Scalpdancers (16 page)

“I am Fool Deer,” he said. “Let my words fly as straight and true as the arrows I make. Let my words strike your hearts. I say I will not listen to Lost Eyes. I will not listen to the trickster White Buffalo. They must be driven from our village. Have you forgotten when the buffalo came no more and our children cried from hunger and the Above Ones turned from us? It will happen again if we allow White Buffalo to remain.”

“He does not intend to stay. He will leave before the moon is full, when his wounds are healed,” Lost Eyes said. “These are his words.” He spoke slowly and loudly so that all would hear. “It is not our way to leave one of our own for the Crow to torture and kill. That is why I brought him here.”

His words rang through the air and for a moment no one seemed to have a reply until canny old Fool Deer spoke again.

“And it is not our way to have a pup speak among men,” the chief of the Bowstring Clan retorted. Now his expression turned shrewd. “But you have spoken and I have heard you.” Fool Deer paused to allow the council to hang upon his words. If indeed White Buffalo could be trusted to leave without a fight, so much the better. Fool Deer had realized how he might have his revenge on Lost Eyes in the process. He opened his arms as if to embrace some invisible presence. A gust of wind tugged at his unbraided gray hair.

“Your words are those of the one you serve. Let him speak then for you both. Let his words be your words. And his fate, your fate.” Fool Deer slowly advanced on Lost Eyes.

The father of Waiting Horse raised the eagle feather aloft and when he had closed the gap between them, he lowered the feather and brushed it across the younger brave's shoulders, first the left and then the right. Then Fool Deer touched the tip of the feather to Lost Eyes' chest, over the heart. The arrow maker returned to the fire in the center of the council circle. The flames fed greedily on the deadwood, and smoke rose as a sooty banner to blacken the stars. A crescent moon floated between clouds like faerie islands, ghostly and mist-swept.

Fool Deer held the feather above the dancing flames. “His fate be your fate,” he repeated in a strong, clear voice that carried to one and all. And with that pronouncement he dropped the eagle feather, itself a source of magic and power, and sacrificed it to the flames. A rush of amazement swept through the Blackfeet. Fool Deer picked up the ceremonial pipe and held it out to the council.

Dog Chases The Hawk stepped forward. “Who stands with Fool Deer?”

Lost Eyes watched, speechless. He had set the trap and walked into it. He had baited and caught himself and allowed Fool Deer to snare him. Nor was Lost Eyes surprised when Black Fox broke from the throng and joined Fool Deer by the fire.

Black Fox took the medicine pipe and returned to the perimeter of the council gathering. He raised the pipe aloft and fixed his victorious gaze on Lost Eyes. “I stand with Fool Deer,” he said. Banishment for Lost Eyes. And in time Sparrow would forget him and find a suitable young man whom the Great Spirit had not forgotten.

Tall Bull got to his feet and, standing alongside Black Fox, accepted the pipe from Sparrow's brother.

“I stand with Fool Deer,” said Tall Bull.

That too was no surprise. But Lost Eyes watched with sinking spirits as one after another of the braves rose and repeated the litany that had begun with Black Fox. Only Wolf Lance passed the pipe by and remained squatting cross-legged on the hard-packed earth. Lost Eyes grew angry and strode from the council circle.

He shoved his way through the braves, who only grudgingly gave ground. They jostled and elbowed the departing young brave, but at last he broke out of the ring and sought escape into the village. But the words hounded him, banishing him forever. Sparrow was lost to him…his own people…everything. He stumbled and stopped. He clawed at his chest and stared in stunned silence at the stars and the sinister moon while his mind raged.

All-Father, why?

But for Lost Eyes the question—like the ache in his heart—went unanswered.

9

It was time for the gathering, and the unmarried women of the village rode out on their sturdy mounts under the amber gaze of the morning sun. More than a dozen pretty maids, ranging in age from twelve to an “old” nineteen years', frolicked like fawns—much of the show made for the unmarried braves sure to be watching—and raced one another for the lead. It was good to feel life on a day in spring, good to smell the clean, sweet aroma of the pines upon the rain-washed air.

