The Dying Grass, page 112
2
Ollokot, my brother, show me your heart. I know not what to do.
Elder brother, you know very well that when our father lay dying, he told us to look to you. Lead us. You are my chief.
3
He rides up to White Bird, who smiles at him and says: In that draw there we killed a fine buffalo cow; she was almost snow-white,
and he sees that this tale is about his father.
White Bird, my dear brother, hear me! The People must not divide their hearts. Now with so many of our best men killed, we are growing weak. If we go in different ways, the Bostons will devour us one after another until we are finished.
Then you are content that Lean Elk is head-chief?
Lean Elk or you, either way I am satisfied. Now it is Looking-Glass who in his addled heart once more makes trouble. Speak to your young men! It is the young men who say yes or no. Advise them to follow whoever is head-chief . . .
Your words are good; I shall tell them even though they never listen.
4
Toohhoolhoolsote,
he who Dreams by himself,
flying up past the lodgepole pines and beyond red scree and silver scree to the crags, snow and eagle-caves,
now rides along the ridgetop, smoking kinnikinnick which he has made from the irregularly ovoid leaves of chipmunk apples. This is strange, for usually it is only Bostons who smoke as they ride.
Heinmot Tooyalakekt canters alongside him. The young men fall back.
Grinning with all his teeth, the bear-hearted chief repeats: The Bostons have taken my country but they will never pen me up.
Hear me, my dear brother. They will pen you up if they divide us. Are your young men satisfied to follow one head-chief?
Brother, you speak entirely without sense. Who is there to follow but Lean Elk or White Bird? They both say the same: We must ride to the Old Woman’s Country. You have no experience, and Looking-Glass is broken in his heart. As for me, I refuse to lead these quarrellers.
If Cut Arm sends more killers—
Heinmot Tooyalakekt, you fear the Bostons too much! Every man must die. When he attacks again, we shall fight again. But he is helpless until his slaves bring him more mules and horses.
That may be so, but will your best men remain one-hearted until we are safe?
Am I then Cut Arm, to tell People what they must do?
5
Heinmot Tooyalakekt rides wearily back to Lean Elk, telling him what indeed he knows: The People have begun quarrelling, pokát, pokát,
to which news Lean Elk, whose exhausted eyes resemble those bright-hued poisonous mushrooms which always turn grey, replies: They can carry away my chieftainship whenever they like,
as the horses say: Hinimí,
and Heinmot Tooyalakekt replies: My dear brother, it was never in my heart to remove you, but to ask what we should now do.
What is there for me to do but what I am doing? And what can you do but keep thanking us all for nothing?
Lean Elk, hear me! Looking-Glass gives us no rest; you know his jealous heart; and now that we blame him for the loss of our best men, he hates himself. Day and night I keep warning the young men to follow you . . .
Warn them as you wish. When they tire of me, then they may have another chief,
at which Lean Elk knees his horse forward, the sun sparkling rather than glaring on the brass buttons of his trade vest.
6
In Looking-Glass’s band the women ride more sadly than others,
because Cut Arm robbed them first, at Kamnaka,
even before our losses at Big Water and Ground Squirrel Place,
and ever since Looking-Glass has caused the People harm and grief, his wives and daughters live unspeakingly ashamed,
but that brave woman named Arrowhead, who always rides with a wolfskin over her shoulders
(she who stopped to bandage Peopeo Tholekt’s leg-wound after the Bluecoats attacked Kamnaka)
now says: My People, be cheerful! Soon we shall be free forever beyond the Medicine Line!
