The Spirit of Thunder

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  “Seven,” he said.

  “Seven years. And in all that time, not one word of marriage.”

  “We were arguing for four of those years,” he pointed out.

  “True,” she agreed. “But that hardly matters. There are still three years without a proposal. Why now? What made you decide to talk marriage today?”

  “It was something that One Who Flies said to me.”

  Her teasing tone turned to curiosity. “Really? What was it he said?”

  “One Who Flies said: Why haven’t you asked that girl to marry you?”

  She laughed. “Now you are teasing me,” she said and turned to walk away.

  “No,” he said, following her. “It is true. He said it last night.”

  “And what was your answer?”

  “I did not have one.”

  She stopped. “You didn’t.”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t. So I came straight here and waited all the night like a moonstruck youth for the first sight of you. I wanted the very next words I said to be the words I should have spoken years ago: Will you take me as a husband?”

  She took a step closer, then another. She reached out and touched the edge of the blanket and he opened his arms to her. She took a third step. Her hands slid around him and she laid her head on his chest. He let the blanket slip to his shoulders and wrapped it around them both.

  “Yes,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

  “I am sorry I took so long.”

  “Who will you send?” she asked. “To speak to my father?”

  He sighed. “I do not know. I would have sent Laughs like a Woman, but now...I do not have an elder or a truly close friend to act as intermediary.”

  She gave him a playful tap but did not release her hold of him. “Don’t be silly. Of course you do.”

  “Who?” he asked. “One Who Flies? I couldn’t ask him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s never done it before?”

  “And Laughs like a Woman had?”

  “He doesn’t know what to do.”

  “So teach him. It is not a difficult thing. He comes over. He asks. He leaves.”

  “But...” Storm Arriving was stymied, caught between his head and his heart, and not caring for what his heart was saying. He felt Speaks While Leaving grow still in his arms, as she guessed his reasons.

  “It is because he is a vé’ho’e,” she said.

  Storm Arriving grit his teeth, ashamed of his unreasonable feelings.

  “Then what about Big Nose,” she asked, attempting to find a solution. “Or one of the chiefs of your soldier society?”

  “No,” he said. “You were right the first time. It should be One Who Flies.” He took a deep breath and let it out again, trying to calm his mind as well as his spirit. “In the fall, before the People depart for winter camps. He will come to visit your father in the fall.”

  She hugged him tightly. “You are a good man,” she said. “Now let me go so I can help my mother get the day’s water.”

  He opened his arms. “I am not keeping you.”

  “Yes, you are,” she said, her cheek against his shoulder, her arms still around his chest. “Yes. You are.” Then she stood on tiptoe and kissed him swiftly and was gone, running down the river path.

  Chapter 2

  Autumn, A.D. 1886

  Elk River, Western Reaches

  Cheyenne Alliance Territory

  George crouched down next to his walker and waited for the signal that would begin the hunt. His huge, lizard-like beast lay as flat as she could in the long, dew-damp grass, though her flanks were plump with fat from the frequent summer hunting. George leaned up against her down-covered skin to steal some of her warmth. Though she was the cause of a great deal of his anxiety on these hunts, he was not so afraid of her as to forego what comfort she could provide. Together, they waited under the metal-lidded sky of the northern prairie.

  The People had moved, picking up camp several times throughout the summer, following the herd as it wandered north towards the greening regions of the higher latitudes. It had been a peaceful time of hunting and trading with allied neighbors like the Inviters and the Cloud People, and had been free of conflict with the more antagonistic tribes like the Crow and the Cradle People. As the weeks passed, George became accustomed to the slower, more deliberate rhythm of the Indians.

  His life now progressed in time with the land around him. He rose earlier, but refreshed. Each morning he bathed in river waters and watched grown men, even old grandfathers, act like boys, though it be just for a hand of time. The days were filled with chores and duties—though fewer for him than for others—and the evenings were busy with feasts and dances and always, always the drumbeat of ceremony.

