

R. GARCIA ROBERTSON

HAPPY HUNTING GROUND

 *
There is no general sign, except to combine the signs for DEATH, BEYOND, and
INHABIT, denoting a land beyond death and living . . .

 *
It is impossible to learn at this late date what the Indians believed prior to
our advent, but I am inclined to think they always pictured a hereafter of clear
waters, white tipis, and good hunting. Our missionaries have earnestly sought to
convince them that there is a hell of eternal torture, as surely as there is a
heaven of endless bliss. Though Indians freely admit that whites may and
probably will go to hell, I have yet to meet an Indian who believes in his heart
that any Indians will go there.

-- Indian Sign Language, Capt W.P. Clark, 2nd Car, 1884

The Iron Road

We saddled up our stolen horses and rode south, leaving Lakota Country for
Indian Territory. In four sleeps we were past Court House Rock, between the
Forks of the Platte, old familiar territory to my husband. Summer heat cast hazy
moats around the monuments. Riding knee to knee, we talked half in Sheyenna,
half in English, still exploring each other's tongues, filling gaps with pidgin
Lakota and sign talk, acting out words, smiling at each other's antics. Yellow
Legs wore a stained Medicine shirt and plain leggings. I had on my white doeskin
dress, slit for riding. Each morning he braided my blonde hair, painting it red
at the parting to show the world how proud he was.

Raven trailed behind us, dragging a pony travois with Nothing on board, acting
the dutiful Sheyenna wife, a role she relished more than anything--except maybe
the baby behind her.

Yellow Legs had that aboriginal ability to memorize ground as effortlessly as a
seasoned actor learning Shakespeare, and he kept up a running commentary--not on
what we were seeing, but on what lay just over the flat horizon. What the
country would be like. Where we would find water. It was one of his best
Medicine tricks. He pointed out hidden creek beds, and the remains of an army
camp where he and Crazy Horse had gotten many American horses with the Long
Knife mark on their hips -- he traced a U.S. in the air with his finger.

Anything out of place got instant attention. A smudge of smoke or dust. A
peculiar animal movement. Several times he saw the bones of buffalo that had not
been there before. Each time Yellow Legs dismounted, piously turning the eyeless
skulls to face the sunrise and rebirth, doing his part to assure the yearly
return of the buffalo. On the ground he was bowlegged, from a life on horseback,
but was still taller than I, taller than Crazy Horse, though not so tall as
Touch-the-Clouds. I was just past twenty and desperately in love. Yellow Legs
was only the second man I had ever known. He was over forty-- with gray in his
braids and laugh wrinkles around his eyes--but I was only his second woman, and
he always treated me as something precious.

When time came to camp, Yellow Legs would look at me, saying, "Get down, wife"
-- a sentence not half as curt in Sheyenna as it sounds in English. "Get down"
is a greeting. If a Sheyenna brave is not happy to see you, he would just as
soon that you stayed on your horse. And to Yellow Legs "wife" was a term of
endearment more tender than any of my names.

I was born Sarah Kilory, youngest daughter to a going-to-meeting Quaker, and a
charming Bog Irish drunkard. But not even my husband bothered with my Christian
name. Birth names were for babies. Who cared what meaningless sounds my parents
cooed over me when I was weak and formless? Sheyenna kept hanging names on me,
hoping one would stick. Not all were flattering. To some I was "That One." Or
Enutah, "The Foreign Woman." Most commonly I was "American Woman," a name
borrowed from Crazy Horse's Lakotas. Only Yellow Legs could call me "Wife."

Unpacking my travois, I pitched my little twelve-skin lodge next to Raven's
bigger one. My tipi was plain and tiny by Sheyenna standards, just big enough
for me and my husband-- when he came to call. But it was all mine. How often
could a civilized woman say she had a home of her own waiting wherever she went?
Raven got dinner going shuffling about with Nothing on her back, doing her gruff
imitation of a grizzly with cub. Elk jerky simmered in the stewpot seasoned with
rose hips and cactus greens cooked soft with the spines burned off. She fanned
the cook fire with a crow's wing. Many Sheyenna would not touch a black bird of
death-- but Raven's name gave her special powers over crows, kites, buzzards,
and other Eaters of the Dead.

I served myself, not bothering to thank her. Buffalo Indians did not have, or
need, a dozen different ways of saying "much obliged." To Raven, sharing stew
was as normal as sharing a husband. When I first came into camp, I was a
wide-eyed Wasichu, always thanking people for everything, trying to make
friends. Raven was the one who pointed out that gushing over people for doing
right sounded sarcastic, implying their natural impulse was to do wrong.
Gratitude assumes a giver, not a sharer, and comes more easily to a Wasichu than
to a Sheyenna.

She dipped into her stew with a chipped china cup -- my spur of the moment gift
during that embarrassing moment when we discovered we were married to the same
man. Yellow Legs had a way of letting the medicine work itself out, and did not
manage to communicate that he had a wife until I arrived in Crazy Horse's camp,
deep in Lakota Country -- where I could hardly stalk off in a huff. Nor did
Raven get any warning. He had not told her, "I'm going to Red Cloud's Agency to
pick up a couple of pounds of coffee and a skinny blonde wife." Her first hint
that I existed was seeing me ride into camp side-by-side with her husband. She
had yet to thank me for the cup.

Raven had round brown arms, and hips twice as wide as mine. Her raw energy could
be frightening. A glutton for labor, she openly prided herself on being Yellow
Legs' "working wife." I was plainly one of those silly indulgences that
successful warriors wasted time with -- like a parade pony, painted and primped,
but only ridden on special occasions. And she did it all with Nothing on her
back, or propped in the shade, watching sleeping waking to nurse. If the baby
fussed, Raven swooped down, smothering her cries with a tit. I once asked why
she named her precious offspring "Nothing."

"A special baby needs a special name," she replied.

I asked what was so special about "Nothing."

"Nothing is special about Nothing. I am waiting for her special name to come."
Pure Sheyenna -- the baby was too important to have a name.

On the fifth morning we mounted up, riding south through a booming prairie dog
town, filled with plump dogs, plus all the shifty types that hang around a
well-to-do dog town-- weasels, red-tails, and black-looted ferrets. A trio of
little ground owls dived into an old dog hole as we rode by, clicking out exact
imitations of a rattlesnake's rattle. Old Man Coyote and Mister Badger weren't
fooled, one started to dig while the other watched the bolt hole. I broke up
their joint hunt, shooing the moochers off, shaming them for hunting nestlings.

The coyote trotted a dozen yards, then turned, wearing a sly look, yip-barking
back at me. Yellow Legs laughed. "He called you a meddling yellow-haired bitch."

"Really." I raised an eyebrow. My husband claimed to understand the speech of
coyotes -- having learned it from a Snake boy who was raised by wolves.

"Of course -- but to Coyote that is a compliment. Bold light-haired females
breed good pups."

In a couple of sleeps we reached the South Fork of the Platte. This late in the
Big Dry Time the river had sunk down to a trickle in its mile wide bed, a thin
film of water hiding bogs and quicksands. Of course we could not use the
recognized fords -- where the Wasichu crossed -- but Yellow Legs saw that our
horses barely wet their fetlocks.

On the high sweltering divide between the Platte and the Pawnee, Yellow Legs
turned loose the ponies to graze and went hunting rabbits, while Raven collected
buffalo chips to cook them on. (The treeless landscape had reduced us to burning
turds) I lay alone on my travois, exhausted by the day's heat and the night's
ride, slipping in and out of sleep. Then something incredibly curious happened.

Close to dusk, a coyote came trotting up. He was in no way special, looking much
like the one I had seen at the dog town, a bit bigger than most, but with the
usual pointed snout and graying piss-yellow fur. I wondered if he had trailed us
all the way from the Forks of the Platte, hoping for a handout. He stopped,
settling back on his haunches, giving me a smug slantendicular look.

"Go away," I told him.

"Why?" he replied.

Tired as I was, I nearly sprang off the travois. No matter how much my husband
swore that prairie wolves could speak, I never expected to be talking to one.
The words did not come out of his throat, but formed inside my head, clear as
stream water, and in English if you please--somehow it would have seemed less
outlandish if the beast had spoken Sheyenna. Too stupefied to answer, I sat up,
searching frantically for Yellow Legs. No luck. He was still off rabbit hunting.
Raven and Nothing were not in sight.

The coyote scratched himself, looking cockeyed at me. "American Woman. you are
the one with far to go. Come follow me. "Turning half about, he trotted off at
an angie into the hot twilight -- looking back over his shoulder, totally
confident I would follow.

Which I did. Staggering to my feet, I stumbled after him in dreamy fashion, feet
barely touching the ground. The phantom prairie wolf led me to the base of some
gray rounded bluffs, strung along a stream like a row of burial mounds. Without
being told, I knew the bluffs contained the Camp of the Dead. Father had given
me bleary lectures about the Land Under the Hill inhabited by faeries and the
dear departed. By one of those eerie coincidences, Buffalo Indians and Bog Irish
both thought the Spirit World could be found inside some high place.

A creek ran along the base of the bluffs, looking just like the Greasy Grass,
the stream at the sunset edge of Lakota Country-- the one whites call the Little
Big Horn. A circle of men sat by the water, waiting to cross over and join the
dead. Crazy Horse was there, playing poker for pony stakes with the Custer
brothers--the General, Tom, Boston, and James Calhoun. With them was Bloody
Knife, Custer's scout, and Colonel Myles Keogh. Crazy Horse had won all the
ponies--and the 7th cavalry officers were having to throw in their clothes as
well.

