Beneath a rust moon, the aged warrior folded back the flap of hide and slipped out onto the cool ground. Bony-limbed and crouching, he halted.
The braves would be stationed downwind of the encampment, unalerted to action. The People had not seen trouble all summer. It was a quiet night and prosaic. A night like any other. The young sentries would be heavy-lidded, taken with thoughts of the venison which had been dried that day, or possibly of the warm bosoms of their wihingnathun, who lay sleeping curled in furs of moose and antelope.
On feathery feet, the elder made off into the darkness. Unwitnessed.
Pain accompanied his movements. Somewhere along the circuit of his summers, the bones of his hips and back had come to defy him. They cried out when he rose from his warming fire. They gave him sharp stabs if he stirred in his sleep. The People had witnessed his deterioration. Always, the elders were noticed and prized among the People. They were the first in the circle to speak. They were offered the choicest cuts of the ptehchaka roast. Chirping Sparrow had appeared at his teepee in the mornings. She had massaged his naked body with a poultice of the nettle leaf. Like old leather was the skin of her hands on his woeful joints and muscles. Oh, how she talked. Never did the winyan rest her tongue when she came. She complained of the scarcity of berries. The meanings behind the flights of the finches or nuthatches. Often, she droned on of her longing for the winter encampment, where the People had a steady diet of meat.
Eventually, the healer came. He issued herbs and medicinal teas. He would bring the tea to the elder’s lips and tilt the liquid down his gullet. The wise man had performed the smudging ceremony, too, speaking in low tones about wellness and of finding harmony between body and spirit. Still, the elder’s limbs stiffened; he began to seep blood in his waste.
Walking now, the elder lost sight of the teepees. His gait grew more erect. This was how it was with a stubborn body: it needed coaxing, like a beleaguered nag. The wizened Lakota Sioux hobbled on through the black. He had little need of light; he would know the way if he were blind. Even if he were still a boy.
Gradually, the figure was swallowed up by the gloom. The pad of his footfalls emitted no sound. After so many years dedicated to stealth—in the hunt, in the electric thrill of a raid—the hide of his moccasins knew to tread softly. One small step after another. The journey would take all night.
The elder had no need of weapons, nor food. He carried few tokens. The hoop that he had once held and spun in honour of the Great Spirit was too large to carry and hung untouched in his quarters. It had been long since he had joined in the dance. The wolf tooth kept in memory of that stimulating hunt when the man’s blood ran quick, and he suffered the deep wound to his thigh—that too he left behind. The tobacco pipe was an easy thing to transport. A single eagle feather from his headdress, as well. To carry the weight of the full headdress would have been impossible. Plying his way toward the ravine, the elder thought of the war bonnet he had so bravely earned. The beadwork, the bright colours. He saw the wondrous ceremonies during which he had worn it and danced for Mother Earth.
One arrow he carried. It afforded him no protection, for he had not his bow, but the pointed tip was a fond memento of evenings before the fire, chipping and carving flint. Hearing the ancestral songs. Entranced by the ever-changing flames. This particular tip had been crafted from white bone.
He would recognize the outcropping of rock when he saw it. Of this, the elder was certain. It had been some years, but he would know it. A peculiar creation of the mighty Wakan Tanka. One immense slab of rock thrusting up on an angle while another went down into the soil, forming a sort of covered bed. An oversized statue of a clam hidden by wild grasses and cane brush. A person could be standing on the ground of the upper shelf and not see the formation below. The brush was so thick.
The elder had discovered the hidden cavity by chance, during a rabbit hunt. The bison had been fleeting that autumn. As skittish and unpredictable as the spirits. The wakanpi. The scouts had returned to the camp with their heads low. Hunters were dispatched. They rode far in the four directions to locate a herd; they listened to the ground and made the sweet grass prayers. No bison.
Rabbit became their aim. The elder had split from the party. Three or four fat hares zigzagged toward the safety of a dense thicket. Unnerved. The elder, who was not an elder then, had attempted a bow shot and missed his mark. He chased his prey toward the brush and dismounted to investigate the scene. The rock formation lay as if it had been concealed for a purpose by some furtive hand. Tucked away for another day—for a precise time and need.
The People were now moving northwest to the summer grounds. As the bison migrated, so did the People. Daily, they covered many leagues. The old warrior walked steadily on through the night. He was confident that the men would not alter their course and search for him, come the dawn. They would know his mind and respect his decision. He had never spoken of the rock shelf formation. Not even to his wihingnathun: she who had born him three sons. But always, it was there in his mind. A secret place. A bed specially fashioned by the Maker. Revealed only to him. His bed. The People were now travelling close by the site—just when the elder’s body was giving out, and his dreams had been filled with images of his crossing. The elder knew it to be a sign.
The dawn was yet to come when he reached the thicket. Thicket, he saw, was too strong a word now; the lack of rains in the season had dwindled the area to a thin brush. This was a good omen. The withered elder would be able to negotiate the shoots and branches. It was tough going. In the darkness, there were thorny endings that caught on his flesh. Scratched his cheeks and his hands. At one point, he paused for reprieve. Between the distant hoots of the night birds, he heard his own breathing. He felt the sticks that were his legs trembling beneath him.
Pushing through, he sent up a prayer that the People would not wail over him long. They would not have his body to wrap in robes. There would be no slitting of his horse’s throat, for the elder had not owned a mount in ages. The winyan would cut their hair and the songs would go on into the autumn. This was customary and right. Foremost in the elder’s thoughts was the wish that the bison would be plentiful and that the Great Spirit would be manifest in the People’s doings.
When he stood before the outcropping, his knees went weak. The bones of his feet pulsed with pain. They felt brittle, like the ribs of the grouse after sitting too long in the flames. The elder fell into a fit of coughing. When he wiped the spittle from his mouth, he saw that his wrist came away with crimson mucous. He waited for the coughing to subside, then slid his feet forward toward the slope of rock.
There was relief in finding the site unchanged. Why would it not be? The weighty slabs must have been embedded here for eons. Since before the ancestors’ ancestors walked. The slabs were immovable. The elder reached out with a quivering hand. Gently, with a reverence, he put his fingertips to the stone. It was cold and powdery. A swell of emotion overcame the weary wanderer. He had arrived. His final lodging.
He caressed the pebbled bed. Shuffled himself closer so that he could sit and rest. A calm began to penetrate his core. The same calm as when he had first encountered the rock bed, pursuing the nimble hares. The elder’s breathing began to level off. Casting about at his surroundings, he marvelled at how thoroughly he was hidden. Cocooned and safeguarded from the world.
One other item he carried. A pouch of small, coded discs his father had traded for when he was among the southern People. The Sioux hunters had mocked his father for making such a foolish barter. Thin and round, the metal pieces served no purpose. Even as scrapers, they proved ineffective. As a child, the elder had been intrigued by the shiny things. The discs were hard and precisely shaped, decorated on their borders with fine runes. Delicate etchings. Medallions, his father had called them. A word that was difficult for the tongue. The medals were worn and, in places, eroded to a smoothness. Old objects from an unknown tribe. At their centres, the medallions showed one vertical line crossed with one horizontal. For long hours, the child had fingered the discs and wondered at their origins.
Soon, sunbreak would warm him. The elder would be ready for its splendid authority. Its powers. More coughing came. His neck and his back seized with strain. He would wait until he could move again. He would settle into his berth and close his eyes, which had once been so keen—able to spy the ptehchaka on a distant crest, or a drifting mallard among the deadfall of a river’s bank. Now, his eyes were tired. Watery. He would close them and rest. He pressed the pouch of medallions to his breast and waited for the Great Spirit to welcome him.