They rode together—Sparrow among them even though she would have preferred to go alone—to the east end of the pass, where the hills opened onto the plains and a line of aspen invaded a landscape once given over to the juniper. They were riding to where the creek grew shallow and widened its banks and at last disappeared, leaving a swath of mud where the waters seeped into the soil and returned to the land. Here, in spring, wild potatoes grew in thick profusion, wantonly trailing vines sometimes twenty feet in length across the plain, their wide white blossoms opening pink centers to the sun—but only for the first few hours of morning, so the women would have to hurry. Sparrow did not join in the songs or the prattling gossip. She ignored a challenge by Blue Cap. Blue Cap, three years younger than Sparrow, was slim and pretty and much sought after, and she wanted to show off before an audience of young bucks who had come to watch the women ride out. The braves loosed their war whoops and strutted among themselves like wild colts, their black manes braided with raven and eagle feathers, their coppery torsos hardening with muscle, having lost much of their winter fat.

“Come, Sparrow,” the thirteen-year-old shouted, leaning forward onto the neck of her dun. “I will race you to the end of the valley.” Blue Cap turned her pretty features toward the sun. “Let the young men see us riding to the light.”

“Why?” Sparrow replied. “You have already blinded them.” She rode with the mare, allowing the animal's movements to flow into her. She had no wish to impress anyone. Five days had passed since the council, and Lost Eyes' banishment weighed heavy on her mind. She was both angry and saddened by the outcome, one moment furious that he should have placed himself in such a position and then despairing because he would be gone before the next full moon.

“Poor Sparrow. She has ears for only one flute outside her lodge,” a sharp-featured young woman taunted. This was Blind Weed and she was older than any of the others in the root-gathering party. She had ridden up opposite Sparrow and overheard Blue Cap's challenge. Blind Weed was a large-boned woman, comely enough but with an acid tongue that discouraged suitors. It was also rumored she had been intimate on more than one occasion with a warrior in the village who had already taken a wife.

“And you have ears for one flute too many,” Sparrow retorted. She was in no mood to allow herself to be the target of Blind Weed's barbs.

Sparrow drove her heels into her mare's flanks and the animal bolted forward. Every woman within earshot of the exchange laughed at Blind Weed's expense. Though she was to blame for her own bad reputation, Blind Weed hated anyone who questioned her behavior. She loosed a pouch from her shoulder and flailed away at Sparrow, hoping to knock the smaller woman from horseback. She missed and Sparrow rode clear. Blind Weed, on a surefooted but slower pinto gelding, could do nothing but fume helplessly as she fell behind.

The unmarried women rode with wild abandon past the wives of the village, who now had duties of their own this day—to plant corn in the south meadow, where the crops were assured plenty of sunlight.

The Scalpdancers had learned the art of cultivation from the prairie tribes, who had in turn obtained knowledge from a Cheyenne village along the banks of the Tongue River. Most of the planting had been accomplished a few weeks earlier, but a few dozen shoots remained to be planted and the weeds and wild flowers need to be discouraged from returning. One of the women turned the soil using the shoulder blade of a buffalo for a plow. She had attached the shoulder blade to a pair of fresh-cut saplings. A mountain-bred mare drew the makeshift implement across the rich earth.

The married women paused in their labors and playfully insulted those on horseback. It was all in good fun. Yellow Stalk maneuvered herself to the fore and hurled a dirt clod at the root gatherers. Owl Bead and Berry joined in the assault, and the other ten women followed suit. Then the riders swept past and peace returned to the valley of the Scalpdancers.

Moon Shadow moved as silently as her namesake in and out of the lodge. She appeared solemn, said little, although from time to time she would chant a keening prayer song. She packed parfleches of dried meat and put together pouches of herbs and roots. And there was a buckskin shirt she wanted to finish and there was—there was—she needed… The tears began to flow.

Lost Eyes had just swept the flap back and entered the tepee and found her with tear-streaked face and bowed shoulders. He noticed White Buffalo's pallet was empty. He squatted by her and wrapped his arms around Moon Shadow's rotund body.

“Little mother, what is it?”

“I cry for you,” she said.

“Save your tears then. I am not dead.”

