had stopped following Wind In His Hair when night fell but when he woke in the dark, hearing gunfire, he had jumped on his pony and sprinted toward the sound. Luckily, he had seen the white man and the Tonkawas before they had seen him and, guided by instinct he did not know he possessed, had strung an arrow and shot. From that moment all he remembered were images; the white man's rifle, the Tonkawa goading his horse, the battle cries of his friends, his pony squirming under him, his second arrow seeking its mark with a slowness that made him think he was dreaming.
Hears The Sunrise glanced at the two bodies in the grass, then stared at Smiles A Lot. That the boy who was good with horses had killed two of the enemy was indisputable, yet Hears The Sunrise still could not believe it.
'Where did you come from?' he asked gruffly, as he could not question what he had seen with his own eyes.
'I've been following you,' Smiles A Lot replied.
A sharp yell drew their attention, and in the distance they saw Iron Jacket and Hawk Flying celebrating the death of their enemy. Their knives flashed in the early morning light as the figures slashed and hacked at the body of the hated Tonkawa.
'Where is Wind In His Hair?' Smiles A Lot said dully.
Hears The Sunrise tossed his head curdy over a shoulder. “Back there.'
'I need to see him.'
'I'll take you,' Hears The Sunrise grunted, stepping over to the dead Tonkawa. He slipped a hand ax from his belt and spat on the body.
Then he struck the corpse, slicing deep into its side with the blade of his ax.
Smiles A Lot gazed down at the dead white man. He looked the body up and down, and, guided by the same impulse that had brought death to the scout, he drew his skinning knife from its scabbard.
Deep into the afternoon the lieutenant and his troops waited behind the breastworks they had dug in the dry streambed for an attack that never came. They were sure the Indians would come back, but in the baking heat and dead air nothing moved or made a sound for hours, and at three o'clock the lieutenant assembled a scouting party of a dozen men on the best remaining horses and sent them out. An hour later they returned to report they had seen and heard nothing. The Indians had disappeared.
The lieutenant decided, quite rightly, that he should form up his command and get them back to the post before they died of thirst. With half the bedraggled, demoralized command on foot they started the long, hot march home. Two men were dead, one more would die on the way, and the lieutenant, though he tried mightily, could think of nothing to include in his report that might reflect well on his actions.
What rankled him most, however, was something similar to what had irritated Lawrie Tatum. The lieutenant had ridden out to chastise and scatter a band of ignorant, primitive aborigines led by a wild man with one eye. It should have been no contest, but they had toyed with him. They had killed his men and stolen his horses and then slunk back into the wilderness, leaving him with nothing to report to his superiors but failure.
Chapter XX
Dances With Wolves was as surprised as anyone when the girl Hunting For Something and the boy Rabbit rode into his camp. They had come out of a night storm, drenched and exhausted, like castaways washed miraculously ashore, and the tale of survival they had to tell easily fulfilled the promise of their dramatic entrance.
From the moment he saw them, Dances With Wolves knew there had been a disaster, and as he listened numbly to the details of the devastation and its aftermath, he felt his soul altered in ways that could only be compared with the upheaval that marks the coming of death.
When the girl and boy were finished, he felt as if split in two. A part of him was still alive in the world, comforting his children, making preparations for a night march, and speculating on all that would need to be done to salvage what was left of his community.
The other part of him, separate and distinct from flesh and blood, was floating and rolling as helplessly as a corpse in the currents of an ever-changing river. Past and future had ceased and the present in which he dwelt was curiously inert, devoid of thought or feeling or expression.
It was as if he had ceased to walk on the ground, relegated instead to float, rudderless, in the space between earth and sky.
Outwardly, he manifested none of this. In the three days it took for Hunting For Something and Rabbit to guide them back to the spot where Ten Bears and the survivors were sequestered, he clung to the warrior's performance of everyday duties: laying out routes of travel, grasping every opportunity to take game, helping other families with their loads, watching over his children, and maintaining a constant vigil for signs of enemies.
But, inwardly, Dances With Wolves no longer knew where he was. His disorientation was so complete that he himself could not describe it. The only evidence of his spiritual disengagement was a profound stoicism that gripped him and had even spread to his children. There was a dullness in their eyes, as if something vital inside had been extinguished, and while the three family members walked and talked like anyone else, they had become shadow people, people who neither came nor went, who stayed in one place no matter what they said or did.
There was much to do in the name of survival, and on reuniting with Ten Bears and the others who had escaped the attack, Dances With Wolves and his party of hunters threw themselves into the task of resurrecting what remained of their people. Though the hunters' packhorses were loaded with meat and untanned robes, there was not enough game to sustain them and the first order of business was to effect a move.
A day later they climbed onto the plains, secure in the knowledge that the practiced eyes of Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair would be able to follow the tail. With so few horses most people were traveling on foot, but after two days of marching they reached a well-watered spot they had camped in before. Each heart was lifted by the presence of buffalo, whose sign was heavy and fresh in every direction.
There was no time to mount a long trek to the shining mountains for aspen but they were fortunate to find thick copses of cottonwood and elm within a few miles that yielded enough young trees to provide the framework for new lodges. Women and girls worked day and night, rubbing hides until every muscle ached, to provide the needed coverings, and in a few days' time a new village was rising on the plains.
The buffalo were found in such great numbers that at first glance it might have seemed like the old days, when all a man had to do was ride a few miles from his lodge to make meat. However, the animals to which the people of the plains owed their existence behaved oddly, as if they too had been scattered, but the bounty that flowed into the new village had the effect of a life-giving infusion, and by the time Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair came in, both arriving on the same day, the village was remarkably well-established.
A week later, any prairie wanderer who happened by would have observed a strong Comanche village, perhaps a little shorter on horses than most, but well supplied with food and water, and a bustling population.
But if the same traveler had been able to scratch through the veneer of the picture Ten Bears' restored village presented, he would have found the wreckage of what had once been a tight-knit society. The imaginary passerby would not have failed, upon closer inspection, to be struck by the spiritual fractures that divided the Comanches.
Preoccupied with rebuilding the community and maintaining life, the members of Ten Bears' village did not actively grapple with the weighty issues that had rent their hearts, at least not at first.
When he thought about what the future might bring, Ten Bears now found every avenue he might take barricaded by the obstacle of old age. Through his long reign as a headman he had never sought war. In fact, he had unfailingly counseled against its ravages. But now, with so many winters behind him, his influence in such matters barely existed.
He felt as impotent on the subject of peace. If a roving band of rangers could inflict such carnage on Comanches, what would happen if hair-mouth soldiers flooded the plains with the far-shooting guns that rolled on wheels? The Comanche and all they knew would be reduced to dust so fine that it could only be seen in a shaft of light before it settled on the earth.
