Hugh Howey - Machine Learning

I looked up as well. The morning sun slid shyly behind a bank of clouds. “‘Fell the shade’?” I asked.

“It’s a sun hut.” Collins waved his arm. “They dance in it. The Arapaho do.”

There was a loud snap in the woods. We both turned toward the sound. There was a flash of white as a deer bounded away from us and through the cottonwoods. I turned to Collins, who I suspected knew more of the Arapaho than the moans of a Mason whore.

“What kind of dance?”

Collins watched the deer a moment longer, then scanned the woods. Finally, he turned to the odd structure, whose walls curved upward like an unfinished dome. A pole sat in the center that I figured was bound to support an arching roof; but I would find out later that the hut was finished just as it stood.

“All I know is what little I’ve heard. Pretty sure it started with the Arapaho, but other tribes have taken part. Spreading like those damn Mormons, like some kinda religion.” Collins pointed to the sky. “They dance around a pole and stare up at the sun for days. They see things. Hear voices. And then they probably get drunk on peyote and shove feathers up their arses for all I know.”

He shrugged and pulled out his cheroot. To my amazement, Collins bent and grabbed a smoking fag from the fire and lit the thing with noisy puffs. Maybe he figured we’d already chased away the deer and to hell with the smoke. Or maybe he’d seen enough death the day before to stop saving the thing for a morrow. Or perhaps the talk of ghosts and whispers had stirred his nerves. I watched his white exhalations rise toward the clouds, and the sun reemerged to peer down at us.

“I guess you were right,” I told Collins.

He raised an eyebrow and threw the fag back in the fire.

“I think Lieutenant Randall has done and gone native. Maybe fell for some squaw and started seeing us as the enemy.”

The private pinched something off the end of his tongue and inspected it. “Maybe,” he said. But it sounded like he doubted it. He smoked his cheroot like it would be his last and studied the sky as if the sun up there knew something we didn’t.

The two of us shared our findings with the major later that morning and handed over Randall’s tent, bedroll, and mess kit. Collins drew a straw for the firing squad; I didn’t. The both of us had missed the court-martial, which hadn’t taken long. Three witnesses said he did it, and Randall hadn’t uttered a word of defense. We heard he stared at the ceiling the entire time before being led back to the pen.

I should have gotten some sleep before lunch—only had a few hours the night before—but I volunteered to ride out with some others to see about another rustling, a strange disappearance of cattle from a rancher to the east.

On the ride out, I sidled my horse next to John McCall’s. McCall had grown up in the Arizona territory, had missed the war entirely, and knew as much about Indians as any of us. He used to keep a feather stuck in his cap until the major told him to lose it. When pressed, McCall admitted he’d heard of the Sun Dance. He was surprised to hear about the hut near Randall’s tent, said he thought it must’ve already been there. I told him about the felled trees. McCall didn’t have much to say after that. We rode along in silence, the sun beating down on us, the horses growing warm, the featureless landscape making it feel like we hardly moved.

While the others went to talk to the rancher about his missing cattle and the burn marks some lightning strikes had left in the grass, I rode the fence line looking for a break in the thorny wire. I was sure the rancher had already checked his fence, but in my experience the most likely culprit to make off with a few head of cattle were those few head of cattle. I expected to see them milling about on the side of the trail where the grass grew tallest. It was getting on noon, and the flies buzzed something fierce. Amazing it could be cool in the morning up in the hills and so damn hot come afternoon on the plains. My mouth was dry and tasted of the dirt kicked up by my horse. Shaking my canteen, I decided to take it easy on the water. Before long, I found a drooping wire in the fence and dismounted to take a closer look.

Was only the top wire amiss. A sprightly cow might make the jump, but unlikely. Wiping my neck, I glanced up accusingly at the high sun. Not a cloud in the sky. I remembered something I’d learned early on in Kansas: there were tribes who would only come at you in the morning from the east. They would ride in, and you couldn’t see their arrows in the glare. Before they attacked, one of their scouts would sit on a hill every morning, high on his horse, feathers blazing, and would be as good as invisible. Ghosts, bringing hell from the east. They would keep an eye on their enemy until it was time to rain death. Devious sons a’bitches.

The sun shone bright that day as I scanned the sky—and finally I had to look away. I didn’t believe what Collins and McCall had said about dancing around and looking up at that fiery beast. A man couldn’t stand two seconds staring at it. And maybe I was delirious from lack of sleep; or thinking about a man I had known who was at that moment being shot in the chest by my compadres; or maybe it was the sight of those I’d buried the day before; or I was just being powerfully curious and not thinking straight. But I felt an ungodly tug… and so I looked up and tried to return the gaze of that great yellow monster in the wide blue sky.

The burn was intense and immediate. It made my brain hurt somewhere deep between my brows. The squinting was involuntary. My horse made a sound and pawed at the air with one hoof. “Steady, now,” I told him, taking the reins and turning away, unable to take it any longer. Blinking tears, I could see a green image in my vision, a disk the color of fresh grass. I wondered if this was what they claimed to see, those who danced and saw what weren’t there.

The wire fence drooped like it was melting in the sun. A faint wind blew dust across my boots. Back toward the fort, mountains rose from the flat desert, impossibly tall, the white on their tops growing with the cold months. I blinked and blinked and wondered what in the hell I was doing out there. How could anyone dance around for three days and stare at the sun? Determined, I gave it another try. I would go for the count of twenty, pain be damned. If an Arapaho could do it, so could I.

Throwing my head back, I squinted at the sun and met it like a man. Again, the feeling was like claws raking my eyeballs. There was a primitive urge to look away, like a thumb on a hot pan. I forced my eyes open wider, muscles in my face quivering in complaint, tears streaking down my cheeks. I lost count. I swayed, my balance funny, and reached for a fence post to steady myself. As my horse clomped down the road, I ignored him. There was nothing but white and heat, both penetrating straight into my brain. I hopped in place and cursed nothing in particular, just said “shit” and “damn” while the tears streamed out, but no bright light was stronger than this Virginia boy.

I had to’ve gone to a count of twenty, but I decided to keep going a bit more. I had the water in the canteen, could dump that in my eyes after and put the fire out. There was no thought of going blind. That fear would come later. I was just enduring the pain because, goddamnit, it wasn’t going to beat me.

My neck cramped up, but now something had taken hold of me, some wild thought that this was the right thing to do, to stare at the sun for as long as I was able. Releasing the post, I drifted around in circles there in the dirt, admiring the shapes and colors as they spun in my vision. I saw purple. I saw strangers swim through the sky. When my lids clamped down involuntarily, I used my fingers to pry them open again. The burn and pain went straight through me until it felt like an itch being scratched. I spun and spun and felt the barbed wire catch at my trousers. The fence would keep me in. I thought of Collins spinning around in his little Indian hut. The barbs were suddenly those sticks, poking at me, corralling me. The light shone right through my eyes, down to the base of my skull, and deep into my neck where words are formed. My face grew warm, but now the bright light was cool as it swam through me. I could hear myself laugh. The horse drew away farther, and I cared little.