seen enough. He slipped around the counter, walked up to Dances With Wolves, and stopped.
'Help you?'
Dances With Wolves slowly turned his head and stared down into the storekeeper's eyes. He could see the words in his head but was fearful that his tongue would not know what to do. When he spoke, his voice seemed to come not from his throat but from someplace deeper, and the flat, ominous sound of it sent a shudder up the merchant's spine.
'Need clothes.'
For a moment the red-bearded man could not find his own voice, and when he did the words came out tangled.
'Clothes. . uh. . yes. . clothes for whom?'
Dances With Wolves had not taken his eyes off the white man.
'Boy,' he said slowly. The word was so weighted that it seemed suspended in the air between the two men. 'And girl.'
Having never encountered a man like this, the merchant stood transfixed, as if hypnotized, his urge to turn away overridden by the stranger's spell.
'A boy and a girl,' he repeated mechanically. 'How old?'
Dances With Wolves shifted his view from the corpulent man to the empty space in front of his face. He had not thought of numbers. He searched frantically now for the memory of them and how they might work, but his mind remained blank.
After a few seconds he looked down at the storekeeper again and raised a flat hand level with his ribs.
'Boy,” he intoned, 'like this.' He lowered the hand to a spot just above his waist. 'Girl, like this.'
With trembling hands, the shopkeeper pawed through the stock and succeeded in picking out a woolen shirt and trousers and a light plaid dress that Dances With Wolves found acceptable.
Hugging the garments to his chest, the confounded shopkeeper hurried around his counter, quickly ripped a length of wrapping paper, and folded it over the clothes. Ashe was binding the packet with twine he glanced up to see Dances With Wolves advancing toward him. The customer's eyes were devoid of all expression yet relentless and, in an instant of horror, the shopkeeper imagined himself a deer paralyzed at the closing of a panther.
Somehow managing a knot, he slid the package toward this other-worldly figure and smacked his lips, trying to get some moisture into his mouth. Though the day was clear and unseasonably cool, beads of sweat had broken out on the fat man's face.
'Ah, let's say. . three dollars.'
Dances With Wolves let his eyes slide down to the pocket that held the paper money. Using one hand to hold it open, he slid the other in and drew out the rolled bills. He could not remember what three looked like but hoped it would come to him as he deliberately peeled a bill away and placed it on the counter.
Once again he lifted his menacing gaze, hoping to find a clue in the red-bearded man's face, but all he saw was a widening of his eyes.
'More. .,' the merchant whispered, 'please.'
Dances With Wolves unrolled another bill and slowly placed it next to the one already lying on the counter.
The shopkeeper was gripped with the notion that the stranger's eyes were looking through him. The man across the counter was staring with the unmistakably quiet, potentially lethal, expression of a wolf.
The merchant's heart began to pound audibly in his chest. His breathing became rapid.
'Mister,' he gasped, 'where are you from?'
Dances With Wolves blinked calmly and the shopkeeper recoiled at the heavy, mystifying words that marched out of his mouth.
'Far. . away.'
His mouth agape, the perspiring storekeeper, certain that he was in the presence of something he could not understand, lurched backward, only to find his progress halted by the solid wall behind him.
He bobbed his head at the packet on the counter and tried to cry out but the words came in an urgent hush.
'Take it. . I give it to you for nothing. . take it. . take it!'
Dances With Wolves' serene and deadly gaze fell on the packet, then rose once more to the terrified man behind the counter. The storekeeper's hands now held the shelving at his side in a death grip.
'Take it,' he gasped again. 'Nothing. . you owe me nothing.'
Dances With Wolves ran a couple of fingers through the twine, hoisted the parcel, and turned for the door. A few steps later he passed outside and his image disappeared in an explosion of blinding, morning light.
Pressed against the wall, in the throes of apoplexy, the shaken storekeeper struggled a few moments to recover. Then he hurried to the door, locked it and pulled the shade, then staggered for the sanctuary of his back room and the earthen jug of spirits he kept there. He was fully inebriated before noon, by which time Dances With Wolves and his newly outfitted children were on their way to the next settlement.
For more than a week they searched with no success. Unable to make inquiries without giving himself away, Dances With Wolves clung to the thin hope that he might catch sight of her. He talked to a few white people as they wandered from town to town, and his fluency in English improved. But as one futile day ran into the next, he despaired more and more.
At the same time the oddness of the dark-skinned man with the two shoeless, speechless children elicited notice wherever they went. It seemed only a matter of time before they would be found out, for no day could be completed without a near-disaster of one sort or another.
They tried to take their breakfast in a crowded eating place, but when a piece of beefsteak hit his palate for the first time, Snake In Hands spat it onto the floor and cried out in clear, concise Comanche, 'It tastes awful, Father!'
Because Always Walking could not be deterred from defecating in public any time she felt the urge, Dances With Wolves was often accosted by irate citizens who demanded that he control his child.
On one hot morning, they had just entered a sizable village of several hundred souls when, drawn to the commotion of women screeching on a boardwalk, they saw a large rattlesnake, obviously in flight, slithering along a crease where the ground met the walkway. Townsmen were racing from several directions to aid the screaming women, but before Dances With Wolves could react, Snake In Hands had scissored off his pony, and, arriving first in the vicinity of the big snake, startled everyone in view by reaching down and deftly picking the serpent up by its tail. Then, with no more care than a boy might take to shuck an ear of corn, he pinched the snake's head between the fingers of his other hand, coiled it twice around his neck, and, cradling the reptile, pulled himself back into the saddle.
Snake In Hands was so intent on calming the snake with soft strokes along its back that he didn't realize the impact of his simple act until his father nudged him to attention and motioned for him to start moving. It was only then that Snake In Hands discovered that the handful of white people around him had ceased all activity.
Rattlesnakes were universally thought of as deadly pests, to be eradicated wherever they might be found, and the sight of a mere boy picking one up and fondling it in a way usually reserved for a favorite pet had produced looks of confused wonder on those who were watching. It also produced a quick exit from the vicinity for the odd trio.
The white man money was quickly used up and they had been surviving on a dreary diet of rabbits, squirrels, and other small game for several days when they reached the outskirts of a large settlement called Vernon.
Like his children, Dances With Wolves had grown weary of a search that seemed more implausible with each day's passing. He was tired of reminding his son and daughter not to behave in the way they were raised. He was sick of white man clothes, white man talk, squalid white man towns, ugly white man roads, and gameless white man country. Most of all he was sick of pretending. It made him feel dirty, and after repeating the distasteful chore of cautioning the children once again, he led them into Vernon with the thought that if they did not find Stands With A Fist in this place, they would turn for home and be done with it.
The outskirts of the town were strangely devoid of life, as were its main street and the mismatched collection of structures that fronted it. They were halfway down the muddy thoroughfare and had not seen a single resident when Dances With Wolves spied a large congregation massed at the far end of town. He halted his pony and listened to the faint hum of voices in the distance. Something special enough to interrupt routine life was happening
