Ghost Dance (2 page)

Old Bear looked into the eyes of the man. They were as sharp and black as the hawk's, as keen as the eagle's. My eyes were once so, said Old Bear to himself. And the man's head was held high, like one who rides over land that he owns, and his back was straight and proud. Yes, said Old Bear to himself, so young men used to ride, so did I too ride.

"I am Old Bear," said Old Bear, "of the Hunkpapa."

The younger man looked at him, and his eyes blazed between the bars of yellow paint on his face, blazed as though with victory. "It is good," he said in his strong, young voice. "Good!" He looked proudly on the old Hunkpapa. "It is a strong sign," he said, "for I am Kicking Bear–Kicking Bear of the Minneconjou from the Cheyenne River."

"I am looking for the white buffalo," said Old Bear, feeling that somehow he could tell this to the young man, and that he would understand.

Kicking Bear looked for a long time at the old man on the painted pony who sat across from him. Kicking Bear did not smile or laugh. Then he said, "The buffalo are coming back."

Old Bear said nothing, but sat unmoving on his pony's back, his heart pounding.

"The buffalo are dead," said Old Bear. He whispered this.

"The buffalo are coming back," said Kicking Bear, suddenly laughing and raising his shield and lance with a joyous upward movement of his arms. He repeated, even shouted happily, "The buffalo–are coming back!"

"They are dead," said Old Bear, his hands clutched suddenly in the mane of his pony.

Kicking Bear reached forth gently and touched the old man's arm, then grasped it. Old Bear could feel the strong grip on his frail arm, feel the tightness and the stirring tremble of those locked brown fingers on his old arm. "The buffalo are coming back," said Kicking Bear.

Then Kicking Bear released the old man's arm and laughed again, as a young warrior used to laugh, as if going to claim his bride or in showing scalps to his father, and saying nothing more, Kicking Bear turned the nose rope of his pony and rode away from Old Bear, beginning to sing a medicine song.

For a long time after Kicking Bear rode away, Old Bear sat still on his pony. He still felt the fingers of the young man tight on his arm, and still heard his words. Were the buffalo coming back? What did the young man mean? One should not lie–and most of all not lie about such things, not about the dead, or the buffalo.

Not far from the hoofs of his pony, lying in the sage by the river, Old Bear saw the white shards of a buffalo skull, broken, lying near a patch of cactus.

The buffalo were dead.

But the young man had said they were coming back.

And one should not lie of such matters.

On the back of his pony Old Bear, in spite of the fiery sun overhead, shivered, trembled, and the pony, startled, shifted his footing.

Old Bear's eyes stung with tears.

Had it been a vision?

Could it be that even now Old Bear had died, and was riding with ghosts in the spirit land?

But he looked about himself, at the slow, muddy river, at the brush and sage, the sand, the cottonwoods along the banks. At the cactus, and the shattered fragments of the skull of a buffalo that lay near it.

No, said Old Bear, I am not in the spirit land.

But perhaps the young man had come from the spirit land, in spite of the rifle, come to tell him about the buffalo? Old Bear looked after the distant figure, who had ridden away singing medicine as it had not been sung for twenty years.

And the young man was riding toward the camp of Sitting Bull. This was also the camp of Old Bear.

Old Bear turned his pony to ride after the young man, to question him, to find out what he had meant. This was, after all, Sunday, and was a medicine day, and who knew what could happen on such a day, or who the strange warrior might be, or from where he might have come.

And this morning when he had touched his shield, Old Bear had known that today was not as other days, that this day was different.

With a sudden cry Old Bear kicked his pony into a sudden gallop, racing after the figure in the distance.

Forgetting the white buffalo.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

With one long, yellow, thick nail, Lester Grawson picked his teeth, leaning back against the cane seat of the luxury passenger car, watching the thousands of gaslights in the great city of New York loom like candles in the black night, over the shining rails as the train entered the yards.

"No," he growled, moving his sleeve so that it would not be touched by the black porter with his handbroom.

The porter turned to the occupants of the seat across the aisle. "Station in five minutes," he said. "Station in five minutes."

