Conquering Horse (30 page)

Raw patches began to show on the Black One’s glossy hide, on the rump, over the shoulder, along the belly. Streaks of blood began to show on Dancing Sun’s immaculate white coat. One moment both puffed exhausted, the next they went at it again with snarls of rage. Flecks of blood and froth flew in all directions.

Finally Dancing Sun managed to catch Black One’s nose between his jaws. He bit in and shook him with all his might. He growled. He backed around and around, shaking and mangling him. Black One suffered it for a few moments. Then, rousing himself with great effort, Black One gave a desperate jerk—and broke free, with half of his nose gone.

They backed off. They let fly another ear-splitting piercing challenge. Then, rampant, they flew at each other yet once again, throwing their whole weight into it. They hit. The ground shuddered under them. Dust puffed up. For a moment they hung balanced against each other. Then, slowly, Black One tottered over on his back. Dancing Sun pounced on him in a flash, stunning him with his sharp forefeet, cracking open his skull. Again and again Dancing Sun struck, cutting him to ribbons with his hammering hooves. With his teeth he stripped off Black One’s ears, flung them across the prairie. He struck until Black One’s brains began to run out.

Sure that Black One was dead at last, Dancing Sun suddenly set out after the other ambitious lovers, scattering them pell-mell, chasing them until they were out of sight.

When Dancing Sun came back, head high, he appeared to disdain the loving attention of his mares and colts.

During all this time, Leaf worked like a muskrat mother, preparing her nest. She made a cradle by weaving a flat platform out of willow withes and covering it with buckskin. She scraped and tanned hides for a small tepee to be used on the way home. She dried many cases of meat. She made her husband a dozen pair of tough moccasins. She also tanned him a new buffalo robe, a new pair of leggings, and a new fetish case.

For herself she made a dress, a loose supple piece of doeskin which she worked until it shone like fresh snow. She covered it with beautiful quillwork, blue and yellow and white and red. Even the lift strings, used to tie up the dress when the grass was wet with dew, were placed in pleasing symmetry all around the bottom. Every now and then she held up the dress against her body, smiling and tittering to herself, as if surrounded by a circle of admiring women friends.

Sometimes No Name caught her sitting silent by herself in the entrance of the cave, her black eyes on him but not seeing him, absorbed in herself. Her look caused him to recall what
his mother had once remarked about pregnant women. “Before her child is born, a good Yankton mother always fixes her mind on a certain hero. This is done so that when the child grows up he will desire to do great things and become a great hero himself.” He wondered if Leaf had him in mind, or her father Owl Above, or her brother Burnt Thigh. Though tempted, he dared not intrude upon her thoughts and ask her.

For some odd reason, another of his mother’s warnings came to him, that a woman should not look too hard at an animal before her child was born. “There was once a woman,” Star said, “who found a rabbit hiding in some wild plums. The rabbit was gentle and soft. She took it in her arms and petted it and held it close to her face. When her time came, her child was born with a split nose. This man is still alive.” No Name hoped that some evil spirit had not placed the thought in his mind. They of the other world often knew beforehand what was to come to pass.

Eyes averted, yet studying Leaf closely, he soon came to see that he was one of those who had been fortunate in the choice of a wife. Leaf rarely complained about her lot in life. She accepted what came. She did not long for tomorrow that it should bring her some great and wondrous surprise. The great thing was now, it was happening now, and she lived it to the full. When she ate juicy broiled hump, she enjoyed the hump, fully, at that moment. When she sucked marrow from a warm bone, running her tongue deep into it, she lived in the tip of her tongue, for that moment. When she looked into the fire, she enjoyed the warmth and color and the mystery of the flames, fully, at that moment, then. When she crooned a hero song to herself for the coming boy, she lived in her throat, in the song, for the moment even becoming the hero.

One evening No Name came home to wife and cave bone- tired, exhausted, dispirited. He hardly noted that Leaf took off his moccasins and rubbed his feet as usual.

He got out his pipe. He lit up with a Coal from the fire, much in the manner of his father. He blew up a big puff of smoke. It hit one of the broad leaves of the fallen cottonwoods above, baffled around it, streamed up in finer wisps, and vanished.