All the same. Looking-Glass, whom the Crows called friend, Arrowhead and Lucky Man, and once was nearly adopted into the Tobacco Society, continues silent,
dreading that this last place where we must now ride,
the Country of Redcoats and Cutthroats,
may be fatal,
like mistaking death camas for wild onion, which certain foolish or desperate women have done in autumn, when only the bulbs remain
(not even Old Wolf Woman could tell food from poison then);
so as he rides he pleases his heart by remembering a certain Crow woman softening quills in her mouth,
her hair parting painted crimson, her small hands quick and lovely;
then he Dreams his way back to Kamnaka, the riverine home which Cut Arm once painted off for him
(my heart once thought to sit in peace within this morsel of my country, but Boston dogs dragged me down),
and as his women watch him
(how can this sad one smile as he rides?),
he remembers one summer day before he had more than one wife, when he and his Crow friends came riding homeward after killing many Cutthroats, and left their horses down at the creek with the young boys and clambered up the sandstone cliff to have a smoke in Two Eyes Place; from below, these caves resembled two eyesockets in the rock, one of them shallow, and the other, which they entered, opened into nostrils continuing back into the rock in smaller channels like guts; and here in the tan coolness of the cave they sat gazing out at the river cañon and junipers and pallid rimrock, a few small clouds coming over the beautiful land where if he must give up his home he would have wished to dwell forever;
and as I, William the Blind, sit beside the river at Pompey’s Pillar, I wonder how to know who Looking-Glass was; through my binoculars, the stripe of a sandbar on the far side of the Yellow Stone becomes an agglomeration of tan rocks sufficiently distinct to enumerate if I so wished, and I can count the leaves of the chokecherries behind them, and nearly distinguish the fruit; this might be the difference between my eyes and Looking-Glass’s, and my knowledge and his
as he now rides toward the Medicine Line,
longing to kill a fat buffalo cow for the People,
hoping for Crows and Bostons to kill
(all his life he has proved himself,
which becomes difficult once one fails),
hating Cut Arm, Bluecoats and the Crows, but hating Lean Elk still more, since of all that Looking-Glass has lost
(our future now as unbranched as the antlers of a half-grown deer),
it is only what Lean Elk took from him that he may win back:
this he loathes him for;
and should he not regain it, he might well become some maggot-producing thing like Cut Arm’s heart.
Now he must give himself to the Cutthroats. They are cruel but do not lie. As Sitting Bull has famously said, the white men are all liars.
Heinmot Tooyalakekt,
the feebly crooked-hearted, who favors White Bird and Lean Elk,
pretending all the while that just as falling snow sometimes conceals the trail of a bleeding deer, so that the hunter cannot find it, so all that has fallen upon us now obscures our way:
a chief must never so believe!
(Ollokot should be the Wallowa chief),
rides up alongside him to say: Looking-Glass, my brother, how is it with you?
You ask, so I shall tell you. The People are all fools. My women and daughters are sick; how much farther can they ride? Ollokot’s son is weak; your baby daughter wastes away. The wounded ones are tortured as they ride. We must rest!
Thank you, my brother; I shall not contradict you . . .
Good, for in what I now say there is no error. Listen: I alone have crossed the Medicine Line! Even Toohhoolhoolsote has never gone there. If White Bird claims to have hunted there, he lies. He is jealous of me; he has no sense. Hear me, Heinmot Tooyalakekt: In the Old Woman’s Country it is very cold. If the Cutthroats’ hearts are poisoned against us, how far can we ride before we freeze to death? I am telling you three times: Before we go on, we must kill meat, doctor our horses and prepare the People. If not, all but the best men must die! What do you say now?
Looking-Glass, I am but one chief; I know not what to do.
7
So all day they ride on, and Heinmot Tooyalakekt keeps quiet because he has done all he can and will not further trouble the warriors and other chiefs
(as his father used to say, it is all talk, and nothing coming),
they are riding, hungering, fearing and sorrowing as they go,
lowering their buffalo horns on strings into the creek whenever they feel thirsty
(their hands and necks are cold),
and when Redhead stumbles, nearly throwing Springtime, it is only Good Woman who comes to her,
receiving a smile like a death-grin,
while Looking-Glass’s wives keep singing softly into the horses’ ears the song their husband taught them, the song that a Crow girl sings to her horse:
Horse will help.
Horse has a WYAKIN.
at which their horses walk a trifle more quickly;
somewhere behind, a wounded woman is groaning
and Springtime wavers in the saddle.
8
Spying backward, cantering through coulees, picketing his horse and creeping up the twisting grassy grooves in the sagebrush until he has reached a broken outcropping from which he can peer down invisibly,
or climbing up a steep ridge of rusty scree,
watching across those wide shallow cañon lands
(cool wind, and pale brown small prairie chickens in the rocks),
White Thunder can see far southward the dust of oncoming Lice-Eaters (after stealing our horses, the Crows have all ridden away) and a few dark dots of Bluecoats
(from far away he can smell those Americans who stink as if they never clean themselves):
Cut Arm is farther behind than before! Poor fellow, he is no good for anything; he should go home to eat soup with his wife (may she cut off his head!)
and, blowing on his numb hands, White Thunder circles down into the salt- or sand-caked flats of sagebrush and dying grass, where the land splits open, rockily grinning for many a crooked cañon, in case there might be other Bluecoats or Lice-Eaters advancing murderously,
but there is only cool wind.
