels were underground, Sam set the pup high on a rock and let him go.

  Coy went immediately to the hole of the burrows and crouched down on all fours to wait. He had no hesitation about what to do.

  A squirrel stuck its head out of the hole.

  Coy had chosen the spot behind it.

  After a moment of looking, the squirrel hopped out.

  Coy was on it in a flash. The squirrel was all wriggling legs, tail, and head in Coy’s jaws.

  One crunch and the squirrel was still.

  Sam couldn’t believe how fast it all was. Coy had watched and watched and figured it out perfectly.

  He tore the squirrel apart and fed. Sam didn’t watch. Good that, if they were short of food, Coy knew how to get his own.

  Sam got an idea. Using his patch knife, he cut off his left pant leg at midcalf. Then he cut the stove pipe of leather into long, circling strips, like peeling an apple. Had he not let his blade wander too close to the edge, he could have cut it into a single, long thong. Instead he ended up with three thongs, each of several feet.

  The fact of three gave him another idea. He did the same to his right pant leg.

  When he was finished with that, he tied the thongs end to end until he had three long ones. Then he braided them into a rope five or six feet long. He held it up, admired his handiwork, and made a slip knot in one end of the rope. It would work.

  He turned his attention back to the village. Nothing to see, really. No active hunt for him, not that he could tell. Nevertheless he would wait another day. They might be half on their guard tonight. By tomorrow night they would assume he’d hightailed it as far as he could.

  That’s when he would strike.

  By the time dark fell the next day, he was more thirsty than he’d thought a human being could ever be. Coy had slipped off a couple of times during the day and maybe found some water. Sam didn’t want to risk it again. A coyote moving around some sandstone cliffs, that wouldn’t attract attention at all.

  When full dark came and he left the crack, what he had to do first was drink. Instantly, though, he realized how stiff his body was from being jackknifed in that crevice all night and all day. He stretched like he’d seen cats and dogs do.

  He walked a big circle to the north. When he approached the village, he wanted to come down the creek, not up, where they might expect him. He just had to hope that the horse herd downstream was the only one. Hope, and watch very hard.

  He smelled the creek a hundred yards away, before he even got to the trees. He’d often wondered how animals did that. Now he knew. For a person, you just have to be thirsty enough.

  Before he slipped into the trees, he sat quietly and looked for a long time. His throat was so dry it ached. The gibbous moon gave good light. He needed to be sure. He waited until he knew he wasn’t just giving in to his thirst.

  At the creek Coy drank until he threw up.

  Sam drank a little, laid down full length in the creek, and drank again. He couldn’t afford to be sick, or to lose the water he was getting.

  He padded to the edge of the trees and studied the prairie to the west. Ghostly. He couldn’t help it, that’s how it looked to him. Maybe nothing was moving, but it looked like anything might leap out at any moment.

  He imagined a tomahawk flashing toward the skull from behind.

  He rubbed the back of his head.

  He jumped.

  Something moved.

  No, he saw now. A lump of cloud floated in front of the moon and changed the light out there slightly.

  He kept looking. He felt pretty sure no horse herd grazed there. With the village maybe a mile away, he couldn’t be sure a herd wouldn’t yet be downstream.

  He called Coy and the pup came.

  It hurt him to do this. He looped the slip knot around Coy’s neck, and then made another knot to keep it from opening. He tied the far end to the trunk of a sapling.

  Coy sat contentedly. Sam moved away, and Coy ran at him until—WHAM!—the leash knocked him off his feet.

  Coy ran at Sam twice more, then pawed at the offending place on his neck.

  Sam knew it wouldn’t come off, and was far too strong to break or give in to teeth.

  He hated tying Coy. He trotted downstream before he could think more about it. Coy yipped and yipped and then gave a piercing, mournful croon of good-bye.

  Sam kept going.

  No one in the village would hear a coyote complaining a mile away, or think anything of it if they did.

  A hundred yards downstream he started watching hard. Every camp put sentries out. Best to walk in the edge of the trees, he thought. Less likely to be seen, better able to see.

  If he saw a sentry—when he saw on
e—he’d have to make a choice. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He’d never killed a man.

  He stopped still and looked around. He also thought. To head off without a weapon, without a way to hunt, that was certain death.

  He refused to think any further.

  He eased down the creek, every sense alert. His mind was as wide open as the night sky, the moon and stars like the trees and bushes and shapes of earth and rock.

  Long time, long time. He stepped slowly, each foot placed with care. Yes, I have the patience for this, Father. Fear gives me patience.

  His mind knew fear. His response was, Clear head, keep your head clear.

  Time didn’t change until he began to hear sounds. He listened. A horse stomping, shuddering, blowing its lips.

  Herd?

  He kept very still.

  Then he looked downstream, looked until he saw.

  Dark shapes against sky and prairie. Yes, dark, triangular shapes. Tipis. Yes, he was sure. The horse was staked fifty yards downstream, on grass but not water. A buffalo horse or a warhorse, then, too valuable to leave with the herd. Must belong to a brush hut he couldn’t see, low between here and the tipis.

  His heart teetered. Clear head, he instructed himself.

  He got his patch knife out of his gage d’amour. He smiled wryly at himself. Why didn’t I have my one weapon in my hand all along?

  Perfectly still, he moved his eyes around the dark night. The Crows always kept a sentry to each of the four winds, east, south, west, and north. If Pawnees did the same, there should be one close to the creek, here on the north. The sentries were young warriors, seeking coups to establish themselves as men worthy of respect.

  Where were the brush huts? The north and northwest, he remembered clearly.

  A thin line of hope shot up in his chest. How many brush huts had he seen? Probably two young men to a hut. How many lodges? Maybe another young man on average in each lodge. A score of young men altogether, or two dozen. Maybe whatever sentry he found would be the man who stole The Celt.

  He wiped that bit of foolishness away and started to tease himself when …

  A night owl called.

  Sam wished he could go invisible.