hunters could see them.
Fortunately for the spies, they had gathered up their weapons and made ready to move as soon as they saw the column starting out from the fort, intending to shadow it for a day or two before hurrying home with news of its existence.
But there was no time to shadow anything now. The hunters were already firing at them as Dances With Wolves, Smiles A Lot, and Blue Turtle leapt onto their ponies. They charged along the tree line until it ran out. No one was hit by the hunters, and if the soldiers saw them now, it couldn't be helped.
On hearing gunfire in the nearby woods, the column halted. But Captain Bradley was not overly disturbed. Since his initial, disastrous encounter at the dry streambed he had clashed with Indians several times, and the results had been far different. He had vanquished several small groups of Comanche and Kiowa raiders, overrunning and killing half a dozen warriors. His naive, bungling commandant had been replaced by an astute field officer, and since winning his captain's bars he felt supremely confident. Late experience told him that if he took the necessary precautions, kept a clear head, and thought on his feet, the men he led now could keep a whole nation of Indians at bay.
He had met General MacKenzie and held him in high regard. Mackenzie's obvious grit was something the captain wished to emulate, and he felt honored to be given the opportunity to play a vital role in the grand campaign to sweep the plains. As he sat squinting at the tree line for a sign of what might be causing the disturbance in the woods, Captain Bradley did so without a hint of trepidation.
A tiny knot of riders burst into the open at the end of the trees. They galloped up a long incline toward the naked brow of a low hill several hundred yards distant, and the captain noted with satisfaction that his chief of scouts, a levelheaded former ranger named Cox, had already raised his field glass to follow the runaways.
'Comanches?' Bradley asked casually.
“Sure are, Captain,' Cox replied, the glass still pressed against his eye. 'Three of 'em. They seen us. . they're ridin' like hell.”
'Good,' the captain said cooly, 'that's the whole idea.”
The chief of scouts suddenly lowered his field glass, squinted at the three riders for an instant, then raised the glass again.
'I'll be goddamned!'
He abruptly passed the glass to Captain Bradley.
'One of 'em looks like a white man. Take a look, Captain.”
Bradley raised the glass in time to see the three Comanches crest the little knob of a hill. One of them — his hair was cropped and he was appreciably taller than the others — happened to glance back a moment before he disappeared behind the rise. At first sight he might have passed for Indian, but, seeing the structure of his face and the roundness of his eyes, the captain was inclined to agree.
'Probably a deserter,' Bradley theorized, handing the glass back.
'I've heard there's a few white men with,em, but I never seen one before.'
'Me neither,' the captain replied.
'I wouldn't want to be in his hide when we catch him.” Cox chuckled.
'No,' the captain remarked, picking up his reins, “he won't have any skin to be in after the army gets him.'
Chapter XLVII
As the delegation disembarked in the political heart of the white nation they found themselves at the center of a wild, unthinkable scene.
Aboriginal visitors had been coming to Washington for many years, but such appearances were hardly routine, and the platform was overflowing with a gaggle of government functionaries and citizens eager for a look at the alien personifications of the 'Indian problem.'
Having grown used to being objects of curiosity, the men who called themselves Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche snaked through the mass of whites pressing around them with pronounced aplomb, their faces utterly impassive, speaking rarely and then only in low murmurs to one another. The whites fell silent when the free men passed, the drama of their appearance heightened by the light clink of jewelry and the gentle scrape of moccasins that filled the vacuum of sound.
Exiting the station, they were greeted with a pageant-like spectacle that stretched the limits of their comprehension. A great hatted crowd waited below them, flanking both sides of a long, open patch of stone leading to a road filled with wagon traffic. Between the path and crowd, standing shoulder to shoulder, were two solid lines of blue-coated policemen. Like the throng they were charged with controlling, the police were gazing up, their expressionless eyes barely visible in-the brim shadows of their strange uniform hats.
Everywhere the visitors looked there were white man houses, some reaching so high into the sky that they grazed the clouds. The sun still hovered in the heavy, smelly air but the earth was nowhere to be seen. All that was left of the natural world were columns of green scattered over the vista, trees growing in straight lines on either side of the white man's many roads.
After receiving a brief explanation regarding the function of steps, the warriors started down. waiting at the bottom of the steps were several open wagons, all drawn by fine, sleek horses. They climbed into the carriages and set off through the streets, stopping traffic and turning heads, until they arrived at their place of residence, something the white men called a hotel.
Here they were shown the room where white men filled their bellies and were casually informed that the white man had a machine that told him when to eat. It turned out that the device, which the white men mounted on walls, erected in streets, and even carried in their pockets, told them far more than when to eat. The machine told them when to wake and when to sleep. It dictated the moment at which one man could visit another, when he could perform duties, when he could relax.
No one could understand the necessity of such a thing. Ten Bears put it most succinctly when he remarked to Kicking Bird, “How can a man be a man when he enslaves himself to a circle of glass and metal?”
The visitors, who were housed in separate suites according to tribe, were indoctrinated in the uses of furniture, the function of water closets, the intricacies of beds, the opening and closing of windows, and the procedures for summoning hotel staff members.
When the thing called a bathtub was demonstrated, the men from the plains were amazed to see a pond magically take form before their eyes. They were equally horrified, however, when the plug was pulled and the water drained away through a black, evil-looking hole bottom of the pond. Something down in the hole made disturbing sounds as it fed on the water. No one wanted to bathe on top of the creature, nor did anyone want it getting out, and for the duration of their stay, the tubs' drains were jammed with knife blades or stuffed with linen and regularly monitored for any sign of whatever dwelt inside.
Because they were only two, Kicking Bird and Ten Bears were provided with a sumptuous but smaller suite at the rear of the hotel consisting of a sitting room, a bedroom, a water closet, and a bathroom. Leaving Ten Bears stretched out on one of the beds, Kicking Bird made a thorough and energetic inspection of all that the rooms contained. He was vibrating with excitement, not only for the many wonders at his fingertips but for the prospects for knowledge as well. His ability to communicate was increasing every time he spoke white words, and though he understood relatively little, he was pleased with his progress. He knew innately that having the words would increase his power in negotiations when he returned to the reservation. Without knowing the words, the Comanche would be as dependent on the white man as the white man was on his clocks. Learning the language was the first and most essential tool to navigating the bizarre terrain of the white world and Kicking Bird embraced the study of it with zeal.
As he drifted through the rooms, he was constantly intrigued by all that the white man had wrought-from the fixtures on the bathroom sink to the glass transoms that opened over the doors. Like the others, he feared the bathtub and was baffled by the concept of time, but, taken as a whole, he was deeply impressed by the
