Ghost Dance (37 page)

Totter gave one last, long wavering scream and then Chance heard no more. He didn't know if the man had died then, or if only from that time on he had been unable to scream. Chance judged the latter, as the women did not leave him. On the other hand it was possible they were simply mutilating a corpse, blinding it, castrating it, making it unfit for the next world.

But the dance continued and in his concern for Lucia the fate of Totter was forced from his mind. He hoped for Totter's sake the man was dead. But Lucia was alive.

He looked on the girl, in the midst of the dancing bodies, the scalps held over her head. He saw the blond hair, braided, knowing it bound with glass beads; he saw the reflection of the fire in her eyes; he sensed from the lines of her face the pain she felt; how cruel must be the protest of the muscles in her arms now; how tired she must be to stand thus for so long; and yet to Chance in that moment she seemed barbaric and beautiful, the proudness and fineness of her face and head, the carriage of her slender, courageous body, its delicate, subtle lineaments unmistakable beneath the single, thin garment permitted her, accentuated with cruel frankness by the dictated posture of the Scalp Dance.

This woman, said Chance to himself, looking on the girl in the light of the fire, seeing her through the dancing ring of howling warriors, is indeed trophy.

The incessant beat of the tom-tom seemed to pound in Chance's blood.

Never before, thought Chance, have I seen her thus, as pure woman, as prize.

And Chance sensed then, as he had never sensed before, the ritualization of courtship, the meanings of the stylized amenities he had found so much a nuisance so many years ago, the teas, the suppers, the dances, the visits here and there, the formal calls on Sunday afternoons; all of it, said Chance, is this; pursuit and capture, dignified, made acceptable; no longer do they flee from us like deer through the forest, to be driven into brush or backed against rocks, to be cornered and bound, and led back as brides; no longer; but only the nature of her flight is changed and the nature of the bonds determining to whom it is she belongs; in the end it is the same, the flight and the capture; and here, in this place, her meaning as woman is clear; here, apart from symbols and disguises and distortions and frivolities, she stands as a woman, the prize of man; does she, this woman, now know her femaleness; does she understand; is the meaning of her excruciatingly desirable body now brought home to her; does she now understand the significance of her sex, that she is female, that nature has destined her for man?

Yes, thought Chance, she is very beautiful, marvelously, incredibly beautiful–Miss Lucia Turner, educated Eastern gentlewoman, sophisticated and refined graduate of a finishing academy for young ladies, holder of advanced opinions, reader of French literature, intellectual, reformer, feminist–captive female–suddenly unexpectedly astoundingly shamefully simply captive female–reduced utterly, she, Miss Lucia Turner, gifted and beautiful, to ancient, primitive essentialities–owned, literally owned.

The tom-tom's beat raged on, drunken, intoxicating.

I want to own that woman, thought Chance.

No, thought Chance, no.

He tried to shake the wildness from his thoughts, his wanting to possess the woman, tried not to respond to the heady, fiery rhythms of the tom-tom, the stamping feet, the twisting bodies, the cries, the Scalp Dance of the Hunkpapa and Minneconjou. He was a civilized man, a gentleman, bred to courtesy and regard, the product of a silken, chivalrous tradition, a gracious tradition of white linen and polished silver, candlelight and imported wines, a man whose first thought would once have been always to favor and respect the fair, gentler sex; and yet Chance had realized in the past years that the implicit condescension of his familial, Southern tradition, with its indulgence and courtesy towards the fair had been in its own way an imprisonment of the very creatures it purported to shelter and honor; and then he had been convinced, partly by Lucia Turner herself, that a woman must be accepted and esteemed for what she might be in herself, as a person, and not for her sex, no more than a man, and this had seemed decent to him and probably right; but this night he had seen that woman, whatever might be her capacities, her glories, her rights, was yet woman; and his blood told him older secrets than he had imbibed during evening suppers in South Carolina, undiscussed, unremarked secrets beyond the tutorings of liberals and radicals with their insane myopia to the subtle chemistries of human conquest and surrender, to the genetic tenacity of the instincts of the female to belong, of the male to possess. Beautiful as they are, intelligent as they are, they are weaker than we, thought Chance, and they are our mates, ours forever, in their hearts and in our blood, victorious only in surrender, whole only in annihilation, fulfilled only by the incontestable delight of complete, unconditional submission, wanting it, desperate for it, ancient as the caves, knowing it or not.