  He knew the day by the arc of the sun and not the hands of a pocket watch. In learning this, he learned too of how the earth moved and where the moon and the sun and even the stars were. At times, he could almost sense where he himself was in the world, could almost feel the presence of lands and places far removed from a single man on the lonely prairie.

  Only in hunting did he still feel completely out of place. Hunting was a man’s one great duty of the summer months, and the tribesmen worked hard to feed their families and put aside meat and supplies for the winter months. Though George had no family to feed, he did have the burden of a walker, and he had no intention of dealing with a hungry walker. Unfortunately, he had no rifle, and could not use a bow with any accuracy. He had only Laughs like a Woman’s knife and—his only effective weapon—his walker. More than once he had been forced to rely on the generosity of his walker-riding comrades to help fatten his own beast for the long, dark winter months ahead.

  Walkers moved much like whistlers, standing on long hind legs, but they were larger than their herbivorous cousins. George’s walker was twenty feet long from the tip of her narrow, tooth-filled head to the end of her striped tail, and she was more muscular than any whistler. Walkers were predators—perhaps the largest on earth—and several weeks before, George, in the thrall of what had seemed to be a good idea at the time, had acquired one.

  He laughed silently at the notion of a man acquiring a walker. No, it had not been his doing. It had been hers. He had found out too late that once a walker bonded with a new rider she would rarely let another ride her.

  He sighed. It had seemed a good idea at the time. Now, though, the novelty of caring for a fifteen-foot tall, meat-eating monster was wearing very, very thin. Every week during the heavy hunting season, walkers had to eat, and eat they did—with enthusiasm. The fat his mount put on now was needed to see her through the winter when she entered into a state of semi-hibernation.

  George waited for the hunt to begin with growing impatience. He began to hum a wordless tune.

  A hiss issued from the grass nearby. He poked his head up above the grass to find Blue Arrow scowling at him. George shrugged and gestured. Yes. Quiet. Stay low. Blue Arrow, still scowling, ducked back down into the tall grass next to his own walker.

  When will the signal come? he silently asked the clouds.

  But then he heard it: a whistler call, three long notes. It came again. They were coming!

  “Ame’haooestse.”

  It was Blue Arrow again. He was standing up in the waist-high grass, calling George by his Cheyenne name.

  “He’kotoo’êstse,” George said in a harsh whisper. Be quiet!

  “Ame’haooestse,” Blue Arrow said, and pointed. George heard the whistler call again. He stood up and looked.

  A man on whistler-back was riding their way. It was Storm Arriving. George waved.

  “One Who Flies,” Storm Arriving said, speaking in French. “Three Trees Together would like to speak with you.”

  “Now? I’m rather in the middle of something.”

  Storm Arriving frowned, puzzled, and George wondered if he had used the wrong French idiom.

  “I am trying to hunt,” he added to clarify.

&nb
sp; “Ah. Yes, I see. Your walker will have to stay hungry today. Three Trees Together was very insistent.”

  George sighed. There was nothing else to do but go along. Storm Arriving would not have ridden a whistler out into the middle of a walker hunt without need. George clambered up onto his walker’s back. The “saddle” was no more than a rope tied around the walker’s keel-like breast with a small wicker wedge tied to it to keep him from sliding down the beast’s knobby spine. He slipped his feet into the two loops of rope that served as stirrups and bid his beast rise to her feet.

  “Good,” Storm Arriving said as the walker stood. “Come, please, One Who Flies.”

  They rode off. George’s walker grumbled, and Storm Arriving maintained some distance between his whistler and the unhappy carnivore. George looked back toward the hunting ground. Already the waiting walkers were invisible, hidden by the tall grass.

  “I was hoping,” he said to Storm Arriving, “to at least make a kill today. She’s been getting impatient with my lack of skill at hunting.”

  “Yes,” Storm Arriving said without embellishment.