He inclined his head to the left, still waiting, as he had waited all week, for his helper to speak to him.

Presently Leaf served him supper. He ate slowly, with little relish. When he finished his first helping of boiled meat, he turned his dish over to signify he no longer had hunger.

Leaf retreated into the shadows. She sat watching him.

Again he lighted his pipe. He brooded. This time the pipe had an unpleasant taste. And he finished his smoke only because it was bad luck not to do so.

“You have not told of today, my husband,” Leaf said finally from the shadows.

A frown drew his brows together. He did not like it when she began the talk. “Nothing of importance happened today.”

“When will you catch the stallion, my husband?”

He swallowed back a sharp word.

“My husband?”

“It is for the gods to decide.”

“This cave is a dark place even in the day. Well, I am afraid for our child. The cave will cast a shadow over its life.”

He put his pipe away. “Now you speak as one touched by the moon being.” He sat staring at the graying embers along the edge of the fire.

She waited an interval, then said again, “You have not told of today, my husband.”

Suddenly he said it all in a rush. “Today I saw Dancing Sun walk along the horizon. I became afraid. He walked, yet he looked like a ghost horse going very swiftly. He walked, yet his mares and colts had to run very swiftly to keep up with him. Ai, sometimes I think it is the same horse that Holy Horse saw. One day this white stallion will take me to the middle-of-
the-earth too where the demons will overcome me and I will not be heard of again.”

“What does your helper say?”

He started. How had she known it had fallen silent? “Ai, woman, I am still waiting for him to speak.”

“Have you offended him that he does not speak?”

“I have thought of this. Yet I can not remember anything.”

Again, after a silence, she asked, “My husband, this Dancing Sun, is he as all male horses?”

“I do not understand, my wife.”

“Does he torment his sons?”

He fell silent. After a moment he shuddered. He remembered what Dancing Sun had done to the slow brown stud.

Leaf persisted. “What do the mothers say to this?”

“They submit,” he said shortly.

She sighed. “Ae, so it is with the Yanktons also. The fathers permit us to hold the sons for a short time. After that they take them away and send them to a high hill where they must seek a vision.”

“I love my father very much and do not wish to hurt him. He has always been very tender with me his son.”

“Thus it seems,” she said quietly, eyes downcast, hand on her swollen belly. “Yet did not your father require that you torment yourself?”

“My father wished for me to show my bravery that I might be ready to replace him as chief when the time came for him to join those of the other world.”

“A mother’s heart is always large for her son. She will always weep when it is time for him to leave on his trail.”

“It is not the way of all Yankton mothers,” he said patiently. “My mother told me a great thing when I was about to depart. ‘Son, the thing you seek lives in a far place. It is good. Go to it. Do not turn around after you have gone part way, but go as far as you were going and then come back.’ ”

Leaf sighed from the depths of her belly. Her breasts stirred
under her leather dress. At last she said, “When I am old, may it be given me to say such a great thing to my son.”

He had been careful to keep their horses, the sorrel gelding and the dun mare, well hidden from the white stallion, either in the brush under the cottonwoods when the wind was north, or in the back of the cave when it was south.

But one evening the white stallion surprised him by coming alone to the meadow just west of the cliff. The white stallion walked out to where a patch of blue-eyed grass grew deep and lush. After sniffing around at it some, the white one began eating with relish.

“Haho!” No Name exclaimed softly to himself, watching from behind a thick cottonwood. “It is as Sounds The Ground said. He likes to go into the low places and eat the flowering grass. I well remember him saying this.”

No Name stole softly out of the brush to get the mare and the sorrel before Dancing Sun got wind of them. The mare, whom they had named Black Stripe because of a thin band of dark hair running down her spine, was in heat. She stalled frequently. Dancing Sun was certain to scent her before very long and come and steal her.

But as luck would have it, the wind changed before he could get Black Stripe into the cave, and in a few moments Dancing Sun’s shrill inquiring neigh cut through the evening silence. No Name tried to hurry the mare inside, but the stallion’s call had roused her and she hung back on the rope.

Dancing Sun shrilled another high piercing call of desire. This time Black Stripe let up on the rope long enough to whinny loudly in answer.