Lucia Turner, standing before him, captive female, woman of the enemy, he by the blood of his Indian brother Hunkpapa, was woman, so designated by a handful of cheap glass beads that bound her hair, woman alone, female, all else, education, accomplishments, stripped away from her, meaningless, save the worn dress of an Indian squaw, the thin hide of an animal given to her that her nakedness might be clothed.

The madness of the drum swept through Chance.

As the dance swirled about Lucia and the tom-tom's beat infused her blood, making her senses reel, and the imperious demand of the drum, the wild turning circle of men who shouted and stamped about her, spoke words to her without speech, she felt for a wild moment that yet another dancer had suddenly entered the circle, that about her, knife in hand, howled and reeled and stamped yet another warrior of the Hunkpapa.

No, he was sitting quietly beside Old Bear, watching, not stirring, the reflection of the flames on his impassive countenance.

Yet still Lucia could not rid herself of the wild feeling that had swept her, that yet another presence now shared the savage circle, one claiming her more than any other, one more fierce and terrible than any other, one who would not yield her to another, not for horses or gold or life itself.

Yes, she said, half drunk with the fire, the madness, the pain, the howling dance, the tom-tom, join them, my love. Thou, too, my love, join them and dance about me; dance your victory and your desire and your pride; dance your manhood, your claim on this she, whom I am. Dance, Edward Chance, Medicine Gun of the Hunkpapa, dance about me; thou more than any other.

Edward Chance leaped to his feet.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty

 

The morning after the Scalp Dance Chance awoke thinking maybe it was strange he should have slept those few hours between the ending of the dance and dawn. Quite possibly it had been his last night. Yet he had slept. He did not object. If he had to die in an hour or so he preferred to do so with his senses alive and keen.

He lay wrapped in a saddle blanket which had been taken from Totter's horse.

He recalled the ending of the dance, how he had gone to Lucia and helped her to lower her arms, taking the scalps from her, moving her arms for her.

Old Bear had not permitted her that night to go to the shelter of Drum, nor had he permitted her to sleep beside him. Such matters were contingent on the outcome of the morning's business.

It was dawn now.

Old Bear had been kind. He had designated Totter's greatcoat for Lucia's use. After the dance Lucia had been returned by Winona to the blanket shelter from which Chance had first seen her emerge, driven by the thin woman with the pointed stick. There, Winona made Lucia sit upon Totter's greatcoat, which she opened under her like a blanket. Then, as Winona ordered her, not resisting, Lucia crossed her ankles and placed her wrists, also crossed, behind her back; then, with rawhide straps, Winona bound her. She had not tied Lucia cruelly, as Drum might have done, but she tied her well; Lucia had hoped that the Indian girl might free her or, intentionally or through lack of skill, bind her loosely enough that she might, with effort, escape; but after an hour's piteous struggle in the lonely darkness of the crude shelter Lucia knew this hope was unfounded; that her former pupil had secured her perfectly; that she had been bound by a Hunkpapa woman, who did not intend her to escape; when the men came in the morning she would be, thanks to Winona, yet a bound captive in the blanket shelter, awaiting her fate. But before she had left Winona had gently placed Lucia on her side, wrapping Totter's greatcoat about her, buttoning it closed for warmth.

Chance sat up in the blanket, wiping his eyes.

The ashes of the huge fire formed a sloping mound, now covered with a light dust of snow that had fallen in the night. Near the fire, naked, still staked out, lay the corpse of Jake Totter, mutilated and eyeless, the snow on it not melting any more than on the rocks and brush.

Chance was waiting for the discovery to be made, that Grawson had made his escape.

He had not tried to free Lucia.