Men looked up from their cards. The General stammered a greeting. Brother Tom
took off his undershirt, tossing it to Crazy Horse-- I recognized the big
American Eagle tattoo on Tom's chest. Colonel Keogh got up, giving a courtly
bow; a lovely Irish gesture, except that he was dressed in just his socks and
the medal from the Pope he wore around his neck. He nodded at the shallow ford
where Medicine Tail Coulee climbed the Little Big Horn bluffs, saying, "Ladies
first."

Shivering, I started across the ford, though I knew that death lay up the
coulee. I could hear my departed Mother calling to me, the way she used to call
us home. I opened my mouth to answer.

Bluffs and water vanished, and I was back standing beside my travois. Coyote and
the whole ghostly company were gone. By the time Yellow Legs returned I had
firmly convinced myself it was all a mirage brought on by the heat, and my lack
of sleep. Of course my husband would have none of that, blandly assuring me that
I had talked to Old Man Coyote, and seen the camp of the dead.

I shut up-- bizarre dreams are a Medicine man's stock in trade. Besides, the
dream's meaning was frightfully clear. Crazy Horse, Bloody Knife, Myles Keogh,
and the Custers were all ticketed for the Spirit World.

But I was going to go before them.

I tried to put the whole business out of my head. Some sort of waking dream, no
more. Not worth bothering with unless you were born Sheyenna.

Two more sleeps and we were in the Valley of the Pawnee, finding it badly picked
over, looking like a panorama from an apocalyptic gospel. Rotting buffalo lay in
heaps, beneath clouds of vultures. You didn't have to be Crazy Horse to tell it
was the work of professional hide hunters -- skinning stopped at the hip. We
passed quickly on. Not bothering to turn any skulls to the sunrise, or otherwise
pay our respects. Heading down the Arikaree Fork, we turned south onto the open
prairie, riding over grass turned blonde by the sun, straight into the worst of
the Big Dry Time. Western Kansas is never wet -- now it seemed burnt over.
Buffalo wallows which usually hold the rankest sort of water were caked and dry.
But each evening Yellow Legs showed us where to dig, leading us from one dirt
well to the next, finding the headwaters of streams that became big rivers
farther east.

We crossed the lonely tracks of the Kansas Pacific, the last reach of
civilization between us and Indian territory. Relieved to put this final rail
line behind us, we rode higher in our saddles, looking for signs of buffalo.
Ahead lay the vast short-grass prairie of southern Kansas where buffalo come
together to carpet the earth. The great Southern Herd, the largest accumulation
of meat on the hoof in the Americas, would be moving north to meet us. And south
of the Flint it all belonged to the southern tribes -- Sheyenna, Snakes, Blue
Clouds, Kiowas and Apaches.

Beyond the Flint, we could follow the North Fork of the Canadian into Indian
Territory, where Yellow Legs would be on his proper reservation enrolled and
legal. Just reaching the Flint would be a relief. The Medicine Lodge Treaty had
made the south bank into Indian hunting grounds. With war brewing between Crazy
Horse and Custer, I wanted my husband on the right side of every treaty ever
written. Fresh meat would be a treat, but I would have eaten raw prickly pear if
it got us closer to the Sheyenna Agency.

In shimmering noontime we topped a rise and saw the Flint cutting across the
plain. Between us and the river lay something that was not in my husband's
mental universe -- a fresh line of rails. Dark eyes narrowed and laugh wrinkles
disappeared. "There was never an Iron Road here."

"It has to be the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe," I decided. When I came west to
teach Indians, the line had been stalled somewhere in East Kansas. Now here it
was, flung across our path, headed for southern Colorado, twin threads of steel
connecting Topeka to nowhere.

The ground around the rails was dotted with alabaster mounds. Yellow Legs
recognized the white objects first. His lips tightened, and I knew we were
riding into trouble. Piled along the tracks were the bones of thousands of
buffalo.

We crossed the tracks, and reached the Flint, watering our horses in a vast
boneyard. The buffalo had been cut down as they came to drink. Wagon tracks and
boot marks showed who had done the killing. When Coronado crossed Kansas his
conquistadors had never been out of sight of buffalo -- not for a single day--
herds were so thick his army could not push through and had to march around
them. But we had seen only bleached bones and empty wallows. Now we knew why.
Buffalo hunters had turned the Flint River into a line of death, slaughtering
the Southern Herd as it migrated north.

The Staked Plains

I was roundly shocked, but Yellow Legs had sensed disaster as soon as he saw the
Iron Road. What puzzled him was why the Wasichu would kill all "their" buffalo
in a single season, "leaving nothing for winters to come?" Not a paltry question
-- and knowing my people better than he, I doubted the killing would stop at the
treaty line. But hunters feeding the railway gangs could haul meat only so far.
Spoilage alone would limit the swath cut by the Atchison-Topeka.

Putting the boneyard behind us, we pressed on, crossing the Cimarron Trail, then
the forks of the river itself, entering Indian Territory. It made no difference.
Dead buffalo were everywhere. Only here they were killed for hides alone,
leaving the meat to rot. On the North Fork of the Canadian we found firepits and
felled trees. Hunters had wintered on Indian land, leaving only when there was
nothing left to kill. I took a moment to remind Yellow Legs he had sworn off the
warpath. "Then we best not meet these buffalo killers," he replied. "My scalp
shirt is trimmed with the hair of men who did me far less harm."

No longer surprised-- just monumentally sad-- I did my damnedest to hurry us
down the North Canadian and onto the Sheyenna Agency. We were almost to Wolf
Creek when Yellow Legs smelled smoke. He signed, "A small fire of buffalo chips,
with bacon and coffee cooking. Maybe wolves for the Long Knives." By that he
meant army scouts. It had to be an Indian fire, because I could neither see nor
smell the smoke.

Leaving Raven and the baby behind, Yellow Legs and I wriggled forward, resting
his brings' em-close-glasses on a bit of rising ground. He peered through-- then
motioned for me to look. "Two wolves, probably Delawares. A Wasichu is with
them." Through his field glasses I saw two Indians in army coats. Lord only
knows how he figured them for Delawares. The Wasichu with them was younger,
wearing a natty silk shirt, red bandana and black bowler hat. Despite being
young and out of uniform, he was bound to be in charge. The youngest, greenest
Wasichu generally outranked any Indians.

Setting the glasses down, I signed that I should talk to them. "No," Yellow Legs
signed back, "too dangerous."

I insisted. We had to know why they were camped so close to the agency, and I
could ride down and ask without causing trouble. Grudgingly he saw the logic in
that-- there was no telling how two Delawares and a Wasichu would react to a
lone Sheyenna. We were outside the States, on land promised to the Southern
Tribes, but that might not mean a lot. Those two blue-coated Delawares were a
sure sign the army was following in the boot tracks of the buffalo hunters.

Sliding back down the rise, I dusted off, went to the gully where we had hobbled
the horses, mounted up, and rode cautiously forward. I caused a fair stir coming
in. Both scouts grabbed carbines. The boy had a .50 Sharps, made to drop a
buffalo at a quarter mile. "Howdy," I waved, feeling like William Penn preaching
to the mouths of cannon. "No need for the artillery -- just a friendly morning
call."

Seeing nothing more dangerous than me, the boy put down his Sharps and doffed
his bowler. He had dark eyes and a cocky teenage smile. "Why ma'am, you look
nearly white."

"Was when I woke up." My blonde hair was covered in dust and my face was smeared
with paint to cut the sun, which was fairly relentless so late in the Big Dry
Time. Dress and leggings were pure Sheyenna.

"I only knew of one white woman in these parts, an' she left in a hurry. "He
meant that as a joke, but no one found it funny. Not me. And not the edgy
Delawares, who neither took off their hats nor put down their rifles. That I was
white and a woman did not make them a whit less suspicious.

He signed for them to lower their carbines. Reluctantly they obeyed. It takes
more than a pretty face to fool a Delaware. "My name is Masterson William
Barclay Masterson. My brothers call me Bat."

Dismounting, I told him my name was Kilory, and he could call me Sarah.

"More than pleased to meet you, ma'am." Bat scratched his head with his hat
hand, trying to imagine what to make of me. "How can I help?" Any lone white
woman was considered to be in some kind of distress.

"You could start by offering me coffee." I nodded toward his fire, acting
anxiously natural. He poured black coffee into a tin cup. Real Wasichu coffee --
strong enough to float nails -- not the brown watery brew the Sheyenna make do
with. One sip brightened the whole morning. I told him I was a Quaker, coming
down to teach Indians at the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency.

Bat chuckled at that ambition, pouring himself a cup, saying I'd find damn few
Indians to teach. "The Cheyenne and Comanche have jumped their reservations. I'm
scouting for General Miles, and can take you down to Camp Supply. The General
can see you sent safely back to Kansas."

Not aiming to go back to Kansas -- safely or otherwise -- I asked if Bat had
actually seen hostile Cheyenne. More people had told of Indian fights than had
ever been in them.

"Seen hostiles? Hell, I fought them for three days."

"Where was that?"