There was a sudden crashing in the brush and the next moment the green leaves parted and out paced Dancing Sun, noble head high, long mane flowing in two scarlet waves. He came on swiftly, smoothly.

He spotted No Name pulling at the rawhide rope. Instantly
his whole demeanor as a lover changed. He became the warrior. His head came down, his teeth flashed, his ears shot forward. His tail pointed straight back like a cat’s, jerking spasmodically. Then, with a resounding snort, he made straight for No Name as if he no longer saw the mare, but saw only the man.

No Name dropped the mare’s rope and leaped to one side just as Dancing Sun, dazzling and white and huge, lunged for him. Dancing Sun missed him by no more than a hair.

Then, as Dancing Sun stopped short to wheel around for another charge, No Name, on a sudden impulse, born as much out of fear as out of inspiration, leaped astride the great stallion’s back. No Name grabbed hold of the flashing scarlet mane with both hands, gripped the horse’s belly hard with both legs.

Dancing Sun reacted volcanically. He went straight up on all fours. No name felt him rising under him like a wave on the Great Smoky Water. At the top of his jump, Dancing Sun broke four ways, and when he came down, as each leg hit ground one after another, there were four separate jolts. Then, shrieking outrage at finding something still latched to his back, Dancing Sun began a strange twisting run on the meadow. No Name felt the great muscles of the horse squirming and bulging and undulating powerfully under him. It was like riding an enormous snake which had just had its head chopped off.

Dancing Sun stopped dead. He seemed to reflect to himself a moment. Then, snorting, he turned his head and snapped at No Name. His face was so close, No Name could see red inflamed arteries pulsing furiously in the backs of his blazing eyes. No Name ducked to one side to avoid the terrible snapping teeth. Again Dancing Sun rose wonderfully under him, very high. And at the top of the jump, because of the awkward way he sat on the stallion, No Name lost his hold. He arched into the air in a tumbling somersault and landed on his back.

It took a moment for No Name to collect his wits. Then he sprang to his feet, fully expecting to find the mad stallion on top of him. But to his surprise, the stallion did not come on.
The stallion was still snorting and shrilling with rage, but he was being held at bay by Leaf. Leaf had fire and smoke in her hand and was waving it in the stallion’s face.

No Name stared. Then he understood. Leaf had heard, then seen, the stallion come for the mare Black Stripe too. When No Name dropped the lead rope, Leaf had quickly secured the mare with the gelding, who was already in the cave, and then had seized a burning brand from the fire and had rushed out to help her man. Instinctively she had known what to do. Fight fire with fire. In the rust-tinted dusk the smoke from the burning brand was almost exactly the color of the stallion’s coat.

No Name saw how Leaf strained to be quick despite her heavy oblong belly, saw how ferocious her eyes were. He leaped to help her and took the burning brand from her.

Dancing Sun seemed to understand that the hot brand had changed hands, from female to male, and once again charged, mouth and head down like a raging predator lizard. No Name thrust the burning brand into his face. Dancing Sun shrieked, reared, struck out with both forefeet, almost knocking the brand from No Name’s hand.

Again Dancing Sun charged. Again No Name jabbed the brand into his face.

The furious action roused No Name, and fear in him changed to anger. He too suddenly became enraged, completely forgetting that he had ever thought the horse wakan. He began to roar. “Back, you white devil! Hehan, so you wish to make my heart hot this day? Good, eat this! Fire you are and fire you shall have!”

Behind him Leaf had become infuriated too. “Kill him, my husband!” she cried. “Burn his eyes! Do not be afraid. Rush him, he is afraid of fire!”

Still the white fury came on. Dancing Sun reared and struck out at them with his glittering gray hooves. He whistled piercingly.

Then, from behind No Name and Leaf, the mare Black Stripe in the back of the cave whinnied, high, wonderingly.

The stallion seemed to go blind at that. He drove so fiercely at No Name and Leaf that both had to retreat under the fallen cottonwood. Teeth bared, froth flying in flakes, Dancing Sun made a final snap at No Name. He caught the burning brand with the side of his mouth and knocked it sailing into the stream at their feet. The brand went out with a quick whistling sizzle.