Death Chants (25 page)

Wild Horse Dancer
came running through the trees, the heavy rifle catching on brush and tree limbs, slowing him
down.

He burst into the
clearing, feeling a great surge of triumph, of victory.

He faced the dying
mother buffalo, gun proudly raised for a final, victorious killing shot, but he made a
mistake.

He looked into the
soft shiny eyes of mother buffalo. He saw her looking with the greatest love of all, at her
little calf. Her eyes, even dying, held only love for the little calf, as if he were the only
thing she could take away with her to the land of shadows.

Horse Dancer
dropped the rifle, the victory gone, now ashes in his mouth.

He had killed
something that loved.

A mother that loved
her child.

Mother buffalo bent
her head then and thrust her muzzle against the calf, gently pushing him away. Her legs gave out
then and she fell on one side, like a great living tree felled by summer lightning.

The reddish-brown
calf bawled, and flung himself upon the great shuddering heap of flesh and bones that was
becoming nothing.

And the little calf
raised his muzzle from the body of his dead mother, his eyes staring at the new blue sky and he
wailed.

Later, the rifle
forgotten and lost in the place where it was dropped, for which later there would be punishment,
in a night that could not begin to wash away the remembered horror of the day, the boy found
comfort in his mother's arms.

The crime had been
explained and understood and even for­given, but Horse Dancer was like a bird stopped suddenly in
flight.

As he lay in the
dark beside the sleeping form of his mother, he thought he heard something.

He started, lifting
his head, his crow-black hair shining in a beam of moonlight.

There, he heard it
again.

From somewhere in
the dark forest where the mountain be­gan, an eerie animal cry reached his ears.

It was not wolf or
elk. It was more like the mourning cry of a dying human being.

The horror of the
day raced up the boy's spine. It couldn't be. His ears strained to hear the sound again, his body
rigid.

But he heard
nothing for a long time except the usual sounds of night.

The lodge was warm.
Sleep began to call him again.

The wind, yes, it
must have been the wind, and with that comforting thought Horse Dancer settled into the delicious
sleep of a held child.

And for a while,
the boy's sleep was deep and undisturbed. But then the sounds came again, louder and
closer.

And the boy was
thrown into wakefulness like a sleeping cat splashed with icy water. He gently threw off the
comforting arm of his mother and crept silently out the door of the lodge.

Somewhere up on the
mountain, the mournful wails came keening down toward the boy.

"I'm sorry,"
whispered the boy.

He knew it must be
the buffalo calf whose mother he had killed. Now the slowly starving little animal stumbled
through the night searching the world for a mother that was no longer in it.

As the boy stood
there, the cry of the little calf grew louder and closer.

It sounded like it
was running toward him.

Horse Dancer stared
straight ahead, tring to make out the figure of the little buffalo calf in the bright
moonlight.

The sound got
closer. Now it was coming almost from where the boy stood, but there was nothing
there.

Ice touched the
boy's spine.

Now the wailing,
piteous cry of the buffalo calf came from the ground where the terrified boy stood, but no
buffalo calf was there. And then the sound came from directly above him, high in the
sky, and stayed up there, and passed beyond
him, like a flock of geese journeying into winter, and then softly, grew faint and disappeared in
the distance.

Then the boy looked
up at the sky in both wonder and terror in equal measure.

Surely Horse Dancer
had heard the cry of a Spirit Buffalo and it would have some great meaning to him around which he
could build his life.

Perhaps the Spirit
Buffalo knew how sorry he was and had forgiven him.

He only knew, in
his folly, he had tasted manhood and the beginning of its sorrow.

Now, he stared at
the sky, and wondered in his rapidly beating heart, if he had also, touched magic.

The magic did not
go away.

The Spirit Buffalo,
in forms and faces of its own choosing, continued to touch his life as he lived it.

In Horse Dancer's
seventeenth summer he met a man born with the dead.

For three moons the
man born with the dead wandered the hills and valleys with a sharp digging stick, searching for
the lost grave of his long dead wife.

Horse Dancer's
people did not look in the man's eyes when he walked by. They said the shadow of the grave was in
them, and was not good to look upon.

They called him
Looks For Death.

Another man had
taken his wife in the dead of a long-ago winter. They had fled into the mountains to escape the
wrath of her husband. A blizzard had overtaken them and neither of them had ever been seen
again.

Somewhere on the
mountain, their bones lay entwined where deadly winter overtook them, buried treasure for the man
who sought it. That they had met their deaths and slept on the moun­tain together, that was
commonly known, for a traveler had found them and buried them on the spot where they had died.
The traveler told everyone he met of the tragedy but his directions were not clear and no one had
ever found their lonely grave.

It was whispered
ever so softly, so softly that not even the spirits of the wind dancing outside the lodges, could
hear it, that Looks For Death's wife had stolen away some great treasure, a medicine bundle given
to man by the Great Thunderbird.

Whether Looks For
Death sought treasure or bones, none could say for sure, but the mountain was scarred from end to
end by the marks of his digging stick.

Horse Dancer saw
him many times that first summer.

Always from a
distance at first, but later Looks For Death began coming down closer and closer to the
village.

Close up, it was
easy to see Looks For Death was starving. His ribs were showing, his eyes bright, glazed and
sunken in his face. His legs dragged like they were turning into heavy logs.

