Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Swift Canoe were unable to report their news to Black Elk immediately.
On the previous day the hunters had run into exceptional luck near Sweet Medicine Creek, bringing down three full-grown elks and a fat mule deer. So much meat to butcher and pack in required help from camp. And friendly Sioux scouts had recently reported that Pawnee patrols had invaded Cheyenne country—meaning an armed war party would have to accompany the hunters back with their valuable haul.
Black Elk had led the war party. They had not returned until their uncle, the moon, had journeyed well across the sky. Wolf Who Hunts Smiling and Swift Canoe lingered about impatiently the next morning, until Honey Eater finally emerged from Black Elk’s tipi and started the cooking fire.
Soon after, Black Elk emerged and ate his morning meal. Afterward, he moved to the shade behind his tipi and sat to file arrow-points, which he had fastened onto a cottonwood stick to hold them. The two young warriors finally approached him.
“Cousin!” said Wolf Who Hunts Smiling.
Black Elk looked up. He was still tired, and his face still puffy and lopsided from sleep. Even so, the ear sewn back onto his skull with buckskin thread gave him a particularly fierce aspect.
“I would speak with you,” said Wolf Who Hunts Smiling.
“You have a tongue,” said Black Elk impatiently. “Use it.”
Knowing a storm was about to break, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling glanced toward the tipi and lowered his voice. Then he announced bluntly, “Honey Eater has been meeting with Touch the Sky. He holds her in his blanket. We saw them last night.”
Black Elk had expected nothing like this. For a moment his face was blank, the words too impossible to believe. Then, abruptly, hot blood rushed to his face.
“You speak in a wolf bark! Everyone knows you hate Touch the Sky. I care nothing for the trouble between you and your enemy, nor what lies you speak of each other. But now you claim that my bride has sullied the Medicine Arrows!
“Cousin! A moment before, I told you that you have a tongue. Now, I swear by Maiyun, I will cut it from your head!”
“I speak the straight word! Swift Canoe saw them too.”
Swift Canoe bravely met Black Elk’s fierce dark eyes and nodded.
“Both of you hate him!” said Black Elk. But desperation had crept into his tone. Adultery was a serious charge, as serious—and almost as rare among the Cheyenne—as the murder of a fellow Cheyenne. No one would make such a charge lightly.
Abruptly, Black Elk threw down the arrow-points and stood up, hurrying into his tipi. The two youths expected a storm from within as Black Elk confronted his squaw. But instead he emerged a moment later, holding a curled piece of red willow bark.
“Swear this thing you have told me,” he challenged them, thrusting forward the piece of bark. “Swear it on the Sacred Arrows!”
They glanced down and saw a red-clay drawing of the four Medicine Arrows, two pointing vertically, the other pair crossing them horizontally. No Cheyenne would lie while swearing on the Arrows, even on a symbolic drawing of them. Without hesitating, both bucks placed their hands on the bark and swore their oath.
Finally Black Elk believed them.
The hot, jealous rage which consumed him almost caused him to rush inside and kill Honey Eater on the spot. But following hard upon his rage came another emotion: shame. How could he, a proud warrior whose bonnet was full of coup feathers, admit to the tribe that his squaw was secretly meeting the outcast spy?
He could divorce his wife on the drum, of course. And this was a great disgrace for any squaw, let alone a chief’s daughter. The men in the man’s clan would sing the Throw-away Song while the husband danced by himself, holding a stick in his hand. Dancing up to the drum, the man hit it with his stick.
Boom! “I throw away my wife.” With those words a warrior could drum his wife away, making a public quit-claim to all responsibility toward the squaw.
But the entire tribe would soon learn why. And never would he be respected—a war chief who could not keep his wife from rutting with a white man’s dog! Besides—despite her treachery, Black Elk still loved Honey Eater. Better to pretend nothing had happened. Better to eliminate the other half of the problem.
Better, decided Black Elk, to kill Touch the Sky.
True, the mysterious stranger had the fighting spirit of a cougar and had developed into the best warrior Black Elk had ever trained. But he did not respect the Cheyenne way. He was a threat to the entire tribe, as this blackest of crimes proved.
Once again Black Elk held out the red willow bark.
“You have long thirsted for Touch the Sky’s blood,” Black Elk said to his cousin. “If you and Swift Canoe will make a vow of silence about this thing you have told me, I will give you my permission to kill him. And I will help you do it secretly, so the tribe will not know it was you.”
The two friends readily agreed and swore their vow.
Arrow Keeper had already announced to the Councilors that Touch the Sky had been sent in the direction of the sun’s birthplace on a vision quest at Medicine Lake.
