Stone Calf was impressed that this Dances With Wolves, so new among them, was talking in Comanche already. And talking well.
The older warrior could also tell that Dances With Wolves wanted something, and when the discussion suddenly shifted to Stands With A Fist, he knew that this must be it.
Dances With Wolves tried to put it as casually as he could, but Stone Calf was too much the old fox not to see that the question was important to his visitor.
“Is Stands With A Fist married?”
“Yes,” Stone Calf replied.
The revelation hit Dances With Wolves like the worst kind of news.
He was silent.
“Where is her husband?” he finally asked. “I do not see him.”
“He is dead.”
This was a possibility he had never considered.
“When did he die?”
Stone Calf looked up from his work.
“It is impolite to talk of the dead,” he said. “But you are new so I will tell you. It was around the time of the cherry moon, in spring. She was grieving on the day you found her and brought her back.”
Dances With Wolves didn’t ask any more questions, but Stone Calf volunteered a few more facts. He mentioned the relatively high standing of the dead man and the absence of children in his marriage to Stands With A Fist.
Needing to digest what he had heard, Dances With Wolves thanked his informant and walked off.
Stone Calf wondered idly if there might be something going on between these people, and deciding it was none of his business, he went back to his work.
Dances With Wolves did the one thing he could count on to clear his head. He found Cisco in the pony herd and rode out of the village. He knew she would be waiting for him in Kicking Bird’s lodge, but his mind was spinning wildly with what he’d been told and he couldn’t think of facing her now.
He went downriver and, after a mile or two, decided to go all the way to Fort Sedgewick. He hadn’t been there for almost two weeks and felt an impulse to go now as if in some strange way the place might be able to tell him something.
Even from a distance he could see that late summer storms had finished the awning. It had been torn away from most of the staves. The canvas itself was badly shredded. What was left was flapping in the breeze like the ragged mainsail of a ghost ship.
Two Socks was waiting near the bluff and he threw the old fellow the slab of jerked meat he’d brought along for nibbling. He wasn’t hungry.
Field mice scattered as he peeked into the rotted supply house. They’d destroyed the only thing he’d left behind, a burlap sack filled with moldy hardtack.
In the sod hut that had been his home he lay down on the little bunk for a few minutes and stared at the crumbling walls.
He took his father’s broken pocket watch off its peg, intending to slip it into his trouser pocket. But he looked at it for a few seconds and put it back.
His father had been dead six years. Or was it seven? His mother had been dead even longer. He could recall the details of his life with them, but the people . . . the people seemed like they’d been gone a hundred years.
He noticed the journal sitting on one of the camp stools and picked it up. It was odd, leafing through the entries. They, too, seemed old and gone, like something from a past life.
Sometimes he laughed at what he had written, but on the whole he was moved. His life had been made over, and pieces of the record were set down here. It was only a curiosity now and had no bearing on his future. But it was interesting to look back and see how far he had come.
When he reached the end there were some blank pages, and he had the whimsical idea that a postscript was in order, something clever and mysterious perhaps.
But when he raised his eyes to think, against the blankness of the sod wall he saw only her. He saw the well-muscled calves flashing from under the hem of her everyday doeskin dress. He saw the long, beautiful hands extending gracefully from its sleeves. He saw the loose curve of her breasts beneath its bodice. He saw the high cheeks and the heavy, expressive brows and the eternal eyes and the mop of tangled, cherry-colored hair.
He thought of her sudden rages and of the light surrounding her face in the arbor. He thought of her modesty and dignity and of her pain. Everything he saw and everything he thought of, he adored.
When his eyes fell back on the blank page spread on his lap, he knew what to write. He was overjoyed to see it come alive in words.
He closed the journal and placed it carefully on the center of the bed, thinking capriciously that he would leave it for posterity to puzzle over. When he walked outside Dances With Wolves was relieved to see that Two Socks had disappeared. Knowing he would not see him again, he said a prayer for his grandfather the wolf, wishing him a good life for all his remaining years.
Then he vaulted onto Cisco’s sturdy back, whooped a goodbye in Comanche, and galloped away at full speed.
When he looked over his shoulder at Fort Sedgewick he saw only open, rolling prairie.
She waited almost an hour before one of Kicking Bird’s wives asked, “Where is Dances With Wolves?”
The waiting had been very hard. Each minute had been filled with thoughts of him. When the question was asked she tried to construct her answer with a tone that shielded what she felt.
“Oh, yes . . . Dances With Wolves. No, I don’t know where he is.”
She went outside then to ask around. Someone had seen him leaving early, riding to the south, and she guessed correctly that he had gone to the white man’s fort.
Not wanting to know why he had gone, she threw herself into finishing the saddlebags she’d been working on, trying to blot out the distractions of the camp so that she could focus only on him.
But it wasn’t enough.
She wanted to be alone with him, even if it was just in her thoughts, and after the noon meal she took the main path down to the river.
Usually there was a lull following lunch, and she was pleased to find no one at the water’s edge. She took off her moccasins, walked onto a thick log that ran out like a pier, and, straddling it, dipped her feet into the cooling shallows.
There was only a hint of breeze, but it was enough to blunt the day’s heat. She placed a hand on each thigh, relaxed her shoulders, and gazed at the slow-moving river with half-closed eyes.
If he came for her now. If he looked at her with those strong eyes and laughed his funny laugh and said they were going. She would go right now, the where not mattering.
Suddenly she remembered their first meeting, clear as if it were yesterday. Riding back, half-conscious, her blood all over him. She remembered the safety she had felt, his arm around her back, her face pressed against the strange-smelling fabric of his jacket.
Now she was understanding what it meant. She understood that what she felt now was what she felt then.
