The kettle before Chance rested on a platform of rocks, and bubbled over a small fire, set in a hole in the middle of the dirt floor. Chance’s eyes stung from the smoke. Not enough smoke, from Chance’s point of view, found its way out the smoke hole in the roof.
Chance looked at Kicking Bear.
“I would like to learn about the Ghost Dance,” said Chance to Kicking Bear.
Kicking Bear dropped the last of the beef down his throat and swallowed it.
Kicking Bear seemed to hold no particular grudge against Chance for the wound of his hand, about which there was wrapped a long strip of scarlet flannel.
Chance had offered to treat the wound but Kicking Bear had assured him loftily that he himself, Kicking Bear, was a great medicine man and would handle the matter, so Chance had not insisted, and then Kicking Bear had let him look at the hand anyway.
After he had done what he thought he should, Chance carefully bandaged the hand, and told Kicking Bear that he would not be likely to close the first and second fingers of his right hand from that time on.
He had then watched Kicking Bear, with his teeth and left hand, carefully undo the bandage he had placed on the wound, take something from his own medicine bag, which contained among other things, a small, dead bird, place this something-Chance saw now it was a leaf-on the wound, drop the white bandage in the bag, and then, patiently, with difficulty, rewrap the wound with the original strip of red flannel.
“Why?” asked Chance.
“Make it get well,” had said Kicking Bear.
Chance thought maybe that was supposed to explain the leaf. Then he pointed to the flannel wrapping.
“Why this?” he asked. “Why not the white bandage?”
“More pretty,” had said Kicking Bear.
Chance had begun to explain the theory of infection, but Kicking Bear would have no nonsense of this sort, and so he had desisted.
Yet from this time Kicking Bear had tended to regard Chance as a practitioner in his own trade, and worthy of respect in that regard, if not in any other.
It was well known that white men, though evil and untrustworthy, were shrewd and cunning, and knew many secrets.
It was undeniable their medicine had great power.
In particular Kicking Bear had been impressed with the stinging, brownish liquid Chance had poured on the wound from the tiny glass vial in his mysterious black leather bag, for the liquid had burned horribly and that had convinced Kicking Bear that it must be extremely efficacious.
For that liquid, in fact, Kicking Bear, not to be outdone, had given Chance in return two small leaves, from a plant Chance did not recognize, and six narrow bark-peelings, each about three inches long, from what was probably an aspen. These Chance had gravely wrapped in paper and put in his bag.
It was thus, all this done, that Chance felt it might now, following the meal, be permissible to question Kicking Bear on the theological complexities of the Ghost Dance.
“So tell me about the Ghost Dance,” said Chance.
Kicking Bear looked at him, glaring, but not a glare of anger, rather one of righteous impatience with Chance’s obvious lack of information.
“You can read it in your own Holy Books,” said Kicking Bear.
“‘I don’t understand,” said Chance.
“Many, many years ago,” said Kicking Bear, wiping his mouth with the flannel cloth wrapped about his wounded hand, “the Great Spirit so loved the white men that He sent His only Son to live among them and teach them the good trails and the true medicine, but the white men were white men, and they took the Son of the Great Spirit and foolishly nailed Him to a big wooden cross and killed Him.”
“This is true,” said Running Horse. “The woman who lives with the teacher at the school has told us these things, and so have many others, like the men in the black dresses.”
“But,” Kicking Bear went on, “the Great Spirit did not like this, which is easy to understand, and He is not so easily shamed by the white men, not Him, and He has appointed a time for the ending of the world and the great judgment. At this time the Son of the Great Spirit, the same One who was nailed to a cross and would not stay dead for the white man, will come to judge the white men and destroy them.”
“Yes,” said Chance, “I have read these things, or at least something like them.”
“Well,” said Kicking Bear, “the time of the judgment is spring. When the grass comes again and the trees are fresh with leaves, the Messiah is coming-the Second Coming, it is called-but this time He is coming to the Indians.”
“I see,” said Chance.
“The Indians,” said Kicking Bear, “will not take the Son of the Great Spirit and nail Him to a tree. They will be happy to have the Son of the Great Spirit come and live among them, and teach them the good trails and the true medicine. They will give Him a fine buffalo-skin lodge, and good wives and good horses. They will treat Him as a chief.”
“Where are the white men all this time?” inquired Chance innocently.
“Dead,” said Kicking Bear. “In the spring the Messiah will come and the earth will roll up and cover the white men and their railroads and soldiers and big brick buildings. But the Indians who dance the Ghost Dance, only those, will dance on the top of the rolling earth and by the mystery of their dance be saved, and when the earth has covered the white men and their stone cities the earth will once more be new and beautiful. On the prairies the grass will grow waist high, and be green, and the streams will be swift and clear, and the antelope and the buffalo will come back to their country and with them will come all the dead Indians, and their horses and dogs, and there will be much singing and the making of medicine and much feasting and talking and hunting and being friends, and no white men.”
Chance was prepared to suppose that there might be more between heaven and earth than was dreamed of in his philosophy, but he was reasonably sure that most of these things were not among them.
“Do you really believe that?” asked Chance.
Kicking Bear looked at him. “Yes,” he said.
“Why?” asked Chance.
“Because I have talked with the Messiah,” said Kicking Bear simply, “and He has told me it is true.”
Chance felt a shiver move along his spine.
“You talked with the Messiah?” asked Chance.
“Yes,” said Kicking Bear, “in the country of the Yellow Stones, where the water is like steam and the rivers burn, the Messiah came to me in a vision and He taught me the Ghost Dance and the Ghost Songs, and told me to teach these things to His children.”
“How do you know what He said was true?” asked Chance.
“Does the Son of the Great Spirit lie?” asked Kicking Bear.
“I suppose not,” said Chance.
“Look,” said Kicking Bear. “I will show you.” He got up and went to the corner of the cabin where he had leaned his Winchester. Carrying the weapon in his left hand he returned to the fire. “The Messiah,” he said, “taught me to make the Ghost Shirts and I have taught this to the Hunkpapas.” To Chance’s surprise, Kicking Bear handed him the weapon. The Indian then went to a bundle of his belongings, containing his medicine bag, which lay near the door of the cabin. With his left hand Kicking Bear rummaged about through a ‘blanket of items and drew forth a large buckskin shirt, dyed scarlet. He shook the shirt out and held it up for Chance to look at. There was a half-moon on the chest and the image of a buffalo on the back. It was a Ghost Shirt.
“When I wear this shirt,” said Kicking Bear, “no bullet or knife can hurt me. The medicine of this shirt is strong.”
“You should have worn the shirt this afternoon,” said Sitting Bull, between puffs on the pipe. Chance thought he detected the faint glimmer of a smile in the chief’s eyes, but he could not be sure, for the expression of Sitting Bull was now as apparently imperturbable, as impassive, as expressionless as before.