It sounded so odd, this rigid, proper English word, that Lieutenant Dunbar laughed out loud, and like a teenager who has just said something silly, Stands With A Fist covered her mouth with a hand.
It was their joke. She knew the word had flown out like an inadvertent burp, and so did the lieutenant. Reflexively they looked to Kicking Bird and the others. The Indian faces were blank, however, and when the eyes of the cavalry officer and the woman who was two people came together again, they were dancing with the laughter of an inside thing only they could share. There was no way to adequately explain it to the others. It wasn’t funny enough to go to the trouble.
Lieutenant Dunbar didn’t keep the other pony. Instead he led it to Ten Bears’s lodge and, without knowing it, elevated his status even further. Comanche tradition called for the rich to spread their wealth among the less fortunate. But Dunbar reversed that, and the old man was left with the thought that this white man was truly extraordinary.
That night, as he was sitting around Kicking Bird’s fire, listening to a conversation he didn’t understand, Lieutenant Dunbar happened to see Stands With A Fist. She was squatting a few feet away and she was looking at him. Her head was tilted and her eyes seemed lost in curiosity. Before she could look away, he tipped his head in the direction of the warrior’s conversation, put on an official face, and laid a hand against the side of his mouth.
“Correct,” he whispered loudly.
She turned away quickly then. But as she did, he heard the distinct sound of a giggle.
To stay any longer would have been useless. They had all the meat they could possibly carry. Just after dawn everything was packed, and the column was on the march by midmorning. with every travois piled high, the return trip took twice as long, and it was getting dark by the time they reached Fort Sedgewick.
A travois loaded with several hundred pounds of jerked meat was brought up and unloaded into the supply house. A flurry of goodbyes followed, and with Lieutenant Dunbar watching from the doorway of his sod hut, the caravan marched off for the permanent camp upstream.
Without forethought his eyes searched the semidarkness surrounding the long, noisy column for a glimpse of Stands With A Fist.
He couldn’t find her.
The lieutenant had mixed feelings about being back.
He knew the fort as his home, and that was reassuring. It was good to pull his boots off, lie down on the pallet, and stretch out unobserved. With half-closed eyes he watched the wick flicker in his lamp, and drifted lazily in the quiet surrounding the hut. Everything was in its place, and so was he.
Not many minutes had passed, however, before he realized his right foot was jiggling with aimless energy.
What are you doing? he asked himself as he stilled the foot. You’re not nervous.
It was only a minute more before he discovered the fingers of his right hand drumming impatiently at his chest.
He wasn’t nervous. He was bored. Bored and lonely.
In the past he would have reached for his cigarette fixings, made a smoke, and put himself to work puffing on it. But there was no more tobacco.
Might as well have a look at the river, he thought, and with that, got back into his boots and walked outside.
He stopped, thinking of the breastplate that was already so precious to him. It was draped over the army-issue saddle he’d brought from the supply house. He went back inside, intending only to look at it.
Even in the weak light of the lamp it was shining brilliantly. Lieutenant Dunbar ran his hand over the bones. They were like glass. When he picked it up there was a solid clacking as bone kissed bone. He liked the cool, hard feel of it on his bare chest.
The “look at the river” turned into a long walk. The moon was nearly full again and he didn’t need the lantern as he treaded lightly along the bluff overlooking the stream.
He took his time, pausing often to look at the river, or at a branch as it bent in the breeze, or at a rabbit nibbling at a shrub. Everything was unconcerned with his presence.
He felt invisible. It was a feeling he liked.
After almost an hour he turned around and started home. If someone had been there as he passed by, they would have seen that, for all his lightness of step and for all his attention to things other than himself, the lieutenant was hardly invisible.
Not during the times he stopped to look up at the moon. Then he would lift his head, turn his body full into the face of its magical light, and the breastplate would flash the brightest white, like an earthbound star.
An odd thing happened the next day.
He spent the morning and part of the afternoon trying to work around the place: re-sorting what was left of the supplies, burning a few useless items, finding a protective way to store the meat, and making some journal entries.
All of it was done with half a heart. He thought of shoring up the corral again but decided that he would just be manufacturing work for himself. He’d already made work for himself. It made him feel rudderless.
When the sun was well on its way down, he found himself wanting to take another stroll on the prairie. It had been a blistering day. Perspiration from doing his chores had soaked through his pants and produced patches of prickly heat on his upper thighs. He could see no reason why this unpleasantness should accompany his stroll. So, Dunbar walked onto the prairie without his clothes, hoping he might run into Two Socks.
Forsaking the river, he struck out across the immense grasslands which rippled in every direction with a life of its own.
The grass had reached the peak of its growth, in some places grazing his hip. Overhead the sky was filled with fleecy, white clouds that stood against the pure blue like cutouts.
On a little rise a mile from the fort he lay down in the deep grass. With a windbreak on all sides, he soaked up the last of the sun’s warmth and stared dreamily at the slow-moving clouds.
The lieutenant turned on his side to bake his back. When he moved in the grass, a sudden sensation swamped him, one he had not known for so long that at first he wasn’t sure what he was feeling.
The grass above rustled softly as the breeze moved through it. The sun lay on his backside like a blanket of dry heat. The feeling welled higher and higher and Dunbar surrendered to it.
His hand fell downward, and as it did, the lieutenant ceased to think. Nothing guided his action, no visions or words or memories. He was feeling, and nothing more.
When he was conscious again he looked to the sky and saw the earth turning in the movement of the clouds. He rolled onto his back, placed his arms straight against his sides in the manner of a corpse, and floated awhile on his bed of grass and earth.
Then he closed his eyes and napped for half an hour.
He tossed and turned that night, his mind flitting from one subject to the next as though it were checking a long succession of rooms for a place to rest. Every room was either locked or inhospitable until at last he came to the place that, in the back of his mind, he knew he was bound for all the time.
The room was filled with Indians.
The idea was so right that he considered making the trip to Ten Bears’s camp that instant. But it seemed too impetuous.
I’ll get up early, he thought. Maybe I’ll stay a couple of days this time. He woke with anticipation before dawn but steeled himself against getting up, resisting the idea of a headlong rush to the village. He wanted to go without rash expectations, and stayed in bed until it was light.