Man on Two Ponies (4 page)

“I hope your father comes back and takes us all home,” Billy said to William later.

“Forget it,” Long Chin told him. “You won't see them again. Captain Pratt is asking the Indian Commissioner to send them home by another route. He doesn't want them here again.”

The chiefs did return, and Billy's hopes rose when Spotted Tail demanded a council with everyone present. Pratt objected to including the boys, but Spotted Tail brushed his objections aside. Since the chiefs had to speak through interpreters, the boys knew
all
that was said.

Pratt sat scowling as the grim-faced Spotted Tail rose to speak. “We sent our sons, the sons of chiefs, to learn to
talk
like
whites,” he said, pausing for the interpreter. “Instead you make them work
like
common Wasicun laborers. You have them beaten—the Tetons do not beat children. You are an evil man!” Red Cloud, American Horse, and Two Strike echoed Spotted Tail. Pratt had lied to them. His school should
be
destroyed.

When the others had finished speaking, Spotted Tail arose again. “I am taking all of the Brulé children home,” he said. He turned to the boys. “All of you get ready.” Red Cloud nodded to the Oglala boys—they were also to go home. Thrilled, Billy glanced at Pratt, wondering what he'd say. Pratt's face was white—if all of the Teton children left his school would have to close. Elated, Billy dashed to the room, undressed, and put on the shirt, leggings, and moccasins he'd worn when he arrived. Ignoring Pratt's orders,
all
were talking and joking in Lakota. Soon they'd
be
on the train heading for home. Billy felt like singing.

He looked up to see the solemn Long Chin standing in the doorway, and he had the same sinking feeling he'd felt that morning
when the two Indian police rode up. Before a word was uttered, he knew that Long Chin brought bad news. The blood seemed to drain out of his body, and his skin felt suddenly cold.

“Get back into your school clothes. You're not going home, at least right now.” All looked at him with shocked expressions.

“Why not?” the round-faced Julian asked.

Long Chin explained that a big man in Washington, Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, had wired forbidding Spotted Tail and Red Cloud from taking the Teton children. Billy waited anxiously the next few days while telegrams flew back and forth between Pratt and the secretary, whose warnings were relayed to the chiefs. When told that the Secretary of the Interior demanded that they leave their children at Carlisle,
all
but Spotted Tail backed down.

“My sons are going home with me,” he said grimly. “No one is going to stop them. And I will get the rest of them away from here as soon as I can.”

Billy watched as Spotted Tail's sons ran to his side, wishing he could join them. The other chiefs and headmen surrounded father and sons like buffalo bulls protecting cows with newborn calves from wolves. Campbell stood nearby, wolflike, ready to grab one of the boys if he could. Before Pratt could order men to guard the gate, Billy slipped through it and ran the two miles to the station as if his life depended on it. The train was on a siding, and three men stood near the engine, but they ignored Billy.

Looking toward the school, Billy saw the chiefs coming in carriages. Still panting hard, he felt a wave of fear when he saw Campbell following them. He dashed into a car and crouched under a seat, trying to make himself small and invisible. His heart was pounding and sweat poured from his face as he prayed to Wakan Tanka, the god of the Tetons. “Help me, Grandfather,” he breathed. “Don't let
him
find me.” He heard voices, then heavy steps in the aisle, and knew no Brulé walked that way. He tried to shrink farther under the seat.

A powerful hand jerked him to his feet, and he found himself face to face with a scowling Campbell. Holding Billy's arm with one hand, he raised the strap with the other. Outside the
car Spotted Tail and the others prepared to board the train. Camp
bell lowered the whip and dragged Billy out the door at the other end of the car. “Wait till I get you where they can't hear you squall,” he snarled. “I'll teach you
to
run away.” He kept his promise.

After his beating Billy staggered to the stables, the welts on his back throbbing painfully. His shirt seemed to be sticking to his skin, and he wondered if it was from blood. He took it off, and with swollen eyes was trying to see over his shoulder when he heard voices.

“Oh, what he did to your back,” a girl's voice said. He turned and saw Mollie Deer-in-Timber, hand over her mouth. She was a dainty girl of ten with small hands, fairly light skin, and wide, expressive eyes. With her was another Brulé girl her age. Embarrassed to have them see him, Billy could only stammer,
“Go
away and leave me alone.”

“I'll get something to put on it,” Mollie said. “Don't move. Wait right here.” The two ran off. Billy didn't know whether to leave or stay as she'd commanded. He was putting on his shirt, trying to make up his mind, when they returned.

“Take it off,” Mollie ordered. He obeyed, wondering why he let a little girl tell him what to do. He still wished they hadn't seen him. He felt her small hands gently rubbing something soothing into the cuts on his back and shoulders. “Does that feel better?” she asked when she finished. He had to admit that it did, but he didn't care to
talk
about it.

For an exhilarating moment it had seemed that he might escape, but now he might as well be dead. The painful welts on his back were nothing compared to the ache in his heart.
I
was
so close to escaping, so close.
He imagined himself lashing Campbell to a tree, giving him a taste of his own strap until he screamed, then shooting him full of arrows, but taking care not to kill him too quickly and end his agony. Now only one hope remained, that Spotted Tail would have them all sent home.

A week after the chiefs left, Long Chin and the girls' interpreter met them when they came outside following supper. “Captain
Pratt
has arranged for most of you boys to work on farms around here
for the summer and learn about fanning. Men with wagons will be here for you in the morning.” The girls' interpreter announced
that they would live with families in Carlisle and other towns to learn housekeeping.

“That means we'll be alone among Wasicuns all summer,” square-jawed Robert American Horse said. “No one told our fathers we'd have to do that. I don't want to learn fanning. It's woman's work. The other things they make us do are bad enough.”

