Michael Blake: The Holy Road

After a long silence, his lips moved almost imperceptibly. "Tell me how this has come to pass."

Smiles A Lot told of the night he had spent in the rain outside Kicking Bird's lodge. He told of the arrangement he had made with Magpie Woman and the bargain he had struck with his father. He was tempted to reveal his feelings for Hunting For Something but decided that such an admission would only distract Owl Prophet.

It was hard to tell what Owl Prophet was doing. His eyes had shut as soon as Smiles A Lot started to explain, and they remained closed even after Smiles A Lot had stopped talking.

But all the while Owl Prophet held his head up, as if the eyes were somehow seeing through the lowered lids. Smiles A Lot started when the lids suddenly flew open and the prophet's eyes, round as eggs, stared straight through him. The words Owl Prophet spoke were flat and trancelike, delivered with an authority that discouraged questioning.

“Journey to the country of the Kiowa. Seek out the place of mystery, the great bluff with sides that slope back to the earth, the bluff whose rock face looks like a bear has clawed it. A creek runs along its base and winds around behind. Secret your horses and possessions there and climb the back side of the place of mystery. Sit near the edge where the rock face falls to the creek. Do not eat. Do not drink. Only pray. Pray hard. Ask the Mystery to reveal your destiny. When you see something, come and tell me what it is."

Owl Prophet trembled. His eyelids closed then opened into slits once again. "You have heard me," he said lowly. "Make ready and go. Leave that pony where he is."

Smiles A Lot wasted no time. He asked his befuddled mother to prepare enough food for a week of sleeps, then picked up his old bow and a few arrows and cut three favorite ponies from his herd. His preparations were so single-minded and hasty that to say good-bye had not occurred to him. His only thought was to follow Owl Prophet's instructions, and when his father asked when he would return, Smiles A Lot answered simply, "I don't know.”

Then he vaulted onto a dapple-gray pony and, with horsehair lines to the other two in hand, started off through the village. People noticed him leaving but no one spoke to the boy, whose eyes were fixed straight ahead to the northeast.

One, however, followed him to the edge of the village, there to stand watching on the lip of the prairie as the young man and his horses shrank to specks. For a long time she had wished he would look her way or speak to her. For a long time she had been unable to think of much else and her heartstrings had been jumping all morning with the news that Magpie Woman was building a lodge for him, that his father was going to make him a bow, and that he had been sequestered with Owl Prophet.

What mission he was undertaking she did not know. She only knew that whenever a man left camp there was no guarantee he would return, and she stood squinting until the black dots moving in the distance vanished below the horizon. All along she had hoped that the rider and his horses would by some miracle grow larger again and that he would be riding toward her instead of away. But now he was gone and inwardly she chided herself for being shy. Life was uncertain these days. It seemed like something new was happening every day and there was no knowing what tomorrow promised. And now there was nothing she could do but wait and hope for his return. Then she would do something, she told herself.

For now her heart was on the ground. She stared down at her moccasins with wet eyes and with the wild thought of jumping on one of her father's ponies and racing out to catch up with him. But when she lifted her eyes once more and saw that he was truly gone, she put herself back in the hands of fate and walked gloomily into the village. It would do no good to mourn a missed opportunity, she told herself. Might as well go home and make up grandfather's bowl of pemmican.

Wind In His Hair did not much care for domestic life. Left to his own, he would have little to do with anyone, even those connected to his blood. But his sense of dedication defeated him. He recognized that a part of his responsibility as a warrior was to make himself available to family beyond his wives and children, to occasionally make long journeys away from the home village. He avoided such forays to the scattered villages of the plains whenever possible, but his wives were shrewd. Several times a year they laid careful traps for their celebrated husband, traps which once sprung were rarely evaded.

Such was the case with his most recent trip, a trip to the south one of his wives had asked for as they slept together on a snowbound night many moons before. In the time that followed she had taken care to remind him of his promise only at moments when his spirits were especially good, and he finally declared that they would go soon after his return from Mexico.

Any attempt to wriggle out of the domestic mission was made especially hard by One Braid Trailing's status as his youngest, prettiest, and favorite wife. She was devoted to him and didn't lose her temper often. And they never had to go all over the country because her only family resided with the Honey-Eater band in the south.

Her father was a Comanche, her mother a lifelong Mexican captive, and Wind In His Hair liked them both, especially the father, who was esteemed as a member of the Honey-Eaters' equivalent of the Hard Shields.

What he didn't like, aside from the unexciting social nature of the visit, was the country. The country had too many small hills and trees. Hills and trees made him nervous because he was used to gazing as far as he could see.

The worst thing about going to the Honey-Eaters, however was their closeness to the whites. The slow-spreading infection of whites eating into the body of the Comanche empire was most pronounced in the southern extremities, and though the band he was visiting was the largest and strongest among the remaining Honey-Eaters, it was still tiny in comparison with the powerful communities farther north.

Attrition from constant conflict with the whites had tattered the community's once cohesive quilt. The village was top-heavy with the old and infirm. Mature warriors seemed to grow scarcer each year, and few were the young men ready to take their places. So many of them had been killed by what the whites called "rangers," deadly bands of heavily armed whites who roamed the borders of Comanche country looking for Indians to exterminate. They killed Comanches in any way they could and were more likely to poison a spring or knock a man off his horse with a far-shooting gun than they were to engage him in face-to-face combat.

They were good at hiding in the eastern country of hills and trees and that made them hard to kill, aside from the rare occasions when they were found in the open. If found there, they would invariably retreat, hats flying in the dust of speeding horses.

Ambush was their forte and a Comanche party wandering into one ran the risk of losing every man. The whites always had guns, several for each man, and they never seemed to run out of bullets. The end result was sad news coming back to camp, news that made for widows and orphans, and gave cause for new war parties going out, part of a never-ending cycle of remorse and retribution that fractured the pleasures of living as surely as a splintered mirror cuts an image to pieces.

This was the woeful scenario that greeted Wind In His Hair's arrival at the Honey-Eaters' village, The hollow air carried the wails of grieving women to his ears even before he entered the village proper. They were mourning a hunting party that had been forced by lack of game to travel farther east than they wanted and had been surprised as they watered horses on the banks of a stream. The hair-mouthed Comanche hunters had driven them back against a cut bank where the warriors had to fight with nothing in the way of cover. Four of the party of eight were killed during the day, and all of them would have died had it not been for the intervention of thick clouds which covered the moon long enough for the survivors to escape.