Ghost Dance (25 page)

Needless to say, they also did not find Edward Chance, which proved to be a particular disappointment to two men who rode with them, Lester Grawson and Corporal Jacob Totter.

Above the camp, on Medicine Ridge, watching, not moving, stood the solitary figure of Kicking Bear, medicine man, he who had brought the Ghost Dance to Standing Rock.

The death of Sitting Bull would enkindle the Sioux and the Cheyenne.

The news would spread like the sweep of a wind-driven burning prairie from Standing Rock to Pine Ridge, to Cherry Creek and throughout the departments of the Platte and Dakotas.

The messenger would say, "Sitting Bull is dead." And the warriors would gather their ponies and take up their weapons.

For the first time in years, the feet of the Sioux and their brethren, the Cheyenne, would be on the warpath. This would be the Holy War, the war of the Ghost Dance.

It was wrong, for spring was the time, not winter, with the coming snows and the ice and wind, and the barren prairie and the lack of food.

Kicking Bear stood on Medicine Ridge.

He watched the soldiers and the Indian policemen milling about the cabin of Sitting Bull, hitching up a wagon for a body.

When the soldiers and policemen had ridden away, when the wagon too was gone, Kicking Bear turned his back on the camp of Sitting Bull.

There was nothing more to be done.

Strange was the will of Wakan-Tonka.

It had begun here, the Holy War, here on the muddy banks of the Grand River.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

Lucia Turner was up and about the soddy.

She lifted off one of the range lids and stirred the fire. This morning she was using kindling in the range, rather than cow chips or twisted grass. Perhaps it would put Aunt Zita in a better mood.

Lucia had been awakened that morning early, around dawn, by gunfire in the distance, coming from the direction of Sitting Bull's camp. She had hurriedly dressed and climbed to the top of the hill, on which the school stood, but she had seen nothing. Then, after a time, she had returned to the soddy, puzzled, a bit frightened, hoping there was nothing wrong. She had heard firing before, and usually it had been due, as it happened, to drunken Indians. But usually that sort of firing took place late at night, not at dawn.

The pile of kindling behind the soddy had been diminishing rapidly. All that was left of it now was a coal bucket filled with it, sitting beside the range.

Lucia, too, of course, preferred a meal prepared over a wood fire.

Several weeks ago Lucia had purchased a cord of fuel for one dollar from a man in a wagon who did business with the agency, but he no longer came as far into the reservation as the soddy.

If worse came to worse Lucia might hitch up the buck-board and drive down to the Grand River. There she might find a fallen cottonwood and get some of the dried branches. Perhaps she could hire Joseph Running Horse to cut the wood for her.

He had come by the soddy yesterday to ask for Mr. Chance's medicine kit.

She had given it to him.

"I hope he is all right," she had said, pretending not to be too much interested.

"Yes," had said Running Horse, "I hope so," and then he had taken the kit and left, leaving her.

She would have liked to have kept the kit. He might have come back for it. She might then have seen him again, once more, to see him, to speak to him.

She had only said, "I hope he is all right," and Running Horse had said, "Yes, I hope so," and then Running Horse had gone, taking the kit. It had been too quick, too simple, for the hours of remembering, for the not forgetting.

Yes, Mr. Chance, she said to herself, I might have some coffee on. You've shaved, I see. You know, I never expected to see you again. Naturally I'm pleased that you dropped by. William is fine. What brings you back to the reservation?

I'll never see him again, never, said Lucia Turner to herself, hurting in the saying of it, the empty knowing of it to be true.

Never.

Never.

Never.

"Where is my breakfast?" asked Aunt Zita.

Lucia shook herself and puttered noisily about with the coffee pot, not answering.

Aunt Zita had been in a vicious mood since yesterday evening, when she had returned with the buckboard from the agency to find a dead horse only a few yards from the soddy and the soddy itself flaked with bullets.

Lucia had told her nothing.