Horse Dancer took
food to him.

The old man stared
at Horse Dancer. He made no move to touch the food.

Then suddenly he
leaped forward and tore the meat and corn-cakes out of the boy's hand. He was like a wolf
stealing bait from a snare.

He gulped the food
down ravenously.

Looks For Death
changed before the startled boy's eyes. The old man became strong, his back straightened, and he
seemed full of life once more.

He ran to a hill,
thrust his digging stick into the hard ground. He scraped furiously at the hard earth.

Horse Dancer just
stood there, watching the strange old man.

Looks For Death
stepped into the hole he had gouged out. He turned and looked back at the boy.

The look of madness
in his eyes swirled like a cloud blown by the wind.

"This old buffalo
man gives thanks for what has been given!" The old man's voice was like a cold wind.

The boy nodded once
and turned to go.

"I have danced in
all the houses of death!" shrieked Looks For Death, and his eyes rolled in his head. "I am a fly
on the sweet honey of death!"

Horse Dancer knew
then that the old man was mad.

"I cry for her, she
who I have lost. She was every day of my life and her going left me forever in the
night."

Horse Dancer also
knew that the old man's madness came from grief and sorrow and loss, and his fear of the strange
man was lessened in the knowing.

Looks For Death
fell to his knees, his arm wrapped around the length of his digging stick, as if he hugged a
woman.

"I love her," he
said simply, his voice breaking and he wept unashamedly.

Then, as the boy
stood beside the fallen figure of the old man, he knew for the first time a sense of some of the
deepness of the human heart in this world.

Horse Dancer ran
away.

He had seen too
much.

Later, to deny what
the young must always try to deny, he joined in a trick played upon the old man.

In the dark, he and
two other boys his own birth age crept up on the old man and tossed some animal bones into a hole
he was digging.

When he found them,
at sunrise, Looks For Death was deliri­ous with joy and grief and clasped them lovingly to his
breast.

When he knew, after
a time, that they were not human bones, his terrible grief made Horse Dancer and his friends sick
at heart.

It was a trick they
wished never to have done.

Then one day, a
bright, chilly day with the first icy breath of winter in it, Looks For Death
disappeared.

He was gone all
that winter, where, no one knew.

Most thought he was
dead.

But the first days
of summer brought Looks For Death back to the mountain.

One night Horse
Dancer saw him moving in the mountains, like an old gray bird with wings outstretched. Horse
Dancer gathered up some food, and hurried down to meet him, the memory of his unkind trick still
strong and stinging in his mind.

Somewhere in the
dark he lost sight of him.

Toward morning, he
spied a light coming from a stand of pine trees and he went to investigate.

He heard a sound
then, the loud rasp of a digging stick thudding into the slowly thawing ground, and he knew it
was Looks For Death.

A moment later he
saw him.

The old man was
bent to the earth, digging.

Horse Dancer
thought of an old bear digging its winter cave. He had seen a bear digjust like this as it
prepared for its journey into sleep.

Horse Dancer
thought then that he must speak to Looks For Death. Even though everybody in the village was
afraid of him.

"I brought you some
food."

Horse Dancer held
out a quickly wrapped bundle of food.

"Soon," said the
old man. "I know her bones are near."

Horse Dancer set
the parcel of food at Looks For Death's feet. The old man stared at it blankly. Then he looked up
into the face of the young boy. He smiled.

"I knew you would
come. You were sent to hear my tale, to see my last triumph! For you see, I have found that which
I seek."

Horse Dancer did
not know what to make of that. He just stood there quietly, waiting to see what the strange old
one would do.

Looks For Death
pointed to the western slope of the moun­tain.

"I sat on the
highest ledge, letting the sun burn the last taste of winter out of my blood when I saw lightning
moving along the mountainside. No clouds were in the sky but the lightning walked on the ground
until it came to this hill where I now stand. Then it flashed up toward the sky and bathed this
mound in the lightning flash of a thousand thousand summer storms. Then it was gone, back into
the sky, but this hill glowed like the coals of a fire."

The old man touched
his chest above his heart with his hand. "Then in my heart, I knew that this was an omen, a great
sign that had been sent to me."

Horse Dancer stood
there awkwardly, not sure how to feel about this strange tale.

"When I came down
to this place where I now dig, a great unseen hand seemed to pull my digging stick, until it
twisted like a living snake in my hands, pointing to this place like a great finger."

Horse Dancer saw
that there was a small burial mound built by human hands. The ground was hard-packed yellow clay
with large flat stones piled up around it. It seemed to fit the traveler's description of the
grave the traveler said he had made long ago for Looks For Death's wife and her lover.

"You must eat,"
said Horse Dancer. "Eat to regain your strength and I will help you dig."

"Yes," he agreed.
"I will build a fire while you dig."

The old man sat
down beside the packet of food.

Looks For Death
seemed on the verge of total exhaustion.

Horse Dancer built
the fire himself because the old man did not move at all now. He just sat there, looking
dazed.

The warmth of the
fire seemed to revive the old man. He took the food finally and gulped it down like a starving
bear after a winter's fast.

"Soon the bones
will shine in the light of day," he said, watch­ing as Horse Dancer began to dig.