The Arrow Keeper’s Song
Read The Arrow Keeper’s Song Online
Authors: Kerry Newcomb
The Arrow Keeper's Song
Kerry Newcomb
For Patty, Amy Rose, P.J., and Emily Anabel, with whom I walk the Great Circle.
Contents
Part Three The Arrow Keeper's Song
“Now you must select a good man; one who is good-natured and of good character in every way. He will be the man to take charge of the Arrows. He will be the man to take the pipe in his hands. In his prayers he must not forget to pray for the people, for their food, and for all the game, that the animals may be plentiful. All the animals living in the water must also be remembered in his prayers four times. No one will be in the tipi when he prays in the morning. That is strictly forbidden. And the Maiyun will be with him during the time he is alone.”
âBaldwin Twins, Keeper of the Sacred Arrows, from a conversation with Peter J. Powell, in
Sweet Medicine
.
P
ROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
Oklahoma Territory, 1896
“Maheo. All-Father
.
To the four winds I cast my prayers
.
Upon the four winds my voice drifts like smoke
.
I hold my People as I hold the Arrows in my hand
.
What am I? What am I?
Fire in the blood of
nako-he,
the Bear;
The crack of ice on frozen rivers
,
The call of the wild geese
.
I ride upon
hotama haa-ese,
the North wind
.
Call me Spirit Catcher, Sweet Medicine
,
By many names men have called me
.
I am the Arrow Keeper's Song
.
I walk here.”
T
HE HAND OF
M
AHEO
,
THE
A
LL
-F
ATHER
,
APPEARED IN THE
center of a circle of old men whose stern features were etched in stark relief by the brightness of the apparition. The heartbeat of Maheo filled the air and caused the earth to tremble. The Maiyun, the spirits of those who have gone before, leaped soundlessly one moment, gyrated madly the next, as if to distract the elders from their somber ritual.
Tom Sandcrane, blind to the hand of God, saw only the leaping flames from a briskly burning fire. To his ears the heartbeat of the Creator was no more than the hypnotic tap-tap-tapping of the ceremonial drums. No spirits but the tribal elders' own shadows danced upon the buffalo-hide walls of the ceremonial lodge.
Tom stood with the other young men, apart from the ceremonial fire. His twenty-two years hardly qualified him for a place in the circle traditionally reserved for the elders of the Southern Cheyenne. Although Tom was held in high esteem throughout the reservation, here in the Sacred Lodge tradition and custom had to be obeyed, and he could join only if summoned by one of the elders.
Sandcrane shifted his stance and kicked a dirt clod with the scuffed toe of his right boot. He'd been gentling a horse for Allyn Benedict, the local Indian agent. Sandcrane's hard, wiry physique had taken a pounding, but the money had been good, and the experience had afforded him a chance to visit with Allyn's pretty daughter, Emmiline. That green-eyed beauty was worth a hard ride any day.
It was mid-December, the time of the big-hard-face-moon, the third Sunday of Advent, in the last days of 1896, and Tom Sandcrane wished he could have accepted Allyn Benedict's invitation to accompany the Indian agent and his family to church and, afterward, to the house for a late dinner. Emmiline had never looked prettier. But Tom Sandcrane had promised his father he'd attend this night's ceremony ⦠so here he was. He'd spent the last hour standing in the shadows and awaiting his father's humiliation. It was difficult to be sympathetic. The horny bastard had brought this on himself.
Tom removed his faded gray Stetson and brushed back his close-cropped black hair with the palm of his hand, then settled the sweat-stained, broad-brimmed hat back on his head. It was warm here in the lodge; he considered removing his wool-lined denim jacket and would have if there had been a place to set the coat aside. Tom sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets. His movements distracted Seth Sandcrane, who noticed his son standing outside the circle of light. Seth appeared curiously relieved to see that his son had made it to the council. The older man began to take heart. There was still hope that all wasn't lost.
Tom Sandcrane, cut from his father's image, stood a couple inches under six feet. Like his Cheyenne forebears, Tom's was the blood of warriors, the finest light cavalry in the world, which had once roamed the plains and followed the great herds of buffalo and answered to no one. Boarding school had done nothing to dull the young man's natural skills. There wasn't a horse he couldn't rideâno brag, just the plain fact. Tom was sharp as a whipcrack, leather tough, with his father's dark-brown eyes.
