Soon after Yellow Bear’s tribe moved to the Tongue River camp, a Cheyenne word-bringer arrived. He had been sent by Chief Catch the Hawk, whose clan circles were gathered near the Rosebud. Catch the Hawk’s people had learned that the surprise Pawnee raid was led by a renegade named War Thunder. War Thunder and his marauding braves had since split up into many smaller bands to avoid detection while waiting to launch their next raid.
The Rosebud River Cheyenne knew these things because their hunters had encountered several isolated groups of Pawnee—all driving stolen Cheyenne ponies before them. They sent in spies who overheard the Pawnee’s campfire boasting.
Matthew learned the news during his first brief return to the main camp. Black Elk’s band of warriors-in-training had returned to let their ponies graze and rest. Arrow Keeper eyed Matthew’s protruding ribs without comment. He and everyone in the camp knew full well what Black Elk and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling were putting the youth through. They had all noticed the glances exchanged by Honey Eater and Matthew—and the murderous jealousy in the eyes of Black Elk when he saw them. And though Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was young, he was strong, and his need to avenge his father’s death ran deep into his marrow.
So old Arrow Keeper wisely held his silence. The boy was in a dangerous position and surrounded by enemies. Talk was no good to him. Only manly strength and courage to endure suffering would save him. If he was his father’s son, he would survive. If the warrior instincts had been lost to the white man’s ways, however, he didn’t stand the chance of a sick buffalo set upon by wolves.
Either way, Arrow Keeper was powerless to affect the predetermined outcome of a medicine dream. Only time would tell him if the youth was truly the warrior of his vision at Medicine Lake— or if that were even a true vision. It might have been strong magic placed over his eyes by his enemies.
Unable to bear Matthew’s misery, Arrow Keeper did what he could to comfort the youth.
He made sure to keep a fat, juicy buffalo or elk steak constantly sizzling on the tripod outside his tipi entrance while the warriors-in-training remained in camp. The boy divided his brief respite between deep sleeping and ravenous eating in the hopes of restoring himself for the next grueling period of warrior training.
Matthew rallied during the rest in camp.
Thoughts of Bighorn Falls and his former life lost their luster as he renewed his determination to gain acceptance by Yellow Bear’s people. But even when his spirits were at their highest, he would spot Wolf Who Hunts Smiling or Black Elk watching him from a distance, and doubt and homesickness would assail him anew.
Soon, however, Matthew earned a measure of revenge against Wolf Who Hunts Smiling— though his victory was brief and left him in greater danger than ever. His triumph came on the first night after Black Elk’s band rode out again. Back at the main camp, Black Elk had learned a simple gambling game from a visiting word-bringer, and while Matthew tended the fire and filled the water skins, Black Elk taught it to the others.
He heated two stones in the glowing embers, then rolled them free and let them cool for a few moments. After finding a challenger and arranging a suitable bet, each contestant was to pick up a hot stone and grip it in his fist until one or the other threw it down and lost.
Black Elk first challenged his cousin. It was close, but he won a fine kidskin pouch. From Little Horse, he won a handful of bright beads; from the twins, a cavalry jackknife and a hemp wallet.
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling sulked over the loss of his favorite pouch. To recoup his loss, he bullied the other boys into playing against him. He easily outlasted the twins. But he and Little Horse threw their stones down at the same moment. Despite the draw, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling claimed the bet. He argued hotly that Little Horse had cheated by spitting into his hand first.
Matthew observed the argument as he knelt beside the fire and slid the unburned ends of the logs closer to the blazing middle. He was about to rise and return to his spot beneath a cottonwood ten yards away when Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s mocking voice, speaking in English, froze him in place.
“And what about How-Do-You-Do? Does the brave wounder of ponies wish to challenge a more worthy opponent than his own horse?”
The reminder of his failure with the tomahawk made warm blood creep up the back of his neck. Instead of ignoring his enemy, as usual, Matthew matched his mocking stare and nodded. Little Horse heated the two stones while the bet was arranged. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling offered a new pair of beaded buckskin leggings against the red blanket Arrow Keeper had given Matthew.
After Little Horse rolled the stones free of the embers with a stick, Black Elk nodded, each youth seized a stone and wrapped his fist around it.
