by Dan Simmons
Hoka Ushte glanced at the boys, who merely blinked back.
“Yesterday we killed two Susuni and since then have been chased by fifty Susuni on horseback.” There was pride as well as fear in the boy’s voice.
Hoka Ushte looked to the east but could not see the fifty Shoshoni. Some haze on the horizon might have been a dust cloud.
“We were hunting,” said Turning Eagle, “when we found a Susuni making camp near the White River. He was with his woman and a boy of five or six summers. When he saw us, the man leaped upon his horse, pulled his boy up, and ran, leaving his woman. We killed her and gave chase, although we had just this one pony…” Turning Eagle gestured toward the rasping pony as if this were a point of pride. Hoka Ushte thought that the pony was near collapse.
“When he tried to ford the river,” continued Turning Eagle, “we put two arrows into him and he fell off his horse and we caught him down river.” The boy held up a bloody scalp. “He died well. We swam the river to get his horse and the boy, but the child had his hands wrapped tightly in the pony’s mane and the horse was faster than ours. We had chased them an hour when we came over a hill and saw the Susuni war party with the boy in the valley. They chased us. We lost them for a while near the river. Now they are behind us again.” Turning Eagle touched his chest with pride.
Hoka Ushte looked nervously to the east. The haze was definitely a dust cloud and it was closer. “Where are you going?”
Turning Eagle bit his lip. “Our camp was somewhere between here and the river, but we missed it in the night. We can not go back. We are going to the O-ana-gazhee. The Sheltering Place.”
Hoka Ushte nodded. The O-ana-gazhee was a high place in the Mako Sicha where a few braves could hold off an army of Shoshoni. But it was many miles away. There was no chance that this exhausted pony could outrun a war party. These boys were dead.
Turning Eagle stepped closer and spoke in a near whisper so that his friends could not hear. “I am not afraid to die, but I will miss the girl named Sees White Cow. I had promised her that I would count coup and return to her.” The boy looked at Hoka Ushte almost regretfully. “If the Susuni were not going to kill you as well, I would ask you to tell Sees White Cow that I would have come back to her if I could have.”
Hoka Ushte blinked.
Turning Eagle stepped back and said more loudly, “It is a good day to die.” He swung up on the pony. The two boys behind him looked very young and very frightened.
“Hoka hey!” cried Turning Eagle and dug his heels into the pony’s ribs. The little horse was too tired to gallop, but it moved away in a trot.
Hoka Ushte watched them recede slowly in the west and then he looked toward the east. The dust cloud was very visible. Lame Badger hesitated just a second before he began walking toward it.
If the grass had been tall, Hoka Ushte might have hidden in it, but the place he was walking was mostly dry soil and low plants. One could see for miles. There were no large rocks, no trees, and no tall yucca. The dust cloud would be on him even if he ran. The only irregularity in sight was the hint of a slight dip ahead, between him and the Shoshoni war party, and Hoka Ushte walked toward it with the resignation of a condemned man. He knew that it did not matter that he was not one of the three who had killed the Shoshoni man and woman; any Lakota scalp would serve to quench the war party’s anger. Hoka Ushte idly touched his loose and matted hair.
The riders were just becoming visible in the east when Hoka Ushte reached the dry riverbed. It was not deep or wide, less than a dozen paces across, and there was no water or vegetation in it. The riverbed did not wind enough to offer a hiding place, but Hoka Ushte jumped down into it anyway. It would keep them from seeing him for another minute or two. He could feel the pounding of hooves through the ground now.
Hoka Ushte paced twenty paces north, then twenty paces south, hearing the horses’ breathing and the Shoshoni shouts, before he noticed the hole in the east side of the riverbank. It was small. Probably a badger’s hole. This gave him the idea.
Hoka Ushte was lean. With the sound of the horses only a minute away, he began clawing at the hole, widening it just enough to get his feet and legs in. Then he lifted himself by an exposed root and forced his legs into the aperture. Only the fact that he was naked, oiled with sweat, and carried no weapons allowed him to proceed.
