There was no smile on his mouth. But in his eyes, though it was ever faint, was a happy light.
The going was slow that first afternoon in Kicking Bird’s lodge. The time was eaten up by Stands With A Fist’s painstaking attempts to repeat Lieutenant Dunbar’s simple words and phrases. Sometimes it took a dozen or more repetitions, all of them excruciatingly tedious, to pronounce a single one-syllable word. And even then the pronunciation was far from perfect. It was not what would be called talking.
But Kicking Bird was greatly encouraged. Stands With A Fist had told him that she remembered the white words well. She was only having difficulty with her tongue. The medicine man knew that practice would bring the rusty tongue around, and his mind galloped with the happy prospects of the time when conversation between them would be free and full of information.
He felt a twinge of irritation when one of his assistants arrived with the news that he would shortly be needed to oversee final preparations for the dance that evening.
But Kicking Bird smiled as he took the white man’s hand and bid him goodbye with hair-mouth words.
“Hulo, Jun.”
It was tough to figure. The meeting had ended so abruptly. And so far as he knew, it had been going well. Something must have taken priority.
Dunbar stood outside Kicking Bird’s lodge and looked down the wild avenue. People seemed to be congregating in an open space at the end of the street near the tipi that carried the mark of the bear. He wanted to stay, to see what was going to happen.
But the quiet one had already disappeared into the steadily growing crowd. He spotted the woman, so small among the already smallish Indians, walking between two women. She didn’t look back at him, but as the lieutenant’s eyes followed her receding form, he could see the two people in her carriage: white and Indian.
Cisco was coming toward him, and Dunbar was surprised to see that the boy with the constant smile was riding his horse. The youngster pulled up, rolled off, patted Cisco’s neck, and chattered something that Lieutenant Dunbar correctly interpreted as praise for his horse’s virtues.
People were streaming into the clearing now and they were taking little notice of the man in uniform. The lieutenant thought again of staying, but much as he wanted to, he knew that without a formal invitation he would not be welcome. There had been no invitation.
The sun was beginning to sink and his stomach was starting to growl. If he was going to get home before dark and thus avoid a lot of fumbling just to get dinner together, he would have to make quick time. He swung up, turned Cisco around, and started out of the village at an easy canter.
As he passed the last of the lodges he chanced upon a strange assembly. Perhaps a dozen men were gathered behind one of the last lodges. They were all draped in all kinds of finery and their bodies were painted with loud designs. Each man’s head was covered with the head of a buffalo, complete with curly hair and horns. Only the dark eyes and prominent noses were visible beneath the strange helmets.
Dunbar held up a hand as he cantered past. Some of them glanced in his direction, but none of them returned the wave, and the lieutenant rode on.
Two Sock’s visits were no longer limited to late afternoon or early morning. He was likely to pop up anytime now, and when he did, the old wolf made himself at home, roaming the little confines of Lieutenant Dunbar’s world as if he were a camp dog. The distance he once kept had shrunk as his familiarity grew. More often than not he was no more than twenty or thirty feet away as the solitary lieutenant went about his little tasks. When he made journal entries Two Socks would usually stretch out and lie down, his yellow eyes blinking curiously as he watched the lieutenant scratch on the pages.
The ride back had been a lonely one. The untimely end of his meeting with the woman who was two people and the mysterious excitement in the village (of which he was not a part) saddled Dunbar with his old nemesis, the morose feeling of being left out. All his life he’d been hungry to participate, and as with every other human, loneliness was something that constantly had to be handled. In the lieutenant’s case loneliness had become the dominant feature of his life, so it was reassuring to see the tawny form of Two Socks rise up under the awning when he rode in at twilight.
The wolf trotted out into the yard and sat down to watch as the lieutenant slipped off Cisco’s back.
Dunbar noticed immediately that something else was under the awning. It was a large prairie chicken, lying dead on the ground, and when he stooped to examine it, he found the bird fresh-killed. The blood on its neck was still sticky. But aside from the punctures about its throat, the guinea fowl was undisturbed. Hardly a feather was out of place. It was a puzzle for which there was only one solution, and the lieutenant looked pointedly at Two Socks.
“Is this yours?” he said out loud.
The wold raised his eyes and blinked as Lieutenant Dunbar studied the bird a moment longer.
“Well, then”—he shrugged—”I guess it’s ours.”
Two Socks stood by, his narrow eyes following Dunbar as the bird was plucked, gutted, and roasted over the open fire. While it was on the spit he trailed the lieutenant to the corral and waited patiently as Cisco’s grain ration was doled out. Then back to the fire to await the feast.
It was a good bird, tender and full of meat. The lieutenant ate slowly, carving off the plump flesh a strip at a time and tossing a piece out to Two Socks every now and then. When he’d eaten his fill he lobbed the carcass into the yard and the old wolf carried it off into the night.
Lieutenant Dunbar sat in one of the camp chairs and smoked, letting the nighttime sounds entertain him. He thought it amazing how far he had come in such a short time. Not so long ago these same sounds had kept him on edge. They’d stolen his sleep. Now they were so familiar as to be comforting.
He thought back over the day and decided it had been a very good one. As the fire burned down with his second cigarette he realized how unique it was for him to be dealing singly and directly with the Indians. He allowed himself a pat on the back, thinking that he had done a credible job thus far as a representative of the United States of America. And without any guidelines, to boot.
Suddenly he thought of the Great War. It was possible that he was no longer a representative of the United States. Perhaps the war was over. The Confederate States of America . . . He couldn’t imagine such a thing. But it could be. He’d been without any information for a long time now.
These musings brought him to his own career, and he admitted inwardly that he’d been thinking less and less about the army. That he was in the midst of a great adventure had much to do with these omissions, but as he sat by the dwindling fire and listened to the yip of coyotes down by the river, it crossed his mind that he might have stumbled on to a better life. In this life he wanted for very little. Cisco and Two Socks weren’t human, but their unwavering loyalty was satisfying in ways that human relationships had never been. He was happy with them.
And of course there were the Indians. They held a distinct pull for him. At the least they made for excellent neighbors, well-mannered, open, and sharing. Though he was much too white for aboriginal ways, he felt more than comfortable with them. Maybe that was why he’d been drawn from the start. The lieutenant had never been much of a learner. He’d always been a doer, sometimes to a fault. But he sensed that this facet of his personality was shifting.
Yes, he thought, that’s it. There is something to learn from them. They know things. If the army never comes, I don’t suppose the loss would be so great.
Dunbar felt suddenly lazy. Yawning, he flipped the butt of his smoke into the embers glowing at his feet and stretched his arms high over his head.
