The Holy Road

Instead, the old man gazed serenely through his spectacles at the receding tunnel.

We went through a mountain, he thought to himself. It was made to open its body to this snake of metal and wood we are riding. The whites possess incredible magic.

A few moments later, Kicking Bird slid into the seat next to him and related the trouble with Striking Eagle. Ten Bears peered over his spectacles.

'Maybe a ghost got into him.'

'I think he is afraid,' Kicking Bird replied. 'Someone heard him yell about the sun being killed.'

'It's shining now,' Ten Bears observed.

'Striking Eagle's mind can't see it. He can't move.'

'He needs to get off this thing,' Ten Bears said, a hint of condescension discernible in his tone.

Kicking Bird's chin vibrated with a quick succession of reassuring nods.

'They're going to put him off at the next stop.'

'How will he get home?' Ten Bears inquired.

'They will wait for a train going west, Then they will put him on that.'

Ten Bears stared briefly at the seat in front of him.

'Poor man,' he sighed, his voice falling away to silence. A moment later, when he tilted his face toward Kicking Bird's, a smile was hovering, about his mouth. 'He'll have to go back through that mountain.'

Kicking Bird managed to avoid laughing out loud but his shoulders heaved convulsively.

'Are we going to pass through more mountains?' Ten Bears wondered.

Kicking Bird's levity vanished. He hadn't thought of more tunnels.

'I don't know,' he said.

'I wonder if this thing goes through water too. Someone better tell us so we can close these openings. Otherwise the water will come in and we'll all drown.'

Starting to the edge of his seat, Kicking Bird eagerly scanned the car's interior, searching for the little Quaker.

'Lawrie Tatum will know,' he said absently.

'Oh, leave him alone for a while,' scolded Ten Bears. “All you want to do is make that white man talk.'

'What if water does come in?' Kicking Bird retorted.

'This thing has gone over lots of water,” Ten Bears grunted dismissively. 'If it does go into water, the whites will close these things in time. I'm sure none of them wants to drown. How much farther is it to Washington?'

'Lawrie Tatum says it is one more sleep.”

'Is it the biggest white man village?”

'Lawrie Tatum says it will be bigger than anything we have ever seen. He says our eyes will see many things that do not seem real.”

'I believe him,' Ten Bears said, nodding solemnly as he placed his moccasins on the footrest just above the floor.

The old man slid his pipe from its case.

'We should smoke for poor Striking Eagle.”

'Hmm,' Kicking Bird agreed.

'I hope the food is better in Washington,” Ten Bears said, tamping a pinch of tobacco into his bowl. 'They have so much magic, yet they can't make good meat. It's stringy and filled with grease.”

Kicking Bird nodded mutely.

'It goes right through my bowels,” Ten Bears groused.

'Mine, too,' Kicking Bird sighed.

Chapter XLVI

Aside from the incessant, unseasonable rain which swamped the southern plains, the signs had been good for Wind In His Hair and the hostiles. They had been fortunate in striking several more small herds of buffalo and, despite having to dry the meat indoors, they had made enough to last beyond winter.

Everywhere their odyssey led them they met contingents of wanderers with like minds and, as the days until the deadline melted away, Wind In His Hair's camp swelled steadily. People from Comanche bands like the Antelope and the Liver-Eaters and Those Who Move Often had come together, as had significant groups of Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.

With warriors in the hundreds to guide, Wind In His Hair was in constant council. Ten sleeps before the deadline, half a dozen parties of warriors had been selected, formed, and dispatched to specific corners of Comanche territory there to keep an eye on the hair-mouth soldier forts.

Wind In His Hair and his advisers had anticipated the army's plan, thinking the soldiers would try to push them from the south, and it seemed likely that the first enemies would come from the place called Fort Richardson. Owl Prophet, whose standing had been shaken but far from destroyed, declared adamantly that soldiers would be coming from the south.

Three Hard Shields — Dances With Wolves, Smiles A Lot, and Blue Turtle — had been chosen to make the far ride to Fort Richardson. The distance was great, as was the difficulty of sitting undetected under the soldiers' noses until their movements could be learned, but the hardest part was the unrelenting rain.

Descending the caprock required a man to be alert in the best of times but after a week of intermittent deluge the steep ground was greasy and the horses fought for footing all the-way down. The riders had to jump on and off constantly to give the animals a chance to stop sliding or gain their balance. Halfway down, Blue Turtle jumped off his pony, lost his feet, and might have gone over a precipice had he not been able to hang on to his horse's tail.

Bucolic streams had become racing, churning rivers, and at one crossing Dances With Wolves and Smiles A Lot were unhorsed when a large, thick log they were trying to avoid suddenly veered and struck both horses at once. For a quarter mile the warriors and their animals struggled in the current. Miraculously, both eventually made it to solid ground and were reunited with Blue Turtle. But Dances With Wolves lost his food, and from then on rations for two had to be shared by three.

Once they reached the vicinity of the white man fort, the three warriors were dismayed at how little spying they could actually accomplish. The best vantage point to be had was a thick growth of oak a quarter mile from the soldier fort, but with the incessant rain it afforded only fractured glimpses of enemy movement.

The sound of the rain, which dripped from every leaf of every tree, squashed all but the loudest noises coming from the fort, and for three days and nights the soaked, cold scouts huddled under the trees with their horses, nibbling at their dwindling supply of jerked meat.

They were too despondent to converse much, but when they did say something it usually pertained to the task at hand, and midway through the third day of their surveillance Smiles A Lot wondered if they should try to get some white man clothes, put them on Dances With Wolves, and let him go among whites.

Blue Turtle correctly pointed out how risky it would be to obtain the clothes and when they looked at Dances With Wolves for a response, he spat, “No more white man clothes,' then rose from a squat and walked off through the drizzle.

On the morning of the fourth day, when the fog lifted a few hundred feet off the ground and sunlight was endeavoring to penetrate the gloom, the scouts were astonished to see the first riders in a long column starting out of the fort.

Seconds later the distinct cracking of twigs caused the three Comanches to turn. Only a few yards behind them was a large buck. Flanks heaving, he stood nervously and, as he craned his neck for a furtive look behind, the report of a gun exploded in the stillness.

A slug whistled through his antlers and, as the buck bounded away, another round was fired. The Comanche scouts could see white men, two of them, in civilian clothes, coming through the woods with rifles. And the white