Once lean and wiry like his son, Seth Sandcrane now carried an extra twenty pounds and was beginning to show a paunch. His features were creased, not smooth like Tom's, and a white crescent-shaped scar marked his right cheek just be-low his eye. Still, the forty-five-year-old man could sit a horse as well as any young buck. Seth was dressed in the traditional garb of fringed buckskin shirt and leggings, and his long, streaked, silver hair was braided and decorated with an eagle feather with three notches for each time he had counted coup in battle. Usually a good-natured, easygoing soul, Seth Sandcrane wore a grave expression this wintry night. By force of will alone, he shielded his feelings as the elders began to speak. He would not give them the satisfaction of seeing his pain. Seth lowered his eyes to the buckskin Medicine Bundle on the ground before him. The bundle was tied with rawhide and decorated with the sign of the hawk, the buffalo, and horse. Whorled designs of finely stitched beadwork ran along one side from the tied top to fringed bottom. No one needed to view the contents to know what the bundle contained. These were the Mahuts, the Sacred Arrows brought long ago to the Cheyenne by Sweet Medicine, the prophet, as a gift from the All-Father. The Arrows were the most powerful and sacred objects the tribe possessed. They nurtured and guarded the People and were as crucial to the survival of the Southern Cheyenne as the very air they breathed or food they ate. Seth Sandcrane had been the Arrow Keeper for almost a decade, but that honor was about to come to an end.
The majority of the tribe had learned of Seth's indiscretion through rumor and hearsay, but Tom had heard the story firsthand from his father's own lips. Seth had become enamored of Kanee-estse, Red Cherries, who was the wife of Jordan Weasel Bear, one of the elders of the tribe. Jordan, after learning of his wife's infidelity, went into a fit of drunken rage and savagely beat his wife, then fled on horseback into the black night. A couple of days later the rancher's body was found alongside the carcass of his gelding. It seemed the animal had stepped in a prairie-dog mound and broken a leg, crushing Jordan as it fell. The tragedy had tarnished Seth's reputation and jeopardized his position as Keeper of the Sacred Arrows, a man who must be above reproach.
Tom shifted his stance and surveyed the circle of elders. He recognized Luthor White Bear, a crease-faced man with steely gray hair in braids that hung to his shoulders. Approximately the same age as Seth, he had made no effort to conceal the fact that he coveted the role of Arrow Keeper.
To begin the council, Luthor removed the Medicine Pipe from a buckskin bundle in his possession, brushed the red clay bowl with dried sage and brittle stalks of sweetgrass, and then lit the contents of the bowl, a mixture of tobacco and cherry bark.
Luthor's features were marked by a single white band painted across his eyes like a narrow mask. The elder, seated at the southeast point of the circle, represented the originator of life and light.
“I am morning, I bring new life to the People. The sun is my servant,” intoned Luthor White Bear. He smoked the pipe and then passed it to Henry Running Shadow, seated at the southwest point. The latter's traditional buckskin shirt and leggings were baggy and seemed almost comical upon his frail torso. He looked as if he were trying to shrink out of his clothes. His elderly features were concealed behind a mask of red paint.
“Thunder lives in me,” continued Henry Running Shadow in a gravelly voice. “I journey from the south, bringing rain and warm weather. In me the grass grows and the earth becomes green again.” He was fifty-seven years old, and his hands had a slight tremble from the onset of palsy that would one day kill him. He smoked the pipe and handed it to the Cheyenne seated at the northwest. At fifty years of age, Abe Spotted Horse had lived long enough to grow restless for the old days. Chasing buffalo and raiding the white man's villages and towns had provided plenty of opportunity for a warrior to count coup and prove his bravery. Peace had left him brooding and restless. His color was yellow, the color of the sunset.
“I am the place where the sun sleeps. I am that which is without blemish, the ripeness and beauty of the world.” He smoked, and again a cloud of prayer smoke billowed up above the heads of those gathered in the lodge. Abe Spotted Horse stretched out his hand, and the pipe was taken by the last of the painted elders.
The face of Coby Starving Elk was smeared with a band of black paint. He too was in his midforties. A stocky man with a belly that overhung his beaded belt, Coby was unflaggingly honest and could be counted on to hold a wise council.