He pointed his bowler upriver. "Out on the Panhandle -- Cheyenne, Comanches,
Kiowa, maybe some Arapaho. They had us cornered at Adobe Walls. Killed three
whites."

"They just went berserk and tore into the army?"

"No ma'am, no army. Just a couple of dozen scared white folks. I joined up
afterwards. Figured if I was going to shoot Indians I should get paid for it."

"What were you doing on the Panhandle?" I had a fair idea, but I wanted to hear
it from him.

"Hunting buffalo," he answered happily, "at least until that war party showed."
I asked what he had expected, shooting buffalo in Snake territory. Called
Comanches by the Spanish, the Southern Snakes were true blue Texans, homicidally
wary of foreigners and death to trifle with.

Bat gave a wan smile. "I see now it wasn't so smart. At the start we thought it
was a lark -- joking about, playing Indian to scare the greenhorns. But hell,
buffalo are getting rare. You have to hunt them where you find them." He swore
how Kansas was picked clean, but there were still "buff" out in Texas. Lots of
them. Hunters shot until their guns got red hot. Then they poured canteen water
down the gun, or pissed on the barrel, and shot some more. It would not stop
until the buffalo were gone.

Furious, I told him how the whole prairie from here to Nebraska was starving.
Homesteaders along the Pawnee were living on flour paste and belt leather, while
Bat was feeding buffalo meat to the buzzards like some crazed bird lover. Bat
looked back at me like I was too long in the heat, saying, "Hides are what the
railroad pays for. Can't help it about the meat." No wonder Snakes and Sheyenna
tried to lift this boy's hair. They are poor businessmen -- tell them buffalo
meat is worthless and they will brain you out of plain frustration.

"What are Indians going to eat when the buffalo are gone?"

Bat shrugged, "I guess the government will feed 'em. This is Uncle Sam's coffee
we're drinking, and government bacon on the fire. They pay me to shoot Indians.
Someone else has to feed 'em. The buffalo are going. If you want to see them,
you better look fast. If you want to get a buck out of them, better do it now."
Such monumental extermination made the baby-faced killer reflective. "Don't know
what I'll do when the buff are gone. Word's come to Camp Supply that Custer
found gold in the Black Hills. Maybe I'll head north."

Right-- go north and rob the Lakota. Crazy Horse was going to love this boy.
Disgusted, I got up to go.

He set down his coffee, stepping closer. "See here," he says, "I am truly sorry
to upset you, but it would be loco for you to just ride off alone." Bat was a
boy used to having his way by force.

I handed him my coffee, to keep his hands busy; young Mister Masterson looked to
be the type who practiced his draw. Then I stepped back to clear the line of
fire. Maybe Bat was not as mean as he made out, just a little nervous and a
whole lot green -- all set to kill Indians, with an uneasy grin on his face and
Yellow Leg's never-miss Medicine rifle pointed at his head. Bat's pistol was on
his hip; his Sharps lay against a log. All he had in his hands was a bowler hat
and a coffee cup -- and the brave drawing a bead on him already thought that
buffalo hunters belonged in the Happy Hunting Ground. His two Delawares had read
me better.

He hovered for a moment, without touching me -- held back by the Medicine of a
Wasichu woman on the plains. Then he shook his head. "I see you're set on
suicide, so you hardly need advice, but don't go down to Darlington Agency on
your own." He painted a cheery picture of how the Sheyenna had finished off a
pair of buffalo hunters, staking them out "with their heads propped up so they
could see what was being done to 'em."

Bat gave me a last dubious glance, then looked down at the coffee growing cold
in his grip. I must have seemed passing strange, but Bat was not a boy who
pondered deeply on other people's problems. I walked the pony back to where my
husband waited. We had come hundreds of dry, dirty miles to avoid the fight
brewing in Lakota Country, only to find a full out war here in Indian Territory.

Nothing could provoke Yellow Legs into riding further down the Canadian. I
scolded and ranted, reminding him of his promises to enroll at the Sheyenna
Agency. He listened with arms folded and a wooden look on his face, the perfect
image of a stoic warrior berated by his woman. Unable to beat him down, I stood
fuming, watching him open his Medicine bundle and take out his black antelope
bone pipe. Good move, Medicine man, but it was going to take more than a peace
pipe to get me off the war path.

Slowly he packed his pipe, saying "I know you were raised in the Jesus way -- I
respect that. If Jesus had been Sheyenna, he would have made a fine Man-woman,
healing the sick and working in wood. But Jesus never had to worry about Long
Knives coming to bum his camp and steal his women."

I was beyond arguing Bible stories. "I merely want to live in a place with no
war -- where we can be at peace with our neighbors."

"Is there such a place this side of the Spirit World?"

"Yes, in Indian territory. Quakers run the agency. There we could live as
husband and wife -- no one would question it."

He said he would like to see a place with only Sheyenna and Jesus people -- but
he would not go down the Canadian so long as Bear Coat Miles and his Long Knives
were paying Delawares and buffalo hunters to shoot Sheyenna.

Nor was Raven any help. "Let American Woman go alone," she advised, "they will
not shoot a Wasichu." I snorted, saying she would not be rid of me so easily.
Raven took my sarcasm seriously, saying she never thought to be easily rid of
me. "Your white skin and yellow hair are like the sun on a frosty day. Because
of you, our husband is no longer a warrior. Or a hard working horse thief.
Because of you we must become farmers on some southern agency. But all winters
give way to spring."

I told her to mind her baby, asking our husband where he intended to winter.
Yellow Legs pointed his chin southward. "We will winter on the Staked Plains
with Stone Calf's People."

"People" was what the Sheyenna called themselves-- everyone else being an
afterthought in creation. He lit his pipe, offering it to the earth and sky, and
the four directions, then taking a puff and holding it out to me. I was not in a
mood to smoke, but I touched the pipe, showing that the argument was over.

That night we made up in my tipi, beneath the buffalo robes, on a bed of living
blue stem. His skin felt smooth, softer than a white man's, almost like a
girl's. No arrow, no bullet, no war knife had ever touched him. I knew, because
I had made a thorough study of him, going over his body by candlelight, takinth
brown hair. She moved slowly and seemed incredibly calm. "Roland's not here,
Marina."

"Beaumont. But where --?"

"You're at Maculate Conception." The woman wore a yellow polo shirt and baggy
jeans, not hospital scrubs. "It's a time of living by his own ragged Medicine
made him desperately afraid of desertion. In that way he was very much like a
woman, expected to be everything and secretly wanting someone to care for him.

Sharing a husband is not so bad as you might think. As the Sheyenna say, "Better
to share a good man, than to have a bad one all to yourself." What I really
wanted on my nights alone was a baby, a child who'd be with me every night.
You'd think a Sheyenna Medicine man could perform that simple medical miracle,
but so far it had been all fun and no family. What with Medicine rituals,
hunting trips, his nights with Raven, and my own days apart, Yellow Legs
sometimes had damn little Medicine left for me. Such are the hazards of
following your heart.

We trudged back up the Canadian, through gallery forest and pokeweed meadows,
then turned south into canyon lands cut by powder dry alkali creeks. Climbing
past the line of cap rock, we struck out across the griddle hot plains at the
heart of the Texas Panhandle. Raw unyielding prairie. No trees. No buttes or
mesas. Not a hint Of rising ground, though I knew we were high in the air,
higher than the hills at home. The cap rock atop the buttes along the Canadian
formed the bedrock of these high plains. Scorched grass stretched from one end
of the world to the other, making progress impossible to measure. Perspective
vanished. A moving speck might be a cloud shadow, a herd of prong horn, or a
rider ahead. The first Wasichu to see this tableland were Coronado's
conquistadores. Fearing they'd be lost in such immense emptiness, the Spaniards
marked their trail with tall upright stakes, that stood long after Coronado
passed on, giving the vast expanse its name -- el Llano Estacado, the Staked
Plains.

There were few trails. Stiff wiry short-grass sprang back as soon as it was
trodden on, but Yellow Legs went about the business of searching for Stone
Calf's band, finding dust prints and poking through horseshit. Snake ponies ate
only buffalo grass. Barley seeds in the dung meant Long Knives. Corn kernels
meant comancheros.

The Big Dry Time finally broke. Thunder clouds gathered, lightning arced in all
directions, and frigid rains blew down, bleeding the life out of the landscape.
Gray-white earth turned into gummy muck, bailing up on travois poles and ruining
our moccasins. We ate little and slept less. Fever compounded my hopelessness.
Too sick to walk or ride, I ended up flat on my back, being dragged along on a
travois, seeing where we had been instead of where we were headed.

Late one afternoon we spotted figures on the plain, emerging gently out of the
landscape, showing first as dots, then as three tall men on horseback. I did not
need a Medicine dream or horse droppings to know that these were Snakes. At
about rifle range, they vanished. We kept going, assuming they would reappear.
Which they did, sitting patiently in a dusty buffalo wallow, as though we were
of no concern -- which meant they had scrutinized us carefully and judged us
harmless. Their ponies were hobbled lying down, bony flanks heaving quietly.

They greeted Yellow Legs, then came over to look at me. Sick and bedraggled,
lying on a travois, I was still an object of interest. Staring down at me, these
Snakes looked as tall as Crows, skinny men with scrawny horses. I won't say I
looked much better, lying on my back, smelling like a dead moose. My last bath
had been in a gravel pool on the South Canadian.

