Then Wind In His Hair spoke up.
“I do not think it is right for you to go and speak to this white man,” he said. “He is not a god, he is just another white man lost in his way.”
A tiny twinkle flashed in the old man’s eyes as he made his reply.
“I will not go. But good men should. Men who can show what a Comanche is.”
Here he paused, shutting his eyes for dramatic effect. A minute passed, and some of the men thought he might have fallen asleep. But at the last second he opened them long enough to say to Wind In His Hair:
“You should go. You and Kicking Bird.”
Then he closed his eyes again and dozed off, ending the council at just the right place.
The first big thunderstorm of the season came that night, a miles-long front marching to the hollow boom of thunder and the brilliant crackle of forked lightning. The rain it brought swept over the prairie in great rolling curtains, driving everything that lived to shelter.
It woke Stands With A Fist.
The rain was drumming against the lodge’s hide walls like deadened fire from a thousand rifles, and for a few moments, she didn’t know where she was. There was light, and she turned slowly on her side for a look at the little fire that was still popping in the center of the lodge. As she did, one of her hands drifted over the wound on her thigh and accidentally brushed against something foreign. She felt carefully and discovered that her leg had been sewn.
Everything came back to her then.
She glanced sleepily around the lodge, wondering who lived here. She knew it was not hers.
Her mouth was dry as cotton, so she slid a hand from under the covers to explore with her fingers. The first thing they bumped into was a little bowl half-filled with water. She lifted herself to one elbow, took several long swallows, and lay back down.
There were things she wanted to know, but thinking was difficult now. It was warm as summer under the robe. The fire’s shadows were dancing happily above her head, the rain was singing its strong lullaby in her ears, and she was very weak.
Maybe I am dying, she thought as her eyelids began to lower, shutting down the last of the firelight. Just before she fell asleep she said to herself, It is not so bad.
But Stands With A Fist was not dying. She was recovering, and what she had suffered, once it was healed, would make her stronger than ever.
Good would be coming out of the bad. In fact, the good had already begun. She was lying in a good place, a place that would be her home for a long time to come.
She was lying in Kicking Bird’s lodge.
Lieutenant Dunbar slept like the dead, only vaguely aware of the spectacular show in the sky overhead. Rain punished the little sod hut for hours, but he was so snug and secure under the pile of army-issue blankets that Armageddon could have come and gone without his knowing it.
He never stirred, and it wasn’t until well after sunup, long after the storm had passed on, that the carefree, persistent singsong of a meadowlark finally brought him around. The rain had freshened every square inch of the prairie, and the sweetness of its smell was shooting up his nose before he could open his eyes. At first flutter he realized he was lying on his back, and when they opened he was looking directly over his toes at the hut’s entrance.
There was a flash of movement as something low and hairy ducked away from the door. The lieutenant sat up, blinking. A moment later the blankets were thrown aside and he was tiptoeing unsteadily to the entrance. Standing inside, he peered around the jamb with one eye.
Two Socks had just trotted clear of the awning and was turning around to settle himself in the sun of the yard. He saw the lieutenant and stiffened. They watched each other for a few seconds. Then the lieutenant rubbed at the sleep in his eyes, and when he dropped his hands, Two Socks stretched out prone, his muzzle resting on the ground between his outstretched legs, like a dutiful dog waiting for his master.
Cisco whinnied shrilly in the corral, and the lieutenant’s head jerked in that direction. He caught a simultaneous flash from the corner of his eye and turned back in time to see Two Socks galloping out of sight over the bluff. Then, as his eyes panned back to the corral, he saw them.
They were sitting on ponies, not a hundred yards in front of him. He didn’t make a count, but there were eight of them.
Two men suddenly started forward. Dunbar didn’t move, but unlike previous encounters, he held his ground in a relaxed way. It was in the way they were coming. The ponies’ heads were drooping as they plodded in, casual as workers coming home after a long, routine day.
The lieutenant was anxious, but his anxiety had little to do with life or death.
He was wondering what he would say and how he could possibly communicate his first words.
Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair were wondering exactly the same thing. The white soldier was as alien as anything they had ever met, and neither one knew how this was going to turn out. Seeing that blood was still smeared on the white soldier’s face didn’t make them feel any better about the meeting that was about to begin. In terms of roles, however, each man was different. Wind In His Hair rode forward as a warrior, a fighting Comanche. Kicking Bird was much more the statesman. This was an important moment in his life, the life of the band, and the life of the whole tribe. For Kicking Bird a whole new future was beginning, and he was sitting in on history.
When their faces were close enough to be distinct, Dunbar instantly recognized the warrior who had taken the woman from his arms. There was something familiar about the other man, too, but he couldn’t place him. He didn’t have time.
They had stopped a dozen feet in front of him.
They looked all lit up, resplendent in the glittering sunshine. Wind In His Hair was wearing a breastplate of bone, and a large metal disk hung around Kicking Bird’s neck. These things were reflecting in the light. There was even a glint coming off their deep brown eyes, and each man’s shiny, black hair was shimmering with sun streams.
Despite having just awakened, there was a certain sheen about Lieutenant Dunbar as well, though it was much more subtle than that of his visitors.
His crisis of the heart had passed, leaving him as the storm of the night before had left the prairie: fresh and full of vigor. Lieutenant Dunbar tipped forward in the suggestion of a bow and tapped his hand against the side of his head in a slow and deliberate salute.
A moment later Kicking Bird returned this overture with a strange movement of his own hand, turning it over, from back to palm.
The lieutenant didn’t know what it meant, but he interpreted it correctly as a friendly gesture. He glanced around, as if to make sure the place was still there, and said, “Welcome to Fort Sedgewick.”
What the words meant was a complete mystery to Kicking Bird, but as Lieutenant Dunbar had done, he took them for some kind of greeting.
“We have come from Ten Bears’s camp to make a peaceful talk,” he said, drawing a blank look of ignorance from the lieutenant.
Since it was now established that neither one would be able to converse, a silence fell over the two parties. Wind In His Hair took advantage of the lull to study the details of the white man’s buildings. He looked sharp and long at the awning, which was now beginning to roll in the breeze.
Kicking Bird sat impassively on his pony as the seconds dragged. Dunbar tapped his toe against the ground and stroked his chin. As time ticked away he grew nervous, and his nervousness reminded him of the morning coffee he’d missed and how much he wanted a cup. He wanted a cigarette, too.