Beauty for Ashes Read online

  SAM WATCHED THE evening shadows lengthen. They were closing in on him, the gentlest of traps. He felt as though he could almost hear them whisper. He wished he could make out the words. But he knew the message was mockery.

  No meat for you.

  He sniffed. He’d waited since sundown, no deer. Still no deer. Not a one had come to water, or not this water.

  He stroked his single arrow, felt the smoothness of the shaft. He ran his finger along the serrated edge of the flint. Sharp enough.

  Come, deer, come.

  A shadow stirred.

  No, he’d imagined it.

  The shadow edged forward.

  Deer.

  Yes, a doe and a spotted fawn.

  They ghosted forward one step at a time, as though they knew better.

  Now the wind came downcanyon, and Sam was downstream of the deer. They stopped twenty feet from the edge of the trees, suspicious, feeling the predator they couldn’t smell.

  The doe turned straight toward Sam. The fawn echoed her stance.

  He stilled himself, maybe even his heartbeat. This is a chance.

  The doe faced straight toward him. She lifted her muzzle and sniffed.

  Wrong sense.

  She turned back the way she’d come, and stopped. The fawn imitated her.

  Sam held his breath. He didn’t have a decent shot. A sapling blocked the doe’s middle. The fawn stood in front of her. Small target.

  They’re going to run.

  Sam hefted the bow and instantly let the arrow fly.

  A hit! A sort of hit. Sam thought the arrow had actually ricocheted off the back of the fawn and into the doe behind the shoulder blade.

  For an instant the doe stood quivering.

  Deciding whether to die?

  Then she bolted.

  Sam dropped the bow and ran like a maniac.

  She hadn’t been hit hard. The arrow worked up and down in her ribs like a pump handle. But maybe she wouldn’t go far, couldn’t go far.

  When he cleared the trees, the doe and fawn were standing on the prairie, looking around. They saw Sam and ran upstream, their bottoms bouncing in the last of the light.

  Am I going to lose her?

  Sam ran like hell and shrieked like a banshee.

  Out of pain, or shock at the sound, the doe stopped.

  Sam ran and roared.

  When he was a dozen steps away, she ran directly away from the river.

  He veered that way. He would have hollered but was out of breath.

  The doe stopped and pivoted.

  She’s crazy with pain or fear.

  The doe dashed straight at him.

  They collided. Shoulder bounced off shoulder. For a split-second Sam thought the arrow would actually stick in him.

  The doe went down.

  Sam pitched to the ground, rolled, and found his feet.

  The fawn skittered a few steps, stopped, and looked back, quivering.

  The doe clambered up and started to run.

  Before she got three steps, Sam jumped on her back.

  She bolted upward, like trying to jump onto the moon.

  Sam held on.

  He jerked the ornament knife out of his braid, reached around the doe, and slit her throat.

  She crashed down. Sam went tumbling through the grass. He sat up. She wasn’t moving. His right forearm was covered with blood.

  Sam looked at the fawn. It danced lightly away.

  Sam did as his father taught him, and said, “Godspeed.”

  Then he bellowed, “Hallelujah.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  IT WAS A comedy. He’d broken his last arrow, probably when he banged the deer’s shoulder. He gutted her out with his ornament blade, which was the length of a finger joint. Butchering required a butcher knife. Still, he got it done.

  He staggered into camp, exhausted by her weight. Sam dunked himself in the river to get the dust caked with blood off. Straight Arm and Stripe gladly helped finish the butchering. Sam took the heart and liver, his by right, and broiled them on a stick over the flames. He thought that was the best meat he’d ever tasted.

  As the others finished the butchering, he wondered if his dreams would be haunted again. Or did action, maybe, chase away the phantoms?

  He thought of tomorrow. He would spend the day on women’s work—cutting the meat into strips and slowly drying it over low flames.

  Now they fed on the back straps, share and share alike. He gorged himself.

  He broke ribs off and gave them to Coy, as many as the little coyote wanted.