“You will be as one who is.” She sniffed and swallowed and tried to regain the composure she had lost.

“Wolf Lance will be your son now. He will care for you,” Lost Eyes told her, fighting a lump in his throat. For five days he had continued his life as if nothing had happened; the reality of banishment had yet to sink in. Somehow he thought the elders would relent, see their mistake and permit him to remain among the People. Moon Shadow, in her grief, brought the enormity of the loss home. She had been his mother. He would miss her terribly. She had been a good friend.

“Maybe one day I will return.”

“No,” the woman said. “After the full moon you will be considered an enemy and every brave you meet will ride against you. Do not return. Ride beyond the Backbone of the World. I will never see you again. I will cut my hair and bury my heart. And you will be dead.”

She wiped an arm across her face and cheeks, then she picked up the shirt she had sewn for him. The brushed design upon the soft buckskin was incomplete, but a delicate pattern of trade beads and shells adorned the chest and when finished would depict a flight of arrows rising to the sun. Moon Shadow set to work, sniffing back an occasional sob.

Lost Eyes glanced toward the empty pallet. “Where is White Buffalo?”

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“He hobbled out and called to his blaze, and the animal came to him from across the creek. He rode back into the hills, where the Cold Maker comes.”

Lost Eyes' brow furrowed with curiosity and he ducked out of the lodge and studied the north ridge. But if White Buffalo had indeed ridden that way, he was already lost among the trees. Five days and the man had already recovered enough to ride. Surely the shaman possessed great magic, whatever its source. But why should he ride up the back slope? Lost Eyes decided there was only one way to find out. He brought two fingers to his mouth and loosed a sharp whistle, and across the creek, out in the meadow, a big gray mare raised her head and shook her mane and trotted down from the sweet grass. The mare rode through the village and arrived at the lodge. The animal reared and pawed the air.

The young brave spoke softly to the animal, gentling the beast with a soothing litany. “Be gentle. Be still, my proud beauty. Be gentle.”

He draped a blanket across the mare's back and fit a bull hide hackamore into place. He slung a quiver of arrows over his shoulder and, taking up his elkhorn bow, he leapt astride his mare and rode north. He looked to neither right nor left. He had grown used to the stares of the village women and children who watched him pass. Once they had been his friends, his people. Now they would be glad when he and White Buffalo were gone. What had been mere misgivings over his lack of a vision had turned to outright fear. He had inherited White Buffalo's sins and there was no mercy for him, today or ever again.

Nothing much had changed in eleven years, White Buffalo thought as he walked his blaze stallion out of a thicket of aspen and into tall timber that covered the steep slopes of Crazy Wolf Ridge. He could no longer see the village through the trees, but sounds carried and the scent of cook fires taunted his senses. He paused, lost in a reverie of how things might have been. He saw himself with a woman lying beside him in his lodge and she was soft and warm and good to cling to, especially when Cold Maker covered the land in forgetful snow and the world slept. Yes, a woman and children, yes, strong sons to ride with into battle and teach the ways of the Great Circle. He saw children in his mind's eye: They danced before him and ran naked in the sun, and he taught the boys to ride and hunt, and the girls were beautiful and learned the mysteries of womanhood from their mother.

Then he saw the white buffalo and replayed again how he had taken its power: The beast was huge and shaggy and stood tall like some great mound of snow.
The man loosed an arrow, then another, and another, and the wondrous beast bellowed and tried to flee, but the brave rode in close and thrust his lance deep into the animal's lungs, and the sacred buffalo died, its blood spilling onto the ground. The brave washed himself in the blood and ate the animal's heart and stole its power…
.

With that memory, the other dream died. It always died. But maybe this time he might make it live again. He would have his revenge on those who had banished him. The Scalpdancers would regret the day they had driven White Buffalo from their midst, for he had returned with a purpose.

Eleven years' wandering had returned him to the Backbone of the World, where he forged an alliance with a tribe of Shoshoni, the natural enemies of the Blackfeet. These were the Shining Bear Shoshoni and they had heard of the legendary White Buffalo, and he worked his magic among them and slayed two of their chiefs and another had died in his sleep just as White Buffalo had predicted.