Chance made as though to go to the side of the old woman.
Running Horse held his arm. “No,” he said.
Chance saw three Indians approaching the old woman. Each of them carried a small flag, one blue, one yellow, and one white.
Their leader, a tall robust man with large, fierce eyes, squatted down beside the old white-haired squaw who lay unconscious in the dust. He thrust his yellow flag in his belt and leaned over the old woman.
“It is Kicking Fear,” said Running Horse, and his tone of voice suggested that Chance would of course know the name. Chance didn’t.
“See,” said Running Horse. “He carries the yellow flag. That is the color of the light of the spirit world. White is the color of the light of earth. Blue is the color of the sky world.”
Chance was watching Kicking Bear.
Suddenly with a shriek Kicking Bear had sprung to his feet, leaving the old woman lying in the dust. Over his head he clutched a huge chunk of fresh, steaming meat.
Chance assumed he must have taken the meat from the old woman.
Kicking Bear began to sing and dance, carrying the meat over his head in both hands. His eyes not seeming to see this world, he danced into the circle, facing and stirring the numbed dancers.
“What is he doing?” asked Chance.
“He is singing,” said Running Horse, “that the old woman has been to the spirit world, where the Indians and the buffalo and horses still live. He sings that is true, for he sings he has in his hands fresh buffalo meat, brought by the old woman to prove that she has been in the spirit world.”
Kicking Bear, inside the circle, holding the meat over his head, danced in place and the great wheel continued to turn, carrying its rim of dancers past him one by one.
It seemed to Chance that as the dancers passed him, that strange, slow, vast dance somehow changed, perhaps becoming more profound or keen or intense, something almost intangible taking place, something subtle but significant, suggested in little more than the way a hand or head might move, or a moccasin strike the earth. Then it seemed to Chance that the wailing of the dance was rising and falling like a howling wind.
The circle seemed alive now, eternal, no beginning or end. The ring of eternity, thought Chance, moving through the dust of an Indian reservation, turning, unchanging at a place called Standing Rock, and I am here.
“Running Horse,” said Chance.
“Yes,” said Running Horse.
“Where did he get the meat?” asked Chance.
“Maybe from the spirit world,” said Running Horse.
“Do you believe that?” asked Chance.
“My eyes tell me it is true,” said Running Horse, “but the Sun Dance tells me that it is not so, that it is not true.”
“What do you believe?” asked Chance.
“The Sun Dance,” said Joseph Running Horse.
The two Indians who had been with Kicking Bear, putting their flags in their belts, picked up the old woman who lay in the dust and carried her away from the turning circle of the dance, toward a log cabin in the background.
Running Horse motioned to Chance to follow them, and together they did.
At the door of the cabin, smoking, wrapped in a heavy blanket, cross-legged, sat an old Indian, a stocky, heavy man, with a wide mouth, a leathery face, rather deeply lined, a large nose, and an expression as calm as burnt, wrinkled wood. He sat wrapped in his blanket, smoking, calm as a rock.
Before this man in the blanket the two Indians placed the old white-haired squaw, who had fallen out of the Ghost Dance.
Seeing Chance and Running Horse, the man gestured for them to sit down on the ground across from him.
Then, putting aside his pipe, the man leaned forward and lifted the old woman gently in his arms.
She opened her eyes, and looked at the man, and Chance saw pleasure transfigure the dried, wrinkled apple of her face, and through toothless gums she began to mumble disjointedly in Sioux, half to the man, half to herself.
“What does she say?” Chance asked Running Horse.
“She says,” said Running Horse, “she has been with her husband and her children, and has cooked berries and meat for her grandson, who has not been feeling well. He likes berries and meat.”
“Where is her family?” asked Chance.
“They have been dead for many years,” said Running Horse.
The stocky man in the blanket began to speak to the old woman, and his voice, deep and strong for an old man, seemed to Chance surprisingly gentle.
The old woman smiled and lay in his arms, nodding her head.
“What does he say?” asked Chance.
“He says,” said Running Horse, “that he will soon ask to ride with her husband on the hunt, for there is no greater hunter among all the Sioux than her husband.”
The old woman happily closed her eyes, and the stocky man, with a look, summoned the two Indians who had brought her to him, and they gently picked her up and carried her from the vicinity of the cabin, crooning softly to herself, a lullaby, Chance surmised, the sort of thing one might sing to quiet a child.
The man had now retrieved his pipe and was once more placidly smoking.
He didn’t look at Chance or Running Horse.
“Who is he?” asked Chance.
Running Horse said nothing.
The man looked at Chance. “I am Sitting Bull,” he said.
Before Chance had an opportunity to respond he became aware of a man standing near them, or rather of a shadow that was suddenly there that had not been there before, then two shadows, long shadows in the late afternoon sun.
Chance looked up and saw Kicking Bear, scowling down at him, so sweating from the dance that even the dust on his leggings was black with water.
He no longer held the meat which he had shown to the Ghost Dancers, but he carried a Winchester rifle.
Behind him there stood, in a scarlet Ghost Shirt, a young Indian, very strong and, in a cruel fashion, handsome, at whose belt there hung a long-handled hatchet.
Chance did not know this second man but Running Horse knew him.
He was Drum, the son of Kills-His-Horse.
Kicking Bear looked down at Chance, and then he looked to Sitting Bull and said something swiftly in Sioux.
Sitting Bull continued to smoke, his expression not changing.
“What did he say?” asked Chance.
“He said you must die,” said Running Horse.
Chapter Seven
Running Horse uncrossed his legs and rose lightly to his feet, standing to face Kicking Bear, who scowled at him in anger.
“No,” said Running Horse.
“Short hair,” said Kicking Bear, speaking in Sioux.
This time Running Horse did not flinch, and his eyes did not drop before those of his accuser. There was not even a tremor in his prominently boned face, not even a shadow that moved for an instant through his dark, clear eye’s.
Never again would the epithet of Short Hair disconcert the boy, the young man, named Running Horse, for he had learned three days ago, at the stake of the Sun Dance, who he was, and now knew himself in his own eyes, honestly, not through the words that others might try to fasten upon him.
“I am Hunkpapa,” said Running Horse, speaking in Sioux. “You are not Hunkpapa. You are Minneconjou. Why are you here?”
Kicking Bear stepped back, angered. He turned to look at Sitting Bull, but the chief was smoking imperturbably, staring at the ground a few feet from him, seemingly lost in thought.
Kicking Bear turned to face Running Horse. “I bring the Ghost Dance,” he said. “I bring the word of Wakan-Tonka. I am a prophet, big medicine.”
Running Horse did not respond.
“Why do you not dance the Ghost Dance?” challenged Kicking Bear.