By midday, he had heard nothing.
They’d been away from the river for a long time, but it was coming up again. Searching for a place to ford, they followed it for a quarter mile before the soldiers up front found a well-traveled buffalo crossing.
The water wasn’t wide, but the breaks around the river were exceptionally thick, thick enough for an ambush. As the wagon creaked down the incline, Dances With Wolves kept his eyes and ears open.
The sergeant in charge called for the driver to stop before they entered the stream, and they waited as the sergeant and another man crossed over. For a long minute or two, they probed the breaks. Then the sergeant cupped his hands and called for the wagon to come along.
Dances With Wolves clenched his fists and shifted to a squatting position. He could see nothing and he could hear nothing.
But he knew they were there.
He was moving at the sound of the first arrow, far faster than the guard in the wagon, who was still fumbling with his rifle as Dances With Wolves looped the hand chain around the man’s neck.
Rifle fire exploded behind him and he yanked the chain taut, feeling the flesh beneath it give as the soldier’s throat caved in.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the sergeant tumble forward off his horse, an arrow deep in the small of his back. The wagon driver had jumped over the side. He was knee-deep in water, firing wildly with a pistol.
Dances With Wolves landed on top of him and they grappled briefly in the water before he could work himself free. Using the chain like a two-handed whip, he lashed at the driver’s head and the soldier turned limp, rolling slowly in the shallow water. Dances With Wolves gave him more vicious whacks, stopping only when he saw the water turning red.
There was yelling downstream. Dances With Wolves looked up in time to see the last of the troopers trying to escape. He must have been wounded because he was flopping loosely in the saddle.
Wind In His Hair was right behind the doomed soldier. As their horses came together, Dances With Wolves heard the dull thud of Wind In His Hair’s skull cracker as it crushed the man’s head.
Behind him it was quiet, and when he turned he saw the men of the rear guard sprawled dead in the water.
Several warriors were jabbing lances into the bodies, and he was overjoyed to see that one of them was Stone Calf.
A hand grabbed his shoulder and Dances With Wolves spun into the beaming face of Kicking Bird.
“What a great fight,” the medicine man crowed. “We got them all so easy and no one’s hurt.”
“I got two,” Dances With Wolves yelled back. He lifted his chained hands into the air and cried out, “With these.”
The rescue party didn’t waste any time. After a frantic search, they found the keys to Dances With Wolves’s chains on the body of the dead sergeant.
Then they jumped on their ponies and galloped away, taking a course that swung many miles to the south and west of Fort Sedgewick.
CHAPTER XXX
An inch of early snow fell fortuitously on Ten Bears’s fleeing people, covering their tracks all the way to the winter camp.
Everyone made excellent time, and six days later the splinter groups had reunited on the bottom of the mammoth canyon that would be their home for several months.
The place was steeped in Comanche history and was aptly named The Great Spirit Steps Here. The canyon was miles long, a mile wide in most places, and some of its sheer walls ran half a mile from top to bottom. They had spent the winter here for as long as most people could remember, and it was a perfect spot, providing forage and plenty of water for the people and ponies and ample protection from the blizzards that raged overhead all winter. It was also far from the reach of their enemies.
Other bands passed the winter here, too, and there was great rejoicing as old friends and relatives saw each other again for the first time since spring.
Once they had reassembled, however, Ten Bears’s village settled in to wait, unable to rest easy until the fate of the rescue party was known.
At midmorning on the day after their return a scout thundered into camp with the news that the party was coming down the trail. He said that Dances With Wolves was with them.
Stands With A Fist sprinted up the trail ahead of everyone. She was crying as she ran, and when she caught sight of the horsemen, riding single file high on the trail above, she called his name.
She didn’t stop calling it until she had reached him.
The early snow was the prelude for a fearsome blizzard that struck that afternoon.
People stayed close to their lodges for the next two days.
Dances With Wolves and Stands With A Fist saw almost no one.
Kicking Bird did the best he could for Dances With Wolves’s face, taking down the swelling and trying to speed its recovery with healing herbs. There was nothing to be done with the fragile, shattered cheekbone, however, and it was left to mend on its own.
Dances With Wolves wasn’t concerned with his injury at all. A heavier matter was hard upon him, and in struggling with it, he was not inclined to see anyone.
He talked only to Stands With A Fist, but not much was said. Most of the time he lay in the lodge like a sick man. She lay with him, wondering what was wrong but waiting for him to tell her, as she knew he eventually would.
The blizzard had begun its third day when Dances With Wolves went for a long, solitary walk. When he returned he sat her down and told her of his irreversible decision.
She turned away from him then and sat for almost an hour, her head bowed in silent contemplation.
Finally she said, “This is the way it must be?” Her eyes were glistening with sadness.
Dances With Wolves was sad, too.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
She sighed mournfully, fighting back her tears.
“Then it will be.”
Dances With Wolves asked for a council. He wanted to speak with Ten Bears. He also asked for Kicking Bird, Wind In His Hair, Stone Calf, and anyone else Ten Bears thought should attend.
They met the next night. The blizzard was tailing off and everyone was in good spirits. They ate and smoked their way through a lively set of preliminaries, telling animated stories about the fight at the river and the rescue of Dances With Wolves.
He waited through all this with good humor. He was happy to be with his friends.
But when the conversation finally started to wane he took the first silence and filled it.
“I want to tell you what is on my mind,” he said, and the council officially began.
The men knew that something important was coming and they were at their most attentive. Ten Bears turned his best ear toward the speaker, not wanting to miss a single word.
“I have not been among you for very long, but I feel in my heart that it has been all my life. I’m proud to be a Comanche. I will always be proud to be a Comanche. I love the Comanche way and I love each of you as if we were of the same blood. In my heart and spirit I will always be with you. So you must know that it is hard for me to say that I must leave you.”
The lodge erupted with startled exclamations, each man furious with disbelief. Wind In His Hair jumped to his feet and stomped back and forth, waving his hands in scorn for this foolish idea.
Dances With Wolves sat still through the uproar.
He stared into the fire, his hands folded quietly in his lap.