After several fitful sleeps I awoke in a Snake camp, brown dingy lodges with big
ear flaps. strung along a shallow arroyo. Snakes are as casual as Kiowas are
formal. Your best introduction is to unpack and set up camp, watching to see no
one borrows your horses. I helped Raven with her tipi, so as not to look like an
utter weakling. But once the lodge was up I collapsed inside, wrapped in a
blanket, feeding twigs and dry grass into the fire. Raven took Nothing to find
water.

My privacy only lasted as long as it took Yellow Legs to find someone to smoke
with. He sauntered into the tipi accompanied by a tall, well-built warrior with
grim blue-gray eyes and the wild confident air of a war chief. Clearly a person
of consequence, though the Snake political system never pretends to be anything
but anarchy-- Snakes follow whomever they please for as long as it pleases,
exasperating both friends and enemies. I pulled my blanket tighter, and we
pretended to ignore each other. A war chief does not waste Medicine eyeing other
men's wives. And a proper Sheyenna wife does not stare at a visiting Snake as if
he planned to pinch the silverware. Heaven knows there was no excuse to leap up
and play hostess.

Yellow Legs insisted on making introductions. "This Snake's name is Quanah,
which means Smells Sweet." For the first time since crossing the Flint I had to
stifle a laugh. Snakes aren't prized for their aroma, and despite his blue eyes,
Smells Sweet was all Snake. Seeing I was sick, he sent for a Medicine woman. I
did not need anyone burning sweet grass over me, but it was pointless to protest
-- to a Snake, impulse and action are the same.

Yellow Legs and Smells Sweet smoked up the tipi, and were still swapping stories
when the Medicine woman arrived. She was as much Spanish as she was Snake, and
Smells Sweet introduced her as "Curandera," the Healer. I could not tell if this
was a name or title -- probably it was both. She went right to work, poking me
unmercifully, asked with signs and simple Spanish how I felt. Dolor! Nauseas!
Fiebre! When I did not understand, Healer acted out the symptoms.

She did not burn plants, paint me up, or put her clothes on backwards, but she
did demand a full description of my dreams. Naturally my Coyote dream impressed
her the most. I tried to pass it off as heat stroke, but that was hopeless. You
cannot even discuss dreams with Buffalo Indians without laying claim to all
kinds of vision power. The sign for "dreamer" is the same as the sign for
"Medicine man," and a dream is "night-seeing" or "sleepwork." No one but me
doubted that I had conjured up a full blown Medicine vision.

Healer signed her diagnosis. "She is Wasichu." Pointing at me with her chin, she
drew her hand across her brow. The men puffed and passed the pipe, as though
this observation were fairly profound. "I too am part Wasichu," she added.
"There is much Medicine in the blood of Wasichu women. We do not sicken the way
People do. A Wasichu can walk about when the whole camp is dying, then crumple
up when the work is hard or the weather turns rainy."

The men signed that they too had seen this, Smells Sweet adding that his own
mother had been white. On his mother's side he was a Parker, kin to some of the
best folks in Texas society.

"She is also a bruja." Healer said it evenly in Spanish, making the sign for
Medicine woman. A nice way of saying I was a witch. "Power whips around her like
an unruly wind." Her hands swirled and she puffed her cheeks, blowing and making
the signs for wind and Medicine. She promised I could look forward to whole new
forms of dementia. Arguing Buffalo Indians out of their superstition is near
impossible even when you're hale and hearty -- an invalid hasn't a shot at it. I
merely pointed out there was no use to Medicine you could not control.

Healer chuckled. "To a Wasichu, everything must have a use." The men laughed,
saying that was certainly so. "Take care and cultivate this Medicine, it will
grow." Healer's hands shot up like a corn plant in the sun. "Deny it, and it
will whirl out of control, carrying you off." She rummaged through her Medicine
bag, producing powders and herbs. "I will give you a broth to drink now for your
fever, and stronger Medicine to help you on your journey."

I signed that she had done plenty, and I felt wagon loads better, but Healer
ignored my protests. Perhaps she was merely completing her own Medicine. "These
are your helpers." Healer held out four small wrinkled cactus buds. "Keep them
with you. The winter ahead will be a hard one. When you need them, scrape the
hair off and eat one -- even though they are bitter." She combined the eating
sign with a comical grimace.

I mumbled a muchas gracias, putting the buttons in my Medicine bag, among my
herb teas and patent pills -- though by now our luck was so thoroughly bad a few
cactus buttons weren't going to turn it around. Then Healer brewed up a broth
that seemed mostly cayenne pepper, claiming it would clean my spirit and get me
on my feet. Which it did--scorching my sinuses, and blistering my gullet, then
getting me on my feet and out of the tipi at a run. I did not stop until I was
out of camp squatting among the ponies. It even burned coming out.

When I recovered from that cure, we set off again, traveling between storms.
Freezing rain turned to snow by the time we found an abandoned campsite in the
buttes and canyons of New Mexico Territory. From a pair of moccasin prints and a
turkey feather, Yellow Legs deduced the camp was Sheyenna. We followed their
trail, and one snowy morning we came upon a hundred-odd lodges pitched beside a
cottonwood creek. The air was so cold the limbs on the cottonwoods cracked like
pistols going off. Yellow Legs signed, "Get down." Tipi markings told him this
was Stone Calf's band of the Southern Sheyenna. Our winter home.

Catherine

By the moon of Frost in the Tipis, the hard winter Healer promised was here, and
we all crowded into Raven's lodge to stay warm. Nothing cried constantly, tiny
ragged breaths that misted in the frigid air. Raven was down with fever, so I
had to care for the baby-- like Healer said, I was Wasichu, likely to be up and
about when People lay sick in their lodges. Nothing had diarrhea, and her rabbit
fur bundling was always dirty, but there was no way to wash fur in freezing
weather. I replaced the sage padding, apologizing to her for the dirty fur. At
least Nothing got to have her black and watery bowel movements indoors -- I had
to do my business on the iron cold ground outside. When I finished, Raven took
the baby to her hot breast. It was scary to see Raven so helpless; the woman who
could do the work of ten Wasichu was weaker than I. I was now Yellow Legs'
working wife. You could tell by the makeshift look of the tipi -- our robes were
ragged, the fire was feeble.

Bad as things were, our tipi was paradise compared to most of Stone Calfs camp.
No one had died in our lodge. Whole bands had come into camp worse off than we
were -- trudging in, their feet wrapped in rawhide, having lost everything. No
horses. No lodges. No warm robes. No meat for the winter. Long Knives were
attacking the camps, burning lodges and winter stores. Bad Hand MacKenzie had
taken a herd of captured ponies to Tule Canyon, shooting them with firing
squads; a thousand horses lay in frozen heaps.

Nothing stopped crying and started to suck, a good sign. Raven still had milk.
Tonight I meant to make bone soup, so she could get some calcium. Tucking a
small ax under my blanket, I crawled out the entrance flap into the searing cold
to look for firewood. Lodges stretched up and down the frozen creek, a chain of
tiny snow-sided volcanoes, blackened at the tops where the smoke trickled out.
The stunted cottonwoods along the creekbed were dying, stripped of their bark
for as high up as a woman could reach or a pony could gnaw. Smaller branches
were mostly gone, and the bigger limbs were cased in ice. Hanging among the
crystal limbs were grisly little bundles dripping with icicles, the frozen
bodies of children wrapped in swaddling skins.

Swinging the ax as high as I could reach, I chopped at skeletal branches,
swearing that next time I would get Yellow Legs to do this. He was off seeing to
the homes. The man could be a mountain of energy where horses were concerned.
Every morning he dug under the snow to cut grassroots for our ponies.

I let my blanket slip, to get a good swing with the ax, not seeing the young
Sheyenna until he was next to me, grabbing my wrist. I could barely believe I
was being manhandled in camp, and thought he was making some fool attempt to
help-- a Sheyenna version of courting behavior --though this was hardly the
moment for some random brave to get romantic. Then he twisted hard, making me
drop the ax. So much for courtship. The grinning bastard yanked my blanket off
-- going right for a roll in the snow.

I gave up the blanket, grabbing my skinning knife left-handed, screaming, "Let
me go," slashing his wrist.

His grin faded, and he let go, staring at his bleeding wrist. "You cut me."

Scooping up the fallen ax, I told him, "I will chop you too. Give me my
blanket."

He let the blanket drop. Wind howled between us. There was a knife in his belt,
but he seemed to have forgotten it, saying, "I thought you were the crazy
Wasichu."

I waved the ax. "You are the crazy one. Attacking a woman in camp. Assaulting a
guest of Stone Calf." I wanted this dumb brave to know he was the one in the
wrong, the one who had broken the Peace of the Camp.

He looked hurt and stubborn. "I thought you were the crazy Wasichu who gathers
wood for Long Back."

I had never heard of Long Back. Snatching up my blanket, I told him, "I know
your face. I will tell my husband. I will tell Stone Calf. You will be driven
out onto the prairie." He could stick his prick in a frozen gopher hole. I did
not know if I could get this oversexed brave thrown out of camp, but it sounded
good. Nothing confuses a warrior like threats that he cannot meet. -- especially
from wild-eyed women. Now he had to worry about his standing. There were no
coups to be had wrestling with another man's wife in the middle of camp.

