Drum was shaken, but he did not seem frightened. He sat back, cross-legged, breathed deeply.
“The medicine has been made,” said Kicking Bear. “It is over.”
Kicking Bear slowly poured the blood from the badger out onto the ground and with his hands and fingernails scooped a small hole in the scarlet mud, into which he placed the organs and viscera of the animal. Then he scooped dirt over the place and put some stones on it. The carcass of the animal itself he thrust in his belt.
Running Horse hesitantly put forth his hand and touched Drum’s arm.
Drum looked into his eyes.
“I will not forget again,” said Drum, “that we are both of the Hunkpapa.”
“I am glad,” said Running Horse.
Kicking Bear now stood up, his blanket wrapped about his waist, and raised his arms to the east, where the rim of the sun now burned over the prairie.
“Wakan-Tonka!” cried Kicking Bear. “Drum, the son of Kills-His-Horse, has made medicine. His death will be the death of a brave of the Hunkpapa. Until his death he will be strong, fortunate and victorious! There will be no medicine that can prevail against him!”
Kicking Bear lowered his arms and turned to Drum. “Let your heart be strong,” he said. “You cannot escape death, so live without fear.”
Drum rose to his feet, and Running Horse, too, got up.
Kicking Bear came to Drum and placed his hands on his shoulders. “What is there now to fear?” asked Kicking Bear.
Drum looked at him for a long time. Then he said, slowly, forming the words carefully, “Nothing. There is nothing left to fear.”
“The fearing is done,” said Kicking Bear. “It is finished!”
“Yes,” said Drum, slowly, “it is finished.” He looked at Running Horse. “I feel strong,” he said. “Strong.”
“I am glad,” said Running Horse.
Drum did not take his eyes from Running Horse. “So you will grow old, Little Warrior?” he said. “And you will have children and grandchildren?”
Running Horse looked down.
“Tell them of Drum,” said the young Indian.
A dog began to bark in the distance, down in the camp of Sitting Bull.
“Look!” cried Kicking Bear, pointing to the camp.
Drum and Running Bear stood numb for that second with astonishment, for filing into the camp, on horseback, was a contingent of blue-coated Indian police, about thirty of them. They were coming in quietly, purposefully.
They reined up outside the cabin of Sitting Bull.
With a cry of rage Drum scrambled down the side of Medicine Ridge, half falling, half stumbling, running headlong toward the camp. Running Horse raced behind him, shouting at the top of his voice, trying to rouse the camp.
The Indian policeman, burly, with his short hair, in his ill-fitting blue uniform, guts cold, hands trembling, with his white man’s orders, hesitated before the calm wood of the door to Sitting Bull’s cabin.
Then he drew his pistol from the cavalry holster at his belt.
This was the cabin of the troublemaker, the hated Sitting Bull, who would not smoke with him, and his kind, and who as long as he lived would not do so, Sitting Bull who stood in the hearts of the people as a symbol of the old life that had gone with the departing buffalo, who as long as he lived would remind the people of the pipes of stone, the days of many horses and the feathers of eagles.
The Indians who were wise would understand that these were the days of the white man, and would be good Indians, and live as the holy teachers of the white men cautioned them, being meek, and bearing their crosses and loving all men, even Crows. And when the Indians were good they would receive gifts from the Great White Father, and maybe even a badge and a gun, and a blue suit that would make them more than a chief, almost as much as a white man himself.
The Indian policeman had no great love for the white man, but he knew that the wars were over, and he knew who had won them. Sitting Bull did not know that. Sitting Bull would not smoke with him. Sitting Bull called him a short hair.
The policeman threw his weight against the cabin door bursting it open.
He stumbled into the cabin, followed by several of his men, clutching their weapons.
Sitting Bull, on one side of his lodge, sat up, wrapped in his blankets. “What do you want?” he asked.
The Indian policeman pointed his pistol at the chief. “Come with me,” he said. His voice was loud, like a white man who talks to an Indian. Then he remembered the formula given to him by the white men. “You are under arrest,” he said.
Sitting Bull sat quiet for a minute. Then he said, “Very well, I will go with you.”
The Indian policeman gestured with his pistol, impatiently, for the chief to rise and dress.
Already there were four or five dogs barking outside and he could hear the noises of the camp.
Outside two of the Indian police were fumbling to put the high wooden saddle of Spanish design on Sitting Bull’s white horse.
Some of the Indians of the camp, now roused by the clamor of the dogs, stumbled out of their cabins and tepees, forming a puzzled, hostile ring about the Indian policemen outside the entrance to Sitting Bull’s cabin.
The police pointed their weapons at the Indians and ordered them to draw back.
Several of the police looked anxiously in the direction from which they had come.
Old Bear, standing in the door of his cabin, observed this and he too looked down their backtrail. He could see nothing, but his war sense told him that there would be soldiers, white soldiers, not far distant. Indian police for diplomatic reasons, not soldiers, had been sent to the cabin of Sitting Bull, presumably to seize him and take him away to the iron and stone houses.
But there would be soldiers.
The white man would not trust this thing altogether to short hairs.
There would be soldiers.
Old Bear went back into his cabin and removed his rifle from a cracked, beaded, buckskin sheath.
Edward Chance was awakened by the barking of dogs. He was in Running Horse’s cabin.
Winona, who had accompanied Running Horse back to the cabin the night before, and who had accepted and given love in the very room in which Chance had pretended to sleep, breathing heavily, wrapped in his blankets, smiling, facing the wall, was already up.
The fire was started.
Chance sat upright, blinking the grit of sleep out of his eyes, puzzled, wondering about the dogs.
He looked at the girl. She now wore moccasins and a fringed, deerskin dress, having visited Old Bear’s cabin last night to gather her belongings. Her face had been washed and her hair, cut short to the back of her neck, had been combed. She was piling articles in the cabin which might be of use in a journey, particularly food, clothing and ammunition, into the center of a striped cotton blanket on the dirt floor.
Outside Chance could now hear cries, angry shouts.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Winona.
Winona stopped for a moment to face him. Her face was ashen. “A bad thing,” she said, “a bad thing, Brother of my Husband.”
“Where is my brother?” asked Chance.
“I do not know,” said the girl.
She turned to her work.
Chance reached for the Colt, which he kept next to him, and shook the holster and belt from the weapon.
Swiftly he went to the door, the weapon in his hand. It smelled clean and ready. He had cleaned and oiled it last night.
Chance saw Winona take down the hawk feathers from the rafter and his own medicine kit, and put them in the striped blanket. He noted that the medicine bag of Joseph Running Horse, like the young Indian, was gone.