"Kansa," Wooden Foot said, indicating the workers in the fields. "They're called Kaw, too." He led his companions from the shallows into rippling foot-high bluestem. "They get along with 'most everybody. Guess that was typical of all the tribes a long time ago. Even the Cheyennes, when they lived in Minnesota or wherever. It ain't true no more. You'll soon see the reasons."
Passing almost due west, they did:
Emigrant wagons, westbound, with white tops billowing and snapping in the autumn wind.
A coach of the Butterfield Overland Despatch line bound down the Smoky Hill route with clatter and a cloud of dust.
A railroad work camp, double-story office cars lined up on a spur that ended in the middle of a field of thistles, clover, wilted goldenrod.
"This yere's tribal land, Charlie. The Indians been 'customed to roam anywhere they pleased, like them Arabs way on the other side of the world. Long as anyone can remember, they lived off the land's bounty. Chiefly the game and buffla. The Kansa, f'rinstance, they changed their way. Settled down. But not the Cheyennes. They live the old way. So you can't steal their land or shove 'em on a farm and expect 'em to kiss your foot.
That's why some of 'em's killin' people. Didn't you do the same when the Union boys marched all over your land?" "Yes, sir," Charles said, understanding.
In Topeka, Wooden Foot bought a load of tin pots. "The women like these better'n rawhide bags or sewn-up buffla stomachs. They can boil water 'thout all the fuss of droppin' in hot rocks."
The new goods required Fen to pick up some of the burden. The collie pulled a travois that held their tipi poles and cover. He went hours at a time, with only his lolling tongue showing his strain.
From a detachment of cavalry they learned that the big peace conclave, the one Willa had mentioned, had started, down on the Little Arkansas. The captain leading the detachment said, "You boys might have a peaceful winter for once."
"Damn fool," Wooden Foot said after the troopers rode on. Red-faced, he showed a surprising amount of sweat in the winy autumn air. "That captain's one more who don't grasp how the tribes work: He thinks that if a peace chief like old Black Kettle, whom we're goin' to see, makes his mark on a treaty, everybody else just puts their feet up and stores their weapons. Mighty few sojers understand that no one Indian speaks for all Indians. Never did. Never will."
"I guess you think pretty highly of the Southern Cheyennes."
"I do, Charlie. They's the finest horsemen in the world. Finest cavalry, if you want to sharpen a point on it. Also, I been out here long enough to see 'em as different people, not just a bunch of copper-color look-alikes. If some Dog Society man rapes a farmer's wife, like as not the cavalry'll shoot some peaceable old chief, 'cause they can't tell the difference. I was lucky. Pa taught me to see each one separate. They's good ones and they's bad ones, quite like the general run of humans. I loved one enough to take her to wife some years back. She died birthin' a little girl. Baby died a week after."
He coughed suddenly; bent his head forward, jaw clenched, as he grasped a handful of his shirt. Charles reined Satan, leaning left to grip Wooden Foot's arm. "What is it? What's hurting you?"
"Nothin'" — the old trader got his breath — "to speak of."
He gulped, eyes watering. "My pa had a bum heart. He passed it along. Don't let it worry you. Let's travel."
The low hills began to flatten; the willows and cottonwoods to thin out. They rode through shorter buffalo and grama grass, empty of habitation except for the mound towns of black-tailed prairie dogs. Autumn light flooded everything, creating a raw beauty from hills sliced open by wind to reveal striations of white and yellow and orange chalk. Charles couldn't exactly say he was happy, but each day he thought of Augusta Barclay a little less.
"All right, Charlie," Wooden Foot said when they'd forded the Smoky Hill. "Time for you to start school."
"You never know when you'll need speed, Charlie. Boy an' me, we practiced till we can put the tipi up in ten minutes and strike it in half that. With your help I figure we can cut it some more. Notice that the round door always faces east? That way you miss most of the big rain and wind storms outa the west, and you catch the mornin' sun. Also, the tribes like to be reminded that way that it's the Great Spirit who sends 'em light and nourishment. Well, let's hop to, Charlie. Up she goes in eight minutes if you want your supper."
Flickering fire shone on the coil of brass wire. Wooden Foot's hair, long to start with, had grown enough to split into braids. He was winding wire round and round the braid hanging over his left shoulder.
Charles munched some pemmican, a chunk of powdered buffalo meat hardened up after the addition of fat and berries. "If you don't want to bother with that, I can cut your hair with my knife."
"Oh, no. You cut off a man's hair, you take away his life in the hereafter. If a Cheyenne ever gets a haircut, his woman burns the cuttings so nobody does mischief with 'em."
Boy jumped up, excited. "Road! Road!"
Charles looked past Boy's pointing finger to the veil of stars unfurled across the heavens. "That's the Milky Way, Boy."
"It's the Hangin' Road, Charlie," Wooden Foot said. "The trail the Cheyennes travel to the spirit world. The road to the place of the dead."
The trader patted his nephew to calm him, then opened his parfleche, a hide bag decorated with quills and painted designs. From the bag he took a roll of clean, soft animal skin, which he spread by the fire. Next he opened small pots of red and black paint he moistened with spit. He surprised Charles by producing an artist's small brush. With strokes of black he began painting at the upper left corner of the skin. A line of three stick-figure horses and riders. He finished with a smaller four-footed figure out in front.
"What in thunder's that?" Charles asked.
"The start of our winter count. Kind of a picture history of a season in a man's life. Chiefs and braves make 'em." He grinned. "I figure the Jackson Trading Company's important enough to have one this year."
They saw a buffalo herd in seasonal migration southward. By a stream dried to a width of six inches, they waited hours for the herd to pass. It was six or seven miles long, front to back, and a good mile across. Wooden Foot pointed out the old bull leaders.
"One name the tribes got for the buffla is Uncle. Since he provides pretty near everything they eat or use, they figure he's pretty near a relative."
Under an ugly gray sky streaked silver by lightning, Charles held on to his hat and squinted through blowing dust at eight young Indians armed with lances and rifles. They were within hailing distance, so Charles clearly heard them yell, "Sons of bitches. Sons of bitches!"
One brave knelt on his pony's back, thrust out his rear end, and thumbed it with his right hand. Wooden Foot sighed. "They's sure learned all the best we got to teach."
Boy crowded his horse close to his uncle's. Charles rested the Spencer on his right leg, his mouth dry with worry. The lightning streaked east to west, and distant thunder pealed. Behind the braves milled a herd of at least fifty wild stallions, mares, and foals. The white men had stopped when they spied the Indians herding the ponies across some low hills.
"That's money on the hoof, them horses," Wooden Foot said. "Tribal wealth. They won't risk losin' it by comin' after us. They seldom attack 'less they outnumber the other side or they's trapped or provoked. 'Sides, they's near enough to see we got these."