I backed into our tipi, thoroughly shaken. It was the first time I had been
menaced by a brave in camp. I had been freely threatened with mayhem and forced
marriage out on the prairie, but the most miserable camp circle was meant to be
a woman's haven. When Yellow Legs returned from his precious ponies, I told him
to go gather the wood. "A man grabbed me. It is too damned cold to cut wood with
someone going through your clothes." He looked properly aghast, seizing his
Medicine gun, asking who this man was.

"No one I know personally." My husband's show of concern had me feeling better;
I took away his gun and handed him the ax. "Here, cut some wood. I think it was
some mistake." No reason to ticket my attacker for the Spirit World. Then I
added, "Does anyone know of another Wasichu woman in camp?"

Ax in hand, he considered the question. "Someone might, but not me." He vanished
through the tipi flap.

I sat back, cold and frightened. My attacker had not acted snowblind or stir
crazy. He was convinced there was a Wasichu crazy woman in camp -ready to meet
any man's demands. I had to find Long Back's lodge, and see for myself what the
man was talking about. Raven was sick and asleep -- no sense in waking her.
Pulling my blanket about me, I went looking for this Crazy Wasichu. Afraid of
what I would find.

People glided like ghosts between the lodges. Dead ponies and mules lay sheeted
in ice, half eaten by hungry Sheyenna. Dogs slunk about, looking for food while
aiming not to become a meal.

Halfway down the creek an especially thin wraith emerged from a lodge. Wrapped
in a threadbare blanket, she darted over to the bushes by the stream bed, tugged
wildly at the brush, breaking off frozen branches with raw hands. Her feet were
mud-spattered and blue with cold, but her ankles were white. I walked slowly
over. Seeing me, she started like a frightened bird, then went back to work.

The glimpse I got was harrowing. She looked crazy; her hollow sunken eyes half
hidden by unkept hair. And she was definitely white. Not a white Sheyenna, like
Kiowa Woman, but a girl born and raised Wasichu. Like me. Calmly as I could, I
asked, "What is your name?"

She stiffened. With my face greased and painted against the cold, I doubted she
could tell I was white. Her soft child's mouth moved hesitantly. "My name is
Catherine."

Shivering, she went back to ripping at the brush, frantic to tear off a few
twigs of firewood. I bent down to help her, drawing my heavy knife, chopping at
the branches. "How did you get here?" A dumb question but I had to ask.

She gaped at me. "I was captured."

"Where?"

"Far away. Up north. In Kansas."

We sure as hell weren't in Kansas anymore. She looked around, then bent down and
bundled up her sticks, scrambling back toward the tipi she came from. Turning, I
saw two men coming, not fast, but with easy confidence. One was the warrior who
had grabbed me. Seeing the girl disappear into the tipi, they sat down a couple
of paces off. When I stared, they turned their heads politely away. Going to get
Yellow Legs, I kept looking over my shoulder. They sat on the ice hard ground,
like Old Man Coyote and Mr. Badger covering the exits to a prairie dog hole,
waiting for the poor creature to emerge.

Yellow Legs was back in the lodge, sitting proudly beside an immense pile of
twigs. I told the whole terrible story, begging him to go to Long Back's lodge
to try to get Catherine out. He could have my horse and anything else Long Back
might want in trade. Yellow Legs took his pipe and left.

Raven was awake. After a long silence she spoke up. "It would be good to have
another woman in the lodge, now that I am so weak. But we need your horse too."

I snorted. It was not as if we were riding anywhere. "I want that girl out of
Long Back's lodge because she is being horribly mistreated. Men in camp are
raping her."

"Some men will do that," Raven acknowledged. "It is a part of men's Medicine I
never understood."

"No," I snapped, "it is not men's Medicine. It would be men's Medicine if they
were raping each other. You would not accept it if she were Sheyenna."

"If she were not Wasichu, you would not be so worried."

Sweating and shaking beneath her buffalo robe, with her pitiful thin baby at her
breast, my sister-wife was still full of fight. I thought of the men I had seen
so set to kill; Bat Masterson, with his blind certainty, Crazy Horse and Custer
with their smug warrior ethic. None of them were out here on the Staked Plains,
gathering wood barefoot, being raped while they worked. Both sides boasted how
they fought to protect their women, yet hardly a brave or soldier had died in
this buffalo war. War parties fought when they felt inclined, while the army
blundered about, raiding villages and peace camps -- pushing women and children
into the front lines.

I told Raven, "Every camp makes its own Medicine, and the Medicine in this camp
is terrible. Raping girls will not make it one whit better. No wonder children
are dying." It was true. If you believed in bad Medicine, it was no surprise
this was a death camp.

Yellow Legs entered, sitting down at the back of the lodge, dim flames lighting
his dark features. "I smoked with Long Back. He is happy with his new woman, who
fetches wood well enough-- though she is weak and cries at night. He says he
does not need horses, though I offered him my war horse and my best buffalo
ponies. Long Back would of course prefer a proper woman, a Ute perhaps, or even
a Mexican-- but no one is offering one. He said to come when the grass was up,
or there are buffalo to hunt. Then he might need more horses and fewer women."

Yellow Legs stared straight into the fire, then went on, "Long Back wondered why
I wanted such a weak and clumsy woman. He claimed some men in camp were curious
about how it felt to copulate with a Wasichu. He himself was not curious, being
very happy with the wives he has. But to show he was generous, Long Back said I
could take her out and copulate with her. I told him I was not curious."

There it was. A girl with sad scared eyes was being tortured in camp, and there
was nothing to do about it. I wanted to scream.

Raven groaned and got to her feet, handing Nothing to our husband, then turning
to me, "Help me go outside." I stared dumbly. "Help me go outside," she
insisted. "I will talk with the women."

I helped her out of the lodge. Her flesh hung loose, but the frame beneath was
still strong. She went first to a hollow in the creek bank, squatting in the
snow with her dress pulled up. Frigid wind sang down the creekbed. From the
color of the snow in the hollow the whole camp had diarrhea. Only the cold kept
us from stinking clear to California.

When she was done we hobbled along the line of tipis, stopping at a big
smoke-darkened lodge. Raven scratched at the entrance flap. We were ushered in
by a wrinkled old scarecrow named Yellow Hair, the mother of a war chief called
Medicine Water. With her were two sisters, Two She-Wolves and Stands Apart.
Throughout camp families were doubled and tripled up.

We traded news. The sisters told how Gray Beard's camp had been raided by
soldiers riding in wagons. Few were killed, but everyone lost food and lodges.
Two She-Wolves and Stands Apart had brought their daughters to Stone Calf's camp
hoping to find things were better -- by now they knew things here were almost as
bad. Yellow Hair had trudged all the way to the Agency, but what she saw there
sent her scurrying back to the Staked Plains. "Long Knives are taking away guns
and ponies, locking people in corrals with only trash to eat."

More women came in, and half the stories had to be retold. The newcomers
included Yellow Heir's daughter-in-law, Medicine Water's wife, a giantess with
angry eyes called "Buffalo Calf." She must have grown some since her parents
named her. "Buffalo Cow" would have been closer to the mark. I kept my blanket
pulled up, saying nothing, waiting to see what Raven had planned. My sister-wife
sat beside me, breathing softly, summoning her strength. Finally she spoke. "I
heard there is a Wasichu in Long Back's lodge."

This non-question was directed at no one, but Buffalo Calf spoke up, saying that
in the Big Dry Time she went with her husband to get revenge for the buffalo.
They crossed the Flint, going as far as the Fat River, ticketing about a dozen
Wasichu off to the Spirit World. Buffalo Calf only discussed those killings she
had a hand in, but when she did her eyes lit up like hellfire, and she went into
unnecessarily grisly detail, mimicking the sound an ax makes when it splits a
woman's skull. At no time during this amiable romp was Medicine Water's war
party in the least inconvenienced by Bear Coat Miles' cavalry, or the army
garrisons in southern Kansas. The way war parties moved invisibly over the
prairie helped make war on the plains so terrible. Baffled by the braves'
invisibility, the army would attack the villages, turning the whole brutal show
into an innocent-killing contest.

Eventually Buffalo Calf got around to tel ling how Catherine's family was
massacred -- an easy stroll from the nearest army camp. Catherine and three
younger sisters had been brought south, along with the guns and horses that
signified a successful killing spree. Two She-Wolves and Stands Apart added to
the story, saying the two youngest sisters were left behind when Gray Beard's
village was attacked. The little girls were given to a boy, who left them
sitting on a buffalo robe for the Long Knives to find. No one knew the boy's
name, but I thanked God for him. He could as easily have killed the girls --
even wars of atrocity and annihilation have their heroes.

Raven spoke up again. "The one that is with us should go back with her sisters.
She is bad for the camp Medicine. Men have been forcing her to copulate. Such
things can happen among Utes and Crows, but we are People."

"She is not a Ute or Crow," retorted Buffalo Calf. "She is a Wasichu, a crazy
woman who does not say no." Several others agreed, as if that explained it all.

But Raven refused to be put off. "If she is crazy, she does the camp no good."

Buffalo Calf glared at us from her place in the back of the dark tipi, making my
face paint feel pretty thin. "You are northerners and may not know how we
suffered. In the winter when White Antelope was killed, we made a peace camp in
the Big South Bend, near to the Long Knives' fort. The Long Knives came anyway,
raping and killing."

