Conquering Horse (36 page)

Parting the branches of the plum thicket, narrow eyes glittering, he saw flesh shining on grass. He couldn’t quite see what it was, so he pushed farther through the stiff prickly twigs. Leaning down for a closer look, he finally made out a sack of pale diaphanous skin. Inside lay a curled-up colt. It was a bag of waters, unbroken, and the colt inside was dead. “Ahh-h-h,” he said, and sank to his heels.

After a moment, collecting himself, he picked up a stick and poked into the silken envelope. The envelope broke and syrupy fluid spilled across the grass. With his fingers he widened the rent for a better look at the baby horse. It was a female. He drew out one of its rear legs. The leg was already cold, stiff. When he let go of it, it snapped back into place. He lifted the colt’s short plume of a tail. It was reddish. He opened the rent farther and saw that the colt’s hair was a light gray. Except for a somewhat thin rump the colt was perfectly formed.

“I do not understand, my helper.”

He looked up. Some ten steps away stood the white stallion’s favorite mare, the light-gray with the white hooves. Twinkling Feet looked even more gaunt and bony than Black Stripe. She stood trembling, as if about to collapse. Her flanks were spotted with shiny film and blood.

She heard him move and turned her head, nickering weakly.

Thinking she might be an easy catch in her weakened state, he approached a few steps, holding out his hand.

She let him come to within an arm’s length, then up came her head and her tail lashed twice against him.

He stood. He shook his head. “I can see you are not happy, favorite one. Well, I know another who is not happy. It is a sad thing to lose so fine a colt. It is all from the running. It was not good. Yet the gods told me to catch your master.”

He withdrew from the plum thicket and called back to tell Leaf that he had found another horse.

Leaf stepped out from the gooseberry bushes. “Twinkling Feet was one of the wild ones?”

“She was his favorite wife.”

“Can you catch her?”

“She is not worth catching. She will die by morning.”

“It would be a good thing to arrive at the door of your father’s lodge with three horses.”

“What would you have me do?”

She went back into the gooseberries and searched her par-fleches.
After a bit she found what she was looking for, a small leather case and a rawhide strap, and brought them to him. “Sounds The Ground gave me a small gift of corn against an evil day on the trail. Here is also a strap I made while you were seeking the stallion.”

“Ho, now I see I have a wife who is full of pleasant surprises. What else have you hidden?”

“Cup your hands.”

“I hold them open before you.”

She poured out half of the multi-colored corn. “See if the mare likes it. It may give her strength to live.” She hung the rawhide strap over his shoulder. “Try to catch her while she eats.”

He suppressed a smile. He turned and again pushed through the plum bushes.

The gray mare stood in the same place, switching her wet tail. He held out the corn to her. She got the smell of it, nickered weakly, but made no move to come for it. He stepped closer, reaching as far as he could, at last got the corn under her nose. She lipped up a few kernels, rolled them around loosely in her mouth, then let them dribble to the ground.

Moving still closer, he stepped on something soft and giving. He looked down. There, barely hidden under old leaves, lay a second colt. “Ahh-h-h,” he said. Looking around, he spotted another bag of waters, this one broken, and next to it the afterbirth. “Twins,” he whispered softly. He poured the corn to one side on the ground and knelt softly. Gently he scratched away the leaves.

The second colt was alive. Barely. The mare had cleaned it thoroughly. She had bitten the cord off neatly, close to the navel. Examining the earth behind them, he saw she had picked it up by the neck and carried it to dry ground and then had covered it with leaves to keep it warm. He lifted its rear leg. “Ai-ye!” he cried aloud. “It is a stud colt.”

Leaf heard his cry and came hurrying through the plum thicket. “What is it, my husband? What have you seen?”

He jumped up for joy. “It is yet another colt, my wife. The white stallion’s favorite has had twins. A wonderful thing. Truly a sign from the gods.”

“Ahh-h-h,” Leaf said, low.

He knelt beside the colt again. “See, it is a white colt with a reddish mane and tail. A true son of his father.”

“Ahh-h-h,” Leaf said again, low.

He looked across to where the sun was setting. A flare of red gleamed on the winking river. “My father, you have given me what my vision desired. Thank you, thank you.”