Yesterday Lucia had taken the saddle and gear from Chance's dead horse. She had then heaped dust over the animal. Today, hopefully, she would see some Indians and get them to take it away and bury it. If Joseph Running Horse passed by, he would help. Yesterday, when he had called for Chance's medicine kit, she had forgotten to ask him. She also supposed she should give the saddle and the rest of the gear to him. But the entire matter had, yesterday, slipped her mind. If William Buckhorn's father had returned from Fort Yates, he could probably be counted on to help Running Horse. The two of them could rig a travois. There probably wouldn't be too much work, except maybe for the digging.

"You'll have to get that horse out of here," Aunt Zita had said.

"I know," had said Lucia. "I'll get some of the Indians to help."

"They'll probably eat it," Aunt Zita had said.

"No," Lucia had said, rather firmly, "they will not."

Actually, Lucia had thought to herself, if the horse had been fresh killed, they might. She had learned from Aunt Zita how the rations had not been distributed Saturday and she had supposed, rightly, that supplies might well be scarce in the Standing Rock camps. And one could eat horse meat. She had heard that. At any rate Indians could. She herself, of course, could not do so. The thought of it, for no reason that she could clearly understand, turned her stomach.

"Indians will eat anything," had said Aunt Zita.

Lucia grimaced. She had heard, and knew, that Indians would eat dog, too. She supposed they might indeed eat anything, or about anything. Of course they would have preferred buffalo. Or beef. Or mutton. Some of the younger Indians had never tasted buffalo. Lucia had had it only once, on a dining car on the way to Standing Rock. A rancher had shot it and given a shoulder to the conductor, and the conductor had given the steward a cut for the schoolmarm. Its taste was difficult to describe. Not like beef. Not just like beef. She had liked it. Aunt Zita would not touch it.

"Did you hear gunfire this morning?" asked Lucia.

"No," said Aunt Zita.

"I did," said Lucia.

"From Grand River, I imagine," said Aunt Zita.

"Yes," said Lucia, "it was."

"I think I know what it's all about," said Aunt Zita.

"Tell me," said Lucia.

"I want to know what happened here when I was gone," snapped Zita.

Lucia looked down, and continued busying herself with the breakfast. With a fork she turned a piece of bread on the wire toast rack sitting on the black iron top of the range. She used a wooden spatula to loosen Aunt Zita's eggs in the skillet.

"Well?" said Aunt Zita.

"All right," said Lucia, "a man came by when you were gone, and two men were after him, and wanted to kill him, and I helped him get away, with the help of a friend of mine."

Lucia had said all this in one breath and stiffened inside her cotton dress bending over the range, waiting.

"I want to hear a great deal about this," said Aunt Zita, and the words might have been spoken by the head of a stone angel.

Lucia scooped the eggs on a plate with the spatula and quickly picked up the toast with two fingers and darted it onto the plate, not altogether displeased that she had left it too long on the wire rack.

She put the plate on the kitchen table in front of Aunt Zita.

"The toast is burned," said Aunt Zita.

"I'll make you some more," said Lucia.

"I want my coffee now," said Aunt Zita.

"I'll get it," said Lucia, and, using her apron as a potholder, picked up the coffee pot with two hands and poured Aunt Zita a large cup of the fragrant, black liquid. She then poured some milk from a jug which she had brought up earlier on its string from the well into the coffee, and put in two heaping tablespoons of white sugar, the way Aunt Zita liked it, and then gave her the cup.

"My toast," said Aunt Zita.

Lucia cut a slice of bread from the loaf and put it on the toast rack.

"Why was there shooting at Grand River?" asked Lucia.

"Take this away," said Aunt Zita, pointing a long white finger at the dark toast on her plate.

Lucia took it. She might have eaten it herself but instead she used the lid iron to move one of the flat circular lids on the range and drop the bread into the flames, and then she replaced the lid. She would later remember that she had thrown away a piece of bread.

Lucia turned around and faced Aunt Zita. "Please," she said.

"My toast," said Aunt Zita.

Lucia turned the toast and waited a minute until it had browned, and then served Aunt Zita.

Lucia sat down opposite her, and watched her knife press butter onto the toast.

"Please," said Lucia.

"I heard yesterday," said Aunt Zita, chopping at the eggs with the side of her fork, "from one of the men who drives one of the beef wagons who heard from a lieutenant at Fort Yates that the Ghost Dancing is about over." Aunt Zita looked at her wisely, a flap of egg on her fork halfway to her mouth. Then the fork moved and the bit of egg disappeared between her thin lips.