Suh, thought Grawson to himself.

Grawson folded the greasy napkin on his lap around the chicken bones and wedged it between the cane seat and the side of the car. He spit on his fingers and pulled on the red mustache that hung over his lips, wiping the grease from the hair. He dried his fingers on his trousers and peered out at the gaslights.

Good, thought Grawson, good, I'm here, and Edward Chance is here.

The train's whistle came through the thin glass of the single window.

Sparks glowed along the roadbed scattered from the funnel-shaped smokestack on the engine.

He heard the grinding of brakes and the train began to slacken its speed, groaning and clanking the heavy couplings of the cars. Looking out the window Grawson saw briefly the white faces of two gandy dancers, watching the train come in.

Irish, thought Grawson.

Grawson was a large man, short of neck, thick of shoulder, with a square, flattish face. Large hands, red knuckles. His teeth were yellowed by tobacco. His left eye moved peculiarly at times, flinching. But it was a strong face, between a pig and a bear, a face with heavy teeth, a wide nose, eyes as flat and expressionless, as heavy and blunt, as the blade of a shovel.

Grawson looked at himself in the reflection in the window, from the small kerosene lamp above his head. He twisted the screw, extinguishing the lamp. He did not want to look at himself. He had few mannerisms, few things, unimportant things, he worried about, but one was looking into a mirror. Grawson chuckled to himself. It was foolish, he chuckled. He knew it. But he did not care to look into mirrors. He was not sure what might, someday, look back at him. Maybe it would not be him. Maybe it would be something else. His left eye flinched twice, and he squinted out at the lights.

The train was passing now between freight tracks, passing coal sheds, passing piles of ties, passing other cars, drawing into the station.

It was a hot night.

Grawson wiped a roll of sweat and dirt from the inside of his high, stiff collar. He twiddled it for a moment between his thumb and forefinger and then mashed it with his thumb into a crack in the cane seat.

It was a damn hot night.

Grawson stood up and pulled his wicker suitcase from the rack, and his coat and newspaper. He put the suitcase between his feet and the coat and newspaper on his lap.

He closed his eyes and listened to the rolling of the wheels on the steel track. Five minutes, he thought.

Yes, she had been pretty, thought Grawson.

Clare Henderson had been a damn fine figure of a woman, the bitch.

God how I loved her, said Grawson to himself.

Grawson opened his eyes and saw the couple in the seat across the way staring at him. When he scowled at them they turned away. His left eye blinked, and then he closed his eyes again.

Now the wind came across Barlow's meadow some eight miles north of Charleston, a chilly wind in that gray time of day. It had rained the night before, that five years ago.

He could make them out now, Edward Chance and someone, alighting from the carriage, making their way through the high wet grass toward him and his brother, Frank.

"He won't fire, Frank," Grawson had said.

"I know," said Frank.

In the cane seat Grawson shook as though twisted with pain and groaned.

He opened his eyes and saw that the couple across the aisle had gathered their baggage and pressed to the head of the car, joining with others. Grawson looked out. The train was in the station now, the platform crowded. Redcaps scurried here and there. Relatives, spouses stood on the cement lanes under the lights, here and there one waving and running beside the train.

Grawson closed his eyes again. There was time. There was plenty of time. He had his whole life and how long did it take to pull a trigger?

Not long, Grawson remembered.

He had watched the two men, gallant Frank and the moody Edward Chance, back to back, with their white shirts, open at the throat, the red sashes, the long-barreled single-shot weapons held before them.

Damn Clare Henderson, cursed Grawson, not opening his eyes, pressing his forehead against the cold of the window.

Chance was to die. That had been understood. What had Clare told Frank, who wanted her and her house, and her people, so bad he would kill for them? What had Chance done to her? Grawson rubbed his nose with one pawlike hand. Not a goddam thing, I'd guess, he said, but crazy Frank, he'd do anything for her. And I would too, said Grawson to himself. I would, too. Amusing, swift, graceful Frank–a rider, a sportsman, a marksman–my brother, my brother.

"He won't fire," Grawson had told Frank.