He lifted the colt’s pulpy head. Its half-closed bluish eyes were glazed over. A film of dust covered its under eye. Its mouth, already pursed for suckling, weakly drew air instead. The colt smiled a strange ludicrous smile, lower lip hanging, fuzzy nose lifted.

“It is dying,” Leaf said.

No Name knew it. But it enraged him to hear her say it. He lashed out, snarling, “Woman, why do you hate the white ones? Are they not holy and wakan? Woman, perhaps this is the horse the white mare told about in my vision. Would you destroy my vision?”

Meekly she bowed her head, “I hear you, my husband.”

He picked up the colt tenderly in his arms. “You are my god,” he cried, looking down at it. “Live! I will take care of you as if you were my own son. You shall see.”

Holding its slender slippery body close, he felt its heart beating against his bare chest. “Aii,” he cried, “it will live. Already I feel my power entering its heart.” Gently he laid it down again. He cupped his hands around its soft protruding lips and breathed into its mouth, deep, long; breathed until the colt’s chest began to lift and fall on its own a little. His breath and the breath of the colt became one. The breath of the colt had a flesh-sweet taste.

Leaf said behind him, “It was born too weak to stand. It could not get the milk.”

He let go of the colt’s mouth. “Ha,” he snapped around at her, “at last you speak with the wisdom of a Yankton breeder. Woman, it is well known a colt must drink milk immediately after it is born or it will die.” He picked up the slack body in his arms again, with its head in the palm of his hand, and moved toward Twinkling Feet.

But Twinkling Feet, though weak, and interested in what was happening to her colt, was suspicious and moved away.

“Wait a moment, my husband.” Leaf scooped up the corn No Name had thrown to one side. Carefully she held it to the mare’s lips. Twinkling Feet, with some reluctance, at last took a mouthful and began chewing.

Leaf waited until the mare had chewed the corn some, then took the rawhide strap from No Name’s shoulder and secured the mare. Twinkling Feet, never touched before, was at last too beaten down to care.

Again No Name approached Twinkling Feet, holding the mouth of the colt to her bag. The mare stood. Her black dugs were dripping full. With a prying finger, No Name opened the colt’s mouth and pushed its lips around the near dug. The colt lay inert.

Leaf said quietly, “Milk a little in the colt’s mouth, my husband. So it gets the taste.”

No Name gave her a scorching look. “Count my hands, woman, and then tell me which one is not busy.”

“I hear you, my husband.” Holding the strap with one hand, she reached her other hand under the mare and milked the dug into the colt’s mouth a few times.

The colt’s lips moved loosely, milk ran out of the corners of its mouth, its glazed eyes rolled once.

“When my father still had horses,” Leaf said, “he often said twin colts were not a good thing. Neither the one nor the other was ever born strong enough to stand. The mother could not
sustain both of them in her belly at the same time and yet give them full hindquarters with which to stand.”

“Ho, no doubt that is another bit of wisdom you father unearthed alone, which my father Redbird as a horse breeder never knew.”

“Nevertheless, my husband, what my father said remains a true thing.”

“Milk the mare again, woman.”

Leaf stripped the dug a half-dozen times. Again milk ran out of the corners of the colt’s mouth and down its slippery white hide. The mare shuddered, and almost collapsed.

Leaf withdrew her hand as if to suggest it was no longer any use.

“Again!” No Name ordered harshly. “It is the wakan white horse of my vision that I hold in my hands. Would you destroy my vision?”

Once more Leaf milked into the little one’s mouth, a series of good steady streams.

All of a sudden the colt gathered itself up and coughed, exploding milk over No Name’s face and Leaf’s arm and the underside of Twinkling Feet. All three jumped a little.

“Look,” Leaf said, matter-of-fact, “it coughs.”

“See,” No Name cried, joyfully, “it lives!”

The colt licked its lips and swallowed. It rolled its eyes. Some of the glaze and dust on its pupils washed off under its long pink lashes.

“Drink, my son,” No Name urged coaxingly, cuddling the colt against his chest. “Drink, all the Yanktons wish it.” He held the colt’s mouth to the mare’s dripping dug again.

This time the touch of the fat dug awakened the colt and it suckled a few moments. Its throat pulsed twice.

“Ahh,” Leaf whispered.

“Hi-ye,” No Name cried.

Twinkling Feet looked around and nickered at her colt. She
smelled its thin rump where it lay over No Name’s arm. She seemed to understand that the thing being done was good.

