Stone Song Read online

  When the party got near the Loup River, Little Thunder and some others said they wanted to ride to the Pani earth lodges to steal some horses. The Sicangu thought the Pani truly a vile people. What marked them irredeemably as savages was their taste for capturing girls of the Lakota and Sahiyela and sacrificing their lives to Morning Star.

  But Spotted Tail looked at Curly and his Hunkpatila comrades. Everyone was holding horses or getting mounted. Spotted Tail grinned, seeming to ponder the fun of committing mayhem here against the fun of committing mayhem there. “Let’s not overwhelm the poor Pani with numbers this time,” he said. He jerked his head sideways and smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Let’s go against the Two Circle People.” He seemed to have something delicious in mind.

  They found the camp easily enough—the Two Circle People were away from their river cornfields to hunt—and Spotted Tail said they’d try stealing a few Two Circle mounts, just for fun. “This time we’ll ride Two Circle horses, next time Two Circle women,” he joked.

  Curly got his wish: Spotted Tail chose him to help sneak up on the herd, his first warlike deed. In the middle of the night he and his uncle slipped quietly toward the pony herd. They sat still in moon shadows. Curly used his eyes silently. And his ears—he took in all the sounds of the night birds, the wind, the thumpings and snufflings among the ponies. Before long he knew where the two guards were, knew that one was motionless but alert, the other still and asleep.

  Spotted Tail and Curly crept toward the herd very slowly, easing from shadow to shadow, blending in with the wrinkles in the landscape when they moved, sitting still as boulders when they waited. At each pause they sat still until the birds stirred again, and until the herd stopped stirring.

  Curly breathed slowly, fully aware of himself, his body, its motion, of everything around him. He could walk with perfect certainty, knowing he would not make noise. He was sure he could sit still while a sentry looked right at him and go unseen. He was a tree, a bush, perhaps a coyote, but not an enemy.

  They did it the hard way but good way. They took the time to approach a dozen of the hobbled horses without disturbing them. These would be the most valued mounts. Silently, one by careful one, they cut the restraints. Just before first light they mounted swiftly, yelling and waving their blankets. As they hightailed it out of there, Spotted Tail laughed and whooped like a maniac.

  For the first time Curly felt himself a warrior.

  Then Spotted Tail got serious. He and the youths drove the horses hard half the night, left them in a gully with a watch, and rode fast back to the Two Circle camp. At dawn, hidden, they watched to see how many warriors were in camp. Spotted Tail gave a big smile of satisfaction. “Goddamn few,” he said to Curly. When he wanted to act silly, Spotted Tail would say his favorite wasicu word: goddamn. The Two Circle men were mostly gone after the stolen ponies.

  Curly, Hump, and Young Man-Whose-Enemies lined up in a flank next to Spotted Tail. When the leader nodded, the warriors charged as furiously as dust devils, whooping and yelling and kicking up dust and creating every kind of havoc.

  That was when Curly felt it, the lifting of Hawk from her perch in his heart, the rise toward an attitude of flight.

  He toppled the ear-flap poles of one tipi and threw his spear through the hide of another. He vented the cry of the red-tailed hawk, KEE-ur, KEE-ur, fierce and primordial, a yawp of predation. Now he felt it, the leading edge of her wing catching the wind.

  He saw Hump touch an armed older man on the head with his coup stick and yelp out his victory. Spotted Tail knocked down a tripod holding a medicine bundle. Excited, Curly trampled the bundle with his pony’s hooves. He saw a fat woman fleeing with a duck waddle. He chased her on his pony. When she heard the clap of hooves, she waddled twice as fast. He laughed and circled his pony so hard they both almost fell.

  KEE-ur, KEE-ur. His heart’s cry, not a musical sound like some birds’, but raw and bloody.

  Two Circles ran like spooked prairie hens. Some of the youths and older men got into some brush along the creek and started a defensive fire, arrows and a little lead.

  Curly heard the whu-up-up of lead near his ear, too near.

  KEE-ur, KEE-ur.

  Whoa. Death is here. A warrior must watch himself or catch a little of it.

  He held up his pony. The thought of Rider’s invulnerability against enemy fire skittered across his mind. He felt for it in his heart. He couldn’t find it.

