believe that men had not been killed, he scanned the survivors again, more carefully this time.
One of the forlorn groups of women was sitting in a loose circle and now he noticed a prostrate form, lying facedown. He rode closer and discovered the Owl Prophet family. The form at the center of their circle lay with arms and legs spread wide. The nose of its face was pressed squarely into the earth. It was Owl Prophet.
“Is he dead?' Smiles A Lot asked calmly.
Bird Woman turned her gaze to her husband and watched him awhile before looking once again at Smiles A Lot.
“He's meditating.”
“What happened?” Smiles A Lot demanded. “Where are the men?”
“They were gone.”
“Are any men here?”
Bird Woman glanced around aimlessly.
“Ten Bears is here. . I don't know where. He's alive.”
It was now too dark to see and Smiles A Lot rode about calling out the old man's name. A stirring in one of the shadowy groups drew his attention and a girl's mournful voice sent the word
Ten Bears was still being helped to his feet as Smiles A Lot slid off his pony.
“What has happened?” he gasped.
“White rangers,” Ten Bears replied. The old man was lucid as always, but he seemed winded, as if her were recovering from a blow to the stomach.
“Where are the men?”
“There were very few here. I was out of camp. And Owl Prophet.”
“How many people are dead?”
“Maybe half. I don't know how more did not die.”
At this Ten Bears visibly winced and Smiles A Lot leaned toward him.
“Do you have a wound?”
“No,” answered Ten Bears and he stared suddenly into his questioner's eyes with a look so pitiful that Smiles A Lot felt a startling, unfamiliar impulse to cry.
“Where did they go, the men?” Smiles A Lot asked.
“Kicking Bird took some people north to the Kiowa. There are white soldiers up there.”
“Yes, I saw them.”
“Wind In His Hair has a large party in the east, looking for scalps. Dances With Wolves is hunting in the west. . Do you have any food? Everyone is hungry.”
“It isn't much,” said Smiles A Lot, turning back to his pony. “I'll give you what I have.”
He pulled his little bag of jerked meat off the pony and, lifting the flap, offered its contents to Ten Bears. As the old man's hand disappeared into the bag other hands reached out of the darkness to join it and Smiles A Lot noticed that one of them belonged to Hunting For Something.
It had been a long time since he had turned his thoughts to her but the realization that she had survived threw open the door to his heart. The old feelings that rushed in were as intense as before, yet strangely different.
He still thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. The shape of her lips, the way she carried herself, the slender frame, the timbre of her voice — all these attributes and many more had retained their full power. But he viewed her differently now. Perhaps it was his experience at Medicine Bluff or perhaps it was the sobering effect of catastrophe. Whatever the reason might have been, the fact that something had changed inside Smiles A Lot was indisputable. He felt straighter, taller, stronger, self-contained, and at peace. The fat of his emotion had been miraculously pared away, and, if anything, he loved and admired her more deeply than before. However, this was no time to be lovesick.
“Are my mother and father here?” he asked Ten Bears.
The old man swallowed what he was chewing. “I think they are dead,” he said.
Smiles A Lot didn't gasp or cry. Ten Bears had confirmed what he already sensed, and though his heart sank with the knowledge that they were gone, loss was a part of life that every Comanche understood. As he stood over the crouching survivors, the sole sign of grief Smiles A Lot displayed was silence.
A small voice, made tinier by the stillness, spoke up.
“I'm here, brother.”
The voice belonged to Rabbit, the youngest of his brothers and sisters. Smiles A Lot bent at the waist and peered forward.
“Rabbit. . where are you?”
A little hand reached out of the darkness and Smiles A Lot took it. He dropped to one knee and placed a hand on each of Rabbit's this shoulders.
“How did you get away?”
“I hid in the grass like a coyote,” Rabbit said proudly. “The took Stands With A Fist. I saw the, They took that little girl, Stays Quiet, too.”
“But they didn't take you.”
“No, they couldn't see me. I disappeared.”
Smiles A Lot cupped a hand behind the boy's head and pulled his brother's cheek to his own.
“You did well, little brother.”
“Can I stay with you?”
“Yes,” Smiles A Lot answered, “you stay with me.”
Settling his other knee on the ground, he turned his attention back to Ten Bears.
“We should get away from here, Grandfather.”
“Yes,” the old man agreed, “everyone will be safe in the west. The canyons will hide us. But you will have to be the leader, Smiles A Lot. We have only you to help us.”
The boy who was good with horses spent the rest of a long night walking the killing ground, making a head count of the survivors, and found that remnants of almost every family survived.
Three women and two children had serious wounds, but Owl Prophet was still prone and likely would have remained there had Smiles A Lot not resorted to dousing him with a pot of cold water. The medicine man did what he could for the wounded but one of the women and one of the children passed into the shadow world before dawn.
When the sun finally came up Smiles A Lot forged what was left of the village into a force for action. Rabbit and the other boys were split into two groups: one to catch the remaining horses, the other to scour the surrounding prairie for small game. Rabbit's group succeeded in gathering seventeen horses and the other boys returned with six guinea fowl and almost a dozen wild hares, enough to give everyone in camp a few mouthfuls of food.
At the same time, Smiles A Lot put Hunting For Something in charge of her surviving peers and the girls scavenged the ruined camp for anything that could be salvaged to use on the trek west. The girls were successful, retrieving much useful material for the trip.
The rangers had not been as thorough as first appeared, and by noon Hunting For Something and her friends had collected almost twenty good lodge poles, a large pile of cooking utensils, enough buffalo hide to stitch together two lodges, and even a few weapons, including two working rifles that had somehow escaped attention.
By mid-afternoon the horses were loaded with what had been gleaned from the camp's ashes, several travois had been constructed for Ten Bears and the wounded, and they were ready to march out. Everyone was relieved to get away from the scene of so much pain.
Ten Bears lay on one side, rocking atop his movable bed, his gray head propped on an elbow. His chance escape from the hands of the rangers had already ceased to prey on his mind, and the ugliness of butchery and burning which resulted in the destruction of his community was beginning to recede. What would be referred to in the future as The Place Where The Rangers Burned Hearts was no longer a part of the present. Distance had diminished its impact enough to be guided toward memory as the long dark line on the horizon which marked the beginning of the canyonlands was sighted.
The simple act of moving had given purpose to people who had lost everything. Curiously, Ten Bears himself