This was Chivington's Sand Creek massacre. We had passed Sand Creek on our way
south, but Yellow Legs would not go near it-- "Too many ghosts." Buffalo Calf
had hidden in the snow, watching Chivington's troopers drag women and children
from her tipi -- "I saw three aunts and five sisters taken by the Long Knives.
They copulated with the older ones, then killed and scalped them. A Long Knife
chief took out his pistol and shot the little ones, one by one, while they
screamed for him to stop. My whole family was murdered -- but even that did not
make me crazy." Maybe not crazy, but awful dam close. One look into Buffalo
Calf's eyes told the whole tale. She was never going to forgive Catherine's
people, not while they were still busily destroying her tribe.

Two She-Wolves and Stands Apart said they too had fled the Sand Creek camp with
their daughters. "We would have died in the cold and snow, but a coyote took
pity on us. He caught hares for us to eat, and guided us to Gray Beard." Cynical
as he was, even Old Man Coyote found winter war tough to stomach.

"Yes." Raven shivered. "But that was many winters ago, and even a coyote can
have pity."

"A coyote can have pity," Buffalo Calf agreed, "but the Wasichu do not. If we
have pity on this girl, will they have pity on us?"

I wanted to shout, "Yes, of course we would" -- but I knew the answer was most
likely no.

"It would be better for People everywhere if this crazy girl never leaves the
Staked Plains," reasoned Buffalo Calf. "If she lives they will use her words
against us. And if she dies they will treat us no worse."

Buffalo Calf was actively hateful, but most of the others just had more
immediate problems. Two She-Wolves and Stands Apart had their own daughters to
protect-- there was no promise that the Long Knives would not rape them. They
knew what had happened at Sand Creek. And Yellow Hair's son was dead sure to be
jailed or hung, even if Catherine were handed over healthy, unhurt, and made
into an honorary tribal princess.

But bless her stubborn heart, Raven would not give in. "I too have a daughter,"
she told them. "I do not want her to die on the Staked Plains. We are not Snakes
to live on what the coyotes leave-- the young and weak must go in to the Agency.
And they must have this girl, to trade for food and blankets." My sister-wife
was coldly clever, driving a wedge between Medicine Water's family and the rest
of the women. Yellow Hair had admitted that Medicine Water was likely to be hung
no matter what. Raven held out the thin chance that by bringing in Catherine the
others might get sympathy -slim odds to be sure, but Stone Calf's band was hard
up for hope.

"Medicine Water is a warrior," she reminded them. "No one hounded him into going
north, saying he must kill this girl's family. He chose the bow; for that we
feed and honor him. But we do not shield him behind the bodies of defenseless
ones." One by one women agreed to ask Stone Calf to lead them back to the Agency
-- with the captives. Medicine Water would fight on all the better with only
warriors to feed.

We return to our tipi. Tiny rivers of ice ran down the sides of the lodge from
frost melting around the smokehole. Nothing was crying. I pulled back the
entrance flap, waiting for Raven to worm her way in. The walk and talk had
weakened her-- but she had showed me the proper line to take with the Sheyenna.
I owed her for that.

Yellow Legs looked godawful relieved. Swiftly handing the baby to Raven, he sat
back in his seat of honor at the rear of the tipi. Stoic courage and a Medicine
gun cannot stand up to a sick child. I settled into the wife's place nearest
him. This terrible winter had put new lines in his face, but I was going to have
to add to my man's burdens. I told him we had to take Catherine's case to Stone
Calf.

"Cath-er-ine." Raven drew out the Wasichu name, which meant nothing in Sheyenna.
"If she were a Lite or Pawnee, you would not be so concerned."

I was tempted to say the Christian thing to swear I would be just as concerned.
But winter on the Staked Plains stripped you of pretense, leaving little in the
way of hope or hypocrisy. Raven deserved the truth. A Ute or Pawnee girl in
Catherine's place would provoke compassion, but not the same urgency. Only
snakes shed their skins. Catherine was white like me and never meant to be here.
"She is Wasichu," I admitted. "That is why Long Knives and Buffalo Soldiers will
come for her with wagon guns and many firing rifles. Do the Utes have wagon
guns? Do you want your people broken like the Pawnee?"

Yellow Legs sighed, picking up his Medicine bundle. "We will speak to Stone
Calf." He hated to have his wives fighting. Polygamy is not all frolicking under
the buffalo robes -- just ask a Mormon.

In the peace chief's tipi I sat on the women's side, and Yellow Legs went to sit
with the men. Stone Calf's wife, a woman with wide-set intelligent eyes and a
proud pointed chin, served us token bits of dried mule, showing her husband was
still a chief, even among beggars. Stone Calf looked as if he had aged twenty
years in a single winter. Dog Soldiers and war chiefs had threatened to shoot
his ponies. His son had thrown his life away fighting the buffalo hunters. Still
he stood for peace and reason, sending runners to the agency, asking the army
for terms. The answer was no terms. An unconditional surrender. No protection
for the buffalo. No punishment for the hunters who had robbed the Sheyenna. Just
reprisals against anyone who had left the agency.

I studied the worn edges of my long winter moccasins. Plainly the army aimed to
crush the southern tribes. Sheyenna, Snakes, and Kiowas were going to be pinned
to the agencies, while buffalo hunters destroyed what remained of the Southern
Herd. The great pulsing heart of the southern plains would be stopped forever.
Not everyone was as resigned as I was. Cloud Chief had come back from raiding
into Texas, bringing guns and horses. More ponies were on their way from Mexico.
Howling Wolf wanted to raid the Wichitas for guns. There was still talk of war
when the grass was up.

But Stone Calf doubted many would live to see grass in the spring. "Tall Bull
has already taken his family in-- when a Dog Soldier goes in, it must be near
the end. Only fear of what will happen at the agencies holds us back." At
Anadarko, Long Knives and Buffalo Soldiers had opened fire on the Snakes and
Kiowas who came in to give up their guns and be counted.

This was my moment. Only I could pretend to speak for the Wasichu. But the
unvarnished truth was not going to do anyone any good. Not Stone Calf. And
certainly not Catherine. So I settled for fraud instead. "Go in," I told them.
"Take Catherine with you. Bring her in alive and they will give you food. Enough
to keep you from starving." Hell, I could have promised them hump ribs, heated
lodges, and repeating rifles -- it wasn't conscience that held me back, but
respect for their natural cunning. By now they knew us rather well.

"Do you really think this?" Stone Calf looked at me.

"Certainly," I lied, "they are bound to treat you better if you bring her back,
and treat you worse if she dies. We Wasichu care about our children too."
Silently I cursed myself -- one more well-meaning Wasichu making promises we
would not keep. We were not going to stop killing off the buffalo, or whittling
down the reservations, or cutting back on rations -- not out of thanksgiving for
the return of one poor white girl. Catherine's story would only confirm white
opinion. Buffalo Calf had realized that much, without being particularly
sensitive to the Wasichu way of thinking.

But my brand of humbug was what this old chief wanted to hear. Stone Calf stood
up and announced, "I will go to Long Back. Those who want peace can come to the
agency with me. Those who want war can stay on the Staked Plains."

Someone had to say "no" to the fighting -- the war stops here, come what may. If
my lies gave Stone Calf the ammunition needed to end the shooting, so be it. I
would take whatever punishment providence dished out.

I do not know what Stone Calf told Long Back and the others but he returned with
Catherine and her sister Sophie, who had been with Gray Beard's band. He put
them up in a lodge next to his. In that lodge I learned enough of Catherine's
story to know I did not want to hear all of it. Her sister Sophie was a few
years younger, and treated rather better, but what she had been through was
suitably horrible. Stone Calf led the trek toward the Agency, heading into the
sunrise. Almost everyone followed. Even Buffalo Calf's tipi came down; Medicine
Water was coming in. All the talk of fighting when the grass came up was just
talk. Even the worst Wasichu haters were sick of bark broth and pony steaks.

At the edge of the Staked Plains we met some Blue Clouds coming the other way,
climbing past the cap rock. The Blue Clouds had stayed resolutely out of the war
with the buffalo hunters. "Everyone loves the Blue Clouds," was their boast.
Lakotas called them "Wanders-Under-the-Cloudless-Blue-Sky." Somewhere or other
they had picked up the name Arapaho. Squawmen liked them because their women
never seemed to say "no" -- a tribe so goodhearted, one sign for them is to
touch the left breast. But these Blue Clouds claimed Long Knives had come to
Darlington carrying a paper with names on it. Everyone whose name was written on
it was taken away. Hearing there were Blue Clouds on the list, they lit out for
the Staked Plains-- without even finding out if the braves on the list would be
hung, or merely locked in stone lodges. For people used to wandering under the
blue sky, being buried alive or buried dead was a thin difference.

Naturally the Sheyenna wanted to know if there were any Sheyenna names on the
paper. The Blue Clouds signed, "The Long Knives would not let us look at the
paper, nor can we read their words." They neatly mimicked the act of writing to
make the meaning clear. "But they spoke of one Sheyenna, a chief they especially
wanted." They made the sign for rock hard, then for buffalo and birth --
together they meant "Stone Calf."

We were aghast. The Blue Clouds hesitated, then signed, "They claim he copulated
with two female captives." Blue Clouds copulate pretty freely, and they seemed
puzzled that the Wasichu would take this seriously. Several Sheyenna braves
looked uneasy. I wondered if they had satisfied their curiosity on Catherine,
and now regretted being inquisitive.