His hips scraped at rock and soil, but they eventually slid deeper into the narrowing hole. The upper half of his body was still hanging out in plain sight. The Shoshoni could not miss seeing him. The earth shook with the sound of war ponies’ hooves. Lame Badger forced his arms down to his sides, his fingers tearing at roots and small stones, desperately trying to make room. His body slid a little deeper until only his shoulders and head stuck out of the sandy soil.
He could hear the shouts of the Shoshoni warriors now, the grunts of the war ponies.
Hoka Ushte concentrated on making himself smaller, thinner, and slicker. With a great grunt and much tearing of already-torn skin, he slid deeper until only the top of his head was visible from outside, protruding like the top of some huge black spider. He could go no deeper. Wiggle as he tried, he could not free his arms or legs or back to slip a finger’s length deeper.
The first of the Shoshoni horses was almost above him now.
Hoka Ushte shook his head against the surrounding hole, trying to cover his shiny black hair with sand and gray dust.
The first pony reached the river channel and stopped directly above him. Hoka Ushte could feel the pounding of hooves and the weight of the horses on his back. More horses arrived, stopped above him and to either side along the east side bank. Loose sand dribbled downhill into his hair from the pawing hooves of the leader’s pony. Hoka Ushte gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, feeling the Shoshoni looking at him now, pointing with their lances, preparing to dismount.
There came shouts in guttural Shoshoni.
Hoka Ushte would have sung his death song then, but he had never composed one. Now he regretted all those hours wasted waiting by the stream to catch a glimpse of Calf Running. A Lakota brave, he realized now, should have been busy with more important things.
Such as preparing to die.
The lead Shoshoni shouted again, let out a bloodcurdling cry, and leaped his horse into the narrow riverbed directly above Hoka Ushte’s exposed head. Torrents of dirt fell on the boy, choking him, filling his mouth with sand.
Hoka Ushte resisted the impulse to struggle, defied the impulse to choke and cough and cry out. He held his breath as more horses leaped above him, more dirt collapsed onto his head, all but burying him. Lame Badger’s entire body tensed and his scalp tingled as he waited for the arrow or lance or hatchet to bury its stone point in his exposed skull. The pounding of hooves seemed to go on forever.
And then they were gone. Hoka Ushte spat sand, wiggled his head until he could find air to breathe, and began to try to free himself. It was not easy, and the sudden surge of claustrophobia and pure panic did not help. At that moment only his earlier fear of death by the Shoshonis’ blades kept him from screaming for help.
The sun was throwing long shadows across the riverbed by the time he had pulled himself free. He was so exhausted by his ordeal that for a time he could only lie on the white sand of the riverbed and pant. He was covered with blood, clay, and sand. If the Shoshoni had returned then, they might have been so alarmed by his appearance that it was possible they would not have killed him right away. They did not return.
It was almost dark by the time Hoka Ushte came up out of the riverbed on shaky legs. He knew that it made the most sense to go east or north, away from the direction of the Shoshonis and their prey, but he was curious. He began following the wide swath of hoofprints through the twilight, convincing himself that it was dark enough for him to hide in the low grass if the riders returned this way.
He found the three Brulé Sioux boys not long after the half-full night-sun had risen and cast a milky glow on the earth. The stars were bright; the
Milky Way prominent despite the moon.
The Shoshoni had caught the boys a short ride from the riverbed. The Sioux pony lay where it had collapsed and died. There were no marks on it. Many tracks led to the northwest. The three Lakota boys lay within an arm’s reach of one another.
The youngest one, the one Turning Eagle had introduced as Tried to Steal Horses, still had a Shoshoni arrow through his neck. His chest and belly showed the marks of a dozen other arrows. His hands were spread wide as if in surprise. His open eyes caught the moonlight, as did the white bone of his bare skull. The boy named Few Tails looked as if he had been dipped from head to foot in red berry juice. Besides taking his scalp, the Shoshoni had taken his fingers, tongue, and heart.
Turning Eagle lay a bit farther from the other two, and something about his splayed posture suggested that he had actually fought his killers. The boy’s throat had been cut from ear to ear and the ragged slit seemed to be smiling at Hoka Ushte. In addition to his scalp and tongue, they had cut off Turning Eagle’s ears, hands, child-maker, and balls. One of his eyes now watched from some paces away, speared on the end of a yucca spine.
