The teenage soldiers had never seen a wild Indian, but in the few weeks of training following their recruitment, they had been reminded repeatedly that soon they would be fighting a deceptive, cunning, and bloodthirsty foe. Now they were actually staring at a vision of the enemy.
They panicked.
Dances With Wolves saw the rise of their rifles just as Cisco reared. There was nothing he could do. The volley was poorly aimed and Dances With Wolves was thrown clear as they fired, landing on the ground unhurt.
But one of the bullets caught Cisco square in the chest, and the slug tore through the center of his heart. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Oblivious to the shouting soldiers rushing toward him, Dances With Wolves scrambled back to his downed horse. He grabbed at Cisco’s head and lifted his muzzle. But there was no life in it.
Outrage took him over. It formed a sentence in his mind. Look what you’ve done. He turned to the sound of rushing feet, ready to shout out the words.
As his face came around, the stock of a rifle slammed into it. Everything went black.
He could smell dirt. His face was pressed against an earthen floor. He could hear the sound of muffled voices, and a set of words came to him distinctly.
“Sergeant Murphy . . . he’s coming to.”
Dances With Wolves turned his face and grimaced in pain as his broken cheekbone made contact with the hard-packed floor.
He touched his injured face with a finger and recoiled again as the hurt shot along the side of his head.
He tried to open his eyes but could only manage one. The other was swollen shut. When the good eye cleared he recognized where he was. He was in the old supply house.
Someone kicked him in the side.
“Here, you, sit up.”
The toe of a boot rolled him onto his back, and Dances With Wolves scooted away from the contact. The rear wall of the supply house stopped him.
There he sat staring with his good eye, first at the face of the bearded sergeant standing over him, then at the curious faces of white soldiers clustered around the door.
Someone behind them suddenly shouted, “Make way for Major Hatch, you men,” and the faces in the doorway fell away.
Two officers entered the supply house, a young, clean-shaven lieutenant and a much older man wearing long, gray side whiskers and an ill-fitting uniform. The older man’s eyes were small. The gold bars on his shoulders carried the oak leaf insignia of major.
Both officers were looking at him with expressions of repulsion.
“What is he, Sergeant?” asked the major, his tone stiff and cautious.
“Don’t know yet, sir.”
“Does he speak English?”
“Don’t know that either, sir . . . Hey, you . . . you speak English?”
Dances With Wolves blinked his good eye.
“Talk?” the sergeant queried again, putting his fingers to his lips. “Talk?”
He kicked lightly at one of the captive’s black riding boots, and Dances With Wolves sat up straighter. It wasn’t a threatening move, but as he made it, he saw both officers jerk back.
They were afraid of him.
“You talk?” the sergeant asked once more.
“I speak English,” Dances With Wolves said wearily. “It hurts to talk . . . One of your boys broke my cheek.”
The soldiers were shocked to hear the words come out so perfectly, and for the moment, they faced him in dumb silence.
Dances With Wolves looked white and he looked Indian. It had been impossible to tell which half was real. Now at least they knew he was white.
During the silence, other soldiers had again crowded around the doorway, and Dances With Wolves spoke at them.
“One of those stupid idiots shot my horse.”
The major ignored this comment.
“Who are you?”
“I’m First Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, United States Army.”
“Why are you dressed like an Indian?”
Even if he’d wanted to, Dances With Wolves couldn’t have begun to answer the question. But he didn’t want to.
“This is my post,” he said. “I came out from Fort Hays in April, but there was no one here.”
The major and the lieutenant held a brief conversation, whispering into one another’s ear.
“You have proof of that?” questioned the lieutenant.
“Under the bed in that other hut, there’s a folded sheet of paper with my orders on it. On top of the bed is my journal. It will tell you all you need to know.”
It was all over for Dances With Wolves. He dropped the good side of his head into a hand. His heart was breaking. The band would leave him behind for sure. By the time he got clear of this mess, if he ever did, it would be too late to find them. Cisco was lying out there dead. He wanted to cry. But he didn’t dare. He just hung his head.
People left the room, but he didn’t look up to see who it was. A few seconds ticked off and then he heard the sergeant whisper coarsely:
“You turned Injin, didn’cha?”
Dances With Wolves lifted his head. The sergeant was bending over him with a leer.
“Didn’cha?”
Dances With Wolves didn’t answer. He let his head fall back into his hand, refusing to look up until the major and lieutenant had appeared again.
This time the lieutenant did the talking.
“What is your name?”
“Dunbar . . . D-u-n-b-a-r . . . John, J.”
“Are these your orders?”
He was holding up a yellowed sheet of paper. Dances With Wolves had to squint to make it out.
“Yes.”
“The name here is Rumbar,” the lieutenant said grimly. “The date is entered in pencil, but the rest is in ink. The signature of the issuing officer is smeared. It’s not legible. What do you have to say about that?”
Dances With Wolves heard the suspicion in the lieutenant’s voice. It began to sink in that these people did not believe him.
“Those are the orders I was given at Fort Hays,” he said flatly.
The lieutenant’s face twisted. He looked dissatisfied.
“Read the journal,” said Dances With Wolves.
“There is no journal,” the young officer replied.
Dances With Wolves watched him carefully, sure he was lying.
But the lieutenant was telling the truth.
A member of the advance party, the first to reach Fort Sedgewick, had found the journal. He was an illiterate private named Sheets and he had slipped the book into his tunic, thinking it would make good toilet paper. Sheets heard now that a certain journal was missing, one that the wild white man said was his. Maybe he ought to turn it in. He might be rewarded. But on second thought, Sheets worried that he might be reprimanded. Or worse. He’d done time in more than one guardhouse for petty theft. So the journal stayed hidden under his uniform coat.
“We want you to tell us the meaning of your appearance,” the lieutenant continued. He sounded like an interrogator now. “If you are who you say you are, why are you out of uniform?”
Dances With Wolves shifted against the supply house wall.
“What is the army doing out here?”
The major and the lieutenant whispered to one another again. And again the lieutenant spoke up.
“We are charged with recovering stolen property, including white captives taken in hostile raiding.”
“There has been no raiding and there are no white captives,” Dances With Wolves lied.
“We will ascertain that for ourselves,” the lieutenant countered.
The officers again fell to whispering, and this time the conversation went on a while before the lieutenant cleared his throat.
“We will give you a chance to prove your loyalty to your country. If you guide us to the hostile camps and serve as interpreter, your conduct will be reevaluated.”