Wind was whistling through the cleft.
He jumped straight up, cracked his head against the ceiling of solid rock, and sank back to his knees. Blinking through the sting of the blow, he could see a silvery light shining through the cleft’s entrance. Moonlight.
Panicked, Dunbar scrambled off in an apelike stoop, one hand held overhead to gauge the ceiling. When he could stand unimpeded he ran for the mouth of the cleft and didn’t slow until he was standing in the brilliant moonlight of the clearing.
Cisco was gone.
The lieutenant whistled high and shrill.
Nothing.
He walked farther into the clearing and whistled again. He heard something move in the cottonwoods. Then he heard a low nicker, and Cisco’s buckskin hide flashed like amber in the moonlight as he came out of the trees.
Dunbar was going for the bridle he left at the spring when a movement flickered in the air. He looked back in time to glimpse the tawny form of a great horned owl as it swooped past Cisco’s head and went into a steep climb, finally vanishing in the branches of the tallest cottonwood.
The owl’s flight was disturbingly eerie, and it must have had the same effect on Cisco, for when he reached him the little horse was trembling with fright.
They backtracked out of the canyon, and when they were on the open prairie again it was with the kind of relief a swimmer feels on coming to the surface after a long, deep dive.
Lieutenant Dunbar shifted his weight slightly forward and Cisco was off, carrying him over the silvery grasslands at an easy gallop.
He rode invigorated, thrilled to be awake and alive and putting distance between himself and the strange, unsettling dream. It didn’t matter where the dream had come from and it didn’t matter what it meant. The images were too fresh and too profound to rehash now. He spurned the hallucination in favor of other thoughts as he listened to the gentle pounding of Cisco’s hooves.
A feeling of power was coming over him, increasing with each passing mile. He could feel it in the effortless movement of Cisco’s canter and he could feel it in the oneness of himself: oneness with his horse and the prairie and the prospect of returning whole to the village that was now his home. In the back of his mind he knew there would be a reckoning with Stands With A Fist and that the grotesque dream would have to be assimilated somewhere down the line of his future.
For the moment, however, these things were small. They didn’t threaten him in the least, for he was charged with the notion that his life as a human being was suddenly a blank and that the slate of his history had been wiped clean. The future was as open as the day he was born, and it sent his spirits soaring. He was the only man on earth, a king without subjects, rambling across the limitless territory of his life.
He was glad they were Comanches and not Kiowas, for he remembered their nickname now, heard or read somewhere in the dead past.
The Lords of the Plains, that’s what they were called. And he was one of them.
In a fit of reverie he dropped the reins and crossed his arms, laying each hand flat against the breastplate that covered his chest.
“I’m Dances With Wolves,” he cried out loud, “I’m Dances With Wolves.”
Kicking Bird, Wind In His Hair, and several other men were sitting around the fire when he rode in that night.
The medicine man had been worried enough to send out a small party to scout the four directions for the white soldier. But there was no general alarm. It was done quietly. They had come back with nothing to report, and Kicking Bird put the matter out of his mind. When it came to matters beyond his sphere of influence, he always trusted to the wisdom of the Great Spirit.
He’d been more disturbed by what he saw in the face and manner of Stands With A Fist than he had been with the disappearance of Dances With Wolves. At the mention of his name he’d perceived a vague discomfort in her, as though she had something to hide.
But this, too, he decided, was beyond his control. If something important had happened between them, it would be revealed at the proper time.
He was relieved to see the buckskin horse and its rider coming up to the firelight.
The lieutenant slid off Cisco’s back and greeted the men around the fire in Comanche. They returned the salutation and waited to see if he was going to say anything significant about his disappearance.
Dunbar stood before them like an uninvited guest, twisting Cisco’s reins in his hands as he looked them over. Everyone could see his mind was working on something.
After a few seconds his gaze fell squarely on Kicking Bird, and the medicine man thought he had never seen the lieutenant looking so calm and assured.
Dunbar smiled then. It was a small smile, full of confidence.
In perfect Comanche he said, “I’m Dances With Wolves.”
Then he turned away from the fire and led Cisco down to the river for a long drink.
CHAPTER XXIV
Ten Bears’s first council was inconclusive, but the day after Lieutenant Dunbar’s return another meeting was held, and this time a solid compromise was reached.
Instead of leaving immediately, as the young men had wanted, the war party against the Pawnee would take a week to make necessary preparations. It was also decided that experienced warriors would be included.
Wind In His Hair would lead and Kicking Bird would go along also, providing critical spiritual guidance on the practical matters of choosing campsites and times for attack as well as divining unforeseen omens, several of which were sure to appear. It was to be a small party of about twenty warriors and they would be looking for booty rather than revenge.
There was great interest in this group because several of the young would be going out for the first time as full-fledged warriors, and the addition of such distinguished men to lead them produced enough excitement to upset the normally placid routine of Ten Bears’s camp.
Lieutenant Dunbar’s routine, already altered by his strange day and night in the ancient canyon, was upset, too. With so much going on, the meetings in the brush arbor were constantly interrupted, and after two days of this, they were discontinued.
Besieged as he was, Kicking Bird was happy to turn his full attention to planning for the raid. Stands With A Fist was glad for the cooling-off period, and so was Dances With Wolves. It was plain to him that she was making an extra effort to keep her distance, and he was relieved to see the sessions end for that reason if for no other.
Preparations for the war party intrigued him, and he shadowed Kicking Bird as much as he could.
The medicine man seemed to be in touch with the entire camp, and Dances With Wolves was delighted to be included, even if it was only to observe. Though far from fluent, he was close now to the gist of what was being said and had become so proficient in sign language that Stands With A Fist was rarely called upon during the final days before the war party left.
It was a first-rate education for the former Lieutenant Dunbar. He sat in on many meetings at which