  Uncertain, he decided to rest a moment at the far end of the village. Most of the fire was in the center. Spotted Tail was riding around like a dervish, screaming. Curly saw him push a running man down with his coup stick and whoop with laughter. The Sicangu shot at no one.

  Then Curly saw it. Yes, movement. Buckskin. A warrior in the brush not forty yards away, creeping close enough to shoot an arrow.

  KEE-ur, KEE-ur.

  Riding close enough for the hand coup crossed his mind, but Curly realized he was far from that size of spirit yet, and unprotected against enemy fire.

  He slipped off his horse. He wanted to make sure of his aim, not show off with a wild shot from horseback. He waited.

  Motion again. The left arm of the figure raised.

  Quickly Curly aimed just below the arm and squeezed the trigger. The warrior half-rose and pitched forward.

  “Hu ikhpeya wicayapo!” Curly bellowed, calling bloodthirstily for the complete defeat of the enemy and then humiliation heaped on the dead body.

  He left his horse and dashed to the body, scalping knife in hand, and touched it, his first coup.

  Noticed uneasily that the hair was brown, like his sister’s, and in braids, like a woman’s.

  Jerked the head back to take the scalp. Saw he had killed a woman.

  His mind and heart were fluttered with wing beats.

  Take the scalp! his head shouted at him.

  Some of the people would judge a woman’s scalp more of a trophy than a man’s, a greater blow to the pride of the enemy.

  Don’t touch it, his heart said. Like Rider, take nothing for yourself.

  But Curly hadn’t intended to kill a woman. Shame ran in him like bile. If he had identified her as a woman and deliberately attacked her in front of her man as an insult to him, that would have been fine, but…

  He dropped the lifeless head.

  Mounted. Trotted off. Wing beats pounding furiously against his ribs. Hawk’s agitation.

  Should he have trusted in the protection against enemy fire? Should he have done this, should he have done that?

  He heard Young Man-Whose-Enemies whoop as he took the woman’s scalp.

  Suddenly Curly didn’t want to be in the fight but simply to take it in with his senses. He trotted his pony off to a little knoll.

  The fracas was ending. The other warriors joined him, no one hurt, four scalps in hand.

  Curly saw Spotted Tail look back at the village keenly, bowing his horse’s head back that way. The Two Circle men were set and ready now. The village was dangerous.

  Spotted Tail jumped his horse forward. Curly had the impression of a fury of energy, like a huge boulder bounding down a hill.

  Spotted Tail raised no weapon. He charged straight at the firing Two Circles.

  He rode untouched through the barrage. He turned his horse and rode parallel to their line, lead and arrows flying all around him. Untouched.

  Rider, Curly thought. His blood surged.

  From behind them on a bluff Spotted Tail’s wife Spoon made the trilling sound, rejoicing in her man’s medicine.

  Spotted Tail kicked his horse hard back toward the Lakota on the knoll. His warriors shouted their exultation. Curly yelled, for once full of words.

  Spotted Tail whirled and looked back at the village. Curly felt his muscles arch with eagerness.

  Again! The shirt wearer bounded horseback toward the village. The Two Circle men fired frantically. Spotted Tail seemed to ride in triumphant pulse to a grand, measured, heroic music.


  Curly felt not a quiver of fear for his uncle.

  Spotted Tail was invulnerable.

  Oddly, now, in the midst of Curly’s uncle’s whirlwind, it came back.

  That sense of himself as possibility, riding the wind, in the fury of the whirl of life, yet at the same time above it, observant and serene.

  In this high awareness, Curly smelled again the blood and excrement of man and beast flowing. The acrid dust dried his nostrils. The sounds of the battle streamed through his consciousness, separate and distinct. He saw his uncle’s charge and the previous fight not as a tumble of distinct impressions, but as a slow parade, all events simultaneous, prolonged, suspended in time.

  This must be the way Hawk sees the world, he thought. He heard the trilling of Spoon on the bluff behind as a kind of martial flute music. He felt at home.

  Spotted Tail let his nephew maneuver the two of them off by themselves. They sat cross-legged chewing on pemmican, a dried, sausage-like meat. Spotted Tail saw that the boy was distressed. For Light Curly Hair the hardest thing seemed to be asking other people for things, anything.