  Tomorrow he would also set about making new arrows. He’d trade the deer hide for a pair of moccasins. Which would still leave him poor. He had no rifle. He had no traps to take beaver to earn money for a rifle. Or powder and lead, or a butcher knife, or coffee and sugar, or anything else that would make him a white man.

  He was so belly-heavy he could barely move. He crawled to his buffalo robe.

  I have meat against the winter.

  And guilt enough to last a lifetime.

  IN THE MIDDLE of the night Coy mewled and woke Sam up. He wondered if the little coyote was hungry again. He reached down and petted Coy’s head. Suddenly, he had one clear thought: That meat, actually, won’t last the week.

  He also thought that being poor wasn’t all right. It didn’t shine, as Beckwourth would say.

  Sam was in a big hole.

  He needed to trade for things. Material goods. White man stuff.

  He took stock. He owned Paladin, as much as any man could own her. But he would never trade her. The tricks she could do, they dazzled his mind and lifted his spirits. And no one else could get her to do them.

  He didn’t own Coy, who was no good in trade anyway. He gave the coyote’s ears a good rub and lay back down.

  He had his legs, arms, and brain. And heart. What would that get him?

  He could shoot some beaver, probably, with arrows. That was the hard way, compared to setting a trap and coming back later. If the beaver swam for its lodge, what would he do? Swim into the lodge? With maybe several beaver there, that idea didn’t shine.

  A few of the Crows had traps the fur men had traded them for almost nothing, in the hope that the Indians would learn to be fur hunters. They weren’t, not to amount to anything. Sam could take deer and trade hides and meat for traps. Yes, that’s what he’d do.

  Then he’d spend part of the fall and winter getting enough plews to trade for…

  Just a minute. Was he going to trade for a rifle?

  He couldn’t do that. Had to get The Celt back, some way. Had to get The Celt back.

  He shoved that out of his mind. He heard the inside of his mind whisper, “Too damn dangerous.”

  He had to work hard, work like hell. He had to get stuff, had to prove himself.

  Because Meadowlark would never marry a poor man, a disgraced man.

  He turned over in the buffalo robe. He looked at the blackness of the sky through the leaves and branches of the hut. He wished it was light, so he could get going.

  MEADOWLARK AVOIDED HIM. Everyone in the Gray Hawk family avoided Sam, even Flat Dog.

  At midday they’d returned and set up their tipi in the lodge circle. They said little to anyone, and few approached them. Maybe that was a way of honoring their grief.

  The family shunned Sam. They refused even to look in his direction.

  He rode Paladin upriver, Coy following, to a willow patch to cut more shafts for arrows. By God, he was going to become an arrow manufacturer. The only way he could rise in the world, now, was to make arrows. Trade them or take deer with them. No other way.

  In the evening Sam waited in the cottonwoods and watched the other young women come to the river to get water. Meadowlark didn’t come. Needle made the trip, surely to keep Meadowlark away from Sam.

  When Sam got back to his brush hut, though, Flat Dog sat there talking to Stripe and Straight Arm. He shared a deer hindquarter with the three of them. Sam ha
d hung it up, thinking the cold September night and cool day wouldn’t spoil it, not in one day. Sam showed Flat Dog the gift bow from Bell Rock, and described his deer hunt for comical effect. Flat Dog said very little in return.

  When they were finished, he said to Sam, “Let’s build a brush hut.”

  Sam smiled big. “First thing in the morning.” At least two Crows were treating him decently.

  “First thing,” said Flat Dog, “we hunt. I’ll lend you some arrows. Then we build the brush hut.”

  TWO WEEKS LATER the village moved. Everyone marched down the Big Horn to the Pryor Mountains. Along with the other Kit Foxes, Sam rode as a policeman. He felt good to be doing the job along with Flat Dog, Bell Rock, and Red Roan. They kept order in the long line of pony drags, and watched out for the enemy. The trip was uneventful. Sam was glad the Kit Foxes still treated him as one of them.

  Other villages met them near the foot of the Pryors. Together they made one great camp, a series of lodge circles up and down the river. Sam was, sort of, one of over a thousand of Crow people.