9
Thus the mountains enlarge, until dusk hides them as we ride on
(Lean Elk shouting: Hurry, you People! Do you want the Americans to get you?)
while finally, when the old ones can go no more, we loose our horses, picket Cut Arm’s mules and make camp
(an easy thing without tipis and lodgepoles, our dried meat and pounded roots nearly gone),
as Peopeo Tholekt sings softly over his yellow horse, who is now strong again
and White Bird, who is fishing-skilled, goes down to the creek,
the women gathering rosehips to make the children stronger, then patching their ropes of horsehair
(now that the sunflowers have completed themselves, they gather the seeds and pound them)
even as the young men wonder what is best:
what if we are going round and round for nothing?
—the old men smoking kinnikinnick, with nothing to say
as in a place apart, Toohhoolhoolsote makes a circlet of willow branches sleeved in crimson King George cloth and decorated with eagle feathers; perhaps it will help us;
and our dead sing the soft song of Tuk-le-kas’s small bell
as Sound Of Running Feet, with three white necklace-loops about her short throat, clasps her hands and stares into the fire
and White Bird has a toothache
while Springtime, having suckled her child and salved her husband’s bleeding packhorses, braids Good Woman’s hair.
10
My dear husband, my heart wishes for Feathers Around The Neck to sing over our daughter.
Star Doctor has cured many young children.
I am telling you three times!
Síikstiwaa, as you wish, so shall it be done,
and Heinmot Tooyalakekt pays the shaman two horses:
now he is carefully singing
as Good Woman, Sound Of Running Feet, Cloudburst and Welweyas begin singing and tapping long sticks together,
he sucks away the baby’s sickness through a rolled-up leaf and incenses her with herbs;
when she opens her eyes, her mother, believing that she already appears stronger, smiles and silently weeps.
11
The young men are arguing with Ollokot. They know more than their chiefs.
Heinmot Tooyalakekt says: Now let this talk be finished,
and they stare, falling silent.
That night he goes in to Good Woman. She is making him stiff; she is pressing him erect.
12
Now it is dawn. We cannot get warm (some children are weeping). Lean Elk is already calling. With numb fingers the women pack the mules and horses. We ride ever nearer to the Medicine Line, and a light hail strikes us with the clicking as of a buffalo’s dewclaws.
All day we ride,
finding buffalo droppings, but not fresh,
White Bird and Heinmot Tooyalakekt beating grouse out of the sage, so that the women and children will have something to eat;
the old ones begin to speak against Lean Elk.
13
Looking-Glass has shot a browsing elk, and the People are glad,
while Ollokot skins five minks
and the young men hope to kill more buffalo
as Canada geese keep crying out of sight,
because it is the season to ride home, away from the Buffalo Country, riding, riding to the home we have no more;
our old women cannot stop shivering; they are digging up sagelily bulbs to eat
as Heinmot Tooyalakekt sits on a stump, his face smooth, his cut’s half-closed, with the slender pigtails which his wives have made for him falling straight and neat down his chest, while Springtime sews up a hole in his blanket;
then some of the young men begin striking a tree with sticks, all in time, and singing as they strike:
We are flying up!
so that Toohhoolhoolsote, smiling, sings: Death is in the light;
then Good Woman spreads over Springtime’s heart a yearling buffalo blanket, to keep the baby warm.
IT CERTAINLY IS A LOVELY STREAM
SEPTEMBER 20
1
And to the west, steep pale bluffs look down on the blue Musselshell. His army awaits the bugle, each man preparing coffee in his cup.
Well, general, it certainly is a lovely stream. And millions of buffaloberries to refresh us. They must be the best puckerers on earth—
Always the humorist, Redington. Now, where’s our Mr. Joe?
At least as far away as Camp Lewis, sir. One of my Injuns is due back from Fort Sherman any hour now—
Fort Sherman’s been decommissioned.
General, that’s so. Major Reed bought the buildings, I’ve heard. He and his partner run a pretty exciting trading post out there. Lots of firewater—
Your Indian had better not ride in drunk, or he’ll be punished. What’s his name?