  At last Curly began, “Where does that power come from?” The boy forced himself not to mumble the second sentence: “You couldn’t be touched by enemy fire.”

  “A gift,” Spotted Tail said. He looked his nephew in the eye.

  “From …?”

  Spotted Tail shrugged. He was not a philosopher, did not trust words for the big things everyone knew. He waited.

  Curly seemed to turn the words over and over and look at them carefully. “You saw beyond?”

  Spotted Tail shook his head. “No. I didn’t. I seldom do.”

  The boy’s face spoke a thousand words. Always so serious. “But how do you know you’re safe?”

  Spotted Tail looked within himself. He didn’t want to give a facile answer. He wanted to look at the reality and describe it simply and accurately. At last he spoke. “You are prepared. You listen to your spirit helper. You feel … everything. The sun, the wind, everything. Sometimes you feel something rise in you, and you know.”

  He waited. “When you are truly thirsty, drink deep. When you truly feel the drum, dance.” He said it this way even though he knew his nephew didn’t dance. “When you feel the power, swim in it, feel it like a big river in spring flood.” Spotted Tail smiled a big smile at his nephew. “That’s all.”

  He hoped Curly had the simplicity and the truth within him to accept this explanation, to feel its surfaces, to suck on it, to hold it in his heart. For there was nothing more to say, really.

  Curly sat. Words lit his face and went away. He struggled not to fidget. He stared off into space. Finally, he got to his feet, murmured, “Thank you,” and left.

  Yes, thought Spotted Tail. It’s hard to be young.

  A DIFFERENT KIND OF WAR

  A quarter-moon later Curly awoke to the sound of the rain-slides-off-the-feathers bird, the owl. Two calls, he remembered now. Maybe even three.

  Without sitting up in his blankets he looked around the camp. It was half-shadowy, the first hint of dawn light.

  Another hoo-oo, hoo-oo.

  Other young men were stirring, reaching for their weapons. They heard what Curly heard—men imitating owls.

  Suddenly Spotted Tail burst out of his little travel tipi, brandishing his spear in one hand and his war club in the other. He yelled, “Who wants to fight a true Lakota? Who is man enough?” He dashed around like an incensed goose looking for someone to bite.

  Curly flushed with shame. His uncle was playing the fool and would get himself killed.

  It came from the gully, fast. Hit Spotted Tail. Knocked him down. Two bodies tumbled over the ground like boulders hurtling downhill. Arms thrashed. Blows, strangled cries, probably bites. The bodies poised, writhing, struggling.

  Curly ran toward his uncle, an arrow notched.

  A brawny chest rose up above Spotted Tail. A thick arm hefted a club.

  Curly knelt quickly and drew his bowstring.

  At that moment a dozen riders whipped their mounts into camp, bellowing their battle cries.

  Curly held the tip of his arrow on the brawny chest.

  Then he lowered it.

  The enemies were yelling in Lakota.

  A rider tapped him on the shoulder with a coup stick, very lightly.

  No Water’s thick arm plunged a knife into the dust next to Spotted Tail’s ear. Spotted Tail’s guffaw filled the camp.

  No Water’s face lifted to the sky above the mock-slain Spotted Tail. His voice roared in triumph. Curly couldn’t take his eyes off No Water’s hands.

  Spotted Tail gave a death rattle and then cackled.

  Then everyone sat down with stories to tell.

  No Water, the twins, Pretty Fellow, several other Bad Face youths, and some young Sahiyela had gone out looking for Two Circle ponies, too. Not until they saw the tracks did they realize the Sicangu and Hunkpatila young men had already had their fun with these people.

  “It’s nothing to brag about, whipping such unworthy foes,” said Black Twin, “but we want to hear what happened anyway.”

  Little Thunder spoke for his young men, Spotted Tail for the gang Curly was in. “We got some horses,” Little Thunder said, not making a big deal of it. “The ones you see there,” he said, nodding toward a rope corral. “The Pani know nothing about horses.”

  The chief was bragging by understatement. They had fifteen or twenty good-looking ponies.

  Spotted Tail told briefly about stealing the Two Circle ponies and the doubling-back raid. He mentioned Curly’s first coup. This was not a formal telling, like the one they’d have back at the village. Hump sat next to his hunka and looked at him happily.