  He was still a poor man, but not desperately poor. He owned a dozen arrows and an otter skin quiver, two pairs of moccasins, a shirt, and two buffalo robes. The robes were rubbed half hairless by wear, and wouldn’t get him through the winter.

  In another way he was desperate. Meadowlark avoided him completely. She didn’t stand outside her lodge in the evenings to meet any suitors at all, not even Red Roan. She didn’t sit outside in the afternoon sun, sewing with her friends. She didn’t mingle with the people of the other villages to trade news of what had happened since the spring hunt. She seemed never to come out of the tipi. The entire Gray Hawk family, except Flat Dog, was keeping to themselves. And they were keeping Meadowlark away from Sam.

  Flat Dog confirmed it. “My mother and father haven’t forgiven you for leading that raid. May never.”

  The raid where “the one who isn’t here” died. Flat Dog never used Blue Medicine Horse’s name. No one did.

  Sam didn’t use it. But he dreamed about Blue Medicine Horse.

  He tried to keep his voice casual. “Not Meadowlark either?”

  Flat Dog seemed to ponder while he chewed a slice of blackstrap. “I don’t know.”

  They were broiling the backstrap on sticks over open flames. They ate fresh deer meat most evenings now, and Sam was killing his share. His arms and shoulders were getting noticeably bigger, the muscles more defined.

  Sam looked at Flat Dog straight in the eyes. “I dream about him.”

  Flat Dog looked at Sam questioningly.

  “The one who isn’t here.”

  Flat Dog lowered his head.

  “Maybe it’s me that can’t forgive.”

  Flat Dog snapped his head up.

  “Forgive myself.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. It…” Flat Dog sounded frustrated.

  Sam said slowly and clearly, “Forgive myself.”

  Flat Dog thought for a long moment. “Tomorrow we better go see Bell Rock.”

  SAM, FLAT DOG, and Bell Rock were sitting naked outside the sweat lodge, sweat pouring down their bodies. The evening was cool, soon to be cold, and Sam was glad for it.

  Sam looked at his friends. He had told Bell Rock, simply and truthfully, that the death of the one who was not here was disturbing him, even disturbing his dreams.

  Bell Rock said they would sweat.

  Between rounds they smoked the pipe. After offering the smoke to the four directions, the sky, and the earth, Bell Rock asked for wisdom for each of them, to know how Sam might be healed.

  At the end of the sweat, Bell Rock said in his usual way, acting offhand about what was important, “You should think about holding a sun dance.”

  Sun dance. Sam knew vaguely about it. A ceremony where men put skewers through their chests and hung by ropes from lodge poles. When he thought there wasn’t so much difference between him and Indians—began to think maybe he could be Indian—he thought of the sun dance, shuddered, and knew he was white, white, white.

  “Maybe you should ask for all the buffalo tongues to be saved.”

  To another Crow, Bell Rock would have said those words without mention of a sun dance. Characteristic Crow indirection, Sam knew that much, but he didn’t know what tongues had to do with it. He decided to keep his mouth shut and his stupidity hidden.

  He did know the autumn buffalo hunt, the big one where they joined with other villages and got meat for the entire winter, was coming in the next few days. Men were making medicine to bring buffalo to the people. Scouts were out looking for the great, shaggy creatures.

  “Save the tongues from the hunt that’s coming up?” he asked.

  They were all embarrassed that Sam didn’t know. But they all understood it was because he was new to being a Crow. His friends were good about taking the time and trouble to explain. And then, after one explanation, expected him always to know.

  “We hold a sun dance sometimes,” Bell Rock began, “when one of us has been killed by an enemy, and someone has a great thirst for revenge.”

  “That would usually be a relative,” said Flat Dog. After hesitating, he added, “It might be a close friend.”

  “The man who asks for the dance, he’s called the whistler.”

  “He doesn’t ask for the dance directly,” said Flat Dog. “He tells someone we should save all the buffalo tongues, and that someone tells the chief, and the chief tells the herald to spread the word.”

  “Why buffalo tongues?”

  “During the ceremony, which takes a number of days,” said Bell Rock, “the whistler must give buffalo tongues to the principal families, and to all those who help him.”

