steeped in shadow on the other side.
At times Smiles A Lot wished fervently that she had never looked at him because all the difficulties of his life were nothing compared to the fix he was in now.
And what if she looked at him again? What if they talked? What if they touched? The obstacles that lay beyond were insurmountable. Her father, Horned Antelope, was the son of Ten Bears and a Hard Shield. Smiles A Lot's father was a craftsman, a master of bow-making, but nothing else. Matches like that were not made.
It was terrible to be stuck. It seemed to take all the power he possessed to get up each day, to walk and talk and sleep. He was a fluttering piece of chaff whose every motion was under the absolute control of a momentary meeting with the eyes of a girl.
Yet there was a strength coming out of it, a hardening in Smiles A Lot he had never felt before. He possessed the heart of a dreamer and the sanctity of dreaming was something to be protected. At his darkest moment, the lonely, desperate heart that beat inside him grew suddenly large and powerful at the thought of defending his dream. In a strange way it didn't matter if they never spoke or touched. She was already in him. A dream of blinding, beautiful purity was buried in his heart. No one could take it away. He didn't care about Wind In His Hair's scalp or the coming of the whites. He didn't care if the earth yawned one morning and swallowed the whole village, for he knew that as he drifted down,
spiraling head over heels into the void, he would be encased in the cocoon of her being. . of the girl called Hunting For Something.
Chapter VII
All communities are susceptible to exotic influences, and this was true of Ten Bears' village. Kicking Bird's deviation into the wider stream of political life had created a vacancy in the spiritual life of the band which was now occupied by the secretive, mysterious man known as Owl Prophet.
In many ways he was as traditional as any Comanche. He was happily married, the father of two likeable daughters. He practiced the medicine of healing and curing with better than average results, steadily building a lucrative practice that largely freed him from the time-consuming labor of the hunt and the inherent dangers of raiding.
But Owl Prophet's true specialty was not medicine. Medicine was but a sidelight to his true calling of prophecy and Owl Prophet conjured the future with a magic so dazzling that he was able at times to hold the entire village in sway.
He operated out of a lodge adjacent to his family's. No one knew what went on inside, because no one had ever entered. In fact, the power that resided within was so daunting that it stifled the natural curiosity of children. Not one among them brave enough or foolhardy enough to lift the flap of Owl Prophet's lodge and peek inside. What prayers he softly chanted, what charms he maintained, what spells he concocted were known only to him. Since childhood he had been the most inscrutable member of Ten Bears' band and the mystery about him only deepened as more and more of his predictions came true.
Everyone knew about the owl. It was the one object inside the special lodge that people had seen, and its rare appearances were not to be missed because his most spectacular forecasts had come after publicly consulting with his animal assistant.
Owl Prophet routinely predicted dry summers, difficult births, and spectacular weather. Of course he was not right every time, but his many successes made his failures, especially ones without import, easy to forget.
He was particularly adept at sorting out omens, and none was more spectacular than the mystery of the rat. Shortly after Wind In His Hair announced that he and several Hard Shields were going into Mexico and any able- bodied men could join them, a dead rat, its entrails bulging through an opening in its stomach, appeared one morning in the center of the village as if it had dropped from the sky.
Wind In His Hair thought the rat had been dropped somehow by a hawk or owl passing overhead, an explanation readily accepted by Dances With Wolves and the rest of the Hard Shield membership. Ten Bears peered down at the rat and wondered if it hadn't disemboweled itself in a freak accident. Kicking Bird dismissed the rat as a trivial matter, not worthy of thought. But talk persisted and theories of one sort of another fluttered around the village like scattering birds.
The rat's corpse was snatched up by one of the camp dogs before Owl Prophet could examine it, but that evening he hired a crier to circulate through the village, inviting all who desired information to assemble in front of his medicine lodge at the falling of night's first star.
Many eyes watched the sky that night and when the first star flared and died, a crowd gathered at the appointed place. Oddly, there was no fire inside the lodge and people began to grow restless, wondering if Owl Prophet was even inside. Suddenly the tent flap flew up and he stepped out. The crowd was silent. They could make out the outline of the famous owl perched upon his head. A few people gasped as the owl's head swiveled.
“I know the meaning of the rat,” Owl Prophet proclaimed. “Come again in two sleeps and I will tell if it is good or bad.”
Owl Prophet slipped back into the lodge, dropping the flap behind him, and the crowd broke up in confusion. Two nights later the throng that gathered outside Owl Prophet's medicine lodge was large and expectant. The glow of a fire could be seen inside the place of mystery and the crowd waited silently as if holding its collective breath. For several minutes a flurry of shadowy movement held the onlookers' full attention. Then the flap was thrown open by unseen hands and the viewers pressed closer together, craning frantically for a better view of the amazing tableau that had sprung up before their eyes.
Filling the entrance was a large square of canvas, a screen illuminated by the light of the fire behind it. Out of nowhere the silhouette of a man appeared which everyone assumed was the form of Owl Prophet. But before anyone could be sure, another silhouette appeared behind the screen. There was no mistaking the distinct outline of an owl. Its head swiveled on its neck and its body expanded and contracted with what appeared to be living breath. The bird's movements were stiff and mechanical, but instead of inviting skepticism they had the opposite effect. The queerness of the action behind the screen held the audience rapt. Not a soul had ever seen anything like it before.
While the owl performed, incantations were uttered, incantations that seemed to be coming from the silhouette of the man, though the voice sounded different from Owl Prophet's.
“Great Mystery,” the voice intoned, “speak to your servant. Tell me of the rat with the hole. The people want to know its meaning. They are afraid. Let them understand it, Great Mystery. They seek to serve you.'
The request was repeated three times, and all the while the owl gyrated. A long silence followed during which both silhouettes ceased to move. And then, in a measured way, the owl astonished the Comanches by slowly and dramatically spreading its wings. This action was also repeated three times and was so deliberate as to leave the impression that something was about to happen.
When it did, the effect was overwhelming. Gasps of horror broke out in the ranks of the audience. Several youngsters ran away and two people slumped unconscious to the ground as the owl's silhouette began to talk.
It was nothing anyone could understand, an otherworldly blend of high-pitched screeches, low grunts, and prolonged sighs all delivered with dizzying rapidity. The creature spoke for no more than a minute before it spread its wings once more, issued a final piercing screech, and fell away from the screen.
The figure of the man fell away too, and for a few moments the crowd stood still, staring at the black canvas in complete bewilderment. Before anyone could move, heavy, scraping sounds were heard, and moments later, to the astonishment of all, Owl Prophet himself crawled through the entrance. He flopped down in front of the lodge and, with much effort, raised himself to his knees.
“The Mystery has spoken,” he gasped. “The rat with the hole. . a bad sign. . many rifles in Mexico. . death in big water. . a scalp coming back. . a red scalp!”
With that Owl Prophet pitched forward and lay heaving on the ground, unable to move.
The people closest to the medicine man were wary at first of going to his aid, thinking he might be dying. But Owl Prophet continued to breath, and when he lifted his head slightly, those with the courage to do so lifted him up
