Conquering Horse (21 page)

The great meal made him feel sluggish. Half asleep, he watched night swoop down, a vast purple fog. The shadows in the talking cottonwood settled down to where he lay.

Lying on his back, dreaming of home and mother, thinking of bravery and father, he was startled to see a ball of fire come bulging over the near bluff. It took him a moment to realize it was the moon.

He sat up slowly. “Aii,” he cried, looking closely at the moon. “Old mother, you are swollen to twice your size with weeping. I see now that my mother is very sorrowful this night. She cries because her son has gone down the bitter path.”

He sat awhile, gazing up at the moon. Slowly its hue changed from honeysuckle to sage. Slowly also the valley filled with soft muted light. The cottonwood was given silver leaves. The eddies in the gliding waters winked circles of gold.

He looked down at his fetish. “Will I have a good day tomorrow? Where is the enemy? Is he near? Will I find the path” Tell me.”

He tossed it up and caught it. The piece of gray gristle fell with its freshly cut side up. “A good sign.”

He put out the fire. He wrapped the smoked fish in green leaves to keep it cool. He put on his buckskins. He found himself a patch of grass under a gooseberry bush, and lying on his full belly, fell sound asleep.

The moon spun silver ovals up the sky. The stars weakened. The White Path Across The Sky vanished. Crickets creaked in the swales. Frogs chorused. The river slid south, a ghostly green. The night became a great silver bell of silence.

They saw him before he saw them. Omaha. They who went against the current.

There were four of them, three grown men and a youth. They were naked except for clout and moccasins, their faces fierce with war paint, their hair done up for action. They were looking directly at him. Then, casually, almost lazily, the tallest Omaha drew an arrow from his quiver and fitted it to his bow and let fly. The arrow came at him with a rush, enlarging, feather streaming, and then,
whinn
, missed him and fell slithering through the cattails behind him.

He dropped flat on his belly. His heart began to jump like a jackrabbit. “Now I will die in a strange place,” he thought, “and my mother will never know where my bones lie drying. I will be one of those who went away alone and never returned.”

He remembered the bravery of his father and got a grip on himself. If he was to die he had better die a brave man. The four Omaha were sure to boast of having killed him, a chief’s son, and if he let them see he was afraid, word of it was bound to get back to his father.

He turned on his back and looked up at the cattails nodding above him. It occurred to him there had been no redwings hopping about in the cattails. “Ahh, the swamps are always full of happy redwings. I did not see that they had hidden themselves to warn me. My eyes were blind with foolishness.”

He couldn’t crawl because the Omaha were sure to see where the rushes stirred. He waited.

And waiting, his eye caught a quick, stealthy darting movement nearby, almost in his face. Focusing his eyes, close up, he saw a deer fly circling around and around the tip of his bow. The bow had his smell and the deer fly circled it. There was another stealthy whisk of movement off to one side and then he saw what had really caught his eye: a squat black spider with a yellow dot on its back. It was quickly weaving a web in the path of the circling deer fly, from one cattail stalk to another. He watched amazed as it shuttled back and forth. Line after line of glistening gossamer issued from its tail. Swiftly the net spread between the two cattails.

“It is a sign,” he whispered. “If the black spider catches the fly, the Omaha will catch me. If she does not, they will miss me.”

He heard the Omaha approaching. Their feet slid through the wet rushes, lifting out of reluctant mud. He guessed they were wading abreast, coming straight for him, combing the narrow patch of cattails. He watched the spider and the circling deer fly at the same time that he listened for the Omaha.

They were almost on him. He was sure that they had already seen him. Yet the deer fly kept circling, circling, each time just barely missing the spider’s web.

A foot landed almost in his face. It sank splashing in the mud immediately under his ear. Yet still the deer fly Hew around and around.

He held his breath, eyes half closing.

The black spider flung one more strand. The deer fly hit it, stuck on it, buzzed fiercely a second, then broke free and flew off.

“Ai! they will miss me.”

The next foot came down near his hip, again sinking some in the slime. It lifted slowly with a sucking sound; went on. He was safe. “Ae, I will still be known and return in safety to my mother’s pot.”

He lay a long time in the same position, waiting for the Omaha to leave the valley.