  Sam nodded.

  Bell Rock and Flat Dog looked at each other a long moment.

  “All right,” said Bell Rock, “for now we will answer your questions about the ceremony. Then you will ask your heart, and ask the grandfathers and grandmothers, and the four directions, and all the powers, whether you should do this.”

  “Why does the whistler do the ceremony?”

  “He seeks a vision,” said Bell Rock.

  “He is hoping for a vision of revenge,” said Flat Dog. “He blows the eagle-bone whistle and asks to see an enemy killed. Then he rides against the enemy and fulfills the vision.”

  “Whose help is needed for the ceremony?”

  “The effigy owner, mainly,” said Bell Rock.

  “Some men own effigies that have the sun dance medicine.”

  “The owner, we call him the father. The whistler is the son.”

  “The sun dance is not just for one man,” said Flat Dog.

  “Other young men will sacrifice their blood for a vision.”

  Yes, the ones who skewer themselves, Sam thought. It gave him the willies.

  “The sun dance is for all the people. They join in with all their hearts, and share in the blessings.”

  Sam took a long moment to think. “I don’t know how to decide such big stuff.”

  Bell Rock said, “First, ask your heart, not your head.”

  “And,” said Flat Dog, “I have something that may help you.” He reached for a bundle wrapped in a deer hide and handed it to Sam. “A gift.”

  First Sam found a hide bag made from sheepskin. It was a very simple bag, rectangular, with a thong fringe but no bead or quill decoration.

  Inside was a pipe stem and a bowl of red stone. The stone was carved into the shape of a T, with four rings around the part that held the tobacco. These, Sam knew, represented the four directions.

  He also knew that a big moment had arrived. Flat Dog and Bell Rock were inviting him to become a carrier of the sacred pipe, as every Crow man was.

  Sam looked at Flat Dog. He knew the hours required to shape the stem and the bowl, and the expense of getting a woman to sew the bag. He also knew that a quiet statement was being made. This was not an elaborate pipe; it was barely decorated at all, and it was short. Not the pipe of a man of conseq
uence, but of a beginner.

  “Thank you,” he said to Flat Dog. Breath in, breath out. “I accept.”

  “Then,” said Bell Rock, “we will dedicate your pipe by smoking it.”

  “From now on when you can’t decide something, or you need special strength,” said Flat Dog, “you’ll ask your pipe.”

  ON THE NEXT evening Sam came back to Bell Rock. The medicine man asked if he wanted to smoke.

  “Not tonight,” said Sam. “I just want information.”

  Bell Rock waited.

  “Will the people save the buffalo tongues if a white man asks?”

  “They will if I support it.”

  Sam nodded. “Will an effigy owner consent to be my father?”

  “I will.”

  Now a long pause. “Will the people join in with all their hearts, if a white man is the whistler?”

  “Most will, some won’t.”

  Sam grimaced and thought. “This will make it all right, what happened?”

  “He will never be here, and you will always miss him. But it will be all right.”

  “Anything else you want me to think on?”

  Bell Rock smiled. “Maybe you should think of yourself more as a man, not just a white man.”

  THE NEXT EVENING scouts came into the camp with news. On the other side of Pryor Gap, on Lodge Creek, they had found buffalo, many thousands of buffalo.

  That night the heralds walked around the camps crying out the news: “There will be a big buffalo hunt.”

  The next morning experienced men rode out to see the herd and the country around it. Maybe they would set up a jump, where the buffalo could be driven off a cliff. Or maybe no jump would be handy, and they’d decide on tactics for a surround. For a thousand mouths and a long winter, they needed a lot of buffalo.

  That evening Sam Morgan, a pipe carrier and no longer just a white man, spoke a few words to Bell Rock.

  Bell Rock sent Flat Dog to the chief, Rides Twice.

  Though Rides Twice may have been surprised, he merely nodded. Even a chief did not ask questions when Spirit spoke.

  Within an hour the camp herald made their rounds of the lodge circles, crying, “Save all the tongues. Do not let the children have any. Save all the tongues.”