Do you suppose Mr. Joe likes firewater, general? Some of them Nez Perce bucks sure do. If Reed and Bowles let the taps flow freely, that might slow the enemy down a trifle.
I see your meaning. By the way, that’s a fine buckskin you’re riding.
One of the best buffalo-running horses in the world, general. My Crows cut it out of Joseph’s herd.
They’re extremely handsome Indians, by the way. Do you think they ride as skillfully as our Nez Perces?
O, about the same, general.
Redington, I asked for the name of your scout.
It’s Bear Heart, general.
That will be all, thank you. My regards to Captain Fisher. Now, Wood, could you take a spot of dictation, please?
Yessir.
Dear Mrs. Glass, my condolences on the death of your brave son Samuel, who passed away on August 24th, 1877, from wounds sustained during a night attack by Nez Perce Indians at Camas Meadows, Idaho Territory, on August 20th, 1877. You may be sure that he received the best medical care available, so that when the end came he was not in great discomfort. I understand that Company “L” have taken up a collection in his honor. If there is anything I can do for you, please feel free to command me. Your family is in my prayers. Yours sincerely.
Got it, sir.
When shall we date it?
Shall I make it August thirtieth? Then she’ll—
All right. Now we’d better look in on Sturgis. He doesn’t seem capable of great exertions.
I think he’s at the field hospital, sir.
Heartening his wounded, no doubt. Commendable. Well, then, let’s visit him.
Right away, sir.
Well, Sturgis, how are you bearing up?
General, my men are all in, and my horses have hoof disease—
I’m sorry to hear it, colonel,
pitying him in truth,
because on the fourth of February 1865, when I marched my army along the Augusta & Charleston Railroad, with the two-tongued Edisto River ahead, Sherman having commanded me to take Orangeburg, and we had to struggle through deep water, with our cartridge boxes tied around our necks, not one man fell out of the column; no one whatsoever complained of being all in,
or have I forgotten?
I wonder why Lizzie wants to put up green curtains all of a sudden? We’ve never used that color before. And why on earth did that occur to me? O, I see, it’s this wall of foliage trembling
and this brisk breeze, almost chilly, the willows and grasses thrashing even as the crowns of the pines up on the bluffs remain nearly still.
Ollokot, my brother, show me your heart. I know not what to do.
Elder brother, you know very well that when our father lay dying, he told us to look to you. Lead us. You are my chief.
3
He rides up to White Bird, who smiles at him and says: In that draw there we killed a fine buffalo cow; she was almost snow-white,
and he sees that this tale is about his father.
White Bird, my dear brother, hear me! The People must not divide their hearts. Now with so many of our best men killed, we are growing weak. If we go in different ways, the Bostons will devour us one after another until we are finished.
Then you are content that Lean Elk is head-chief?
Lean Elk or you, either way I am satisfied. Now it is Looking-Glass who in his addled heart once more makes trouble. Speak to your young men! It is the young men who say yes or no. Advise them to follow whoever is head-chief . . .
Your words are good; I shall tell them even though they never listen.
4
Toohhoolhoolsote,
he who Dreams by himself,
flying up past the lodgepole pines and beyond red scree and silver scree to the crags, snow and eagle-caves,
now rides along the ridgetop, smoking kinnikinnick which he has made from the irregularly ovoid leaves of chipmunk apples. This is strange, for usually it is only Bostons who smoke as they ride.
Heinmot Tooyalakekt canters alongside him. The young men fall back.
Grinning with all his teeth, the bear-hearted chief repeats: The Bostons have taken my country but they will never pen me up.
Hear me, my dear brother. They will pen you up if they divide us. Are your young men satisfied to follow one head-chief?
Brother, you speak entirely without sense. Who is there to follow but Lean Elk or White Bird? They both say the same: We must ride to the Old Woman’s Country. You have no experience, and Looking-Glass is broken in his heart. As for me, I refuse to lead these quarrellers.
If Cut Arm sends more killers—
Heinmot Tooyalakekt, you fear the Bostons too much! Every man must die. When he attacks again, we shall fight again. But he is helpless until his slaves bring him more mules and horses.
That may be so, but will your best men remain one-hearted until we are safe?
Am I then Cut Arm, to tell People what they must do?
