As the noise of the fighting increased, his eyes checked the line. A few hotheads tried to break away and run to the other fight, but the older warriors did a good job of holding them in check, and no one bolted.
Again he scanned the mists clinging to the breaks.
They were coming up slowly, some on foot, some on horseback. They were inching up the incline, shadowy, roach-haired enemies dreaming of a slaughter.
The Pawnee cavalry was behind the men on foot, and Dances With Wolves wanted them at the front. He wanted the mounted men to take the brunt of the fire.
Bring up the horses, he pleaded to them silently. Bring ‘em up.
He looked down the line, hoping they would wait a few more seconds, and was surprised to see many eyes riveted on him. They kept watching, as if waiting for a sign.
Dances With Wolves raised an arm over his head.
A fluttering guttural sound came up the slope. It rose higher and higher, blasting through the quiet, rainy morning, like hot air. The Pawnee were sounding the attack.
As they charged, the cavalry surged ahead of the men on foot.
Dances With Wolves dropped his arm and sprang out from behind the lodge with his rifle raised. The other Comanches followed suit.
The fire from their guns hit the horsemen at a distance of about twenty yards, and as cleanly as a sharp knife cutting skin, it wrecked the Pawnee charge. Men tumbled from their horses like toys shaken off a shelf, and those not actually hit were stunned by the blistering concussion of forty rifles.
As they fired the Comanches counterattacked, streaming down through the screen of blue smoke to pounce on the dazed enemy.
The charge was so furious that Dances With Wolves crashed square into the first Pawnee he met. As they rolled awkwardly on the ground he thrust the barrel of the Navy into the man’s face and fired.
After that he shot men where he could find them in the turmoil, killing two more in rapid succession. Something large bumped him hard from behind, nearly knocking him off his feet. It was one of the surviving Pawnee war ponies. He grabbed its bridle and swung onto its back.
The Pawnee were like chickens being set upon by wolves and already they were falling back, desperately trying to make the safety of the breaks. Dances With Wolves picked out a tall warrior running for his life and rode him down. He fired at the back of the man’s head, but there was no report. Flipping the barrel around, he clubbed the fleeing warrior with the butt end of the revolver. The Pawnee went down right in front of him, and Dances With Wolves felt the pony’s hooves strike the body as they passed over. Just ahead of him another Pawnee, his head turbaned with a bright red scarf, was picking himself off the ground. He, too, was going for the breaks.
Dances With Wolves kicked viciously at the pony’s flanks, and as they pulled abreast of the runaway, he threw himself at the turbaned man, taking him in a headlock as he slid from the pony’s back.
Momentum sent them careening across the last of the open space and they slammed hard against a large cottonwood. Dances With Wolves had the man by both sides of his head. He was bashing his skull against the tree trunk before he realized that the warrior’s eyes were dead. A broken branch low on the trunk had skewered the Pawnee like meat.
As he stepped back from this unnerving sight, the dead man slumped forward, his arms flopping pitifully against Dances With Wolves’s sides as if he wanted to embrace his killer. Dances With Wolves skipped back farther and the body fell flat on its face.
In the same instant he realized that the screaming had stopped.
The fight was over.
Suddenly weak, he staggered along the edge of the breaks, picked up the main path, and trotted down to the river, sidestepping Pawnee bodies as he went.
A dozen mounted Comanches, Stone Calf among them, were chasing the dregs of the Pawnee force up the opposite bank.
Dances With Wolves watched until the skirmishers disappeared from sight. Then he walked slowly back. Coming up the incline, he could hear yelling. When he reached the slope’s crest, the battlefield he’d lately occupied opened wide to him.
It looked like a hastily abandoned picnic site. Refuse was scattered everywhere. There were a great number of Pawnee corpses. Comanche warriors were moving among them excitedly.
“I killed this one,” someone would call.
“This one still breathes,” another would announce, prompting the arrival of whoever was close by to help finish him off.
The women and children had come out of the lodges and were scurrying down to the battlefield. Some of the bodies were being mutilated.
Dances With Wolves stood stock-still, too fatigued to retreat into the breaks, too repulsed to move forward.
One of the warriors saw him and then cried out.
“Dances With Wolves!”
Before he knew it, Comanche fighters were all around him. Like ants rolling a pebble uphill, they pushed him onto the battlefield. They were chanting his name as they went.
In a daze he allowed himself to be carried along, unable to comprehend their intense happiness. They were overjoyed at the death and destruction lying at their feet, and Dances With Wolves could not understand.
But as he stood there, hearing them shout his name, understanding came to him. He had never been in this kind of fight, but gradually he began to look at the victory in a new way.
This killing had not been done in the name of some dark political objective. This was not a battle for territory or riches or to make men free. This battle had no ego.
It had been waged to protect the homes that stood only a few feet away. And to protect the wives and children and loved ones huddled inside. It had been fought to preserve the food stores that would see them through the winter, food stores everyone had worked so hard to gather.
For every member of the band this was a great personal victory.
Suddenly he was proud to hear his name being shouted, and as his eyes focused again, he looked down and recognized one of the men he had killed.
“I shot this one,” he yelled out.
Someone shouted in his ear.
“Yes, I saw you shoot him.”
Before long, Dances With Wolves was marching around with them, calling out the names of fellow Comanche men as he recognized them.
Sunshine spilled across the village, and the fighters began a spontaneous dance of victory, exhorting each other with back slaps and cries of triumph as they cavorted over the field of dead Pawnee.
Two of the enemy had been killed by the force defending the front of the village. On the main battlefield there were twenty-two bodies. Four more were found in the breaks, and Stone Calf’s team of pursuers managed to kill three. How many had gotten away wounded, no one knew.
Seven Comanches had been wounded, only two seriously, but the real miracle was in the number of dead. Not a single Comanche fighter had been lost. Even the old men could not remember such a one-sided victory.
For two days the village reveled in its triumph. Honors were heaped on all the men, but one warrior was exalted above all others. That was Dances With Wolves.
Through all his months on the plains the native perception of him had shifted many times. And now the circle had closed. Now he was looked on in a way that was close to their original idea. No one came forward to declare him a god, but in the life of these people he was the next best thing.
All day long young men could be found hanging around his lodge. Maidens flirted openly with him. His name was foremost in everyone’s thoughts. No conversation, regardless of subject, could run its course without some mention of Dances With Wolves.
The ultimate accolade came from Ten Bears. In a gesture previously unknown, he presented the hero with a pipe from his own lodge.