And waiting, he noticed that the spider’s web had a diamond shape. The diamond shape reminded him of a story his father Redbird told. Returning from a hunt, young Redbird had become tired as night came on. Young Redbird had failed to get meat, or make a coup, and was sad about it. So young Redbird lay down in the deep grass on the open prairie and fell asleep. Awakening in the morning, his eyes opened on a spider web woven just above his nose in the tall grass. He looked at it a while. Dew drops glistened on the web in the clear morning light. Marveling at its great beauty, at its neat
diamond design, he drifted off to sleep again. And dreamed of the diamond design. A voice told him to use it. The diamond pattern would bring luck to his tribe. When he returned home he told his father Wondering Man about the dream, about the voice, and Wondering Man, overjoyed that his son had returned safe, and full of reverent awe, told the people. Soon everyone was using the diamond pattern in their quillwork.

The cattails whispered overhead, roughly, then softly. No Name’s heavy body pressed down into the undergrowth. Soft mud slowly welled between his shoulders. The damp cold came through his buckskins.

Thinking of his own carelessness in being caught by the Omahas, he remembered the story of another foolish youth, named Spider. Spider was out exploring one day and ran across some ripe chokecherries. Spider began stuffing himself with them, until his lips and tongue turned black and his throat almost puckered shut. At last the chokecherry tree decided Spider was making a pig of himself, so she whispered, “Little nephew, do not eat too much of me or your bowels will bind.” This made Spider laugh. “Oh, that’s all right, little mother tree. I’ve just had a lot of artichokes and they’ll keep me loose.” But his bowels did bind, and a few days later he was seen sitting on a hill facing the wind, trying, trying. Suddenly a rabbit ran between his legs. Astounded, he thought he had given birth to a son. Grabbing his clout, he jumped up and ran after it, calling, calling. “My son, my son, wait for me. I’m your father.” But the rabbit got away. Muttering, cursing the bad manners of the new generation, Spider went back to his hill and sat down again. Except that this time he wrapped a robe around his legs and seat to make sure nothing could get away. At last it came. He folded his robe carefully over it, then quickly got a stick and began to pound it, crying, “Try to get away from me now, will you? My son you are and my son you will remain.”

Thinking about the story again, No Name laughed merrily to himself.

The sun began to shine directly down upon him. It became sticky hot. A few mosquitoes got wind of him and despite the bright sun wisped out of the shadowy undergrowth and sat on him.

“Ae, they have come to tell me something. Perhaps the Omaha have gone.”

He reset his wolf cap, then got up on hands and knees and like a skulking fourlegged peered through the cattails to all sides. The Omaha had left. Also, the swamp was suddenly full of singing redwings.

He resumed his running, walking, running routine. His pace was constant more than swift. The little hills and narrow valleys along the east side of the Great Smoky Water unrolled beneath him. He watched the crows and wolves for sign.

At last, sure he was well beyond the country of the Omaha, he turned west and went down to the banks of the great river. He found a dry cottonwood log with two armlike limbs. It was as white as an old licked-over buffalo bone and because it was very dry would float high in the water. He rolled up his clothes and bow inside his light pack, as well as his fetish, and fastened them on top of his head. Then he pushed the cottonwood log down the bank into the coursing waters. Some dozen yards in, the current seized the tree and began carrying him downstream. The two armlike limbs kept the log from turning over in the water. He paddled along easily, aiming his crude craft for a distant high bluff on the west side. The bluff would make a good lookout from which to examine the farther country.

He remembered his grandfather Wondering Man’s last request for a drink from the Great Smoky Water. He sipped a few palms of it as he floated along. The tan water was medicine and restored him.

The river came down between two long lines of wind-blown bluffs, swinging back and forth in slow heavy curves. It shoved
more than it ran. It threw up innumerable sandbars from its bottoms, then promptly undermined them and dumped them lower down. It undercut its own banks, dropped and overran them, then built them up again. It ripped trees loose from one bank and planted them deep in the opposite bank, sometimes right side up, sometimes upside down. It robbed itself of islands, then promptly created new ones. The great river boiled on, a restless fluid force, driving as well as driven.