On the snowy prairie, had they been able to clear the Bad Lands, they might have been trailed easily, and the vengeance of Drum would have been terrible, falling on Lucia perhaps as well as himself; Chance did not wish to face the almost certain dilemma at the end of such a flight, whether to allow the girl to fall into the hands of Drum or to put his last bullet through her brain; if he stayed to fight he might win, and if he did, he was free to go, taking the girl with him; if he lost he did not know what would happen, other than the fact that he would be dead and the girl would be Drum's; perhaps she would live for a time as his squaw and sometime, perhaps, if he tired of her, he might sell her to another, and perhaps this other, or the next, might take ransom or trade her, perhaps for a pair of horses, or a rifle, or a handful of cattle, perhaps to homesteaders, perhaps to a patrol of soldiers; it was possible she might be carried as far as Canada, or after weeks, across the Rio Grande to Mexico, changing hands several times; if this sort of thing happened, eventually, somewhere, somehow, she would find her freedom; a greater danger was that soldiers might attack the Indians who owned her, and that she might fall in the fighting; or be slain by the Indians, whom she might otherwise impede in their retreat; perhaps she would be shot that she might not fall alive into the hands of the soldiers, not be rescued; Chance could imagine Drum killing her under such circumstances; all things considered Chance decided it was best for Lucia that he meet Drum; it was hard to judge the matter.

And something within him was not altogether dissatisfied with this decision.

Old Bear, Running Horse, the others, expected him to meet Drum; he had said he would do so; he was expected to fight, as a warrior fights, not run.

Chance smiled to himself thinking of honor, and of a distant field many years ago.

How foolish that had been.

But, Chance realized, the foolishness of that act in which he had found himself involved, expected to assume a homicidal cultural role, had not been the consequence of the foolishness of honor, but rather of its perversion and distortion; that act, in its special circumstances, had been a misunderstanding of the obligations and significance of honor; a misrepresentation of its imperatives; it had been vanity, not honor.

Chance wondered on the thing honor, understanding it not much at all, wondering if it could much be understood.

It was a strange thing.

If he had run, he knew, astoundingly, that when Lucia was safe, he would then have turned his horse once more toward the Bad Lands, would have returned to meet angry Drum and his people.

Was that honor?

Or foolishness?

Or only the blood of Running Horse in his veins?

Hunkpapa pride?

How can we understand honor, Chance asked himself, or pride, or courage or loyalty; how can we understand what we are, man, ourselves?

What are these remarkable genetic dispositions to nobility, so easily betrayed, that will insist on stubbornly, doggedly filing their claims, whether they be acknowledged or not?

Yet Chance, partly from himself, partly from the bravery of a fine, beautiful girl, partly from the Hunkpapa, understood himself somehow, not quite knowing how, to have learned in the past few weeks something of the mysteries of honor and such matters, more than he had learned in all the preceding empty years of his past life, before he had known friendship, and love; perhaps he had learned most from the Indians, from savages, where honor's primitive rudiments were least concealed by the complex customs and hypocrisies of a civilization of bricks and dollars, that could preach love and brotherhood and on the banks of a creek in South Dakota bayonet women and children. Running Horse, his brother, had taught him something of honor; and so too had Old Bear, Sitting Bull, and Drum; and the Sun Dance had taught him, and smoking, and Wounded Knee; he had learned lessons of truth to oneself, of the keeping of pledges and the being of a brother, and of the incomparable horror of the dishonorable deed, performed because it may be accomplished with impunity.

And so it was that the physician, Edward Chance, in an Indian camp in the Bad Lands of South Dakota discovered himself incontrovertibly sensitive to certain kinds of claims, those of honor among them, sensitive to the coercions of codes of nobility; in this he was a man, not the sly animal that denigrates honor and courage as stupidity and foolishness, the petty envious animal incapable of either, scurrying about in its smugness, the intellectual rodent seeking its hole when the wind blows or the cat prowls, content to be protected by the works and valor of others, men, whom he fears and despises, to whom he owes his wretched existence.

Chance had gone to the brush shelter of Grawson.

He wondered if it had been honor that had sent him there, cutting the big man free. He doubted it. He thought rather it might have been, incredibly enough, pity, perhaps the memory of the screams of Totter.