Heavy Leg knew Buffalo Hump much better than did his young wife, Lark. Heavy Leg could tell by the way her husband moved, and by the way he looked at the horses, when he was wanting to leave. By the time he came back with Kicking Wolf she had already filled a pouch with dried deer meat, for him to take on his journey.
She was not allowed to touch his bow or his lance, but she got his paints ready, in case he had to paint himself and go into battle.
Buffalo Hump was a little surprised when he saw what Heavy Leg had done. Though Heavy Leg had been his wife for a long time, it still startled him that she could anticipate his intentions so accurately. His young wife, Lark, by contrast, had no idea that he was in a mood to leave. She was putting grease on her black hair and had not even noticed what Heavy Leg was doing.
Buffalo Hump was almost ready to mount before Lark awoke to the fact that he was leaving. Though he depended on Heavy Leg and respected her for providing him what he would need on his journey, he sometimes wished she were a little dumber, like Lark.
He was not sure he trusted a wife who could read his thoughts so clearly.
Kicking Wolf's wives were indignant that he was leaving them on such short notice, but Kicking Wolf ignored them. It had been a long time since he had travelled with Buffalo Hump--it pleased him that Buffalo Hump had asked him to come on the journey to Mexico.
By sunset the two warriors had left the camp. Eager for travel, singing a little, they climbed out of the canyon and rode all night.
For two days, as they approached the canyon of the Yellow Cliffso, Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf saw no game, though there had been an abundance of antelope and deer as they travelled south. Soon after crossing the Rio Grande they discovered a small herd of wild horses, a discovery that excited them both. They were small horses, mustangs--z soon as they saw the Comanches, they fled.
Kicking Wolf wanted to chase them awhile; at the sight of the quick, hardy wild horses, animals able to live where there was little water and almost no grass, his appetite for catching horses revived a little.
But Buffalo Hump was intent on one purpose, which was to go to the canyon of the Yellow Cliffso and see the jaguar.
'We know where those horses are now,' he told Kicking Wolf. 'We can come back and track them anytime. If we chase them they might move into Apache country.' 'The Apaches don't like horses,' Kicking Wolf said.
'Not to ride, but they like to eat them,' Buffalo Hump said. 'I would like to have a few of them. The jaguar must have eaten all the deer and antelope but he has not been able to catch those horses.' Kicking Wolf was growing very excited. His passion for horses was very great, and these horses did not even have to be stolen, they only had to be caught. Buffalo Hump wouldn't listen to him, though, so he reluctantly had to leave the mustangs, for the moment.
All he talked about for a whole day was the wild horses they had found near the Rio Grande.
The next day Kicking Wolf led Buffalo Hump to the place where he and Three Birds had been ambushed.
'Ahumado was behind us,' Kicking Wolf said.
'He walks as quietly as I do when I go into a herd of horses.' 'I don't think he is here,' Buffalo Hump said, 'but if he is I don't want him behind me.' He started to reveal the prophecy of the hump, but caught himself. Kicking Wolf was a gossip-- if he knew of the prophecy the whole camp would soon know.
'Let's go high on the rocks,' he said.
'If he is here I would rather be above him than below him.' They picked their way up to the high plateau that led to the Yellow Cliffs. To their surprise there was a declivity on the plateau, a great crater whose sides were steep. Near the center of the crater was a pit, with some charred and broken horse bones in the bottom of it, laying in the deep ashes.
Kicking Wolf knew at once whose bones he was looking at.
'This is the place where they ate the Buffalo Horse,' he said. 'Why did they eat him?' 'Why does anyone eat any horse?' Buffalo Hump said. 'They were hungry.' Kicking Wolf stayed a long time by the pit, looking at the bones of the Buffalo Horse. That Ahumado would kill and eat such a beast, rather than keeping him as a prize, astonished him. He jumped down into the pit and came back with one of the great rib bones.
Buffalo Hump spent some time riding around the rim of the crater, trying to understand how it had come to be. The rocks in it were black, the walls steep. He knew that the great hole with the black rocks in it was a place of power, a place where people came to pray and perform their spirit ceremonies.
Some of the old ones thought that such holes were the footprints of the first spirit people to visit the world. His own view was that it might be the hole where the People first came out of the earth; only, in time, it had silted over, so that the People could not go back into the darkness they had left.
Buffalo Hump put a few of the black rocks in his pouch, to show to Worm and a few of the old men when he got home. It occurred to him that the reason Ahumado had so much power was because he had put his camp near the place of the black rocks. He was said to be black himself, like the rocks.
The crater was such a powerful place that Buffalo Hump was reluctant to leave it; but they had come to look for the jaguar that had been eating all the game.
In the afternoon they rode across the plateau to the Yellow Cliffs. They found the place where the posts were, and the cages, all but one of which had human remains in them. From the cliffso they could see far south, down the range of peaks. Several eagles soared along the cliff edge. Buffalo Hump wanted badly to shoot an eagle. He waited until dusk with his arrows ready, but none of the eagles flew close enough for him to risk an arrow.
'In the morning I will hide myself better,' he said. The eagles were the large eagles of the south; he thought if he was patient he might kill one.
They camped on the plateau. In the morning the sun and moon were in the sky together, one to the east and the other to the west.
Both men knew that it was time to be careful, when the two powers, sun and moon, were in the sky together.