The first sensation of blistering heat almost made Matthew drop the stone. But he clenched his jaw and resisted the urge. His lips were pressed straight and tight with determination. Each youth stared into the other’s eyes and refused to look away.
The wily, mocking light in Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s eyes transformed itself into surprise when the youth he considered weaker than a woman continued to hold out. Sweat broke out on his brow and gleamed in the dancing firelight.
“Drop it, White Man’s Shoes!” Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said, his teeth grinding together in a mixture of pain and determination.
In the past, Matthew would have dropped the stone quickly. But surviving his recent torture by fire had tempered his nerves against the searing pain that night. He recalled the grueling ordeal with Arrow Keeper at Medicine Lake, and the old man’s words rang in his head and urged him on: If you cannot endure this small thing here today, how will you stand and fight when the war cry sounds? His eyes narrowed to dark, piercing points, and he put the terrible burning sensation outside himself, focusing only on the hatred he felt for his enemy.
With an involuntary cry of pain, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling threw his stone down on the ground. Matthew deliberately waited a full ten heartbeats longer, trembling with pain all the while, before dropping his.
In that brief moment, he enjoyed his first and only triumph since joining Yellow Bear’s tribe. Little Horse looked at him with open admiration for the first time. Even the twins were shocked enough to lose their surly stares. They watched the stranger with a new curiosity. Black Elk did not look at him; rather, he aimed a contemptuous glare at his young cousin.
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling rose in fury. He snatched his leggings up off the ground, then turned accusing eyes on Little Horse. As usual, he avoided using names in front of Matthew.
“You! Everyone saw how you deliberately made my stone hotter than the spy’s. You are still angry at my earlier victory! The bet is called off!” The next moment, quite deliberately, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling stepped between Matthew and the fire.
Everyone there knew what the gesture meant, and they fell silent at the gravity of the message. Although Wolf Who Hunts Smiling had just announced his intention of killing the intruder, Matthew recalled that Arrow Keeper had said that once he had been warned it was up to him to kill his enemy first.
However, Black Elk had much to teach his band in the next few sleeps, and everyone was too busy to settle any personal scores as they learned the secrets of the buffalo hunt. Black Elk led the youths along an ancient buffalo trail that wound south from the new camp on the Tongue River. They followed the trail and crossed the vast plains between the Bighorn Mountains on the west and the Black Hills on the east.
It was shedding season and thick buffalo fur lay everywhere. It covered the dry riverbeds and rose higher than the ponies’ fetlocks. Near the rivers were thick cottonwoods with deep-ridged bark. The herds had backed up against these to scratch and had left them wearing thick fur coats. The huge buffalo wallows were so thick with fur Matthew couldn’t see the water.
One morning, they crested a ridge and spotted a vast herd of the bearded monsters running below them. Buffalo always moved in a stampede, Black Elk explained. A few antelopes were running with the herd to seek safety from wolves.
Black Elk opened the ball-and-powder receiver of his side-hammer rifle and loaded it. Then he drew a bead on a straggling cow. Always shoot for the gut, he told the youths. A ball in the rib cage had to hit a vital organ like the heart. But a gut shot bled more and always killed.
And to prove his point, Black Elk dropped the cow with one shot. When the herd had thundered on and the cloud of yellow dust had cleared, the Indians rode down to gather around the carcass. Black Elk taught them the tough job of skinning a buffalo as well as how to stake out the curly hide in order to cure it. Knives and stone chisels were necessary to scrape off every last gobbet of fat or flesh. When it was dry, the skin would be flat and hard, easy to lash to a travois.
The liver was the tenderest and most prized morsel. Black Elk had cut it out first, even before the skinning, and eaten it warm and raw. The other delicacies, including the tongue, the youths cooked and ate immediately. The bulk of the leftover meat would be cut into thin strips and jerked.
Continuing the lesson, Black Elk told of a more ancient way to hunt buffalo that did not require weapons. It was employed when hunters were unarmed, without horses, or could not use their rifles because there was no high ground for cover. Although buffalo could not see well, a gunshot would cause them to stampede. If the hunters were on low ground, they stood a good chance of being trampled to death. The solution, Black Elk explained, was to decoy a few buffalo away from the main herd and to run them off a buffalo jump— a blind cliff over which they fell to their death.
