Michael Blake - The Holy Road

The impact of his fall sent the man's dark, broad-brimmed hat flying, and Kicking Bird and Touch The Clouds saw what everyone else saw. The sun reflected almost as in a mirror off his smooth, shiny head. Hair the length of a rabbit's ran in a band above his ears and low down along the back of his skull. Everyone drew back in disbelief. He had no scalp.

"I will kill this ghost!" White Bear shouted, pulling an arrow from his quiver.

Before he could string it, Touch The Clouds' hand was on his arm.

White Bear's expression said he resented the intrusion but Touch The Clouds' words flew in his face before he could protest.

"Great warriors do not waste arrows on mice. . shivering in the grass."

The squabble between White Bear and Touch The Clouds barely registered as Kicking Bird sat, trancelike, on his pony, watching with profound fascination as the white man scrambled after his hat and replaced it on his head. He was quite small for any man and was wearing something on his bearded face that Kicking Bird had never seen before: two tiny discs of what looked like glass suspended before each eye by a delicate framework of wire.

The man walked back to his mule, clasped a hand on one of its reins, and waited, almost childlike, for what might happen next. Who he was or what might be his mission in Kiowa country the Comanche could not guess. He was not a soldier nor did he have what Kicking Bird imagined to be the stature of an important emissary. That he might be lost was possible, but some indefinable sense told Kicking Bird this was not the case. His eyes seemed to have a special energy that was linked somehow with plaintive hope, and in the few seconds that Kicking Bird watched the apparition, he deduced that this being bore no one ill will.

Inspiration suddenly flashed in Kicking Bird's mind and the excitement it wrought tickled him from head to toe as he realized that he possessed a weapon of great power and that this was the opportunity he had been waiting for to use it.

He had pestered Dances With Wolves and Stands With A Fist to teach him the weapon from the day of their marriage. He had practiced it, in private, for years, checking and rechecking the accuracy of what he knew with the reluctant couple in the set-apart lodge. How much of it he remembered and how well he might pronounce it he could nor be sure, but an instant later he found himself dropping off his pony and walking through the grass toward the little man.

The Kiowa and Comanche warriors surrounding the scene were silenced at Kicking Bird's approach, and in an odd way they, too, suddenly realized that this white man represented no real threat. The Comanche they all knew as mild-mannered was of average height but to see him now, standing opposite the white man, he seemed a giant. The little man in black was a thing so puny that the wildest imagination could not have perceived him as an adversary.

Kicking Bird's confidence was reinforced by a close-up view of the stranger's face. He guessed that the diminutive figure must have had at least fifty winters, though his countenance was full of youthful innocence, and as he uttered the first words he had ever spoken to a white, Kicking Bird could not help thinking he was addressing a boy.

"I," he said, lightly tapping his chest, "Kicking Bird."

The white man's face opened as if a cloud had moved away from the sun. His lips pulled apart in a smile so wide that it seemed as if his eyes were smiling too.

"I," he began in a light, high voice, pushing a finger up against his chest in the way Kicking Bird had done, "I. . Lawrie Tatum. Friend, friend."

"Friend," Kicking Bird nodded for that was a word he knew. "Hmmm. . where?. . from?"

"I'm from Iowa," Lawrie Tatum answered, speaking the words in a clipped, precise fashion that seemed to suit the latent energy pent up in his little body. "But I have come from Washington."

Kicking Bird knew the word Washington too. "Ahhh," he grunted, nodding again, "Washington." He pointed to the peace medal hanging around his neck.

Lawrie Tatum bobbed his head up and down happily. "That's right. . well, that's the man . I'm from the place . . Washington."

"Hmmm. . Washington."

"I. . Lawrie Tatum, want to be your friend. Lawrie Tatum and Kicking Bird. . friends."

At that he thrust a small hand forward, leveling it at Kicking Bird's waist.

At a conference he had once attended Kicking Bird had seen white men make the same gesture. He glanced into Lawrie Tatum's eyes once more, as if to reassure himself that no treachery lurked there, before lifting one of his bronze-colored hands in the stranger's direction.

The two hands closed on one another. Lawrie Tatum grinned and Kicking Bird, not quite believing what was happening, stared at the pudgy digits enveloped in his own long and elegant fingers.

A few other warriors, including Touch The Clouds, had slipped down from their ponies and drifted closer during the exchange. When Kicking Bird performed the intimate act of taking the white man's hand in his own, shock and curiosity drove them even closer.

There they remained for most of an hour standing on the open prairie, ringed by warriors on horseback, listening to the talk of Kicking Bird and the tiny visitor who had materialized out of nowhere.

Important information was obtained in that first interview, conducted with a patchwork of signs, Kicking Bird's rudimentary, untested English, and the curt translations for those who had gathered round.

Lawrie Tatum from Washington was seeking peace and friendship between Indian and white. He was offering himself to the Kiowa and the Comanche as what he called an "agent" for Indians who loved peace. He would serve those who sought peace in a variety of ways — as a procurer of food, clothing, and medicine, as a protector and intermediary between military and government authority and as a guide for those, especially the young, who wanted to take what he called "the white man's road.” Lawrie Tatum was some kind of holy man, and there were many others of his cult, called Quakers, who had spread across the country seeking friendship with all tribes. He had one wife, many children, and was one of those who drilled holes in the ground, put in seed, and took what grew to eat.

These revelations, passed on by Kicking Bird, were listened to with care by the other warriors. Many snickered at the idea of Lawrie Tatum protecting them against anything, but for most of the interview the free men of the plains gave their full attention to the exchange.

But more and more questions, some derisive and combative, were being hurled from the onlookers. Taking the white man's road was a baffling and useless proposition to most, and Kicking Bird and Touch The Clouds both sensed that the best way to delve deeper into the mission of Lawrie Tatum was not in a public forum. Nor was the open prairie proper. They had been standing all the while. They had not sat down, not smoked the pipe.

When the crowd's questions began edging toward ugliness Touch The Clouds addressed everyone with his usual firmness and finality.

"I am taking this white man into camp,” he began.

Hoots of surprise and some of derision arose from the crowd, but Touch The Clouds was not one to be swayed once his mind was made up, and he had already decided that he wanted to study this Lawrie Tatum man in more depth. Single-handedly he quelled all opposition.

"This white man is my guest," he commanded. "He will sleep in my lodge and no harm will come to him."

Lawrie Tatum then climbed onto his wagon and, escorted by most of the warriors of Touch The Clouds' village, rode back into camp, where the women and children and elderly could not wait to get a look at him.

The Kiowa leader ordered a small lodge to be erected between his own and Kicking Bird's, and Lawrie Tatum was made to understand that this would be the place to store his things and rest his body that night.