The lieutenant stood motionless in front of his horse, and as the village swirled around Wind In His Hair, he felt the spirit run out of him. These were not his people. He would never know them. He might as well have been a thousand miles away. He wanted to be small, small enough to crawl into the smallest, darkest hole.
What had he expected of these people? He must have thought they would run out and throw their arms around him, speak his language, have him to supper, share his jokes, without so much as a how-do-you. How lonely he must be. How pitiful he was to entertain any expectations at all, grasping at these outlandish straws, hoping hopes that were so far-flung that he could not be honest with himself. He had managed to fool himself about everything, fool himself into thinking he was something when he was nothing.
These terrible thoughts were going off in his head like a storm of incoherent sparks, and where he stood now, in front of this primeval village, mattered not at all. Lieutenant Dunbar was swaying under the crush of a morbid personal crisis. Like so much chalk wiped from a board with one swipe, his heart and his hope had deserted him all at once. Somewhere deep inside, a switch had been thrown and Lieutenant Dunbar’s light had gone out.
Oblivious to all but the hollowness he felt, the unhappy lieutenant swung onto Cisco, reined him around, and started back the way he had come at a brisk walk. This happened with so little fanfare that the already occupied Comanches didn’t realize he was going until he had covered some distance.
Two teenage braves started after him but were held back by the cool-headed men of Ten Bears’s inner circle. They were wise enough to know that a good deed had been done, that the white soldier had brought back one of their own, and that nothing was to be gained by chasing after him.
The ride back was the longest and most agonizing of Lieutenant Dunbar’s life. For several miles he rode in a daze, his mind churning away with thousands of negative thoughts. He resisted the temptation to cry in the way one resists vomiting, but self-pity bore in on him relentlessly, in wave after wave, and at last he broke down.
He slumped forward, letting his shoulders bunch up at first, and his tears fell without a sound. But when he began to sniffle, the floodgates swung wide. His face twisted grotesquely and he began to moan with the abandon of a hysteric. In the midst of these first convulsions he gave Cisco his head, and as the miles piled up unrecorded, he let his heart bleed free, sobbing as piteously as an inconsolable child.
He never saw the fort. When Cisco stopped, the lieutenant looked up and saw that they had halted in front of his quarters. The strength had been wrung from him, and for a few seconds it was all he could do to sit comatose on his horse’s back. When he finally lifted his head again, he saw Two Socks, stationed at his usual place on the bluff across the river. The sight of the wolf, sitting so patiently, like a royal hunting dog, his face so sweetly inquisitive, brought a new lump of sorrow into Dunbar’s throat. But all of his tears had been spent.
He tumbled off Cisco, slipped the bit out of his mouth, and lurched through the door. Dropping the bridle on the floor, he flopped onto his bunk, pulled a blanket over his head, and rolled into a ball.
Exhausted as he was, the lieutenant could not sleep. For some reason he kept thinking of Two Socks, waiting out there so patiently. With a superhuman effort he dragged himself off the bed, staggered into the twilight, and squinted across the river.
The old wolf was still sitting in his place, so the lieutenant sleep-walked his way to the supply house and carved a big hunk of bacon off the slab. He carried the meat out to the bluff and, with Two Socks watching intently, dropped it on the grassy ground near the top of the bluff.
Then, thinking of sleep with every step, he threw some hay for Cisco and retreated to his quarters. Like a soldier hitting the dirt, he pitched onto the pallet, pulled up the blanket, and covered his eyes.
A woman’s face came to him, a face out of the past that he knew well. There was a shy smile on her lips and her eyes shone with a light that can only come from the heart. In times of trouble he had always called upon the face, and it had come to comfort him. There was much more behind the face, a long story with an unhappy ending, but Lieutenant Dunbar didn’t get into that. The face and the wonderful look it wore were all he wanted to remember, and he clung to it tenaciously. He used it like a drug. It was the most powerful painkiller he knew. He didn’t think of her often, but he carried the face around with him, using it only when he was close to scraping bottom.
He lay unmoving on the bed, like an opium smoker, and eventually the image he held in his mind began to take effect. He was already snoring by the time Venus appeared, leading a long parade of stars across the endless prairie sky.
CHAPTER XIV
Minutes after the white man’s departure, Ten Bears called another council. Unlike the recent meetings, which had begun and ended in confusion, Ten Bears knew exactly what he wanted to do now. He was set on a plan before the last of the men had seated themselves in his lodge.
The white soldier with blood on his face had brought back Stands With A Fist, and Ten Bears was convinced that this surprise was a bright omen, one that should be followed through on. The issue of the white race had troubled his thoughts too long. For years he had not been able to see anything good in their coming. But he wanted to desperately. Today he’d seen something good at last, and now he was determined not to let what he considered a golden opportunity slip past.
The white soldier had showed extreme bravery in coming alone to their camp. And he had obviously come with a single intention . . . not to steal or cheat or fight but to return something he had found, something that belonged to them. This talk of gods was probably wrong, but one thing was abundantly clear to Ten Bears. For the good of everyone, this soldier should be investigated. A man who behaved like this was bound to be positioned high with the whites. It was possible that he already carried great weight and influence. A man like this was someone with whom agreements might be reached. And without agreements, war and suffering were sure to come.
So Ten Bears was encouraged. The overture he had witnessed that afternoon, though it was only a single event, appeared to him as a light in the night, and as the men filed in, he was thinking of the best way to put his plan into action.
While he listened to the preliminaries, throwing in an occasional comment of his own, Ten Bears sifted through a mental roster of reliable men, trying to decide who would be best for his idea.
It wasn’t until Kicking Bird arrived, having been held up by attending to Stands With A Fist, that the old man realized it should not be a one-man job. He should send two men. Once that was decided, the individuals came to him quickly. He should send Kicking Bird for his powers of observation and Wind In His Hair for his aggressive nature. Each man’s character was representative of him and his people, and they complemented each other perfectly.
Ten Bears kept the council short. He didn’t want the kind of protracted discussions that could lead to indecision. When the time was right, he made an eloquent, beautifully reasoned speech, recounting the many stories of white numerical superiority and white riches, especially in terms of guns and horses. He concluded with the notion that the man at the fort was surely an emissary and that his good actions should be cause for talking, not fighting.
There was a long silence at the end of his speech. Everyone knew he was right.