Abruptly the current in the main channel caught his log. It was tumultuous, with waves as high as a small tree. It lifted him, dropped him, then spun him around in violent sickening swings. It raced with a low gushing roar. He hugged the old tree with both arms; swallowed water; got dunked; was lifted clear. Then, as suddenly as it had caught him, it let him go.

He steered his log past mushy sandbars and mucky islands and around floating live trees.

He was almost across the old river when it went for him once more. A whirlpool near a sinking collapsing island grabbed his log and ripped it from his grip, taking it from him like a bully taking a stick from a boy. He had just time to take a deep breath, and under he went. The whirlpool sucked him down, down. His head sparked with flying stars. His lungs swelled until he thought he would burst.

Then the airtight pack on his head, tied under his chin with thongs, began to swell up and pull him the other way. The deeper he sank the harder the pack pulled. The tan waters rushed and whelmed and gurgled over him.

“Ae,” he thought in the darkness of his skull, “it is my helper. He is hidden in the pack and the great river does not know this. My helper does not wish us to drown.”

He began to rise very rapidly, suddenly popped out on the surface. A log lay almost against his face, spinning crazily. He grabbed for it even as he sucked for air. With his hands he stayed the log’s wild revolutions, got a leg and an arm over, then his chin. He lay on it, puffing.

At last the rushing stream was through with him and let
him drift toward the bank. His feet touched bottom. Spent, he slithered up the muddy bank and collapsed.

When he got his breath, he put on his leathers again, hid his charm in the left braid, ate what was left of the dried meat, and set out. He followed a stream which eventually led up through a brushy ravine. This in turn lifted onto the treeless bluffs. Eyes and ears alert, he kept looking for sign. He saw no tracks, neither of man nor horse. He had struck exactly between the Omaha to the north and the Pawnee to the south.

Ahead to the west lay open prairie. The country rolled some at first, gradually leveled off, became a vast lake of knee-high grass. There were no trees, no bushes, no buffalo, no deer, nothing on which the eye might rest in relief or the spirit fasten in hope. It was all new to him. Yet his helper, hidden in his braid, opened his eyes in such a way that it seemed vaguely familiar. This comforted him.

He followed the sun down the sky. Heat waves danced and glittered on the horizon. Sometimes the burning appearance of the prairie gave him the feeling it was all on fire. He ran. He walked.

Toward dusk he spotted something. It was hard to see against the sun and he could not quite make out what it was or how far away it was. Palm over black glittering eyes, he peered intently. After a while he decided it was some kind of fourlegged. It too seemed to have stopped still, waiting for him to move first. Against the sun there was a curious glowing over its dark back. Ahh. Grizzly. He had once seen a silvertip in the brush along the River of the Double Bend.

He strung his bow and drew an arrow from his quiver. Again he had a vision of himself as dead with his bones whitening in a waste of waving green-gray grass. “Ai, soon someone will weep. I hope it will not be my mother.”

He sank slowly out of sight in the grass. He waited. There was no wind. The grass stood still. It also waited.

He raised and looked out again, and was just in time to see
the grizzly look back over its shoulder at him and then, shrugging, separate into two parts. Astounded, he watched the two parts become two old crows and fly off. They disappeared into the blue dusk to the south.

When he arrived at where the crows had been sitting, he found a single seedling ash, about hip high, with birdsquit staining the grass at its foot.

Bone-tired, upset by the grizzly apparition, he decided to make a night of it beside the seedling. He poked around through the grass on hands and knees and uncovered a few prairie turnips. Seasoning the spring roots with some brown June bugs, he ate them raw.

The sun sank in a series of color explosions, the one shading off into the other, first bloodstone, then moonstone, last brownstone.

Looking around to all sides, he missed something. He could not think what it was until he took off his wolf cap. “Ahh,” he cried out softly, “it is the wolf I miss. Not even the coyote dares to live in this place. It is too wild for even the fourleggeds.”

Parfleche for a pillow, he stretched out on the grass. Stars came out as thick as mosquitoes. He watched the leaves of the seedling ash stir against the White Path Across The Sky. He counted the leaves and found there were exactly as many as he had lived winters. The tree was his twin brother. He sighed. He missed Circling Hawk. He wished his brother Pretty Rock might have lived so that he could have known him. He lay quietly on the heaving breast of the earth. It turned under him. “My heart is on the ground,” he whispered. “I am lonesome.”