  Curly hated to talk in front of groups of people, but it was necessary. He spoke simply. “We surprised the village, got five first coups and four scalps. When the Two Circle warriors began to shoot back hard, we rode off onto a little knoll to rest the ponies. It was then that my uncle, Spotted Tail, showed the strength of his spirit.

  “Invulnerable in his power, he charged his pony straight into the fire. He did not fire, because he had no need. He rode like a whirling wind, furious power but nothing to hit. He circled in front of the enemies, gave them his back to shoot at, and rode dancing back to us, his comrades.”

  Curly hesitated. He felt a little foolish doing all this talking. “Then,” he went on, “Spotted Tail felt the spirit rise up in his heart once more, and he rode down the mountain at the enemies again, like a storm. They were afraid of his medicine, and he returned to us untouched.”

  When Curly finished, the young men gave Spotted Tail the respect of silence.

  The camp of the Sicangu was half a sleep away, the visitors said. Tonight they would ride into camp ceremonially, in the manner of victory. They would tell what had happened. Curly’s first coup, Spotted Tail’s great rides, and the other deeds would be told formally to the people. Everyone would dance.

  “Co ho! Co ho!”

  Curly and Hump rolled wearily out of their blankets and stood in front of the wickiup. The dance had lasted until nearly dawn.

  “Co ho! Co ho!” came the chant again.

  Young Man-Whose-Enemies and the others crawled out of their brush huts and looked around warily, eyes blinking at the rising sun.

  None of the young Lakota men was early up from his blankets, and maybe the smiles on the faces of the young Sahiyela men were partly because of that. But not entirely, Curly knew.

  “Co ho! Co ho!” came the chant over and over. It was the young Sahiyela visitors, singing an incantation in their language.

  “They want to fight,” said Hump, grinning.

  Curly wasn’t good at the words of any language but his own, and not much good with those.

  “The kicking game,” Hump said.

  “Co ho! Co ho!” came the chant, low, insistent. There were half a dozen Sahiyela youths and three times as many young Lakota, plus adults. Curly smiled to himself. Probabl
y enough to make a Lakota winner likely. The guests, the Sahiyela, got to pick the game.

  Hump slipped sideways to Young Man-Whose-Enemies and murmured softly, “Yes, the kicking game.”

  Young Man-Whose-Enemies nodded happily. Though it was mainly a Sahiyela game, all the Lakota knew it. The Sahiyela liked to pit one warrior club against another, with wild enthusiasm and violence, but all in good sport. It was a fine way for the Lakota to have fun with their Sahiyela guests.

  The game was tricky. You couldn’t use your hands at all, not even to fend off the other fellow’s feet. You had to learn to dodge kicks, knock them aside with your arms, or slip them with your torso. And the maneuver the Sahiyela were best at, leaping into the air and kicking with both feet together, was very difficult.

  All the young Lakota grinned at each other. “Hokahe!” said someone. It was a joke, a call for violent war against friends.

  “Hokahe!” cried Buffalo Hump. He was always ready for a war, play or real, and always a wild man. He was the most experienced Lakota and so might do well.

  He jerked his head at Curly, meaning, “Let’s go.”

  Curly felt it. Hawk in his chest was uneasy. Not lunging at her perch straps, but restless.

  He would have to think later about what it meant. Later.

  Now he eyed Pretty Fellow. The Bad Face was stronger than Curly would have thought, and smart. He looked slighter than he was. Somehow he’d taken Young Man-Whose-Enemies out of the competition, which got a reaction from the crowd. Two old enmities met, one chief’s son faced the other, and the Bad Face won.

  Pretty Fellow was smiling crookedly. It was one of those smiles that said, “This had to come sooner or later, and I welcome the opportunity.”

  Curly was surprised. He didn’t care about a killing that had happened when he was one winter old. He didn’t like the way resentments still festered. And he didn’t feel that he represented the Hunkpatila.

  Hunh-hunh-he!

  Curly jerked away from three right-foot kicks from Pretty Fellow, head high. They were feints, but Curly flinched backward. Pretty Fellow smiled more crookedly, and the crowd chuckled. Then the silence of high anticipation. This Pretty Fellow wasn’t just playing.