And Frank had agreed.

It was the thing to do, not to fire. That was Edward Chance's job. He could not kill the man Clare Henderson wanted. In honor he could not refuse to meet him. Had he not been engaged to Clare himself?

Chance had wanted medicine, a profession. It would mean waiting years. He had no feeling for the cotton, for the land, for the tradition.

Chance was no better than a Yankee.

So he wouldn't marry her. So he couldn't. So he had to wait. But she would not. And how would she understand him?

I wonder, mused Grawson, what she told Frank.

He could imagine her twisting that scented, lavender handkerchief, the white face, the long black hair–the wringing hands, the tears. No one would protect her. No one would stand up for her. Her fathers and brothers were dead, honorably. If they had been there Chance would have been horsewhipped.

And so Frank Grawson had begun to take target practice, walking a dozen paces, turning, waiting for the handkerchief to drop, lifting his weapon, firing a single shot at a playing card tacked to a tree now some twenty-four paces away.

Why not me? Grawson asked himself. Why not me? And Grawson's lips twisted. Him, with his face like a grizzly, his teeth, those hands like clubs!

"He won't fire," Grawson had told Frank.

"I know," Frank had said, and smiled.

Grawson had gone to Clare, had begged her. "My choice is Frank," she said.

"He won't fire!" said Grawson, sitting up on the cane seat.

"We're in the station, Sir," said the porter. The man made no move with his whisk broom.

Grawson looked out.

He reached into his pocket and took out a liberty quarter and turned it over. He looked at the eagle on the reverse, with arrows in his talons.

"Like an avenging eagle," said Grawson looking at the man, "I come like an avenging eagle with arrows in my claws."

"Sir?" asked the man.

"Here," said Grawson, holding out the quarter and dropping it into the black palm.

The man lifted the whisk broom.

"No," said Grawson. "Don't touch me." And he left the car.

He heard the quarter drop to the floor behind him, but he did not turn.

"Like an avenging eagle," muttered Grawson, bundling up the platform, carrying his coat, the newspaper under one arm, his wicker suitcase in his left hand. "With arrows," he added. "With arrows."

 

* * *

 

Edward Chance had black hair, gray eyes, a thin face, not handsome, an unhappy face. There was little noticeable, little remarkable about Edward Chance, saving perhaps that he had once shot and killed a man. Chance had a good memory, and the patience to think things out, and ambition, and something to make up for. And his craft, medicine, was more than a business with him, more than a professional skill. It was a way of healing for his own heart too, and his heart had need of its healing, for the single bullet that had torn through the heart of Frank Grawson with such swift, irreversible finality had left its second wound in the heart of Cain.

Somehow Chance had expected Lester Grawson to appear, and now, five years later, five years, long years, after Frank Grawson had fallen to his knees, his face looking more surprised than anything, the pistol dropping off his limp fingers, the splash of red on his silken shirt, his brother, the gigantic, improbable Lester Grawson, as implacable as the winter or hungry dogs, had found him.

Chance studied the man across from him, over the green felt of the pool table, in the gaming salon on the third floor of the Manhattan Athletic Club. Grawson leaned over the table, lining up his shot, and the cue moved as though on wires, cleanly, swiftly, and struck the colored, wooden sphere with a sharp click, driving it into a side pocket.

"How did you find me?" asked Chance.

Grawson was lighting a small cigar. It was his fourth in the game. He chewed them down as much as smoked them, his large jaws absently, complacently grinding and shredding the brown leaves, leaving wet, black scraps of tobacco on his chin and mustache.

Grawson looked at him and grinned.

The man's left eye flinched several times.

Chance had seen this twitching several times before in the evening. He had seen this type of thing before and wondered about it. Chronic, guessed Chance, origin obscure, a nuisance, perhaps not really aware of it. So much we don't know. So much.

Grawson reached into his wallet and pulled out a small, stained, carefully folded piece of yellowed paper. It was a clipping from the New York Times. Chance had seen it before. He had even had one. It was the graduation list of his class, 1889, Harvard Medical School.

"Where did you get it?" asked Chance.