with some salutation inquiring about the health of his manhood or with mock shock at seeing him out of bed. Wind In His Hair even tried to saddle him with the nickname One Bee, an allusion to his never-ending pollination of a single flower, but fortunately for the new husband, the name didn’t stick.
Dances With Wolves let the kidding slide off his back. Having the woman he wanted made him feel invincible, and nothing could harm him.
What there was of life outside the lodge was deeply satisfying. He went hunting every day, almost always with Wind In His Hair and Stone Calf. The three had become great pals, and it was rare to see one going out without the others.
The talks with Kicking Bird continued. They were fluent now and the subjects unlimited. Dances With Wolves’s appetite for learning far exceeded that of Kicking Bird’s, and the medicine man discoursed widely on everything from tribal history to herbal healing. He was greatly encouraged by the keen interest his pupil showed for spiritualism, and indulged that appetite gladly.
The Comanche religion was simple, based as it was on the natural environment of the animals and elements that surrounded them. The practice of the religion was complex, however. It was rife with ritual and taboo, and covering this subject alone kept the men busy.
His new life was richer than ever, and it showed in the way Dances With Wolves carried himself. Without dramatics he was losing his naivete but not surrendering his charm. He was becoming more manly without abandoning his spark, and he was settling smoothly into his role as a cog without losing the stamp of his distinct personality.
Kicking Bird, always attuned to the soul of things, was immensely proud of his protege, and one evening, at the end of an after-dinner stroll, he placed a hand on Dances With Wolves’s shoulder and said:
“There are many trails in this life, but the one that matters most, few men are able to walk . . . even Comanche men. It is the trail of a true human being. I think you are on this trail. It is a good thing for me to see. It is good for my heart.”
Dances With Wolves memorized these words as they were said and treasured them always. But he told no one, not even Stands With A Fist. He made them part of his private medicine.
They were only a few days away from the big move when Kicking Bird came by one morning and said he was going to take a ride to a special place. The round trip would take all day and perhaps part of the night, but if Dances With Wolves wanted to go, he would be welcome.
They cut through the heart of the prairie, riding in a southeasterly direction for several hours. The enormity of the space they’d invaded was humbling, and neither man did much talking.
Close to midday, they turned due south, and in an hour’s time, the ponies were standing at the top of a long slope which fell away for a mile until it reached the river.
They could see the color and shape of the water far to the east and west. But in front of them, the river had disappeared.
It was screened by a mammoth forest.
Dances With Wolves blinked several times, as if trying to solve a mirage. From this distance, it was hard to judge exact heights, but he knew that the trees were high. Some of them must be sixty or seventy feet.
The grove extended downriver for the better part of a mile, the hugeness of it contrasting wildly with the flat, empty country on all sides. It was like the fanciful creation of some mysterious spirit.
“Is this place real?” he said, half joking.
Kicking Bird smiled.
“Perhaps not. It is a sacred place to us . . . even to some of our enemies. It is said that from here the game renews itself. The trees shelter every animal the Great Spirit has made. It is said they hatched here when life began and constantly return to the place of their birth. I have not been here for a long time. We will water the horses and have a look.”
As they came closer, the specter of the woods became more powerful, and on starting into the forest, Dances With Wolves felt small. He thought of the Garden of Eden.
But as the trees closed around them, both men sensed that something was wrong.
There was no sound.
“It’s quiet,” Dances With Wolves observed.
Kicking Bird didn’t reply. He was listening and watching with the single-mindedness of a cat.
The silence was suffocating as they pressed deeper into the woods, and Dances With Wolves realized with a shiver that only one thing could make this vacuum of sound. He was smelling its aroma. The taste of it was on the tip of his tongue.
Death was in the air.
Kicking Bird pulled up suddenly. The path had widened, and as Dances With Wolves looked over his mentor’s shoulder, he was staggered by the beauty of what he saw.
There was open ground ahead of them. The trees were spaced at intervals, allowing enough room between to house all the lodges and people and horses of Ten Bears’s camp. Sunlight poured onto the forest’s floor in great, warming splotches.
He could envision a fantastic utopia, peopled with a holy race leading tranquil lives in concert with all living things.
The hand of man could make nothing to rival the scope and beauty of this open-air cathedral.
The hand of man, however, could destroy it. The proof was already here.
The place had been horribly desecrated.
Trees of all sizes lay where they had been felled, some of them lying one over the other, like toothpicks scattered upon a tabletop. Most of them had not been shorn of their branches, and he could not imagine for what purpose they had been cut.
They started their ponies forward, and as they did, Dances With Wolves was aware of an eerie buzzing sound.
At first, thinking that bees or wasps were swarming, he scanned the branches overhead, trying to locate the insects’ nest.
But as they moved toward the center of the cathedral, he realized the noise was not coming from above. It was coming from below. And it was being made by the wing beats of uncounted thousands of feasting flies.
Everywhere he looked the ground held bodies, or pieces of bodies. There were small animals, badgers and skunks and squirrels. Most of these were intact. Some were missing their tails. They lay rotting where they had been shot, for no apparent reason other than target practice.
The primary objects of the genocide were deer that sprawled all around him. A few of the bodies were whole, minus only the prime cuts. Most were mutilated.
Dull, dead eyes stared up at him from the exquisite heads that had been chopped off raggedly at the neck. Some of them sat singly on the floor of the forest. Others had been tossed together haphazardly in piles as big as half a dozen.
In one spot, the severed heads had been arranged nose to nose, as if they were having a conversation. It was supposed to be humorous.
The legs were even more grotesque. They, too, had been chopped clear of the bodies they once transported. Slow to decay, they looked bright and beautiful, as if they were still in good working order.
But it was sad: the delicate, cloven hooves and the graceful, fur-coated legs . . . leading to nowhere. The limbs were stacked in little bunches, like firewood, and if he had bothered, the count would have exceeded one hundred.
The men were tired from the long ride, but neither made any move to get off his horse. They continued to ride.
A low spot in the great clearing revealed four decrepit shanties sitting side by side, four ugly sores festering on the forest floor.
The men who had cut down so many trees had apparently seen their ambition as builders run out. But even if they had applied themselves, the result would likely have been the same. The dwellings they’d managed to put up