“Pawnee are said to be in the area,” said Black Elk. “I will announce to the others that, as War Chief, I have sent you two out on an important scouting mission. Ride hard toward the Black Hills and be waiting when this squaw-stealing dog arrives. Wash his white man’s stink from our tribe forever. For the sake of our people, kill him, Cheyenne warriors!”
~*~
The Pawnee warrior named Red Plume halted the line of braves behind him by raising his streamered lance high over his head.
One by one, all six braves nudged their ponies up beside their leader’s. From behind a huge pile of scree high up in the rimrock, they watched a lone rider below make his way slowly across the open tableland near the Powder River.
“Cheyenne,” said a keen-eyed brave named Gun Powder, recognizing the distinctive red handprint on the pony’s left forequarter.
Normally, at a distance, the distinctive cut of the hair was the quickest way to guess an Indian’s tribe. But this youth had cropped short his hair in mourning, a practice common among several Plains tribes.
“We have been patient long enough,” said Red Plume. “Yellow Bear has crossed over. The best time for a surprise attack will be during their chief-renewal, when all have assembled with their gifts for the poor. We need only wait until darkness, as we did when our people stole their Sacred Arrows. These white-livered Shaiyena fear the darkness.”
Red Plume was referring to the great battle, many winters ago, when the Pawnee had captured the Cheyenne’s Sacred Arrows. Though their enemy had eventually regained them, a hatred inspired by bloodlust had grown between the two tribes ever since.
The Pawnee, who called themselves Chahiksi-chakihs, “men of men,” were naked save for clouts and elkskin moccasins. Bright red plumage adorned their greased topknots, which rose stiff and straight from otherwise shaved skulls. Their powerful bows, made from the wood of the Osage orange, were feared throughout Plains country.
“Our shadows grow long in the sun,” said Gun Powder. “We have only to trail him until he makes his camp for the night.”
In contrast to the Cheyenne and most other Plains Indians, the Pawnee liked to travel and attack after dark. Their priests taught that all energy derived from the stars and constellations. Therefore, the tribe possessed an extensive knowledge of the heavens and commonly employed star charts to move about freely at night. Other Plains Indians named the stars, but—fearing darkness—had not learned to navigate by them.
“No,” said Red Plume. “We seize him now, in the open, before he possibly meets with others. And then we learn from him exactly when and where the chief-renewal will be. Until we know this thing, we cannot know the best time to bring in the main body for the attack.”
Red Plume slid a stone-tipped arrow from his quiver and lined the notch up with the buffalo-sinew bowstring. The others followed suit.
Riding out of the blazing sun behind them to disguise their movement, the Pawnee descended from the high country with blood in their eyes.
~*~
His mind numb with sadness, Touch the Sky had ridden due east all day long, letting his pony set her own pace.
It would still be several more sleeps’ ride before he would spot the rolling, dark-forested humps of the Black Hills on the horizon. Medicine Lake was nestled high among the hills. He had visited the sacred center of the Cheyenne world once before, when Arrow Keeper taught him the rudiments of Cheyenne customs and religion.
All that seemed as distant to him now as a long-forgotten dream. So much had happened since then: He had become a warrior, slain enemies, earned his first coup feather, withstood vicious torture—and sworn his eternal love to Honey Eater, who had returned his vow.
But everything he had done, like Honey Eaters love, was nothing but smoke behind him. He was hated as much by the tribe now as on the first day of his capture. For them, the white man’s stink could never be washed from his skin, though it was red skin like theirs.
The spotted gray shied when a rabbit darted across their path, bringing Touch the Sky back to the present.
With a start of guilt, he glanced all around the sprawling vastness surrounding him. For a long time he had been riding with no attention to where he was going. The plains stretched out endlessly before him, the green and ochre colors bleeding together now as the sun neared her resting place. The river snaked its winding way on his left. Mountain peaks cut jagged spires against the sky behind him, the shimmering sun backlighting them and forcing him to squint.
The gray acted nervous and skittish, even after the rabbit was long gone. Again Touch the Sky glanced behind him, blinded in the fierce light. Scattered clumps of cottonwood trees could easily hide pursuers.
A premonition of danger moved up his spine like the ticklish touch of a feather.
He placed a hand on the gray’s thick white mane and spoke gently to her. It was almost time to make camp for the night. He veered closer to the river, planning to find a good patch of graze in which to tether his pony.
Suddenly, a sharp tug just below his ribs was followed immediately by a white-hot pain in his left side that made him cry out.
Touch the Sky looked down and recognized a Pawnee arrowhead protruding from his body, the honed tip shiny with his blood!
Then his hackles rose when, with a thundering of hooves, his unseen enemies raised a triumphant war cry and charged him.