One sleep after Black Elk shot the buffalo cow, the Cheyenne youths discovered a perfect cliff only a few hundred yards from the buffalo run, and Black Elk decided to teach his band the ancient decoy tricks used to separate a few animals from the main herd. First it was necessary to find a herd at rest, grazing. Black Elk showed them how to listen for the telltale squawking of buffalo birds that followed the herds and lived off ticks in the buffalo’s hide.
Soon they heard the birds on the far side of a long ridge. Making sure to keep his band downwind of the buffalo, because of the beasts’ keen sense of smell, Black Elk led his band to the top of the ridge. Below, in a grassy bottom, a vast herd grazed.
Since they could do nothing until a few animals straggled away from the main herd, they tethered their ponies to graze. Then Black Elk spaced the youths out at careful intervals between the ridge and the blind cliff, placing them at strategic points where the buffalo might veer off and escape. Black Elk sternly warned them to watch for shifts in the wind direction that might give their smell away. Matthew was given the very last spot, a small hill just before the steep drop-off. His job was to run down the hill as the buffalo approached, waving a tree branch to make them veer toward the cliff.
The youth was both excited and determined to perform well. He was still elated from his victory over Wolf Who Hunts Smiling with the hot stones. If he did well in the hunt, the others might change their attitudes toward him.
From his elevated position, Matthew could see everything as it developed. After what seemed like hours, a few buffalo drifted away from the main herd. Black Elk then leaped out from hiding and, shouting and waving his arms, chased the beasts off from the herd.
Matthew watched, his heart pounding with excitement. At a draw where the small herd might have broken across the plains to freedom, Little Horse diverted them back toward the cliff. One by one, Swift Canoe, True Son, and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling leaped from hiding and kept the herd pointed in Matthew’s direction.
Dust swirled in high plumes as the animals lumbered closer to him. Concentrating on timing his leap, Matthew was not aware that the wind abruptly shifted directions. He was about to fly down the hill when the buffalo smelled his presence in time to reverse course in a panic. They avoided the cliff and scattered out across the plains.
Stunned, Matthew could only stare, wondering what had gone wrong. Then, he felt the wind pressure on his sweating back and realized his mistake. To make matters worse, the others had all witnessed how his carelessness ruined their hours of patient waiting. As the rest of the band retrieved their horses and rode toward him, Matthew could see the rage in their faces. Even Little Horse gave him an angry stare.
“Woman Face, mighty slayer of ponies!” Black Elk said. His rage-twisted face and the ear sewn with buckskin thread made him look fierce in his wrath. “Did the white men make you such a mighty hunter?”
When Matthew’s face flushed hot with shame, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling said, “Look at the woman! She wears her heart in her face!”
Matthew had held his tongue at Black Elk’s insults. But since the incident with the hot stones, he had determined to stand up to Wolf Who Hunts Smiling.
“Wolf Who Hunts Smiling barks loud, but lies in his heart like a fox. Everyone saw how he cheated and lied with the stones!”
Wolf Who Hunts Smiling’s rage was instant. In a moment, he was off his pony, his knife at the ready. Matthew had learned his fighting style from watching the drunken miners in Bighorn Falls; and he made the mistake of squaring off to box white-man style.
His eyes mocking Matthew, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling casually picked up a rock and threw it at him, hitting his enemy hard in the forehead.
Pain exploded inside Matthew’s skull. The day suddenly went blurry, and his legs seemed to lose their bones. The next thing he knew, the ground rushed up to meet him, and he lay there dazed.
Snarling in triumph, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling straddled him and knelt, raising his knife to plunge it.
“No!” Little Horse shouted. He jumped on Wolf Who Hunts Smiling from behind and held on for dear life. But Wolf Who Hunts Smiling was stronger and soon had the smaller boy pinned under him, his knife at the boy’s throat.
Black Elk interceded, stopping his cousin’s hand from slicing open Little Horse’s throat. During their struggles, the blade had opened up a nasty gash on Little Horse’s chest.
“He begs for the life of this woman!” protested Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. “He begs for the white man’s dog who ruined our hunt!”
Before Black Elk could reply, a hidden rifle spoke its piece, and True Son’s white mustang dropped dead where it stood.