Fast let his arms drop to his sides and stood, surveying the crowd of Comanches across the fire. Then he sat down. A hush filled Kicking Bird's lodge and for a few moments only the rain, beating steadily on the conical hide that surrounded them, could be heard.
Ten Bears' chin had dropped toward his chest but now he raised it and started shakily to his feet, rising with the aid of the strong arms around him.
"We have heard your talk,” he signed. "We pity the Cheyenne for their troubles. What will you do?"
Wolf Robe rose to answer.
"What can be done to fight an enemy that is everywhere," he replied, "an enemy with weapons no one understands, an enemy that becomes larger every day no matter how many we might kill? No one can answer these questions but we are all warriors and a warrior knows but one thing and that is to defend his people and his country. It may be that the next time the snow flies our bones will be scattered over the earth but none of us are afraid to die."
Ten Bears nodded as Wolf Robe sat. "It is the same with the Comanche. Who knows what fate the Mystery has planned for us. But if Cheyenne runners reach this village and ask us to come and help, we will do it anytime. We have fought side by side in the past and we will help the Cheyenne if they want us to. Comanche fear no enemy."
Ten Bears blinked as he looked out at his guests, wondering briefly if it was possible to fall asleep on his feet. "Our hearts are glad to have old friends in camp. It makes everyone happy. The rain is coming down now and I long to be under the good robe in my lodge. Good night."
Everyone who had been sitting got to their feet. Those standing stirred perceptibly for the first time since the meeting had been convened. Outside, Smiles A Lot pulled back from the lodge wall and receded into the darkness.
But he was still watching as the conferees ducked out of the lodge and moved off through the driving rain with as little care as if they were strolling in the sun. Smiles A Lot, too, was unfazed by the rain that had soaked him through and was now running down his face.
He had read the words of the warriors disappearing into the night as if for the first time. He had seen them as if for the first time. The dreamer he had been all his life was no more, shed as if by magic. It had joined the water pooling around his feet. Confusion had suddenly lifted and he knew he would no longer worry about what he might do.
His dilemma over Hunting For Something was gone, too. His feelings for her were the same, but he no longer felt sick.
Something strong had invaded him, a force with the power to erase the past and set the future. There was only one thing he wanted now. He wanted to be a part of the talk he had just witnessed. When there was a call to arms, he wanted to catch up his strongest pony and ride to battle. He wanted to sire children and provide for them, and from that night on, Smiles A Lot possessed a single, all-consuming ambition.
He wanted to die a warrior.
Chapter IX
There was still dew on the grass when the Cheyenne headed west like a flotilla of small ships sailing slowly away on a flat, endless ocean. Impromptu councils sprung up as soon as they were gone. They had enjoyed the company of their visitors, but the people of Ten Bears' camp were itching for the moment when they could get down to the business of speculating on developments in the country of the Cheyenne.
Though it was far to the north, it wasn't as if no one had ever been there. A few people knew that country well and most had at least touched it in their far-ranging travels. Now that soldiers and buffalo-hunters and settlers had invaded it, everyone wondered if the Comanche might not be next. The Kiowa nation was just to the north, a buffer between the Cheyenne and Comanche, but that was little consolation in light of the monstrous power of what the Cheyenne had called the holy road.
The road and what it carried and what it might mean for all of them was too incomprehensible for consensus to emerge in the endless round of meetings that day. A significant number of warriors refused to believe that the whites would ever consider invading their country, and at many fires there was talk about how quickly the whites would be destroyed if they were so foolish as to try to encroach on Comanche lands. Soldiers especially. Soldiers couldn't ride. They couldn't shoot well, and their big American horses gave out quickly. If soldiers came, they would probably die of thirst before Comanche warriors had a chance to kill them.
The older men shared a more measured approach to the Cheyenne revelations. Kicking Bird and his contemporaries had been trained from birth as warriors, and fighting was second nature to them, but the weight of age and experience gave them a more practical view Still, there was no consensus here, either. Should they move farther west? Should they go to war with the Cheyenne? Should they think about attending the next time whites sent runners with invitations to a council? These and many other issues were raised, but no one could agree. How could there be agreement on what could not be understood?
Kicking Bird smoked the pipe in many lodges that day, so many that by the time he returned home he wondered if all the smoking had not made him ill. Everyone inside was asleep, but lying down did not soothe his queasy stomach. It rolled in persistent waves and he soon went back outside, hoping the fresh air would take his sickness away.
The back of his lodge faced the open prairie, and as he stood staring at the night, Kicking Bird suddenly felt as if he were the only person in the world. How could this be? The earth was under his feet. The stars were filling his eyes. His wives and his children were asleep with full bellies. There was no sickness in camp. The season had been prosperous and there was no reason to think it would not continue. Comanche enemies were far away, and if they were foolish enough to come near they would surely be defeated. Even the whites, with all their guns and all their people, would be defeated if they came out here. How could they think of coming? What could they possibly want with the country of the Comanches except perhaps to walk across it? The more he thought about it, the more Kicking Bird realized that whatever the whites might bring was not as troubling at this moment as his own people's lack of readiness to meet the challenge.
Smoking so much had not made him sick at all. It was a sickness of the heart that had settled in him. Outside of himself no one in the village knew any white-man words and he had never practiced the words pried whenever possible from Dances With Wolves and Stands With A Fist. They could speak the words, but it was well known that the couple who had been born white would be the last to want anything to do with their birth race.
From all he had heard, the white man's talk was confusing. They had made many promises to the Cheyenne and Kiowa, not one of which had been kept. Even the presents they had promised rarely found their way into Indian hands.
Anyone who treated with the whites would have to be prepared. Kicking Bird was the best prepared of them all, yet he knew almost nothing of white ways. And what if he did? Would it really matter if he were smarter than all the whites put together?
Kicking Bird concluded, wistfully, that it would not matter. The Comanche could not agree on the significance of a single dead rat lying with a hole in its stomach in the middle of camp. How could they agree on a course of action for dealing with a nation of strange people whose numbers were staggering, whose clothes and customs and armaments and food and machines might have come from a world beyond the sun and the moon? Kicking Bird saw no way for the Comanche to remain as they were. He could not imagine the Comanche, or any other tribe, meeting the white threat as one people, and without unity all would surely be lost.
He resolved that night, standing alone behind his lodge, that he would never allow himself to feel this queasiness again. He could no more change the condition of the Comanches than he could reach into heaven and shuffle the stars. But he could still do all in his power to serve his people, his wives, his children, and himself. He could not allow himself to be crippled with doubt. Then he would serve no one.