  George grew concerned. Storm Arriving was taciturn only in times of danger. “What is wrong?” he asked. “Why does Three Trees Together want to see me now? Why couldn’t it wait?”

  Storm Arriving did not say anything and George could see the muscles in his neck and shoulders were tense.

  “What is it?” George asked again, sure now that something was very wrong.

  “It is not for me to say.” Nor did he say anything else as they covered the miles back to the camp.

  Storm Arriving led him not to the Council Lodge in the central clearing but around to the south of camp. They rode up into the group of low hills from which came several of the freshets that ran through and around the encampment. The hills were thick with tall birch and aspen. As they rode into the wood, the gray light of the cloudy morning took on a different hue, transformed from silver to gold by the fading leaves of coming autumn. Storm Arriving’s whistler, in tune with their surroundings, shifted color from pale prairie dun to mottled greens and golds. George’s walker, unable to change the color of her skin, merely concerned herself with navigating her bulk along the whistler-sized path.

  Storm Arriving slowed down as they wended their way past paper-pale trunks. Birdsong filled the air and George heard, too, the hup-hrrr of a red squirrel warning his kind of trespassers entering their domain.

  They came to a place where the trees stood slightly back and a small rill tumbled over mossy rocks to create a canopied pond. The surface of the water was dotted with golden, heart-shaped leaves and the darting dimples of water-striders. There was the smell of clean air, damp earth, and the fragrance of nature’s renewal.

  An ancient birch leaned out over the water. Near it was a tiny fire in a circle of stones, and next to the fire was spread a buffalo robe, hide side down. On the robe sat Three Trees Together, cross-legged, staring intently at the pond’s quiet waters. He made no notice of their arrival.

  “Hámêstoo’e,” Storm Arriving said, and their mounts settled into a crouch for the men to dismount.

  They walked over to the old chief. George did not say anything, but left it to Storm Arriving to announce their presence. Storm Arriving said nothing, however, and just stood there near the edge of the buffalo robe, waiting.

  Three Trees Together watched the water’s slow progress from the moss-clad rocks down to the hidden outlet some yards away. He seemed a statue, with only the strong pulse in his neck and the nearly imperceptible turn of his head as he scanned the scene giving evidence that he was flesh and blood.

  Finally, he spoke, though still without looking at them. His voice was quiet and measured, and it was as if he spoke not to them, but to the forest before him. Storm Arriving translated his words.

  “Two nights ago,” he said, “I had a dream. It was not a good dream, but it had a lot of power, and so I paid attention to it. In the dream, I saw a river—I do not know which one—and out of the river came a man, a bluecoat, and this bluecoat, he carried a sack in one hand, and a sword in the other.

  “This man seemed very sad to me. I could see in his eyes that he was sad. He looked at me and he held out the sack. I took the sack and opened it. The sack was full of cherries, nice and fresh, but as I watched, they broke and turned rotten and their juice seeped out of the sack and made a pool on the ground like blood.

  “I looked at the bluecoat again and now his eyes were angry and there was blood on his sword. He held out his sword to me, but I did not want to take it, so he turned away and walked back into the river.”

  The old man stopped speaking as a newt climbed up out of the water and onto a nearby rock. Its brown, pebbly skin glistened with moisture and it cleaned its onyx eye with a carnelian hand.

  “Do you remember,” the old man continued, “what the vé’hó’e chiefs said when you left the City of White Stone?”

  “Yes, sir,” George replied. “They said they would talk again with the People when the cherries were ripe.”

  “Yes. That was it.” The chief’s breath seemed labored, ponderous. “It has been more than a moon since the cherries were ripe. I have sent soldiers to the bluecoats to ask for a chief so that we could talk more. There is so much still to talk about.” Again, the heavy breaths and still Three Trees Together had not looked in their direction. George noticed for the first time that the old chief’s hands were not fingering his medicine bag as was his habit. Instead, they were clenched into fists and tucked into his lap, as if he were trying to hide them.

