Finally Ten Bears laid the pipe in front of him and started up from the floor. Pushing the spectacles higher on his nose, he gazed wistfully over the assembly.
"Hear me, brave-hearted Comanche men. My heart is glad to see you here. It fills with pride at the sight of fine warriors sitting together.
Choking with emotion, Ten Bears paused. In the absolute quiet, he stared at his feet until he regained his composure.
"The little white man agent has asked Ten Bears and Kicking Bird to make a long journey east. The Great Father in Washington wants to meet us and take our hands. I have told him I will go. Kicking Bird has said the same. I have often wondered how white people can live in this world and I want to see it. We will visit the white people for maybe ten sleeps and then we will come back.
"This journey will be my last. When I return I will leave this beautiful earth I have been walking so long and cross the stars to be with all those who came before me. I am looking forward to crossing the stars. I have traveled the circle of life. My life has been good. My heart is good. That is all I have to say for myself."
There was not a sound as Ten Bears sat back down, with help, and the few seconds of stillness that followed seemed to last forever.
Then Kicking Bird stood up.
"I have seen what you have seen," he began. “Our brothers lying dead on the earth. I have fought what you have fought. I was not afraid to fight. I was nor afraid to die. I took a white man's scalp. It hangs in my lodge. . but Kicking Bird is finished trying to fight the white man's guns. It is useless. More fighting will only make more dying. . more weeping."
He paused long enough to let an upwelling of sobs from outside wash eerily through the lodge.
"The little white man says the buffalo are being killed so the white people can have their tongues. Maybe they are making medicine with the tongues of our brothers. Maybe they are using them for ceremonies. I do not know. Soon there will be nothing for my wives and children to put in their bellies. I want my wives and my children to live more than I want to fight.
"Before I go to Washington I will go where the white man asks and take his pen in my hand and touch it to the paper that promises to make no more war. I will follow the 'holy road.' This I will do in the morning.
"I ask no one to go with me. Each man here is a warrior. Each man will know his heart. I have no rancor toward any man who disagrees with what I do. My heart is good."
Wind In His Hair was starting up as Kicking Bird settled back down but, after reaching his feet, he seemed in no hurry to speak. He stood, imperious, for a few moments, his good eye unblinking. Then he laid a fist gently against his chest.
"There is no bitterness in Wind In His Hair's heart,” he began. “Our minds may choose different paths, but some part of every heart will always be as one. All my life I have been a warrior, and I will not change. I will not die as anything else.
"The whites have taken much from me. They have taken my brothers, my wives, my children. Now they want to take me off the earth upon which I walk. Maybe they will kill me now, and if they do, so be it. I will not take their hands. I will keep my ponies' tails tied up for war."
Wind In His Hair had made his quiet, measured statement in silence, and it prevailed as he resumed his seat.
The council did not stir for a minute or two and then, as spontaneously and mysteriously as a school of fish shifts direction, men began to rise and file out. No one talked because there was nothing left to say. Each warrior walked back to his lodge alone.
Chapter XL
The young men were especially troubled. They had planned and dreamed and striven all their lives for opportunities to prove themselves, but the perplexing rush of events that culminated in the most recent council denied them the chance to live fully. If there were no buffalo, how could anyone hunt? Or feed a family? Or have a family? If there were no horses to steal, how could a man grow rich? How could a man win honors if there was no enemy to fight? How could any young warrior just starting out aspire to membership in the Hard Shields? How could Hard Shields exist? What could a man do on a “reservation” except watch the sun go up and down? The questions haunted every young man, and that agony was felt by Smiles A Lot.
When he stepped into his lodge and Hunting For Something asked him what had happened, he said nothing. His mind was being pressured from all sides with pros and cons. To be a Comanche was suddenly a strangely confusing thing.
He stood with his back to her working loose the braid that attached the black cascade of horsehair to his head. when he had returned the decoration to its place of safety in an occasional bag, he walked to the fire and sat down, but still he did not speak.
Sensing that he should not be pressed, Hunting For Something waited patiently for him to come to the fire. Normally, he sat across from her but tonight he sat beside her, as if offering himself, and she knew he was ready to talk.
"Tell me," she said softly.
Smiles A Lot told of the ultimatum Lawrie Tatum had brought to the village and related what Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair had said in council.
"What will you do?" she asked.
"I am a Hard Shield. I will fight."
He had hoped she would embrace his decision but she said nothing.
He gazed at the bulge in her dress where the baby they had conceived was showing and stroked it lightly.
"Maybe you should go in," he whispered.
Hunting For Something shook her head.
“Are you sure?"
“Yes."
Taking her time, she stretched out on her side and laid her head in his lap while Smiles A Lot looked across the fire at the sleeping head —- his little brother.
"I am going to send Rabbit with Kicking Bird," he said.
“He won't go." she retorted.
Smiles A Lot didn't argue because he knew she was right. Rabbit could never be induced to leave.
"What did Grandfather say?" she asked.
"He is going to meet the Great White Father."
Hunting For Something raised her head.
"The Great White Father?"
"Yes."
“Where will he meet him?"
"In the place called Washington."
"When?"
"I think they are going tomorrow He says he will die when he returns home."
Hunting For Something didn't move, but her husband felt a tensing in the parts of her body that touched him.
"I must see him," she said, her voice suddenly a whisper.
Then she got up, and, because the nights were turning colder with the advent of fall, she pulled a robe over her shoulders and wrapped it around her reedy frame.
She started out of the lodge, then hesitated, and looked back at Smiles A Lot.
"I might stay with him tonight."
Chapter XLI
Fatigue had so overwhelmed him that his body seemed to weigh nothing. He could imagine it as a cloud, suspended just above ground, and each time he drifted into the warm haze of unconsciousness, he saw himself in effortless ascent, a phenomenon of the psyche so compelling that it kept him half-awake.
But the old man knew that his tired body was not wholly to blame for keeping him from sleep; rather, it was his mind that made rest impossible. It was crackling with an energy that he would have been hard-pressed to describe. Disconnected ideas and images and statements and even entire scenarios appeared out of nowhere to glide through the portals of his mind, and all Ten Bears could do was watch helplessly as the spectacle went on and on.