Dan Simmons - Black Hills

All right, Mr. Strange Owl announces at last, for something as exotic as this Harley-Davidson J V-Twin machine, they’ll have to send not just to Garryowen or the warehouse at Crow Agency or even to Hardin, but all the way to Billings to get a bearing. And since Tommy don’t go to Billings except on Friday mornings, and this being Tuesday and all, they won’t get the bearing back ’til Friday evening, probably around suppertime, and Mr. Strange Owl closes up exactly at five, every day, no exception, and never opens the store or garage on Saturdays or Sundays, no matter how much folks around Busby fuss and want him to, so it’ll be Monday, September seventh (today is the first of September), before Mr. Strange Owl and young Russell and maybe John Red Hawk here, who owned a motorsickle once, can get around to working on it.

Paha Sapa nods his understanding.

— Is there a bus that comes through here? I’m just going thirty miles or so to the Little Big Horn battlefield.

— What the hell do you want to go to a battlefield for? Nothing there. Not even a restaurant.

Paha Sapa smiles as if sharing in the understanding of how totally foolish that goal would be.

— Is there a bus, Mr. Strange Owl?

There is. It comes through every Saturday on its way from Belle Fourche to Billings. It doesn’t stop at the old battlefield, though. Why would it? But it takes on mail at Crow Agency headquarters, just down the road from the battlefield.

— Do you think anyone here would like to earn a dollar by driving me to the Little Big Horn sooner than Saturday?

There is much earnest conversation about this, but in the end the three old men decide that Tommy Counts the Crows is really the only one who can or would want to drive anyone to the battlefield, and that would have to be during his regular run to Hardin and Billings on Friday, three days from now, and Tommy will probably have to charge three dollars for that, not one dollar, and does Mr. Slow Horse want to sell the broken motorcycle for… oh, say… ten dollars? Odds are good, the Northern Cheyenne old men and boy agree, that the Harley-Davidson can’t be fixed at all. A burned-out bearing’s a terrible thing and who knows what trouble it’s already caused in the rest of that old engine? Mr. Strange Owl might see his way clear to paying the ten dollars for the broken motorcycle and have Tommy Counts the Crows drive the Lakota stranger to Crow Agency for only one dollar, not three.

Paha Sapa suggests that he pay the three dollars to use some of Mr. Strange Owl’s tools and to rent space inside the closed garage on Friday evening after Tommy Counts the Crows gets back with his bearing. Mr. Strange Owl thinks that three dollars for the use of his tools is fair, but the rental of the garage space and use of its electric lights would require another two dollars.

Impressed by the old fart’s negotiating ability, Paha Sapa asks—

— Do you know, by any chance, Mr. Strange Owl, if the Lost Tribe of the Israelites happen to have wandered to this place and settled in Busby, Montana?

The three old men and teenager do not understand this query at all but it’s evident in the looks they exchange that they’ve already decided that their uninvited Sioux guest is crazy.

Paha Sapa confirms the diagnosis by laughing.

— Never mind. I agree to pay the five dollars for the use of the tools and garage space and lights on Friday night.

Mr. Strange Owl’s loud, wheezing voice reminds Paha Sapa of the kind of bellows that once worked in this very space when the garage was a blacksmith shop.

— And don’t forget the price of the bearing itself, plus, of course, the dollar to Tommy for fetching it all the way from Billings.

— Of course. Is there any place here I might be able to stay the three nights before Tommy goes to get the bearing in Billings?

This conference among the three old and one young Cheyenne is much shorter than the earlier ones. No one in Busby, it turns out, wants to board a Sioux, Paha Sapa is told without a hint of apology, not even for cash money, but Mr. Strange Owl informs him that there is a creek just down the road with some cottonwoods if Mr. Slow Horse would like to camp there. There’ll be no charge for the campsite. But Mr. Slow Horse has to promise not to shit or piss in or near the creek, because, you know, people in Busby use that water.

Paha Sapa makes a solemn promise to avoid shitting or pissing within fifty yards of their stream and gathers his tarps, jacket, canteen, and leather gladstone valise from the sidecar. He buys an extra loaf of bread and a flashlight from Mr. Strange Owl in the general-store side of the garage. He noted the creek bed—almost dry this time of year—and the picket line of dying cottonwoods as he went over the tiny bridge both while driving west and then when pushing the motorcycle back east earlier today. It’s not even a half-mile walk, and he has hours before sunset.

Walking west toward the lowering sun, Paha Sapa knows in his heart that the sensible thing to do is just keep walking—hitchhike if anyone will stop for him on the Crow reservation to the west, but just keep walking if no one does. It’s only twenty-five or thirty miles to the battlefield. He can walk through the cool of the night, taking a little care to watch for snakes that come out to soak up the warmth of the dirt and gravel on the road, and be at Greasy Grass by tomorrow afternoon. He’s walked farther than that in one spell of steady day-and-night walking many, many times in his seventy-one years and in conditions far worse than this straight road in the pleasant weather so early in the Moon of the Brown Leaves.

But for some reason, Paha Sapa can’t stand the thought of leaving Robert’s beautiful gray-with-brown-and-orange-trim-and-lettering motorcycle behind to the mercy of Mr. Strange Owl and Mr. Red Hawk and the invisible but threatening Tommy Counts the Crows. And he wonders if the Crows Tommy counts are the flying kind or the sullen reservation kind.

You’ll be leaving the motorcycle behind somewhere in a few days anyway , says a more sensible and less sentimental part of his mind.

Yes, somewhere. But at the battlefield. And at a place of his choosing, not at the burned-out bearing’s choosing. He’s come this far with Robert’s beloved machine, across many miles and almost twenty years of time, and he wants to travel with it the rest of the way.

BY RIGHTS, Paha Sapa should have been restless during his three nights and three days of waiting, so close to his purpose and destination yet so stranded here near a no-place named Busby, but a perverse part of him welcomes the time spent relaxing and thinking and reading along this dried-up excuse for a creek. (What little water there is in the mostly dry streambed lies in puddles and hoofprints—someone around Busby runs cattle—and those few circles of brown stagnant water, it is obvious, have already received their share of excrement and urine. But bovine, not human, so Paha Sapa can understand Mr. Strange Owl’s and the residents of Busby’s concern. For drinking water and for his morning coffee, Paha Sapa has to hike back to the Busby store and pay Mr. Strange Owl two bits to fill his two small canteens at their pump.)

Paha Sapa has found a sheltered place, out of sight of the highway, and rigs his ground tarp and overhead tarp so that he can quickly close up the latter when the rain comes (and his bones tell him it is coming). He makes sure that the site is up and out of the streambed itself so that there will be no surprises if the rain turns into a gully-washer. Anyone who has lived in the West for more than a week, he thinks, would take such precautions.