“It is well, mother,” No Name murmured. “He has my breath and I have his. Also my wife has the smell of your milk on her. We belong to you.”

The colt sagged again, and quit breathing.

No Name whispered fiercely, “Woman, quickly, milk the mare a little.”

Milk ran out of the corner of the colt’s mouth again before it exploded a cough. Then, abruptly, it began to breathe in an even steady rhythm. Gradually too what was left of the glaze vanished from its eyes. It seemed to awaken to the world. At last it began to push its nose around against the mare’s bag. It found the dug by itself.

The colt suckled for some time. No Name counted some thirty swallows before the colt quit, exhausted.

Happy, No Name carried the colt back to the nest of dry leaves. He laid it down gently. It lay breathing to itself, slowly.

“Woman, fetch us a robe. The colt must be kept warm while the milk works.”

She brought the robe quickly. No Name lay down beside the colt and took it in his arms while she covered them both. He stroked the colt under the robe, down its back, down its leg, over its head. He loved it. Gradually, after what seemed a very long time, warmth seemed to return to the colt’s slender white body.

He saw Twinkling Feet pulling against the strap, desiring to be near her colt.

“Let her come,” he said. “Tie her to this bush close by.”

Leaf led the mare over and tied her securely.

He looked up at Leaf again from under the robe. “I have almost forgotten our son. Where is he? He is well?”

“He hangs sleeping in his cradle from a tree.”

“Care for him while I care for this one.”

Lying patiently in the nest of dry leaves, under the warm
buffalo robe, he held the white colt in his arms. He lay holding it in love the whole night through.

Early in the morning he fed the colt again, holding it up to the mare’s other dug. It fed well. When he put it back on the dry leaves under the robe, he saw that its eyes finally shone bright with life. Its white ears and short reddish plume of a tail flopped occasionally at the buzzing flies. Sometimes its legs trembled as if in a phantom gallop.

He waited until the sun had risen some, then uncovered the colt and began to work it. He rubbed its legs, stretching all the ligaments and muscles, and shaped its slender ears with his fingers, and combed out its lovely baby tail with a brush of sticks. He lighted a fire of dry sage and hardened the colt’s slippery cartilaginous hooves in the smoke and heat. He collected certain aromatic leaves, chewed them thoroughly, then perfumed the colt by blowing and spitting the particles into the reddish mane and tail.

At noon, at the same time that Leaf gave breast to their son, he again held the colt up to Twinkling Feet’s bag. This time the colt drank eagerly.

Later that evening, when he held it up to drink once more, it struggled to break free of his arms. When he let it rest lightly on its feet, it took hold and stood alone. And alone it punched its nose into the bag and found the dugs. It drank until the mare was dry.

The next day, try as they might, they could not get Twinkling Feet to eat. They brought her more corn. They coaxed her with fresh grass gathered from the unburnt meadow across the river. They brought her fresh prairie clover from the unburnt meadow across the river and from farther down the valley. They rubbed her down. They lavished love upon her. Yet she would not let her teeth be parted. She had resigned herself to dying.

“She wishes to follow her husband Dancing Sun,” No Name said. “She has been wild too long.”

“Perhaps we should let mother and son go free,” Leaf suggested.

“The white colt? Woman, why do you hate the white ones?”

“If the mare dies the colt dies.”

“I will get the mare some water,” he said. “If she drinks she will eat.”

But Twinkling Feet refused the water too. She did not even bother to lip it.

And that evening, Twinkling Feet went down. She died as the sun set, her eyes glazing over even as the colt emptied her bag for the last time.

The following evening they were back in their cave, sitting by the fire. The baby hung in its cradle from a peg in the wall, the colt slept curled up at No Name’s feet. Earlier in the day, to make sure the colt would stay close, No Name had cut a belt from the hide over Twinkling Feet’s back and belly, including the dugs, and he wore it around his middle.

No Name felt bad. At supper the colt had refused to drink a gruel made of cornmeal and water. No Name had begun to wonder how he was to keep the colt alive.

No Name and Leaf sat watching the fire die away. They sat a long time, wordless.

Finally Leaf, knowing his thoughts, had a suggestion to make. “My husband, I have a thing to give to the colt. Yet I am afraid to speak of it.”