5
Heinmot Tooyalakekt rides wearily back to Lean Elk, telling him what indeed he knows: The People have begun quarrelling, pokát, pokát,
to which news Lean Elk, whose exhausted eyes resemble those bright-hued poisonous mushrooms which always turn grey, replies: They can carry away my chieftainship whenever they like,
as the horses say: Hinimí,
and Heinmot Tooyalakekt replies: My dear brother, it was never in my heart to remove you, but to ask what we should now do.
What is there for me to do but what I am doing? And what can you do but keep thanking us all for nothing?
Lean Elk, hear me! Looking-Glass gives us no rest; you know his jealous heart; and now that we blame him for the loss of our best men, he hates himself. Day and night I keep warning the young men to follow you . . .
Warn them as you wish. When they tire of me, then they may have another chief,
at which Lean Elk knees his horse forward, the sun sparkling rather than glaring on the brass buttons of his trade vest.
6
In Looking-Glass’s band the women ride more sadly than others,
because Cut Arm robbed them first, at Kamnaka,
even before our losses at Big Water and Ground Squirrel Place,
and ever since Looking-Glass has caused the People harm and grief, his wives and daughters live unspeakingly ashamed,
but that brave woman named Arrowhead, who always rides with a wolfskin over her shoulders
(she who stopped to bandage Peopeo Tholekt’s leg-wound after the Bluecoats attacked Kamnaka)
now says: My People, be cheerful! Soon we shall be free forever beyond the Medicine Line!
All the same. Looking-Glass, whom the Crows called friend, Arrowhead and Lucky Man, and once was nearly adopted into the Tobacco Society, continues silent,
dreading that this last place where we must now ride,
the Country of Redcoats and Cutthroats,
may be fatal,
like mistaking death camas for wild onion, which certain foolish or desperate women have done in autumn, when only the bulbs remain
(not even Old Wolf Woman could tell food from poison then);
so as he rides he pleases his heart by remembering a certain Crow woman softening quills in her mouth,
her hair parting painted crimson, her small hands quick and lovely;
then he Dreams his way back to Kamnaka, the riverine home which Cut Arm once painted off for him
(my heart once thought to sit in peace within this morsel of my country, but Boston dogs dragged me down),
and as his women watch him
(how can this sad one smile as he rides?),
he remembers one summer day before he had more than one wife, when he and his Crow friends came riding homeward after killing many Cutthroats, and left their horses down at the creek with the young boys and clambered up the sandstone cliff to have a smoke in Two Eyes Place; from below, these caves resembled two eyesockets in the rock, one of them shallow, and the other, which they entered, opened into nostrils continuing back into the rock in smaller channels like guts; and here in the tan coolness of the cave they sat gazing out at the river cañon and junipers and pallid rimrock, a few small clouds coming over the beautiful land where if he must give up his home he would have wished to dwell forever;
and as I, William the Blind, sit beside the river at Pompey’s Pillar, I wonder how to know who Looking-Glass was; through my binoculars, the stripe of a sandbar on the far side of the Yellow Stone becomes an agglomeration of tan rocks sufficiently distinct to enumerate if I so wished, and I can count the leaves of the chokecherries behind them, and nearly distinguish the fruit; this might be the difference between my eyes and Looking-Glass’s, and my knowledge and his
as he now rides toward the Medicine Line,
longing to kill a fat buffalo cow for the People,
hoping for Crows and Bostons to kill
(all his life he has proved himself,
which becomes difficult once one fails),
hating Cut Arm, Bluecoats and the Crows, but hating Lean Elk still more, since of all that Looking-Glass has lost
(our future now as unbranched as the antlers of a half-grown deer),
it is only what Lean Elk took from him that he may win back:
this he loathes him for;
and should he not regain it, he might well become some maggot-producing thing like Cut Arm’s heart.
Now he must give himself to the Cutthroats. They are cruel but do not lie. As Sitting Bull has famously said, the white men are all liars.
Heinmot Tooyalakekt,
the feebly crooked-hearted, who favors White Bird and Lean Elk,
pretending all the while that just as falling snow sometimes conceals the trail of a bleeding deer, so that the hunter cannot find it, so all that has fallen upon us now obscures our way:
a chief must never so believe!
(Ollokot should be the Wallowa chief),
rides up alongside him to say: Looking-Glass, my brother, how is it with you?
You ask, so I shall tell you. The People are all fools. My women and daughters are sick; how much farther can they ride? Ollokot’s son is weak; your baby daughter wastes away. The wounded ones are tortured as they ride. We must rest!
