The day’s little problems seemed easier to solve as time went by, and when his work was finished the lieutenant would lie back on the bunk with his cigarette and marvel at the peace he felt. Invariably his eyes would grow heavy, and he fell into the habit of napping for half an hour before supper.
Two Socks became a habit, too. He appeared at his customary spot on the bluff each afternoon, and after two or three days, Lieutenant Dunbar began to take his silent visitor’s comings and goings for granted. Occasionally he would notice the wolf trotting into view, but more often than not, the lieutenant would glance up from some little task and there he would be, sitting on his haunches, staring across the river with that curious but unmistakable look of longing.
One evening, while Two Socks was watching, he laid a fist-sized chunk of bacon rind on his own side of the river. The morning after, there was no trace of the bacon, and though he had no proof, Dunbar felt certain that Two Socks had taken it.
Lieutenant Dunbar missed some things. He missed the company of people. He missed the pleasure of a stiff drink. Most of all, he missed women, or rather a woman. Sex hardly entered his mind. But sharing did. The more settled he became in the free and easy pattern of life at Fort Sedgewick, the more he wanted to share it with someone, and when the lieutenant thought of this missing element, he would drop his chin and stare morosely at nothing.
Fortunately, these lapses of spirit passed away quickly. What he might have lacked was pale in light of what he had. His mind was free. There was no work and there was no play. Everything was one. It didn’t matter whether he was hauling water up from the stream or tying into a hearty dinner. Everything was the same, and he found it not at all boring. He thought of himself as a single current in a deep river. He was separate and he was whole, all at the same time. It was a wonderful feeling.
He loved the daily reconnaissance rides on Cisco’s bare back. Each day they rode out in a different direction, sometimes as far as five or six miles from the fort. He saw no buffalo and no Indians. But this disappointment was not great. The prairie was glorious, ablaze with wildflowers and overrun with game. The buffalo grass was the best, alive as an ocean, waving in the wind for as far as his eyes could see. It was a sight he knew he would never grow tired of.
On the afternoon before the day Lieutenant Dunbar did his laundry, he and Cisco had ridden less than a mile from the post when, by chance, he looked over his shoulder and there was Two Socks, coming along in his easy trot a couple of hundred yards back.
Lieutenant Dunbar pulled up and the wolf slowed.
But he didn’t stop.
He veered wide, picking up his trot again. When he was abreast of them the old wolf halted in the high grass, fifty yards to the lieutenant’s left, and settled on his haunches, waiting as if for a signal to begin again.
They rode deeper into the prairie and Two Socks went with them. Dunbar’s curiosity led him to perform a series of stops and starts along the way. Two Socks, his yellow eyes always vigilant, followed suit each time.
Even when Dunbar changed course, zigzagging here and there, he kept up, always maintaining his fifty yards of distance.
When he put Cisco into an easy canter, the lieutenant was astounded to see Two Socks ease into a lope of his own.
When they stopped, he looked out at his faithful follower and tried to conjure up an explanation. Surely this animal had known man somewhere along the line. Perhaps he was half-dog. But when the lieutenant’s eyes swept the wilderness all about him, running unbroken toward every horizon, he could not imagine Two Socks as anything but a wolf.
“Okay,” the lieutenant called out.
Two Socks picked up his ears.
“Let’s go.”
The three of them covered another mile before startling a small herd of antelope. The lieutenant watched the white-rumped pronghorns bound over the prairie until they were almost out of sight.
When he turned to check Two Socks’s reaction, he could no longer see him.
The wolf was gone.
Clouds were building in the west, towering thunderheads filled with lightning. As he and Cisco started back, Dunbar kept an eye on the storm front. It was moving toward them, and the prospect of rain made the lieutenant’s face look sour.
He really had to do his laundry.
The blankets had started to smell like dirty socks.
CHAPTER VIII
Lieutenant Dunbar was right in step with the time-honored tradition of predicting weather.
He was wrong.
The spectacular storm slipped through during the night without loosing a single drop of rain on Fort Sedgewick, and the day that broke the next morning was the purest pastel blue, air that was like something for drinking, and merciful sun that toasted everything it touched without searing a single blade of grass.
Over coffee, the lieutenant reread his official reports of days past and concluded he had done a pretty fair job of putting down facts. He debated the subjective items for a time. More than once he took up his pen to cross out a line, but in the end he changed nothing.
He was pouring a second cup when he noticed the curious cloud far to the west. It was brown, a dusky brown cloud, lying low and flat at the base of the sky.
It was too hazy to be a cloud. It looked like smoke from a fire. The lightning from the night before must have struck something. Perhaps the prairie had been set afire. He made a mental note to keep an eye on the smoky cloud and to make his afternoon ride in that direction if it persisted. He had heard that prairie fires could be huge and fast-moving.
They had come in the day before, close to twilight, and unlike Lieutenant Dunbar, they had been rained on.
But their spirits were not dampened in the least. The last leg of the long trek from a winter camp far to the south was finished. That, and the coming of spring, made for the happiest of times. Their ponies were growing fatter and stronger with each succeeding day, the march had toned everyone after months of relative inactivity, and preparations would begin at once for the summer hunts. That made them happier still, happy in the pit of each and every belly. The buffalo were coming. Feasting was right around the corner.
And because this had been a summer camp for generations; a strong spirit of homecoming lightened the hearts of everyone, all 172 men, women, and children.
The winter had been mild and the band had come through it in excellent shape. Today, on the first morning home, it was a camp of smiles. Youngsters frolicked in the pony herd, warriors swapped stories, and the women mowed through the chores of breakfast with more gaiety than usual.
They were Comanche.
The smoke cloud Lieutenant Dunbar thought was a prairie fire had risen from their cooking fires.
They were camped on the same stream, eight miles west of Fort Sedgewick.
Dunbar grabbed up everything he could find that needed washing and stuffed it in a rucksack. Then he draped the foul blankets over his shoulders, searched out a chunk of soap, and headed down the river.
As he squatted by the stream, pulling laundry out of the sack, he thought, Sure would like to wash what I got on.