containers which they probably hoped to fill with sweet plums or berries. The great man himself was trailing along behind, a utility bag on his shoulder and a look of mortification on his face. At any other time the image of Owl Prophet's wives prevailing on him to join the ignominious trek might have made Dances With Wolves laugh out loud, but today it did no more than remind him of his own unhappy circumstances, and he rode on without giving the plight of the prophet a second thought.
Alone in her lodge, Stands With A Fist brooded, wondering if she might have been too hard on her husband. No conclusion could be reached. Her every thought was riddled with emotion and it took all her mental strength to keep from giving in to the temptation of tears. Tears seemed to be the best way to wash everything clean. But she couldn't let herself go.
When she noticed the pony her husband had left tied outside, she briefly thought how easy it would be to jump on with Stays Quiet and catch up with the rest of her family. But she couldn't do that, either.
Everything was pulling her in different directions, and for the moment something so small as putting one foot in front of the other seemed to take more energy than she could command. Stands With A Fist could look forward to the afternoon of that particular day only because she knew that night and the careless release of sleep would follow.
Ten Bears knew nothing of the squabbling between the unhappy couple who lived in the set-apart lodge, yet he felt something of the same torpor that Stands With A Fist was experiencing. He had seen Dances With Wolves ride out with the hunters late that morning, and when they were clear of camp a strange, inexplicable silence had fallen over the village. It was as if the whole community had been emptied. Only a handful of men remained behind, and most of them were, like himself, old
and infirm. There were many women and children, of course, but their presence seemed suddenly invisible.
No one was carrying water or gathering wood. No one seemed to be working outside. Day had turned to night. Everyone had melted into their homes.
Ten Bears went back into his lodge and lit his pipe and thought about what could be wrong. It wasn't that all the men were gone, he decided. It was the way they went, drawn out in different directions, for different reasons. The splintering of his people was becoming visible, and the more he thought about it the more Ten Bears felt his dread confirmed. The threat of the whites, still so far away, was dividing the people already. And there was nothing he could do about it.
These thoughts were so disturbing to Ten Bears that he had to get up and out. He loved his routine, especially the daily arrival of Hunting For Something, but he decided to deviate. He needed distance and fresh air and sunlight and solitude. Without these things he could imagine himself starting a slow turn to dust.
Shaking with desperation, the old man struggled to his feet, grabbed hold of his stick, and started out of camp, his eyes stuck on the horizon, determined to walk out as far as his withered legs would carry him.
When Hunting For Something came around in early afternoon with her bowl of pemmican and found her grandfather not a home, she too decided to make a change. All morning she had felt uneasy. The village didn't seem like home to her. No one wanted to talk. No one wanted to do anything, not even work. Everyone was going through the motions of living. It made her feel sticky, like she needed to bathe.
She had counted on seeing her grandfather. Standing alone in the deadness of his uninhabited lodge, the girl was seized with a rash impulse. She couldn't say why but she had to do something she had never done before. She had to look for him. She had to find him.
She located him at mid-afternoon. He was reclining against the exposed roots of an ancient sycamore, his legs spread out on the flat, sandy bank of a slow-running stream.
His eyes fluttered when he heard her whisper, 'Grandfather!' and
before he could make a move she was curled against his side, pressing urgently against his bony chest.
“What is it?'
'I had to find you, Grandfather. I thought I might die if I didn't.”
'Why, girl, what's wrong?'
'I got frightened. I don't know why. I wanted to be with you.”
Ten Bears pulled her close and stroked her soothingly.
'You're not going to die.”
'Not if I'm with you. Can I stay with you?”
Ten Bears smiled at the thought of her needing him. It made him feel good all over.
“You stay with Ten Bears,' he said. “Stay as long as you want. No one will bother us.'
The old man and the girl, so widely separated by age and experience, achieved the peace that had seemed so out of reach in the simple act of clutching one another on the banks of the unspoiled stream. Ten Bears released his own restlessness, and Hunting For Something felt her sudden bout of anxiety take flight.
Chapter XV
The line of riders, thirty-six well-armed men, had been on the trail for several days. Not one of them, not even their leader, knew exactly where they were. No one had ever hunted this deep in Comanche country before, and having come this far, they found their thirst for retribution growing stronger with every mile that fell behind them. All were united in a single, common desire — to make the earth run red with the blood of those that had retarded the taming of the frontier for decades. They had answered the call of their kinsmen, the confederation of merchants and ranchers and farmers who lived in a long string of settlements along the eastern edge of the Comanche barrier.
Each man in the band of rangers had lived wildly imperfect lives, and even a cursory review of their backgrounds would have led one to the conclusion that they were an unsavory group. Some had operated outside the law when it was convenient, some were shackled with impoverished intellects, some were ruled by homicidal instinct, and some, like their leader, a gaunt, black-bearded man who occasionally preached damnation in stark, airless structures when the Sabbath came around, were guided by visions of mass adulation.
But who they were, where they came from, and how they lived did not describe them as clearly as what had brought them together. Each had stepped forward when the civilization that spawned them offered a free and clear license to kill.
In idleness the thirty-six men might easily have been at the throats of each other. The seemingly limitless stock of liquor most of them had swilled from the outset of their journey would have spurred offhand insults or tangled misunderstandings, setting the murderous natures of some free to rampage. But the simple purpose of their mission kept them focused on the potential prey awaiting them farther out on the prairie. Though the majority passed each day in an alcoholic haze, there was no quarreling and no violence in their ranks.
On the trail they stayed attuned to every variation in the country they passed over, ever-watchful for a glimpse of their quarry and the chance to chase and kill it.
When they made camp for the night they were careful to throw out a perimeter, keep their cookfires small, and speak in low tones, no matter how often they tugged at the ever-present bottles. Even their conversations, bound to be rancorous and abrasive in the more civilized setting of an established drinking place, were free of conflict. The tales they shared as they ate their dinners and smoked their pipes and kept their weapons clean followed, with few exceptions the wealth of each man's experience on the subject of gore.
Stories of men staggering about with entrails in their hands, shattered bone jutting from sheaths of skin, cleaved heads that afforded close-up views of the fissured brains inside, blood spurting in jets from severed arteries, limbs dangling by the slender thread of tendons, exploding faces, holes as big as melons, whimpering pleas for mercy — any anecdote remotely related to the carnage they loved to inflict was discussed with boundless relish and good humor.
The singular pursuit of slaughter in every imaginable form was at the forefront of every ranger's mind, and its careful cultivation, over days of searching, culminated in the discovery of a good-sized village.
One of the flankers had glimpsed the tops of the lodges as he passed a thick stand of elm situated not more