Hoka Ushte turned away and gasped for air. When he was able to breathe normally he looked back, wanting to sing a death song for them, wanting to help them on their way south, but not knowing the ceremony.
Someday, when 1 am wičaśa wakan, he promised himself, I will be able to do these things.
He turned away and continued his walk east in the moonlight.
They found him a day and a night and a day later. Hoka Ushte had not slept or eaten in that time. He had not devised a weapon or contrived clothing for himself. His cuts were infected, his skin burned with sun and fever, and he was concentrating on the voices which whispered in his mind. He had walked until he could no longer walk and then stood in one place until his legs could no longer support him. He was not aware that he had fallen and had the vague sense of trying to climb the cliff of the earth itself. When the horsemen surrounded him, he was aware only of large objects blocking the sun. He was sure they were spirits come to carry him south and he was surprised when they spoke Lakota with a Brulé accent.
When he awoke sometime later he was lying between soft blankets. Evening sunlight came through the scraped tipi hide with that rich yellow thickness he had loved as a child, safe in his grandparents’ lodge. He thought for a moment that he had dreamed everything in a fever state—he could feel the cold sweat that followed such a fever—but then an old noseless woman leaned over him, said something to another old, noseless woman in rough Brulé tones, and Hoka Ushte knew that nothing had been a dream.
Besides the two women without noses, there was a third, younger woman whose face was intact but stern-looking. She leaned over Hoka Ushte and said, “So…you are alive.”
Hoka Ushte did not know how to respond to this.
All three of the women left the tent and Hoka Ushte was on the verge of drifting back into sleep when a heavyset man with a fierce face entered the tipi. “Did the Susuni strip you naked, take your weapons, steal your pony, and leave you bleeding out there?” snapped the big man.
Hoka Ushte could only stare for a moment. “No, the storm did this. The Susuni did not see me.” He paused. “You are Cuts Many Noses.”
The big man glowered and touched his knife. “How do you know this?”
“I met your son, Turning Eagle,” said Hoka Ushte.
Cuts Many Noses let out a breath. “Is he alive?”
“No.”
The big man shuddered as if his body had taken a heavy blow. “The Susuni?”
“Yes.”
“The other two… Few Tails and Tried to Steal Horses…”
“Dead.”
Cuts Many Noses nodded slowly. “This explains the ghost whistling…” He cut off his words. “Tell me your name and tribe and explain why you were naked and bleeding and alone.”
Hoka Ushte did this. He mentioned only that he was wandering after having had a vision. The big man did not ask him about the vision.
“Can you lead us to my son’s body?” asked Cuts Many Noses.
“I think so.”
“In the morning? As soon as the sun rises?”
Hoka Ushte felt a terrible weakness after his ordeal and fever, but he remembered Turning Eagle’s mutilated body lying there undecorated and un-honored, just lying there where the animals could feed without knowing who this person had been. “Today,” said Hoka Ushte. “I will lead you there before the night-sun rises.”
Cuts Many Noses appeared to consider this. “No. We must not leave the women alone when the wanagi walks tonight. You will lead us to Turning Eagle’s body after the ghost leaves.” Then he left Hoka Ushte alone to contemplate sleep.
Later, just as darkness was falling, the stern-faced woman entered with soup for him. She introduced herself tersely as “Red Hail.” While Hoka Ushte lapped up the thick broth, he tried conversation. “The other two women…the ones with the slit noses…are they sisters?”
“No,” said Red Hail, “they are Cuts Many Noses’ other wives.”
Hoka Ushte pondered this a moment. “And did they…had they…was it…” The old Lakota punishment for a wife’s adultery was to slit their nostrils or cut their noses off. But Hoka Ushte did not know how to say this diplomatically. “Was it because they…” Lame Badger trailed off lamely.
“Yes,” said Red Hail. “Cuts Many Noses has had five wives and only one…myself…has kept her nose. The others proclaimed their innocence, but he is a jealous man.”
Hoka Ushte swallowed a lump of meat in the soup.
“You have eaten enough?” said Red Hail, taking the bowl before the boy could reply. “I must leave. It is getting dark. I must not be in the tipi with you alone.” And the stern-faced woman was gone before Hoka Ushte could even say “Pilamaye.”