Thank you, my brother; I shall not contradict you . . .
Good, for in what I now say there is no error. Listen: I alone have crossed the Medicine Line! Even Toohhoolhoolsote has never gone there. If White Bird claims to have hunted there, he lies. He is jealous of me; he has no sense. Hear me, Heinmot Tooyalakekt: In the Old Woman’s Country it is very cold. If the Cutthroats’ hearts are poisoned against us, how far can we ride before we freeze to death? I am telling you three times: Before we go on, we must kill meat, doctor our horses and prepare the People. If not, all but the best men must die! What do you say now?
Looking-Glass, I am but one chief; I know not what to do.
7
So all day they ride on, and Heinmot Tooyalakekt keeps quiet because he has done all he can and will not further trouble the warriors and other chiefs
(as his father used to say, it is all talk, and nothing coming),
they are riding, hungering, fearing and sorrowing as they go,
lowering their buffalo horns on strings into the creek whenever they feel thirsty
(their hands and necks are cold),
and when Redhead stumbles, nearly throwing Springtime, it is only Good Woman who comes to her,
receiving a smile like a death-grin,
while Looking-Glass’s wives keep singing softly into the horses’ ears the song their husband taught them, the song that a Crow girl sings to her horse:
Horse will help.
Horse has a WYAKIN.
at which their horses walk a trifle more quickly;
somewhere behind, a wounded woman is groaning
and Springtime wavers in the saddle.
8
Spying backward, cantering through coulees, picketing his horse and creeping up the twisting grassy grooves in the sagebrush until he has reached a broken outcropping from which he can peer down invisibly,
or climbing up a steep ridge of rusty scree,
watching across those wide shallow cañon lands
(cool wind, and pale brown small prairie chickens in the rocks),
White Thunder can see far southward the dust of oncoming Lice-Eaters (after stealing our horses, the Crows have all ridden away) and a few dark dots of Bluecoats
(from far away he can smell those Americans who stink as if they never clean themselves):
Cut Arm is farther behind than before! Poor fellow, he is no good for anything; he should go home to eat soup with his wife (may she cut off his head!)
and, blowing on his numb hands, White Thunder circles down into the salt- or sand-caked flats of sagebrush and dying grass, where the land splits open, rockily grinning for many a crooked cañon, in case there might be other Bluecoats or Lice-Eaters advancing murderously,
but there is only cool wind.
9
Thus the mountains enlarge, until dusk hides them as we ride on
(Lean Elk shouting: Hurry, you People! Do you want the Americans to get you?)
while finally, when the old ones can go no more, we loose our horses, picket Cut Arm’s mules and make camp
(an easy thing without tipis and lodgepoles, our dried meat and pounded roots nearly gone),
as Peopeo Tholekt sings softly over his yellow horse, who is now strong again
and White Bird, who is fishing-skilled, goes down to the creek,
the women gathering rosehips to make the children stronger, then patching their ropes of horsehair
(now that the sunflowers have completed themselves, they gather the seeds and pound them)
even as the young men wonder what is best:
what if we are going round and round for nothing?
—the old men smoking kinnikinnick, with nothing to say
as in a place apart, Toohhoolhoolsote makes a circlet of willow branches sleeved in crimson King George cloth and decorated with eagle feathers; perhaps it will help us;
and our dead sing the soft song of Tuk-le-kas’s small bell
as Sound Of Running Feet, with three white necklace-loops about her short throat, clasps her hands and stares into the fire
and White Bird has a toothache
while Springtime, having suckled her child and salved her husband’s bleeding packhorses, braids Good Woman’s hair.
10
My dear husband, my heart wishes for Feathers Around The Neck to sing over our daughter.
Star Doctor has cured many young children.
I am telling you three times!
Síikstiwaa, as you wish, so shall it be done,
and Heinmot Tooyalakekt pays the shaman two horses:
now he is carefully singing
as Good Woman, Sound Of Running Feet, Cloudburst and Welweyas begin singing and tapping long sticks together,
he sucks away the baby’s sickness through a rolled-up leaf and incenses her with herbs;
when she opens her eyes, her mother, believing that she already appears stronger, smiles and silently weeps.
11
The young men are arguing with Ollokot. They know more than their chiefs.
Heinmot Tooyalakekt says: Now let this talk be finished,
and they stare, falling silent.