"I don't understand," said Lucia.

"What's behind the Ghost Dancing?" asked Aunt Zita.

"I don't know," said Lucia.

"Sitting Bull," said Aunt Lucia.

"There's Ghost Dancing on all the reservations," said Lucia.

"Sitting Bull is behind it," said Aunt Zita. "Get him and you stop the dancing."

Lucia went pale.

The gunfire this morning, at the Grand River Camp.

"Get him," said Aunt Zita, chewing, the side of her mouth bulging with buttered toast, "and you stop the Ghost Dancing."

Lucia felt sick.

"There was trouble," said Lucia, weakly. "I heard shots."

"Well," said Aunt Zita, shoving back her plate, "the trouble's over now."

Lucia picked up the plate and put it in the dishpan near the range. She would heat water and wash it later. Lucia herself was not hungry. Somehow she did not even, now, feel like coffee.

"Now," said Aunt Zita, "tell me–and tell me honestly, mind you–what happened here when I was gone, exactly what happened here when I was gone."

Then Lucia, numbly, pretty accurately, filled in the details of what had occurred during Aunt Zita's absence from the soddy. She left out very little, except perhaps that Edward Chance had held her in his arms, and that she in that moment had not objected, that her lips had touched his, and his hers, and that she had lived over that moment in the hours that separated her from him a thousand times, that she would never forget that moment, an instant at midnight on a moonlit hill at Standing Rock when two human beings, each lonely, had cared for and touched one another, she and a fugitive, a stranger.

"What was the man like who was here?" asked Aunt Zita.

"He was a nice man," said Lucia.

"A criminal fleeing from justice," said Aunt Zita.

"I don't know much about it," said Lucia.

"And you thought he was a nice man," said Aunt Zita.

"Yes," said Lucia, "he seemed to be a nice man. I thought so."

Aunt Zita looked at her. Her eyes sparkled like a cat's. Her voice was measured, and the words came out one at a time, like individual drops of cold syrup pouring from a bottle.

"The prairie," said Aunt Zita, "is a lonely place for a young girl."

Lucia looked at her and flushed.

"Did you tell him to go away?" asked Aunt Zita.

"No," said Lucia.

"Why didn't you tell him to go away?" asked Aunt Zita.

"He only wanted a cup of coffee," said Lucia.

Aunt Zita regarded her coldly.

"It would have been impolite to send him away," said Lucia.

"Why didn't you send him away?" asked Aunt Zita.

"I told you," said Lucia.

"It would have been impolite–"

"Yes," said Lucia.

"Is that the only reason?" asked Aunt Zita, her voice as pointed as a sewing needle.

"I don't know," said Lucia. "I don't know."

"I see," said Aunt Zita. "I see."

Outside, the prairie wind, unhurried, rustled through the sage.

Lucia looked at the older woman. "I don't like you," she said.

The girl arose from the kitchen table and went to the door of the soddy, opening it and looked out. She looked at the gradual, sloping hill that lay between the soddy and the school, on another hill beyond; she looked away toward Grand River; she looked at the sky, huge and gray that Monday morning of the 15th of December, 1890. She noticed, from the direction of Grand River, a bit of dust hanging in the air, horsemen, but did not think anything of it.

She could hear Aunt Zita's words behind her. "Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother," said Aunt Zita.

Lucia turned to face the older woman. "I did better than that," she said. "I loved them."

"I," said Aunt Zita, "stand now in their place."

"No," said Lucia, "you are not in their place." She felt her breath quicken. "You took their house," she said, "you sat in their chairs, you ate from their plates, you slept in their bed, but you were not–ever–in their place." Lucia suddenly realized her fists were clenched. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them she had regained control of herself. "Never say that again," she said.

The girl turned away, bitterly. The bit of dust on the horizon was larger now.

"A good woman," said Aunt Zita, "takes no pleasure in the presence of men, save perhaps an interest in the salvation of their souls."

Lucia was watching the dust on the horizon.

"I myself," Aunt Zita continued, "have saved the souls of many a man, whom I brought to repentance, for which they will be grateful at the time of judgment."