Long Chin shrugged. “Captain Pratt's orders. Says it's for your own good.” He left before there were other complaints. The boys and girls wandered aimlessly around in the late afternoon sun. Running Elk was thinking about what Long Chin had said when he was suddenly aware that Mollie Deer-in-Timber was by his side. He hoped she wouldn't remind him of his beating. He didn't want to
talk
to
her but he looked at her face and into her large, soft eyes.
They're like a doe's eyes.

“I'll be with a family in Carlisle,” she said, gently steering him toward the shade of an ancient elm. “I hope there'll be girls my age.” Billy said nothing. “I'm glad we'll be living with Wasicuns. My mother told me we should learn everything we can from them so we can teach our people to do things the way they do.”

“I don't want to learn to do things like a Wasicun.
If
they had
left us alone we could still live in the old way. I don't want to forget I'm a Brulé. I want to be a warrior like my father.”

She knelt in the grass. Billy looked at the boys, hoping Julian would signal him to come, but he was talking to others. Since Mollie was looking up expectantly at him, Billy squatted uncomfortably beside her.
She should be a teacher. She knows how to make you do whatever she wants.

“My mother says there won't be warriors any more, now that we're on the reservation. She says we have
to
learn
to
do things the way Wasicuns do. That's why Captain Pratt started this school.”

Billy chewed a blade of grass. It was disturbing to hear a Brulé, and a
girl
at that, saying such things. What was most troubling was the nagging thought that she was probably right, but he didn't want
to
think about it.

The prospect of living with Wasicuns, away from all Tetons, was disturbing even if, as Mollie said, he could learn useful things from them. Monday morning, thinking about Spotted Tail's sons, he glumly climbed into a wagon with other boys. The girls were watching and waving, Mollie among them. He started to wave back, then saw that none of the other boys were responding, so he pretended to be stretching his arm.

Soon they were on a countly
road
among cornfields and orchards. The driver stopped at one farm after another, checked his list, then escorted a Brulé or Oglala boy to the house. At one farm he beckoned to Billy. “Hop down,” he said. “You go here with Henry Purvis.” He knocked on the door of a neatly painted farm house. A pleasant-faced woman opened the door, then finished drying her hands on her apron.

“Here's yer Injun, ma'am,” the driver said. “Name of Billy Pawnee Killer.”

“Henry,” the woman called over her shoulder, “Billy is here.” She held the door open while he slowly entered. He was still envying Spotted Tail's sons, and the comers of his mouth were turned down. He didn't know enough English to carry on much of a conversation if he'd felt like talking. He wanted only to be left alone, but there was no hope of that. “I'm glad to see you, Billy,” the woman said. “We've been looking forward to meeting you.”

Henry was a stocky man of middle height with graying hair and a brown beard. His skin was weathered, his muscles hardened by daily work, his expression placid. Mild and good-natured, he was frugal as well as hard-working, neither extravagant nor tight-
fisted.
He held out his hand like all Wasicuns did, so Billy limply extended his own.

Mrs. Purvis was a kindly woman whose graying hair was tied in a ball at the back of her head. Like his own mother, she was never idle, always cooking or sewing. Billy never saw her without her apron except on Sundays, when they went to church in the morning and sat in rocking chairs on the porch in the afternoon.

Louise, their blue-eyed daughter who stayed with them summers when not teaching, wore her blonde hair in two braids. She always
put on a sunbonnet when she went outside to shield her white skin form the rays of the sun. She reminded Billy a little of his teacher
at Carlisle, but he didn't want to be reminded of that.

Billy found he couldn't dislike any of them, but he still didn't want to be there—he wanted to be at Rosebud. He felt lonely,
all
by himself among Wasicuns. He wondered if his mother still remembered him, and if his father had returned from Canada.
Will I ever see them again?

The first chore Billy learned was to harness the huge horses and hitch them to the wagon. Then Henry taught
him
to drive the team along the winrows while he pitched hay onto the wagon. It was exciting driving the big team, but it was still Wasicun work, and Billy tried not to feel proud.

“Billy catches on fast,” Henry said as they ate ham, sweet com, string beans, and mashed potatoes at supper time. Mrs. Purvis placed a glass of milk by Billy's plate. He looked at her questioningly. “Haven't you ever drunk
milk?”
He shook his head. “Drink it. It's good for you and I know you'll like it.” He drank a little and had to agree that she was right. He had second helpings of everything. All of this was followed by a slice of apple pie with a piece of cheese on it. Billy had to admit that fanners ate well even though they had to work hard.

After supper, while Henry read and his wife sewed, Louise showed Billy one of her school books. “You know the alphabet, of course.” He recited it. “Let's see what words you know.” She pointed to a list, and he read the ones he recognized, wondering why he didn't pretend he knew nothing. Soon she had him learning new words and reading sentences. “You learn quickly,” she told him. “By the time you go back to Carlisle I bet you'll be way ahead of the others.”

Reminding him of Carlisle was a mistake. “I don't want to go back there ever,” he said, scowling. “They beat us and make us work like Wasicuns. I hate it. I'd rather be dead.” As he thought of Campbell his face contorted, and his fingers opened and closed like he was grasping for something. Louise quickly changed the subject.

“Let me read you a story about Hansel and Gretel,” she said.
Soon he was wonying about their troubles and momentarily forgot his own.
Learning to read may not be a
bad
thing.
By the end of the summer he felt at home with the Purvis family, and under Louise's guidance he actually enjoyed reading.
That
frightened
him a little.
I'm getting to be like a Wasicun.
He wondered what Mollie Deer-in-Timber would
think
of that.