Hoka Ushte awoke in the dark to the sound of a whistling and of many dogs barking. He knew at once it was the ghost Cuts Many Noses had mentioned.
The whistling was lovely, haunting, beautiful. It made Hoka Ushte sit up in the night, heart pounding, and want to follow it, even though he knew it was not meant for him. The dogs were going crazy. Hoka Ushte felt around for his knife, remembered that he had lost it, realized that someone had dressed him in a new breech clout, and then he slipped out through the tipi flap to find the source of the beautiful music.
The fires were out in the camp of the Brulé. Thirty or forty tipis gleamed milk soft in the light of the night-sun. The dogs had ceased barking but were showing their teeth. The whistling seemed to be coming from the edge of the camp, not far from Cuts Many Noses’ tipi. Hoka Ushte began walking toward the sound when suddenly strong arms seized him and pulled him down.
Cuts Many Noses and half a dozen other men were crouched behind a fallen log. The big man motioned Lame Badger to silence as they peered over the log to a lone tipi set out on the grass. Suddenly a tall shadow glided over the prairie toward the tipi and the whistling seemed to swell.
“Wanagi,” whispered Hoka Ushte.
Cuts Many Noses nodded. “It is the ghost of Turning Eagle. He has come for his winčinčalas.”
“Sees White Cow,” whispered Hoka Ushte. “He told me.”
The tall shadow was circling the tipi now. Its arms were very long and its legs floated beneath it, the feet not touching the ground. There was a glow where one eye would be; the other socket was dark. Hoka Ushte shuddered when he remembered the eyeball on the yucca spear.
“My son had learned some of the elk medicine from his uncle,” whispered Cuts Many Noses, his voice sad. “His voice is of the siyotanka.”
Hoka Ushte grunted. He had heard of the elk-medicine flute that would make a magic sound. Any girl who heard it would follow the flute player and fall in love with him. The whistling of the wanagi grew louder and more haunting now. Hoka Ushte saw the tipi flap fold back and a young woman who must be Sees White Cow stepped into the moonlight.
“Now!” said Cuts Many Noses and
a dozen warriors leaped from their hiding places and began shouting and making noises.
The ghost leaped higher into the air, paused like a startled deer, and then swirled like smoke on the wind. The braves rushed to Sees White Cow’s tipi and continued the shouting. The whistling sounded less like a flute now and more like the wind. Hoka Ushte joined in the shouting and waving of arms, noticing a holy man with a black taha topta sapa streak across his face rattling the sacred gourd of a wagmuha to keep the ghost at bay.
Suddenly the swirling shadow twisted like a dust devil and then flew into a thousand fragments, like black dust blowing away in the moonlight. The whistling dwindled to an echo, then to nothing.
“It is gone for tonight,” said the wičaśa wakan.
Braves went to reassure Sees White Cow and her mother. Cuts Many Noses came over to Hoka Ushte. “Thus it was last night and the night before. This is how we knew that my boy was dead. We go now to bury him.”
Braves brought horses, twenty men mounted, someone helped the weakened Hoka Ushte onto his pony, and the warriors rode out onto the moonlit prairie.
It was mid-morning by the time they found the bodies. Scavengers had been at the boys and all of the eyes and much of the faces were gone. Cuts Many Noses put an arrow through a carrion bird that had been working at his son’s liver and that was too fat to fly.
The men had brought lodgepoles on a travois and these they cut into three burial platforms. Turning Eagle’s mother had sent his best war shirt and special dead man’s moccasins with the soles beaded with spirit-world patterns. These they dressed the boy in while relatives of Few Tails and Tried to Steal Horses did the same for their dead. Finally the three bodies were lifted on their funeral scaffolds and the holy man, whose name was Buffalo Eye, said the proper words and offered the pipe to the spirits. By midday the ceremony was done and the twenty warriors and Hoka Ushte swung up on their ponies and rode away.
“This is not the way to your camp,” said Lame Badger as he realized they were headed west, toward the Mako Sicha.
Cuts Many Noses only grunted and began to smear war paint on himself as they rode.
