Lucia looked at Chance, frightened. “No,” she said.
“Be silent,” said Chance.
Lucia was silent. She knew that if she were his woman, she must obey him. He, though he were white, was in his way Hunkpapa, and she knew herself, by capture, to be a squaw of that people, and they would expect her to obey him, as she must Drum, or any other whose squaw she might be.
Old Bear looked at Lucia steadily, closely, watching her eyes. Then the old Indian pointed to Chance. “In the Hunkpapa this is Medicine Gun,” he said.
“I know,” said Lucia. Chance had told her of his Indian name when they had visited, for hours, in those precious days at the Carter soddy.
“If Medicine Gun is not killed,” asked Old Bear, “will you be a good squaw to him?”
Lucia dropped her head. Perhaps in spite of her peril she smiled a bit, somewhere in her heart, she, Lucia Turner, who had held in the East the radical opinions of the most advanced women, extending even to the right to vote, she who had been in her way a heretical, militant outpost of feminism on Standing Rock, who had waged her one-woman war to raise the status of her sister, red or white. “Yes,” she said, head down, “I will try to be a good squaw to him.”
Chance, well aware of Lucia’s unusual opinions and political convictions, smiled too, though the smile could not be read on his face. He recalled how he had enjoyed teasing Lucia on such matters, to see her flush and defend herself, and marshal her arguments.
This was lost of course on Old Bear. “Try?” asked Old Bear, sternly.
Lucia looked at Chance, shyly. “I will be a good squaw to you,” she said.
Suddenly Lucia, for a moment, was afraid of Chance. He sat so quietly, giving no sign of his feelings. She asked herself suddenly what she knew of this man, with whom she had somehow desperately fallen in love. He stayed with the Sioux. He might be for all she knew more Indian than white. He was perhaps a renegade. It suddenly crossed her mind that this man might indeed keep her and use her as simply that, his squaw. Then even this alternative did not frighten her. Do with me what you please, Edward Chance, she thought. Yours. I am yours. However you choose to want me, I am yours.
Old Bear then addressed Lucia again. “If Drum wins,” asked Old Bear, “will you be a good squaw to Drum?”
Lucia looked at him, frightened.
“She will,” said Chance, his voice sounding strange and distant, harsh.
Old Bear did not drop his eyes from those of Lucia.
The girl nodded, shivering in the cold.
Still Old Bear did not drop his eyes from those of Lucia.
“Speak,” said Chance.
“Yes,” said Lucia, “if Drum wins I will be a good squaw to Drum.”
A shout flared at the entrance of the camp.
Drum had returned!
Drum, lifting his rifle in triumph and singing, rode into the camp, astride a huge army horse.
Tied by ropes to Drum’s saddle stumbled Lester Grawson and Corporal Jake Totter, their arms bound behind them.
After Drum came Drum’s warriors, seven of them, grinning, their faces still damp with a sweat that seemed incongruous in the cold, all of them on foot except one, who brought up the rear on a second large-boned army horse, a “U.S.” burned on its flank.
The women, the children hanging to them, pressed forward to see the prisoners.
Swelling under the eyes of his people Drum brought Totter and Grawson to where Old Bear sat near the fire; there Drum forced his two prisoners to the ground before the old chief.
The thin woman, she who had beaten Lucia with the stick, coming as close as she dared, shrieked with glee.
Chance felt sick.
One of the warriors dropped the captured rifles and pistols before Old Bear.
Grawson struggled in his bonds, his huge muscles straining against the ropes. “Renegade,” he said to Chance.
Chance said nothing, not even knowing for certain how he felt. He was more worried about Lucia, and Drum, than anything else.
Totter caught his eye. The soldier’s frame shook with terror. Chance did not judge him a coward. Totter knew the Sioux better than Grawson, in some ways perhaps better than Chance, who knew them only as friends; the Sioux were warmhearted friends, generous, loyal, among themselves good humored, fond of jokes; but as enemies, Chance did not know; he would not have cared to have them as enemies. Totter’s eyes were pleading. “You’re white,” he whispered. “Help us, Chance.”
“Shut up,” said Grawson.
“Or kill us,” whispered Totter, “or for God’s sake kill us.”
Chance shivered.
Then Totter saw Winona standing among the women. His face went chalky.
The girl was watching him, her face showing not the trace of an emotion.
Old Bear dipped into the weapons, taking Grawson’s Colt, which he gave to Chance.
“Thank you,” said Chance, checking over the weapon. Never had he meant an expression of gratitude as deeply as he did that. It not only meant that Old Bear still regarded him as Medicine Gun, and of the Hunkpapa, that he trusted him, but that now in his own eyes and in the eyes of all he was once again a warrior among warriors, for he held a weapon among armed men. The Colt was in good order. Chance slipped it into the holster; too long had the holster been empty.
Old Bear then lifted the two rifles, one by one, examining them. He gave the best one to Drum; the other he kept for himself, handing his old weapon to another Indian. The remaining pistol Old Bear held up by the barrel. The pistol was a weapon for which Sioux had never much cared. It was thought, correctly, to be inaccurate, except at relatively short ranges; it could be beaten in accuracy and distance, of course, by a rifle; it was hard even to hold steady in firing and when it fired the barrel threw the hand up, requiring a separate adjustment for the next shot; it did fire rapidly, but now that shoulder weapons universally used cartridges instead of powder and ball the differential was not that significant. Moreover, some of the Sioux felt that the revolver was somehow a uniquely white man’s weapon, and that only they could use it properly; only they knew the medicine of its steel. Nonetheless Drum reached out and took the pistol, handing it immediately to one of his braves. He was in a good mood but he saw no reason at all in giving Chance two of the weapons.
Chance decided this was the moment, if any, when Drum was in high spirits basking in the glory of his people, to speak to him, hopefully to avert bloodshed between them if it were possible.
“Drum,” said Chance, “you are a great warrior.”
Drum looked at him, surprised.
“Yes,” said Chance, pointing to Grawson and Totter, who squirmed in their ropes, the one defiant, the other terrified. “These are strong, dangerous men,” he said, “but to you they are nothing-you bring them like horses to your people.”
The ropes which had been tied about the necks of Grawson and Totter were held by one of Drum’s braves.
Drum laughed. “It is true,” he said.
“I watched you fight at Wounded Knee,” Chance continued, watching Drum’s face. “You made the Long Knives pay much for their treachery.”
“Yes,” said Drum, grinning and kicking Totter with his foot. “And here,” he laughed, “is another Long Knife.”
“Even more than all this,” said Chance, “you have saved my woman and brought her to the camp of the Hunkpapa. My heart is grateful to you.”
Drum looked puzzled.
Chance pointed at Lucia. “This yellow-haired woman,” said Chance, “is my woman.”
“No!” shouted Drum. “She is my woman! If I want, she will keep my lodge! If I want, I will kill her!”
“No,” said Chance. “She is my woman.”
“If she was your woman,” said Drum, “she would have come willingly to the camp of the Hunkpapa.”