Stone Calf was unshaken. He was taking Catherine and Sophie to the agency -- a
chief must be ready to sacrifice everything for the good of the camp. I myself
was sick, seeing how seriously I had misled the friendly old peace chief.

Later, in our tipi, I explained the gruesome sense of it to Yellow Legs. "Stone
Calf sent runners in saying he took the girls into his lodge. We Wasichu think
that no chief would keep a young white woman except to copulate with her." By
offering protection, Stone Calf had singled himself out for punishment. I
promised to speak for Stone Calf. And Catherine would tell how he saved her. I
pictured Catherine telling her story to some officer's wife -- a tea party I did
not look forward to.

Yellow Legs stared straight ahead, hardly showing he heard me. "It is good you
will talk for Stone Calf, since I will not be there."

"Why not?"

"I am staying here on the Staked Plains."

In times past I would have torn into him, reminding him of his promises. Now I
could summon neither the energy nor the conviction. My pleasant little dream of
a horse ranch in Indian Territory was swept away with the buffalo. Everyone who
had been to Darlington agreed the agency offered only idleness and short
rations. I merely pointed out that Raven and Nothing were too weak to winter on
the Staked Plains.

"That is why you must take them into Indian Territory."

It shows how bad things were that I did not shriek at the notion of going off
with Nothing and my big difficult sister-wife. I merely went, "Whoa?" in
surprised Wasichu.

"I was a warrior." Yellow Legs spoke gravely, as if this were somehow news to
me. "I have not touched the pen since Medicine Lodge. My name may be on the
paper that the Long Knives are carrying around." Not an impossible thought. He
was a well known warrior off his proper reservation -- and the army was clearly
using this buffalo war to round out old scores. "But my family must go safely
into Indian Territory. If you ride in the lead the Long Knives would let you
through."

I had never thought of Raven, Nothing, and me as a family, but I suppose the
idea came naturally to him. It was neatly laid out. I could go straight to the
Quakers, taking Raven and Nothing with me. They were Northern Sheyenna -- no
relation to Stone Calf's renegades. With a white woman to speak for them they
should be utterly safe. No matter how I turned it about, Raven, Nothing, and I
needed to go. He needed to stay.

We had figured in everything except my sister-wife. The woman whose health we
were so concerned about listened dutifully to her husband--then rfused. Raven
was not leaving him. Not this side of the Spirit World. She thanked us for
thinking of her, but she was not about to waltz off to Indian Territory with me
for company. Starved, sick and exhausted, facing the death of her child, the
woman was twelve times more stubborn than I could ever aspire to be.

So what could I do but stay? I had no desire to go on alone into Indian
Territory, to take part in what was sure to be the final calamity of the
Southern Sheyenna. I did not need a Medicine dream to picture the downward
spiral they faced: disarmed, dismounted, subjected to disease and starvation on
a steadily shrinking reservation. No ma'am, life is precious, but not to be
bought at that price. We ended up sitting in front of Raven's tipi wrapped in
whatever would keep us warm, barely speaking, watching Stone Calf's people march
off in a straggling line over the snow. With hardly any horses and pitifully few
possessions, the Southern Sheyenna were disintegrating even as they crawled in
to surrender.

Catherine and Sophie walked with Stone Calf's women, behind the peace chief. It
is impossible to imagine two more different people than Catherine and Stone
Calf; one was a man, a hunter, a warrior and statesman, old and respected, who
had spoken out for peace at Harvard College and at the Sundance councils. The
other was an orphaned girl in her teens, despised, abused, and generally
considered crazy. Yet each held the other's fate. Stone Calf had made himself
Catherine's protector, and Catherine had become his alibi. If there was no new
war when the grass came up, white families from Kansas to Mexico had Stone Calf
to thank. But all the Wasichu would care about was Catherine's story -- she
alone could save Stone Calf from prison or hanging. Somehow I trusted them both.

The last of Stone Calf's People disappeared into the damp morning, descending
past the cap rock toward the plain below. The war to save the buffalo was over.

The Southern Herd

We were left behind in Stone Calf's last miserable little campsite on the lip of
the Staked Plains, surrounded by blackened fire pits and the frosty stone rings
where tipis had stood. Returning to Lakota Country would mean heading north into
the teeth of one of the worst winters in memory -- something too ghastly to
contemplate, with Nebraska starving, and southern Kansas a graveyard littered
with the bones of the buffalo. Instead we headed west, into the direction of
death and sunset, searching for Smells Sweet's Snakes.

And found nothing. No sign of game. No sign of Snakes. Nothing but empty rutted
trails radiated out from the buffalo wallows. Veering south-east, we searched
the heads of the canyons that split the plateau.

I fell ill again. Not with fever or diarrhea, but with the sick lassitude that
signals starvation. My stomach shrank. I made soup for Raven and Nothing by
boiling grass roots, rawhide, and crushed bone. They ate it, but the soggy mess
did not tempt me. As I weakened, more work fell on Yellow Legs. Despite having
two wives, he was the one who took down the lodge and made up the travois each
morning. With one person doing most of the work -- and a man at that-- our
little camp lurched across the bleak expanse, making less progress each day. But
then we did not seem to be going anywhere special.

One dark silvery dawn the sun cut a new notch on the black horizon, but Yellow
Legs did not leave the tipi, no longer having the strength to strike camp. Here
it ends, I thought. We had six horses left, and we had to choose one to kill and
eat. That would leave five starving ponies to carry the lodge, packs, and four
people. You can get only so far feeding on yourselves.

Breaking the ice scum on a small arroyo, I drew breakfast water. Grass stalks
were slippery with frost, and a dark mist hung on the northern horizon. More
snow was coming. I could smell the damp smoky odor of a blue norther on the way.
Beneath it was another smell, earthy and familiar, but harder to place. Back by
the tipi I started a fire, searching through my Medicine bundle, looking for
something that might give strength and flavor to the stew. All I found were the
four cactus buttons Healer had given me.

Turning Healer's gift over in my hands, I thought how her most dire predictions
had all come true. Now was the time to find out if she had given me a Helper, or
merely hexed me. Scraping the fuzz off one with my thumbnail, I tested it in my
mouth. The bud was bitter, with a sharp green undertaste. Chewing it puckered my
mouth. Swallowing was like trying to put away the whole cactus, thorns and all.
I washed it down with dirty ice-water.

Nothing happened. The bitter little button neither filled me up, nor tempted me
to take another. So much for Healer's helper.

The wind picked up. Dead grass bowed back and forth, rippling like a cyclone was
coming. Flecks of whistling sleet sizzled in the fire. Taking the horses around
to the lee side of the tipi, I heard Nothing crying inside. My big, stolen
American horse looked as poor and bony as any Snake pony. The others were in
worse shape. I ducked into the lodge to see to the baby. Raven was asleep, and
Yellow Legs was having a hapless time trying to calm his daughter. Smiling, I
took the baby from him, holding her inside my blanket, against my milkless
breast. Though Yellow Legs was a doting father, his daughter already treated me
as her second mother.

As soon as I stepped back outside she quieted. Babies often react that way to
light and air. By now snow was pouring out of the sky, smothering my fire. Time
to go back into the tipi. But the bright snowfall had lulled the baby. By now I
was resigned to never having the child I wanted, so I sat by the tipi hugging
weak little Nothings-- my poor replacement. This was what my Medicine dream had
meant. I was headed for the Hereafter. Ahead of Crazy Horse, Bloody Knife, Myles
Keogh and the Custer brothers. Having no choice, I had to accept that. Starving
and freezing were no worse than sleep.

But at least I was dying clean. By lying to Stone Calf I had saved Catherine,
Sophie, and heaven knows how many Sheyenna children who would not have survived
the Staked Plains. There was a certain rough justice in my being left behind, to
false the fate my lies had saved them from. My Medicine felt lighter. I had a
reason for coming all this way-- and I was ready to face the consequences.
Searching my stock of Medicine songs, I found only one that fit such a desperate
situation, and sang it softly to the storm:

 *
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I'm found,
Was blind, but now I see.

As the words welled inside me, I felt a prickly anticipation, as though the
cactus bud were spreading through my veins. The storm broke into a million
colors. Rainbow flames raced along the white ground, then shot up to meet the
snow, like a Fourth of July on the plains. Amazed and delighted, I sang louder,
my voice carried upward by the colors:

 *
T'was Grace that taught my heart to feel
And Grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear,
The hour I first believed.

The storm seemed to slacken. The rainbow flames sank down, smoldering at my
feet. I heard a stirring inside the tipi, as though Someone were fumbling with
the entrance flap. Dark patches of smoke condensed in the whiteness, growing
bigger, smudging the shimmering curtain of snow. Holding tight to Nothing, I
sang to the dark patches in the storm:

 *
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
We have already passed.
T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far
And Grace that keeps us all.

The nearest shadow thickened into the image of a great buffalo bull forging
through the wall of snow, striding toward me in absolute silence. I did not
think to flinch, knowing this midwinter mirage would dissolve in a moment, like
Coyote and the Camp of the Dead. Instead I marveled at the minute detail in my
Medicine vision. The black tips on his curving horns. The frost clung to his
broad curly shoulders.

