Danny was aware of his brother leaving, rising from beside him and rustling off through the hay—and though he meant to call him back, he couldn’t resist the sleep coming on, so sweet in its promise, like a bright fall day that smelled of old grass. All he had to do was walk into it, the sky clear with a big yellow sun and ahead of him a soft dirt path leading to a high plain where the ground moved beneath him.
Mountains rose like purple clouds in the west, and between here and there was a herd of grazing buffalo, thousands of acres of them, black and brown and smelling like dust. In the middle of this mass of life Danny saw a high, pointed tent. He was thinking on how to cross this lake of creatures, how to reach that tent, when a voice came from behind him. He turned. It was Two Blood, wearing a straw hat pulled low on his forehead and peering at Danny through his light-blue eyes. He said, “Aren’t you going over there to see him?”
“He’s there?” Danny asked.
Two Blood nodded.
“Does he want to see me?”
“Let’s go.” Two Blood led the way, the two of them reaching out to touch heads and horns and nappy sides as they went, the animals making room for them to pass.
At the high gray tent, Two Blood drew back a canvas flap. There was a large congregation inside, rapt, heads craning forward, and though Danny expected to see his father at the front, along with Reverend Pearl, instead it was Buffalo Bill with his pointed beard and fringed jacket, standing on a wooden stage. He lifted his rifle and fired into the air at two white doves, which burst into puffs of feathers, one then the other, bam, bam. Everybody clapped and cheered. Danny’s eyes were drawn to the edge of the stage where a man—his father—lifted two more doves into view, a bird in each hand. He was old-looking, tired, his shoulders thinner than Danny remembered—and when Buffalo Bill shouted Pull, Ulysses released the birds, which rose above the stage only to explode, one-two, as the rifle jumped in Bill’s hands. Danny ran up through the crowd to the stage, right up close, and waited for his father to spot him. When he did, Danny lifted a hand. His father’s eyes were full of tears.
“I didn’t want you to see this,” his father said, and reached out to lay a finger alongside his son’s cheek.
“It’s all right,” Danny told him. Then the tent began to wobble on account of the press of animals outside, and Danny could feel beneath him the heavy movement of their million hooves—and then he was awake, his eyes coming into focus on the boots of his brother, standing above him in the hay.
“Went out and found you some breakfast,” Eli said. “You still hungry?”