  “It is not a good thing for a grandfather of the People to grow angry. That is for the war chiefs, and even then, anger must be tempered by good judgment. But I find it hard today, not to be angry.”

  He turned to face George and Storm Arriving, and within his deep-set eyes lived a silent rage.

  “The first soldiers we sent to the vé’hó’e came back with no answer, and that made me sad, just like the bluecoat in my dream. But today, when the soldiers returned from their journey, one of them was dead—killed by a bluecoat while approaching a fort across the Big Greasy—and this has made me angry, just as the bluecoat in my dream became angry.”

  George’s heart fell. The idiots! Trust the Army, he thought, to make a bad situation worse. The sentry had probably warned the Indian soldiers away in English, which they did not understand. “Sir,” he said to Three Trees Together. “It is probably just a terrible misunderstanding. I am sure if they knew....” His words trailed off, too weak to have any effect.

  “I do not understand you vé’hó’e—”

  George winced inwardly at once more being lumped together with all others of his race.

  “—but I think I must,” the chief continued. “I think it is the most important thing I will ever do.”

  The old man took a deep breath, but this one was not in anger. It was an attempt to control and dispel his ire.

  “Sit,” Three Trees Together said, patting the buffalo pelt. “Let us smoke a bit. Then I want you to tell me about this yellow chief-metal and what we can do with it.”

  Storm Arriving translated the words of One Who Flies and Three Trees Together for several hands of time, stopping occasionally to drink from the clear water of the nearby brook or to enjoy a bowl of smoke from the grandfather’s pipe. As was the way with Three Trees Together, the conversation often wandered from the topic, sometimes covering vast stretches before finally, but always, coming home to what the old chief really wanted to know.

  They talked of gold and of guns. They talked of what One Who Flies called “artillery” and Storm Arriving could only translate to Three Trees Together as “bigger guns.” They talked of the Horse Nations, of Long Hair, and of the way in which bluecoats made war.

  Oddly, it seemed to Storm Arriving that these were not the chief’s main concern. One Who Flies, buffered by the translation of his words, was unaware of the subtleties of the grandfather’s questions, but Storm Arriving
could hear it.

  In a discussion of his life as a soldier with the Red Shield men and of the tactics he used when he walked the war path, Three Trees Together said, “You used to be a bluecoat. How is it that you threw your blue coat away?”

  Storm Arriving knew that the old chief had already heard the story—everyone had—of how the bluecoats had killed Blue Shell Woman who had loved One Who Flies with all the fervor of a young woman’s first infatuation; and of how One Who Flies, in disgust and anger at the acts of his people, had thrown away his own blue wool soldier’s coat, and vowed never to wear it again.

  Three Trees Together knew this story, though One Who Flies had never personally told it to him. Now he asked to hear it. As Storm Arriving translated the tale, he could tell that the chief was not listening to the words. Even though he did not understand the Trader’s Tongue, he listened to the words as One Who Flies spoke. He watched his hands as he gestured and wrung them. He watched the expressions that crossed the face of the former bluecoat as he told the sad but familiar story. The chief was trying, Storm Arriving could tell, to see into the heart of this man. Storm Arriving found himself trying to see into it, too.

  Who are you? What do you feel? How much like me are you? How different?

  Storm Arriving once thought he knew the answers to these questions, but as he listened to One Who Flies tell his tale, as he heard the varied emotions in his voice, in his words, he saw that there was more to this man than he knew. Perhaps more than he would ever know.

  Later, when the conversation came around to home life, Three Trees Together said, “I have heard you have a lodge of your own. How is it?” And again he watched more than he listened as One Who Flies answered.

  “It is a fine lodge and I am very grateful for the gift. Storm Arriving’s sister has taught me the proper way to raise it and take it down. It still flaps a little in the wind, but I am learning.”

  Three Trees Together leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and began to toy with his medicine bag. “Tell me, One Who Flies,” he said and his steady gaze was fixed on the former bluecoat. “How long do you think you will stay with the People?”