There were myriad sensitive details to consider in mounting the dance. It was to be an invocation, very sacred, and the whole band would be participating. The planning and delegating of various responsibilities for an event of this importance amounted to a full-time job.
Plus there were the ongoing duties of being a husband to two wives, a father to four children, and a guide to his newly adopted daughter. Added to it all were the routine problems and surprises that cropped up each day: visits to the sick, impromptu councils with drop-in visitors, and the making of his own medicine.
Kicking Bird was the busiest of men.
And there was something else, something that nipped constantly at his concentration. Like a low-grade, persistent headache, Lieutenant Dunbar preyed on his mind. Wrapped up as he was in the present, Loo Ten Nant was the future, and Kicking Bird could not resist its call. The present and the future occupied the same space in the medicine man’s day. It was a crowded time.
Having Stands With A Fist around did not make it easier for him. She was the key to his plan, and Kicking Bird could not look at her without thinking of Loo Ten Nant, an act that inevitably sent him wandering down new trails of speculative thought. But he had to keep an eye on her. It was important to approach the matter at the right time and place. She was healing fast, moving without trouble now, and had picked up the rhythm of life at his lodge. Already a favorite with the children, she worked as long and as hard as anyone in camp. When left to herself, she was withdrawn, but that was understandable. In fact, it had always been her nature.
Sometimes, after watching her a while, Kicking Bird would heave a private sigh of burden. At those times he would pull up at the edge of questions, the main one being whether or not Stands With A Fist truly belonged. But he could not presume an answer, and an answer would not help him anyway. Only two things mattered. She was here and he needed her.
By the day of the dance he still had not found an opportunity to speak to her in the way he wanted. That morning he woke with the realization that he, Kicking Bird, would have to put his plan in motion if he ever wanted it to happen.
He dispatched three young men to Fort Sedgewick. He was too busy to go himself, and while they were gone he would find a way to have a talk with Stands With A Fist.
Kicking Bird was spared the drudgery of manipulation when his entire family set off on an expedition to the river at midmorning, leaving Stands With A Fist behind to dress out a fresh-shot deer. Kicking Bird watched her from inside the lodge. She never looked up as the knife flew along in her hand, peeling away hide with the same ease that tender flesh falls away from the bone. He waited until she paused in her work, taking a few moments to watch a group of children playing tag in front of a lodge across the way.
“Stands With A Fist,” he said softly, bending through the entrance to the lodge.
She looked up at him with her wide eyes but said nothing.
“I would talk with you,” he said, disappearing into the darkness of the lodge.
She followed.
It was tense inside. Kicking Bird was going to say things she probably would not want to hear, and it made him uneasy.
As she stood in front of him, Stands With A Fist felt the kind of foreboding that comes before questioning. She had done nothing wrong, but life had become a day-to-day proposition. She never knew what was going to befall her next, and since the death of her husband, she had not felt up to meeting challenges. She took solace in the man standing before her. He was respected by everyone and he had taken her in as one of his own. If there was anyone she could trust, it was Kicking Bird.
But he seemed nervous.
“Sit,” he said, and they both dropped to the floor. “How is the wound?” he began.
“It is healing,” she replied, her eyes barely meeting his.
“The pain is gone?”
“Yes.”
“You have found strength again.”
“I am stronger now; I am working well.”
She toyed with a patch of dirt at her feet, scraping it into a little pile while Kicking Bird tried to find the words he wanted. He didn’t like rushing, but he didn’t want to be interrupted either, and someone might come by at any time.
She looked up at him suddenly, and Kicking Bird was struck by the sadness of her face.
“You are unhappy here,” he said.
“No.” She shook her head. “I am glad for it.”
She played with the dirt halfheartedly, flicking it with her fingers.
“I am sad without my husband.”
Kicking Bird thought for a moment, and she began to build another pile of dirt.
“He is gone now,” the medicine man said, “but you are not. Time is moving and you are moving with it, even if you go unhappily. Things will be happening.”
“Yes,” she said, pursing her lips, “but I am not much interested in what will happen.”
From his vantage point facing the entrance Kicking Bird saw several shadows pass in front of the lodge flap and then move on.
“The whites are coming,” he said suddenly. “More of them will be coming through our country each year.”
A shiver ran up Stands With A Fist’s spine. It spread across her shoulders. Her eyes hardened and her hands involuntarily rolled themselves into fists.
“I won’t go with them,” she said.
Kicking Bird smiled. “No,” he said, “you won’t go. There is not a warrior among us who would not fight to keep you from going.”
Hearing these words of support, the woman with the dark cherry hair leaned forward slightly, curious now.
“But they will be coming,” he continued. “They are a strange race in their habits and beliefs. It is hard to know what to do. People say they are many, and that troubles me. If they come as a flood, we will have to stop them. Then we will lose many of our good men, men like your husband. There will be many more widows with long faces.”
As Kicking Bird drew closer to the point, Stands With A Fist dropped her head, contemplating the words.
“This white man, the one who brought you home. I have seen him. I have been to his lodge downriver and drunk his coffee and talked with him. He is strange in his ways. But I have watched him and I think his heart is a good one. . . .”
She lifted her head and glanced fleetingly at Kicking Bird.
“This white man is a soldier. He may be a person of influence among the whites. . . .”
Kicking Bird stopped. A common sparrow had found its way through the open flap and fluttered into the lodge. Knowing it had trapped itself, the young bird beat its wings frantically as it bounced off one hide wall after another. Kicking Bird watched as the sparrow climbed closer to the smoke hole and suddenly disappeared to freedom.
He looked now at Stands With A Fist. She had ignored the intrusion and was staring at the hands folded in her lap. The medicine man thought, trying to pick up the thread of his monologue. Before he could start however, he again heard the soft whir of little wings.
Looking overhead, he saw the sparrow, hovering just inside the smoke hole. He followed its flight as it dived deliberately toward the floor, pulled up in a graceful swoop, and lighted quietly on the cherry-colored head. She didn’t move, and the bird began preening, as natural as if it were nesting in the branches of a tall tree. She passed an absent hand over her head, and like a child skipping rope, the sparrow hopped a foot into the air, hovered as the hand swept under its feet, and landed once more. Stands With A Fist sat oblivious as the tiny visitor fluffed its wings, threw out its chest, and took off like a shot, making a beeline for the entrance. It was gone in the blink of an eye.