XIII
Little Elk found herself back at her tent, rubbing her once-injured hand. The stumps of her severed fingers were sometimes overly sensitive, other times numb. They had only recently healed over, but they still ached, the little one severed for the death of her husband Running Wolf, the third finger for the deaths of Dances-Like-Grass and Chasing-Two-Horses. The one the Ghost Dancers called “Father” had preached that they abandon the old ways of mourning, that there should be no more cutting or self-mutilation, but she did not follow the Ghost Dancers, however much her husband had wished it.
Guilt washed through her at having been so brazen with the white doctor. Red Horse’s reaction had been understandable; it mirrored her own. She had not intended to touch him and now wondered why she had. She and the doctor had spoken often since she had come to the White River Agency in January, most often with her serving as interpreter when the doctor was interviewing the sick and infirm.
Could she ever call a white man “friend” after—?
No, she must not cling to hatred, lest it blacken her spirit, close her path to the spirit world.
As she walked through camp, the women greeted her with as much respect as could be expected through the pall of despair. So many of them had lost their husbands, their fathers, their children. So many men were dead of all the tribes. Even though Little Elk still felt like an outsider, she shared the bond of tragedy with all these women. Many of them had lived here on the White River Agency for years, but Little Elk had been with Running Wolf in a camp on Pine Ridge, until the Ghost Dancers came and Running Wolf fled with her and the children into the Badlands when the troubles started.
In her canvas tent, she carefully closed the flap behind her and pulled out the leather satchel that held all she owned. Her herbs and ingredients were long gone, left behind in her panicked flight from the carnage, blown apart by artillery, or lost in the blizzard that followed. Not that she had had much left. Her stores had been long since depleted by the sheer number of sick and injured from the winter, from starvation, from years of heartsickness at their unending plight.
As well-meaning as the white doctor was, his medicine would not save Born-with-a-Smile. Her spirit was sick, beset by despair on the inside and starvation on the outside; she needed the medicine of her people.
Little Elk gathered up her last few bundles of dry sage. There was no way for her to replenish them, cut off from trade with other tribes, trapped here so close to the white men, who raped the natural world wherever they went.
All Little Elk could do was go to Born-with-a-Smile and sing for her, entreat the spirits to give her strength, but the Old Ways had been outlawed. The sage might serve to give Born-with-a-Smile some ease by keeping evil spirits at bay for a time. But Little Elk had to be careful; the white soldiers were so anxious, many of them hateful and afraid, that they might simply shoot her for ignoring their regulations.
Nevertheless, she had to try.
She took up a bundle of sage and went to the tent of Red Horse and Born-with-a-Smile.
Red Horse sat out front of the tent, cross-legged, eyes closed. She stopped before him, sat, and waited until his eyes opened.
She said, “Has there been any word about the children?”
“No,” he said.
Two children had been missing this morning, and much of the camp had been enlisted to search for them, but the Army’s regulations would not permit them to look far. No one had broached the news of the disappearances to the army. It was hoped that the children would be found without having to ask for help.
His voice was low. “You like that white doctor, do you?” He used the English word “doctor.”
“No,” she said, “I do not. I was merely overcome by fear for your wife’s life.”
“She sleeps now. Her pain is lessened. Her spirit grows weak.”
“Soon she will meet her ancestors unless you let me help her.”
“The Old Ways are forbidden. If the Bluecoats come here and see, they will take both of us away, and she will die.”
“Since when do you fear the soldiers?”
He stiffened, and glared at her. “I fear nothing! But if they take me away, she will die alone.”
“She has friends and relatives here. None of us are ever alone.” A pang shot through her. Except for those who died this winter alone in the snow fleeing the white man’s bullets. She swallowed the burr of anger. “Let me help her.”
He shrugged. “You can do nothing for her that the Father cannot do. I have been praying to him.”
She nodded, having expected Red Horse’s response. “But there is no one left Ghost Dancing now. Sitting Bull is dead. Spotted Elk is dead.” She chose her words carefully. “After all the troubles, no one dares now. These soldiers will kill anyone wearing a ghost shirt.”
He stiffened again. She could see that her words lodged deep in him. His lip curled down. “You never believed.”
“No, I did not. Running Wolf believed in the Ghost Dance. I went with Spotted Elk because Running Wolf followed him. He is dead now and the Messiah has not come.”
“Running Wolf and I were brothers. We shared our thoughts. When we were young we shared our horses and our victories. And when the stories of the Son of the Great Spirit came, we shared those, too.”
“You are his elder brother. Of course he followed you.” Blame crept into her voice, which she had not intended. Nevertheless, it was there. Running Wolf had listened to the stories of Red Horse and the others who had met the Messiah’s emissaries, and he had believed.
