Chapter XXVI
The valley was long and flat, broken occasionally by oak trees in various stages of growth and a few stunted mesquites. It was covered with tawny grass a few inches high. Etched along its center were the twin depressions set close together that indicated a white man road. Scouts had crept down the night the main war party reached the area and, after close inspection, pronounced the road frequently and heavily used.
Hills rose like shoulders on each side of the valley and it was on the westernmost of these, on the upper slopes overgrown with ash and scrub oak and sumac, that the great party of Comanche and Kiowa warriors awaited their prey.
Just after sunrise, scouts had come in from the east to report that white men had taken the road and were coming their way. A council was immediately convened. The admonitions of Owl Prophet were remembered and it was decided that the,very small party of soldiers and one wagon would be allowed to pass unmolested, while a fresh group of scouts was sent east once again with orders to look for the next white people that might be coming along.
The whites who had been spotted, though they were to be granted life, would be passing very close, and this prospect of proximity to the enemy stirred the warriors. All of them, trained from birth to risk their lives in battle, were aware of the end of existence, and for some the moments they were living now would be their last.
Who might fall could not be known, but it was likely that some of the younger men would not come home. Young men were often foolish. They wanted honors and they wanted to impress young women. They weren't afraid of death, but few, if any, thought they would be killed. They were teenagers who had ridden on few raids and the finality of life was an abstract idea to them. Youth had ordained them bulletproof.
Yet in each there was a mysterious trembling that often led them into peril. The trembling made for an odd sort of giddiness that none was able to confront. They had to ignore the fear rattling up and down their bodies, because those who paid fear too much attention were sure to die. Every boy marshaled his fighting spirit in hope that he might survive.
For men like Wind In His Hair and Iron Jacket and White Bear, men who had fought the enemy a hundred times and survived, the emotions were much the same, though years of combat in every imaginable circumstance had reduced the mysterious trembling they felt before battle to a barely perceptible palpitation. Experience had taught them that the death they courted with every engagement was a thing so sudden and random that to fear it was an unaffordable indulgence.
The responsibilities of people like Left Hand and Whirlwind and Hears The Sunrise and Little Raven, distinguished warriors who had lived to see middle age, left no room for contemplating mortality. They would be charged with seeing to the execution of strategies, to rallying young men at decisive moments, and to fighting a delaying action in the event of a retreat.
At mid-morning the little covered wagon with a red cross first came into view. Half a dozen mounted soldiers were escorting the wagon and it was only through the repeated admonitions of leading warriors that the young men were held in check.
Still, it was something of a miracle that the temptation of the single wagon and its insignificant escort was avoided. All the white men would have died within minutes and in less time than it takes to skin a rabbit their scalps would have been waving from the coupsticks and lances of warriors. But the whites passed in full view, the creak of wheels, the snorting of horses and casual human utterances all clearly heard in the self imposed silence along the wooded slopes of the hill.
When the slow-moving prize finally disappeared from sight a scout from the east pounded in with the exciting news that a second group of white men, the group Owl Prophet said they would be successful in attacking, had taken the road.
Perhaps twenty white soldiers were in the lead, followed by a dozen big wagons driven by hair-mouths. Each wagon was filled with yellow cargoes of corn and in the rear a herd of fifteen good horses was being tended by only three blue-coated soldiers.
Wind In His Hair, White Bear, and a dozen others quickly devised a simple plan for attacking the enemy. The small horse herd in the rear would be hit first as a ruse to lure the main body of soldiers. Most likely they would give chase to the handful of warriors trying to drive off their animals. Once the soldiers had cleared the line of wagons, Wind In His Hair and a large contingent of warriors would swoop down, cutting them off from the corn train, leaving it vulnerable to an overwhelming assault from White Bear and the remaining fighters.
There was no talk of anything going wrong. Neither Wind In His Hair nor White Bear had ever gone into battle wondering what might go wrong. Both men had known bad feelings before riding against an enemy in an ill-advised fight, but there was nothing of that kind in the backs of their minds on this day. They were supreme warriors of unexcelled bravery, and once the plan of attack had been struck, both gave full rein to the innate instincts, polished fine with time, that had carried them so far in life.
Immediately after the council broke up, the hillside that hid the warriors became active as a hive as final preparations were made. Those not in mourning touched up or reapplied the paint they had chosen for themselves and their ponies. Everyone stripped to breechclouts and moccasins to afford maximum freedom of movement. Hair was oiled and heads were adorned with the proper number of feathers set at the proper angle. Scalplocks and the amulets braided into them, a grizzly claw taken in an individual encounter, the talons of a hawk snatched bare- handed from the sky, the canine tooth of a wolf who had entered a lodge-all these charms were fingered repeatedly to make sure they were secure. Warhorses were charged back and forth, made to back up, spun in circles, and guided in all directions to assure the riders who would shortly risk their lives that their animals were sound.
In some cases, horses were switched. Late additions or deletions were made to accoutrements. Lances were changed from one hand to the other. Primary weapons were shuffled, and last-minute changes were made in the fighting units as men jumped from group to group according to the power of intuition.
Dances With Wolves was thankful his intuition had been silent, because he did not want to make any changes. The men under White Bear were all Kiowa but his wish to ride with them had been granted. The wagon drivers presented an easy chance for scalps, but everyone understood that the light-skinned Comanche was after something other than scalps, something only the drivers could provide.
Unfortunately, the arrangement did little to help him apply the single-mindedness so vital to fighting, and even as he smeared blue paint on Smiles A Lot's chest and back, doing his best to create the semblance of an owl, Dances With Wolves struggled to keep his mind from racing off elsewhere.
It was hard to think of killing the enemy while a higher mission consumed him. Added to that was the ever- present distraction of the children who had so disobediently followed him. The anger he first felt at the enormous complication of their presence had subsided but he still felt pangs of irritation at having to constantly consider their welfare, making certain at the same time that nothing he did for his children would compromise the war party. Even in the chaos of going to war, he could not help glancing up the slope for a glimpse of them through the trees where they were helping a handful of older boys watch the reserve horses.
Dances With Wolves agreed with his brothers in arms. It was no good to have a woman — much less a little girl and her nine-year-old brother — with a war party. But everyone also agreed that nothing could be done under the circumstances and they had been permitted to stay with the tacit understanding that Dances With Wolves would be responsible for keeping them out of the way. So instead of singing a silent mantra of courage he was looking up the hill for them every few minutes, or shuddering at the prospect of failing to get his wife and daughter back, or wondering if he was going to die in battle and make it all moot.
Miraculously, these trepidations vanished as three returning scouts were suddenly sighted. The riders flew up the valley at a full run, quirting their lathered horses up the slope, and announced excitedly that the enemy, still unaware of their presence, was just behind them. The war party erupted in a near-soundless frenzy of action as a hundred men swung onto their ponies and galloped in different directions to join their respective groups.
As he leapt onto his pony, Dances With Wolves caught a last glimpse of Smiles A Lot, the azure outline of an owl standing out against the red that coated his legs, torso, and face as he hurriedly guided his pony through the