Then I felt his steaming breath puffing from flaring nostrils. My imaginary bull
was about to trample me. I scrambled to get out of his way. He brushed past,
real and solid, giving me a wary look from under long brown lashes. He was
immediately replaced by a second bull, equally big, equally real. Another bull
followed, then another. Shadow after shadow loomed larger, each one becoming a
buffalo. Falling snow turned to steaming mist, melted by the heat of shaggy
bodies.

Lurching to my feet, I saw brown backs stretching off on all sides, their living
mass blocking out the storm. I pulled back my blanket so Nothing could see. The
child was awake and squirming in my grip, dark eyes scanning the huge beasts,
brown fingers holding tight to my dress. Yellow Legs stood up in the lodge
entrance, hands quivering at his side, croaking in ecstatic Sheyenna, "It is the
Southern Herd."

They plodded purposefully along, in no particular hurry, parting as they passed
our lodge, each buffalo giving us a brief glance, before being replaced by
another. Yellow Legs stepped out to join me. Raven sat up, propped in the
entrance. Now we were among the cows and calves, strong young animals like we
had hardly seen all summer. After so much hardship and horror, the great herd
was here at last; the life blood of the southern plains flowed past us, warm,
earthy and intoxicating. I could feel the deep rumble as millions of hooves
mashed through the snow, shaking the Staked Plains clear down to the cap rock.

Morning melted into afternoon, and still they kept coming; uncurious, unafraid,
unending. We sat huddled against the lodge alongside our horses, humbled by the
sheer mass of the herd, lulled by the steady beat of its hooves. I napped, and
awoke to the same scene; the buffalo passing, Yellow Legs sitting and smoking,
Raven nursing Nothing; our hunger, our worries, our weakness, overwhelmed by
this outpouring of life. I could barely remember how bleak and barren the Staked
Plains had been.

Not until it was nearly dark, and the herd began to thin, did Yellow Legs dare
bring down a cow with his bow. As her kin continued to pass, he said a short
prayer for the spirit of this cow, and of every buffalo, then ripped open the
belly with a two-handed pull of his knife. While I made a fire, Raven laid
Nothing beside the steaming body cavity. The little girl giggled and moved
about, licking blood from her fingers. I spread out a deer hide and Yellow Legs
heaped meat on it: fatty back ribs, thick steaks, and the intestines, liver and
kidneys. We roasted the meat on sticks, stuffing it half-cooked into our mouths,
cracking the bones to get at the marrow. Wolves and coyotes padded past, a
couple stopping to sit at the edge of our firelight, looking for an easy meal.
Later, lying in the tipi next to Yellow Legs, I heard them snarling over scraps
and bones.

Morning dawned bright and empty. Seeing the Staked Plains stretching from
horizon to horizon, I might have thought the day before was a dream, but the
snow around us was churned into frozen slush, dirty with buffalo dung. Yellow
Legs collected the fat from our kill, boiling it in Raven's pot along with herbs
and melted snow to make a Medicine soup. Which sounds revolting, but we soaked
it up, swallowing it in great gulps. I felt a thousand times better. Lassitude
and starvation fell away.

Yellow Legs and I broke camp, eager to be off. There was no question about
direction. The Southern Herd was heading down off the Staked Plains toward
Indian Territory. Descending past the line of the cap rock, we saw knots of
buffalo grazing in the canyons. Two days before we would have greeted them with
with shouts of thanksgiving, unable to believe our luck. Today we just noted how
beautiful their bodies were, how sleek and majestic, then went on. Nothing would
satisfy us except to see the whole of the herd. Our tired horses could not catch
up until late afternoon. Coming out of the canyons I saw the herd again, this
time from a distance under clear skies, a broad brown river flowing east toward
the Big Muddy. The buffalo seemed to be headed for the agencies. I could not
imagine a greater irony than a million buffalo arriving in mass, just as the
southern tribes were being penned up to starve on stringy government beef.

In a couple of sleeps we were looking as fit and sleek as the buffalo. Raven
gloried in her returning strength. Late in the evenings, rolled in my buffalo
robe, I could hear the soft thunk, thunk of a scraper at work outside the lodge.
Winter robes are the warmest, and it is easiest to scrape off excess flesh when
the hide is stiff and frozen.

Crossing the Red River, we bid a grateful goodbye to the great state of Texas,
entering Indian Territory. Lines on the map did not matter to the buffalo. The
herd flowed straight for where the Wichita Mountains stood up on the horizon,
deep within the reservation shared by the Kiowas, Kiowa-Apaches, and
Honey-Eating Snakes. Rising straight out of the plain, the Wichitas form a
granite gateway-- beyond them lay the Chisholm Trail, and Fort Sill. I
remembered a Kiowa tale about how the buffalo fought the soldiers, going right
onto the grounds of Fort Sill, trampling the fences and gardens, trying to drive
the Long Knives away. I had thought this was wishful exaggeration, but now I was
not sure. Were the buffalo going to throw their bulk against the fort? No army
regiment carried enough bullets to kill them all.

We camped at the northern edge of the Wichitas, on a night filled with nervous
expectation. About midnight I heard a soft padding outside the tipi. A now
familiar voice called out inside my head, "American Woman, open up and give a
friend some meat."

Lifting the entrance flap, I saw Old Man Coyote sitting on his haunches, looking
smug and hungry. Raven got right up and began to cut bite-sized bits of jerky,
while our husband produced his Medicine pipe -- both acting as if midnight calls
from talking coyotes were the most normal thing imaginable. The greedy beast
snapped up jerky as fast as Raven tossed it to him, basking in the smoke Yellow
Legs blew his way. "Isn't it wonderful," he declared, "having the buffalo back?"

"But what does it mean?" By now I had given up treating Coyote like a dream. If
anything the world seemed too real, too rich, balanced on the brink of some all
consuming event.

Coyote laughed. "To a Wasichu, everything must have a meaning." Raven and Yellow
Legs laughed with him, saying it was certainly so.

"But what is going to happen?" I demanded.

Coyote looked at me slyly. "It is your Medicine that has brought us here -- you
o[ all people should know."

Yellow Legs and Raven thought so too, asking, "What will the Wasichu do? Will
the Long Knives fight the buffalo? Will they let the Kiowa and Sheyenna hunt?" I
was their resident sage on customs and folkways of the wild Wasichu, but I had
no ready answer. The herd was certain to attract Kiowas, Snakes, and eventually
soldiers. But even hard-bitten cavalry troopers had to be awed by this. The
buffalo promised to bring peace and plenty to the starving agencies.

Suddenly Yellow Legs gestured for silence. "The herd is moving." We scrambled
up, stepping out of the tipi. Under frosty stars I could feel the beat of
hooves, moving off, fading away. It was unusual for a herd to move at night,
unless they were spooked or stampeded.

Despite our weariness, we broke camp at once. Wanting to stay as close as
possible to this moving miracle, we walked our horses through the darkness,
following the broad trail left by the herd. Normally, night tracking is
incredibly frustrating, but tonight it was ludicrously easy. We did not have to
see, or even feel the million hoof prints that broke up the ground -- the rumble
of the herd, the howl of wolves, the odor of buffalo all marked the way. By the
time it was light enough to ride I was supremely exhausted, swaying in the
saddle. Coyote loped along with us, his tongue hanging out.

The Wichitas have little in the way of foothills, rearing directly out of the
flats. Morning light reflected off the peaks like giant granite prisms, turning
the slopes purple, yellow and crimson. A thin patch of breakfast smoke hovered
over a fold in the northern slopes, marking a Snake or Kiowa camp. The buffalo
seemed undeterred by the mountain barrier, though they were prairie beasts and I
had never heard of them climbing much of anything. The herd surged straight into
the mountains.

As the ground rose up, I reined in, seeing a miracle more awesome than anything
in my dreams -- easily the most amazing thing anyone ever saw sober. The largest
and nearest peak in the Wichitas split at the base. The rent opened in dead
silence, widening as it went upward. There was no earthquake, no lava, no
volcanic action; the mountain just peeled back, like a tipi splitting along a
seam. Instead of pumice and magma pouring out, I saw a world open up within the
mountain, a world without snow or winter, a world filled with sunlight, where
plums hung heavy on the trees.

This was the Spirit World. No question about it. Not a little glimpse like in a
fever dream, but the broad land itself, laid out before me. The bards'
undiscovered country that we are all headed for. Sitting there on my big
American Horse, I watched the herd thunder into the gap in the mountain's
flanks. I moved my mouth to speaks, wanting to say something to Yellow Legs, to
get human confirmation. But he and Raven were already headed into the gap, not
questioning what they saw anymore than the buffalo did.

Nothing had prepared me for this. Not my dreams and Medicine visions, nor my
conversations with Coyote. Turning in the saddle, I looked back at the real
world behind me. It was bleak and stark, locked in winter. Nearby was the
morning smoke of a camp that might or might not be friendly. I could go back,
alone, into a hungry world torn by war and hatred. Or I could go on into a world
that vibrated with towering clouds, green leaves and ripe plums. Coyote trotted
past, turning his head to ask, "Are you coming, American Woman?"

The plums decided it. My mouth ached to taste fresh fruit, to ease the bleeding
sores beneath my tongue. Kicking my big American horse, I followed Old Man
Coyote and the Southern Herd out of the cold gray morning, into a world where
the summer sun stood directly overhead.