That night he goes in to Good Woman. She is making him stiff; she is pressing him erect.
12
Now it is dawn. We cannot get warm (some children are weeping). Lean Elk is already calling. With numb fingers the women pack the mules and horses. We ride ever nearer to the Medicine Line, and a light hail strikes us with the clicking as of a buffalo’s dewclaws.
All day we ride,
finding buffalo droppings, but not fresh,
White Bird and Heinmot Tooyalakekt beating grouse out of the sage, so that the women and children will have something to eat;
the old ones begin to speak against Lean Elk.
13
Looking-Glass has shot a browsing elk, and the People are glad,
while Ollokot skins five minks
and the young men hope to kill more buffalo
as Canada geese keep crying out of sight,
because it is the season to ride home, away from the Buffalo Country, riding, riding to the home we have no more;
our old women cannot stop shivering; they are digging up sagelily bulbs to eat
as Heinmot Tooyalakekt sits on a stump, his face smooth, his cut’s half-closed, with the slender pigtails which his wives have made for him falling straight and neat down his chest, while Springtime sews up a hole in his blanket;
then some of the young men begin striking a tree with sticks, all in time, and singing as they strike:
We are flying up!
so that Toohhoolhoolsote, smiling, sings: Death is in the light;
then Good Woman spreads over Springtime’s heart a yearling buffalo blanket, to keep the baby warm.
IT CERTAINLY IS A LOVELY STREAM
SEPTEMBER 20
1
And to the west, steep pale bluffs look down on the blue Musselshell. His army awaits the bugle, each man preparing coffee in his cup.
Well, general, it certainly is a lovely stream. And millions of buffaloberries to refresh us. They must be the best puckerers on earth—
Always the humorist, Redington. Now, where’s our Mr. Joe?
At least as far away as Camp Lewis, sir. One of my Injuns is due back from Fort Sherman any hour now—
Fort Sherman’s been decommissioned.
General, that’s so. Major Reed bought the buildings, I’ve heard. He and his partner run a pretty exciting trading post out there. Lots of firewater—
Your Indian had better not ride in drunk, or he’ll be punished. What’s his name?
Do you suppose Mr. Joe likes firewater, general? Some of them Nez Perce bucks sure do. If Reed and Bowles let the taps flow freely, that might slow the enemy down a trifle.
I see your meaning. By the way, that’s a fine buckskin you’re riding.
One of the best buffalo-running horses in the world, general. My Crows cut it out of Joseph’s herd.
They’re extremely handsome Indians, by the way. Do you think they ride as skillfully as our Nez Perces?
O, about the same, general.
Redington, I asked for the name of your scout.
It’s Bear Heart, general.
That will be all, thank you. My regards to Captain Fisher. Now, Wood, could you take a spot of dictation, please?
Yessir.
Dear Mrs. Glass, my condolences on the death of your brave son Samuel, who passed away on August 24th, 1877, from wounds sustained during a night attack by Nez Perce Indians at Camas Meadows, Idaho Territory, on August 20th, 1877. You may be sure that he received the best medical care available, so that when the end came he was not in great discomfort. I understand that Company “L” have taken up a collection in his honor. If there is anything I can do for you, please feel free to command me. Your family is in my prayers. Yours sincerely.
Got it, sir.
When shall we date it?
Shall I make it August thirtieth? Then she’ll—
All right. Now we’d better look in on Sturgis. He doesn’t seem capable of great exertions.
I think he’s at the field hospital, sir.
Heartening his wounded, no doubt. Commendable. Well, then, let’s visit him.
Right away, sir.
Well, Sturgis, how are you bearing up?
General, my men are all in, and my horses have hoof disease—
I’m sorry to hear it, colonel,
pitying him in truth,
because on the fourth of February 1865, when I marched my army along the Augusta & Charleston Railroad, with the two-tongued Edisto River ahead, Sherman having commanded me to take Orangeburg, and we had to struggle through deep water, with our cartridge boxes tied around our necks, not one man fell out of the column; no one whatsoever complained of being all in,
or have I forgotten?
I wonder why Lizzie wants to put up green curtains all of a sudden? We’ve never used that color before. And why on earth did that occur to me? O, I see, it’s this wall of foliage trembling
and this brisk breeze, almost chilly, the willows and grasses thrashing even as the crowns of the pines up on the bluffs remain nearly still.