Red Horse’s voice grew thick. “I should have shared his death, too. At least it would have been a warrior’s death.” His chin fell, and a long shuddering sigh crawled out of him. Then he straightened. “But we will see him soon, all of them, all of us, together again forever.”
“Red Horse, we have known each other since I wedded Running Wolf. We have always gotten on as brother and sister should. I have been a Dreamer my whole life. Often those Dreams come true.” But not always. All of her dreams lately tortured her from the moment she fell asleep, dreams of terror and meat and strife, but all so vague and disjointed that she could glean no meaning from them.
“I held the buffalo meat in my hand!” he said, eyes growing wide, “It was real! When the Father’s disciples came from the west, we heard his message, and it was true. They taught us the Ghost Dance, and for five days we danced, and I saw wondrous things. I saw my parents living in a great buffalo-hide lodge with thousands of our relatives in a land rich with game. I saw … I saw Quick Strike waving to me, smiling, telling me that we would meet soon in a new world when the grass was thigh-high, and then I heard the Father’s voice and—”
“But this ‘messiah’ is not Lakota! He is a Paiute from the beyond the mountains and desert!” Her nephew Quick Strike had been a brave, quick-witted boy of ten winters until sickness took him two winters ago.
Red Horse continued, “His message is for all the people. He came down from the sky in a great cloud and told us that he was the Son of the God, and that if all people dance the Ghost Dance, the ground will tremble, and the sky will go dark, and all the white men will be swept away in a great storm, and all the ghosts will come back, and all Lakota people will live again, healthy and young, and the world will be remade as it once was, with great herds of buffalo and plentiful game.
“During the dance, many dancers collapsed and went to the Happy Hunting Grounds, and when it was over they came back to life. When I came back, I found a piece of buffalo meat in my hand that Quick Strike had given me.”
She listened politely, even though she had heard the story many times, or stories like it, from her husband and others.
Red Horse leaned forward. “There are no buffalo anymore, and I know buffalo meat! Quick Strike gave it to me!” His lips worked as if the very thought had brought a burst of water into his mouth. “The Father’s words are for all people except the white men. If we dance the Ghost Dance, all will be made new. Everyone listens to the Father: the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Kiowa, the Apache.”
“But many times, you and all the others danced the Ghost Dance, and there was nothing. For a year, you all danced, and the time of the prophecies came and went, but nothing happened. It is spring now, and the ground does not tremble.”
He sniffed. “The grass is not yet high enough. The Father’s prophecy will yet come true. There is a storm in the west. The Father comes soon.”
Anger rose higher in her with each heartbeat of silence between them. Prophecies were mere words, and words were wind.
Finally, she took a deep breath and opened her memory. “When the soldiers caught us, they made us camp by the creek.” Her voice trembled at the memory of how terrified the children had been, with a force of soldiers on horseback and artillery not far off. “That night, while the rest of us waited, the warriors met with Spotted Elk and Yellow Bird, but Running Wolf would not tell me what they spoke of. When the soldiers came that morning to take our weapons away, Spotted Elk, Running Wolf, and all the warriors wore their ghost shirts like your Messiah told them to do! Did Wovoka not say that if they wore their ghost shirts, the white man’s bullets would not be able to harm them? All of them sat on the ground before Spotted Elk’s lodge as if expecting something momentous to happen.” Perhaps they believed that the Messiah would aid them in wiping out the soldiers. Perhaps the Messiah would strike down the soldiers’ artillery with lightning from the sky.
Red Horse’s lips drew tight.
Her voice turned hard and sharp. “But only one thing happened. The warriors in their ghost shirts were all shot dead at the very first! The women in their ghost shirts were shot in the back as they fled across the snow carrying their babies! Children were … shot to pieces—”
His chin thrust out like a boulder in a river. “When the Father comes down from the sky, everyone will see. You will have your children again, and I will have mine. Running Wolf will come back, and the white man will be gone, and everyone will be young forever and fat with buffalo meat.”
She could rail at him for a fool, but Red Horse was as stubborn as Running Wolf had been. She wanted to jump up and tell him that if he was so certain Born-with-a-Smile would return in the spring after her death, she would thank him to kill her now and save her misery.
Not even Born-with-a-Smile had believed the stories of the Ghost Dancers. When the Old Ways had been outlawed, she had become friends with Christian missionaries, who soon converted her to their ways. If Born-with-a-Smile could muster any strength to speak now, would even she think him a fool?
Little Elk said, “So you will not let me treat her with the Old Ways?”
“She is in the hands of the Father.”
The sound of heavy shoes on the earth grabbed her attention. Two soldiers stalked toward her with purpose in their eyes.
She looked at Red Horse one more time and sighed. He cast a contemptuous glance at the oncoming Bluecoats before lowering his eyes. “Ask me again tomorrow,” he said.