you can take my advice or not, that's up to you. But if you don't take it, I've got a warning for you. Soon as I leave you, I'm sending word to the law in Jacksboro to look out for a man traveling with two kids. You go down there, you'll find nothing but trouble.'
Gathering up his reins, the constable made a little shooing motion at Dances With Wolves and his children.
'You get movin' now. Good luck to ya!''
Dances With Wolves moved forward obediently and the constable turned back down the road to Vernon.
When they were out of earshot, Snake In Hands and Always Walking brought their ponies even with their father's.
“What is happening?' the boy asked. 'What did that white man say?'
Dances With Wolves glanced back down the road to Vernon. The constable was nearly out of sight.
'I don't know. I think he was confused. He seems to think we want to find your mother and hurt her.'
The children looked at him in shock for a few seconds, and then, for the first time in recent memory, smiles broke over their faces.
'Why does he think that?' asked Always Walking.
“I don't know,' Dances With Wolves replied.
'He was mixed up.' Snake In Hands laughed. 'Are all white people mixed up like that, Father?'
'Maybe.'
Always Walking's round blue eyes looked up hopefully at Dances With Wolves
'Do you know where mother is now?'
'She is in a place called Jacksboro,'
'Are we going there?'
'As soon as we meet someone who can tell us the way.'
'How can white people get along being so mixed up?” Snake Hands wondered aloud.
'I don't know,' Dances With Wolves said.
'Is that what makes them so dangerous?'
'I don't know white people anymore,' Dances With Wolves explained, 'but I think the answer to your question is yes.'
Chapter XXXII
A chord was struck that reverberated up and down the southern plains like the tolling of a great invisible bell, free village on the prairie failed to heed Kicking Bird's call.
The Cheyenne under Wolf Robe, the Arapaho under Young Dog, and the Kiowa under Touch The Clouds and White Bear and hundreds of other proven warriors fired with the prospect of taking up arms against the clearest threat to their existence eagerly answered the summons.
The war party swept north, constantly gaining strength through the addition of roving warriors and, as almost a thousand fighting men approached the hunting grounds white hunters had entered with complete indifference to all but their own ambition, they moved like a deadly wind that sent everything in its path rushing for cover. In sheer size the body of defenders far surpassed what anyone had experienced and presented a front of unity that few could have conceived.
Owing to the necessity of obtaining food for themselves and forage for their ponies, the party did not travel en masse but in several sections. They stayed in touch through the use of runners, who reported the smallest development with an urgency that fully reflected the significance of having more warriors in the field than could be counted.
Even Owl Prophet was caught up in the thrill of a gathering of such historic proportion. With Kicking Bird's call to arms he had sensed an instantaneous change in the atmosphere and, as warriors streamed into Ten Bears' village by the hundreds, he found himself unable to think of anything but driving the whites out of the buffalo country.
Knowing his advice would be solicited, the prophet withdrew to his mysterious lodge while the warriors made frenzied preparations to march north. When all was ready, they converged on Owl Prophet's lodge and were amazed once again at the spirited, unknowable babble that comprised the conversation of the prophet and his owl.
When the now familiar silhouettes fell away, the spent prophet, running with sweat, staggered from his lodge with upraised arms.
'The Mystery has told of the skunks!' he screamed. 'They are not to be harmed. If this is done, the whites will be driven out!'
The warriors, euphoric with the promise of success, surged in around the prophet, while he, collapsing into their arms, cried out as if it were his last breath.
'Owl Prophet will ride with you. . die with you!'
The Comanche seer proved as good as his word, riding with Kicking Bird at the head of a large contingent of warriors from Ten Bears' village that also included Wind In His Hair and his Hard Shields.
The one-eyed warrior had been one of the first to volunteer his services, ducking into the special lodge shortly after the crier had begun to trot through the village with Kicking Bird's proposal.
'Wind In His Hair and all the Hard Shields will ride with you,' he had declared.
'You make my heart good,' Kicking Bird had replied.
Since then the two rivals had barely spoken. But there was no lingering trace of the divisions that separated them. All animosity lay buried deep beneath the common cause that had brought them together at the behest of a man who seemed to have changed his skin.
From the moment they set out, Kicking Bird, resplendent in battle dress, led with the cool, unhesitating hand of a veteran general. It was he who had designed the novel line of march that would bring the various discrete elements of his force together again at the edge of the hunting grounds. It was he who had counseled. secrecy, night rides, small fires, and evasion instead of engagement if white soldiers were encountered. It sages every few hours between himself and the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa. And it was Kicking Bird himself who had declared that the war party would stay out until the country was cleared, no matter how long it took.
Shortly after the great force rendezvoused, on a day when the plains that spread before them were spotted with the shifting shadows of the cloud world, Kicking Bird lifted a hand and a thousand fighting men halted their ponies.
A group of four scouts were flying toward them from the north. The great party watched as the scouts grew larger; each warrior aware that the speed at which the scouts were traveling meant that they bore urgent news. Something had happened.
A Comanche named Blue Turtle leapt from his pony and dashed up to Kicking Bird, gasping for breath.
'On the earth ahead. . the ground is covered with dark bumps. Some are streaked with pink.'
'What are these bumps? '
'We didn't go close enough to see them. Maybe they are dead buffalo —”
'Many?' grunted Kicking Bird.
Blue Turtle nodded, then turned his head away as he spoke.
'Yes,' he said, 'many.'
Blue Turtle had averted his eyes because he was not certain he could trust what he had seen. He could not believe what his mind said his eyes had found on the prairie. The scale of it was too enormous, and even as he made his report to Kicking Bird, Blue Turtle still wondered if he might be hallucinating.
An hour and a half later when the army of confederated warriors reached the place Blue Turtle had described, there was no man among them who did not feel as if he were in the throes of dementia. Most of them had seen the work of white hunters before, but this was beyond conception.
Ahead, in a country of unbroken plain, the dead lay in uncountable numbers. As far as the human eye could
