Beyond them, when he came around the corner of Sitting Bull’s cabin, accompanied by the chief himself, the subchief Old Bear, and Running Horse, his brother, Chance saw, vaguely in the darkness, the shadows of several ponies, picketed, at hand.
There had been tales of soldiers coming to the camp, to stop the Ghost Dancing, to capture Sitting Bull and return him to the stone houses of the days after the death of Long Hair.
Here and there, in the flickering light, Chance could see loaded travois, lodge skins and provisions bundled across the poles.
Chance sensed that many of the men seated about the fire carried their medicine bags tied to their belts.
Chance could see that some of them had rifles under their blankets.
At the fire itself Kicking Bear stood, and behind him Drum, and the two braves.
“I will fight for you,” said Running Horse.
“No,” said Chance.
“Drum is very fast,” said Running Horse.
Chance had little doubt of it. “Thanks,” he said.
“You must be very fast,” said Running Horse.
Chance didn’t quite follow why Running Horse was saying this. They both knew that Drum was dangerous, and that he would move swiftly. “All right,” he said, “I’ll try.”
Chance did not feel, and was grateful, that there was particular hostility towards him in the camp, in spite of the fact that he was white, and that the women, as he had learned, had returned from the ration point empty-handed.
He had helped many of these same Indians in his stay in the camp.
And they knew that in some strange way he, too, was a stranger to the white world outside the boundaries of the reservation.
The Indians were bitter this night, but not towards him.
Chance found himself standing across the large fire from Kicking Bear, Drum, and the two braves.
Sitting Bull, Old Bear and Joseph Running Horse had all taken their seats, sitting cross-legged, in the forefront of the circle of men about the fire, some ten or twelve feet from the fire.
Without a word the two braves behind Drum took their places, seated, across the fire from Chance, they too leaving open the circle of earth about the fire, that track on which whatever was to take place would soon take place.
Kicking Bear wore a white muslin Ghost Shirt, deerskin leggings and beaded moccasins. There were three yellow lines drawn vertically on his face, one on each cheek, the other running from his upper lip over the nose to his hairline, like the rays of a rising sun. In his belt there were two wooden-handled, long, steel butcher knives.
Chance studied Drum carefully. Other than moccasins he wore only a breechclout and leggings. His hair had been greased and freshly braided, and was tied with two strips of red cloth. His chest and face had been painted with white, black and red lines, painted for war. He did not move but stood with his arms folded, watching Chance. At his belt there hung the steel hatchet Chance had seen him use when he had fought Running Horse.
Kicking Bear, saying nothing, jerked the hatchet from Drum’s belt, who seemed not to notice. Then Kicking Bear circled the fire and paused before Chance; then his hand quickly reached for the handle of the Colt, and Chance’s hand closed on his, and Kicking Bear looked at him. Chance released his hand and, quickly, Kicking Bear removed the Colt from its holster.
Kicking Bear then went to Sitting Bull and placed both weapons in the dust before the chief.
Then Kicking Bear went to the side of the fire away from Sitting Bull, and stood to Chances’ left and to Drum’s right, and stood there, it seemed for minutes, not moving.
Chance looked across the fire, to his antagonist.
Drum, painted, standing very straight, was watching him, his arms still folded, his face for most purposes inscrutable, only his eyes betraying him, revealing suppressed eagerness, the intention to kill.
The hair on the back of Chance’s neck lifted.
He swallowed, hard.
He recalled the words of Running Horse, you must be very fast.
He would try.
With ceremonial solemnity, Kicking Bear, looking neither to the right nor left, removed the two steel butcher knives from his belt, and then he held them, one in each hand, high over his head.
Thus he stood for perhaps a minute.
Suddenly with a cry Kicking Bear flung the two knives into the dirt, one on each side of the fire.
Drum snatched the knife at his feet and leaped across the wide fire. His other hand swooped down and jerked the second knife out of the dirt.
Chance saw Drum standing opposite him, the fire at his back, lifting the two knives in triumph.
Drum’s body, the fire bright at his back, was black, a demonic silhouette edged with flames, in each fist a steel claw nine inches long, that caught and flashed the firelight. And then Drum, exultant, began to chant and back dancing away from Chance around the fire, and Chance could see him, his young, strong body ugly and wild with the grotesque paint of war, red, white and black, and Drum seemed to be studying the ground, and dancing, as if looking for a sign, the spoor, the ashes, the traces of an enemy.
Chance had been too slow.
The other knife had been his.
Now Drum straightened and pointed to the ground.
He began to chant again, “I have found him. I have found my enemy. Now I will kill him.”
Come ahead, you bastard, thought Chance.
Drum looked across the fire at Chance.
Uttering a wild cry, the war cry of the Hunkpapa, Drum charged through the fire, hurtling himself toward Chance.
For an instant the sudden cry had so startled Chance that he could not move and stood as though tied to a stake, numb, as the twin knives of the young Indian struck down at him, but at the last instant he managed to twist to one side, and Drum, in the fierce momentum of his charge, plunged past him.
Chance, off balance, twisting, struggling to get rightly on his feet, not taking his eyes off Drum, stumbled blindly backwards through the fire, kicking its kindling to the left and right.
Then, hunched over, but ready, on the other side of the broken stars of the fire, in the half-darkness, Chance waited for Drum.
This time the young Indian would approach slowly.
Chance crouched down and picked up a flaming brand from the scattered fire.
Drum came about the right edge of the scattered fire now, both knives held low, below his belt, blades up.
It would be a visceral stroke, difficult to block, not the foolish overhand blow that he had first struck.
Chance wanted to get the fire of the brand in Drum’s hair, heavy with grease.
Suddenly Drum’s moccasined foot swept through the ashes of the fire lifting a curtain of ash and sparks toward Chance, to blind him, but Chance, as soon as Drum’s foot had moved, had himself charged and came through the hot veil of ash with its tiny, drifting points of fire, his eyes shut for the instant against the hot ash, the sparks stinging his face, and then was through it, blinking away the hot ash that clung about his eyes, swinging the limb of kindling like a flaming club and struck Drum across the forehead and the wood, half burned, broke and Drum’s head snapped back and before he could react Chance had leaped on him, pinning his arms to his sides, knocking him over backwards, but it was like trying to hold a puma and Drum’s half-naked body, slick with sweat and glistening with paint and grease began to slip from him, and Chance desperately caught his wrists, each of Drum’s hands still with its knife, and together they rolled in the dust in the circle, sometimes to the very knees of the Indians, watching and smoking, sometimes into the charred embers of the fire itself, first Chance on top, then Drum.
Drum bit the side of Chance’s face and then sank his teeth deep into Chance’s arm, again and again, biting as innocently and viciously as any wild animal, but Chance could not release him, dared not, and he, Chance, the gentleman, tried to inch the young Indian’s hair, glistening thick with its ceremonial grease, against one of the glowing scraps of kindling in the circle.