Michael Blake: The Holy Road

Arbuckle emptied a couple of saddles but was unable to get a clear shot at the one he wanted. As the Indian charge broke overhead, Arbuckle about-faced under the wagon to fire at those who had gotten inside the circle.

Suddenly, the mass of horses and men parted and Arbuckle sighted down his rifle at the back of his prize. He squeezed the trigger and the warrior with the bonnet jerked. A hand went to the small of his back and the Indian slumped forward. The man with the eagle feathers disappeared, and Arbuckle's disappointment at not being able to shoot him a second time was fleeting. He knew he had gotten him good with the first round.

Dances With Wolves and a man named He Who Does Not Listen To Them were the first to get to Wind In His Hair. Together they lifted him off his pony, and when they were clear of the wagons, Dances With Wolves pulled the mortally wounded warrior up behind him.

"I am fighting no more!" Dances With Wolves screamed, and as he broke off the battle to carry Wind In His Hair back to the camp, most of the holdovers from Ten Bears' village followed.

White Bear and his Kiowas wanted no more, either, and though a few pockets of young Comanche and Kiowa pestered the wagon train with sniper fire until dusk, the main force of fighters left the field without fulfilling their last, desperate hope. If the whites could kill Wind In His Hair, there was no point in fighting.

The one-eyed warrior was still alive when they reached the temporary camp, but the bullet that had lodged in the bone of his back made it impossible for him to move his legs or even feel them.

As he was carried to bed, Wind In His Hair heard Dances With Wolves calling for Owl Prophet.

"No," he commanded, “I do not want to be doctored. I will not live like this. I am dying now. . let me die."

Propped against a backrest, he lingered until moonrise. Then he closed his eyes and let his chin slump against his chest as the last trace of breath passed out of him.

In his last hours of life the leader had made but one demand. He wanted his body secreted from the enemy, and as soon as he was dead, his remains were carried away from camp, buried in a deep hole, covered with earth, and carefully camouflaged with brush and stones.

No ponies were killed over him and only a few personal items, hastily grabbed up by his friends, were placed in the grave with him. One Braid Trailing cut her hair and slashed herself, but she was the only one who mourned. There was no time for the others.

Word came that yet another column of soldiers was coming, this one from the east. Some families had already started for the reservation and many others were making ready. Those who felt compelled to stay had no idea what to do next. White man soldiers whom they could not hope to fight were converging on them from all directions. If they stayed where they were, they would be annihilated. But where could they go?

In the council convened shortly after the return of Wind In His Hair's burial party, it was decided that a single option was left. They must flee west before the soldiers could catch them, surmount the great caprock barrier, cross the trackless wilderness of the Staked Plains, dive into the Great Hole In The Earth, and hide.

But they would have to escape the net closing around them before they could hope to hide, and, on the night Wind In His Hair passed over the stars, his heirs started west-three hundred men, women, and children pushing almost a thousand ponies, frantic to make themselves invisible.

When Lawrie Tatum and Kicking Bird disembarked at a large spring wagon to the terminus of the train line, they were given a large spring wagon to carry Ten Bears overland to Fort Sill.

At mid-morning of their journey's second day, Lawrie Tatum mentioned that he had been thinking of a suitable site for Ten Bears' interment and had concluded that a place of prominence at the post cemetery would be the best solution.

"Not at Fort Sill," Kicking Bird replied flatly.

"Then where?"

"On prairie. . old way. You go Sill. Me. . Ten Bears go on prairie.”

For a time Lawrie Tatum tried to talk his friend out of it, reminding him that they had much to accomplish on the reservation. But Kicking Bird was unmoved and the two parted, Lawrie Tatum angling north on his mule as Kicking Bird swung south, then west, to Comanche country.

He had been told of the heavy, unremitting rains, but though the earth was still soggy, he encountered nothing but fair weather. The sun was bright, the breeze stiff, and the wagon's two mules had little difficulty navigating the trackless plain.

The deeper Kicking Bird penetrated his homeland the more he wondered how it could be that the free ways were gone. The country looked the same as it always had-vast, ever-changing, and empty. It was hard to believe that white people were taking over the country and that their soldiers were chasing his friends.

He hit a stream swollen by the recent rains, and instead of trying to cross, he followed it, trusting that the Mystery would lead him to the right place.

He had camped but twice when he happened on the perfect spot, an exquisite glade of high grass and soft soil surrounded by sentinels of cottonwoods whose leaves were tumbling.

As he stood watching the place, Kicking Bird heard a thumping in the air, and with only the strange sound as warning, he felt waves of motion suddenly crash over his head. He ducked reflexively, and a split second later saw the forms of two golden eagles sailing across the glade at low altitude. Simultaneously, they arched into an effortless, elegant climb and landed their big bodies with ease on the uppermost reaches of one of the cottonwoods.

He could not believe they had passed so close to him, and as he watched the eagles get their bearings with quick twists of their heads, Kicking Bird understood that since his parting with Lawrie Tatum, the Mystery had been guiding his progress.

For the rest of the afternoon he constructed a burial scaffold under the vigilant eyes of the eagles. When all was in readiness, Kicking Bird pulled apart the wooden box, lifted out the old man's corpse, and laid it on a blanket.

Ten Bears was quite stiff, so there was little Kicking Bird could do to make him more presentable, but he gave the body a cursory inspection anyway. As his eyes traveled to one of the old man's hands he was surprised to see the white man spectacles. They were held in the fingers and Kicking Bird's first reaction was to give the alien apparatus a tug. A second thought quickly seized him, however, and he relented. The hand and the spectacles seemed perfectly at ease. They were welded together in the same delicate way Kicking Bird had observed on so many occasions when Ten Bears was alive.

He rolled the old man up in the blanket, hoisted him onto the scaffold, tied the body fast to its moorings, and stepped back to see if all was right. Then he tossed a few offerings of tobacco into the air and thought of leaving.

But his body would not move. Kicking Bird stood transfixed, trying to understand what might be happening to him.

Perhaps I am meant to stand here awhile longer, he thought.

The breeze rose. Soon it was whistling through the burial scaffold, and as he listened to the eerie music, Kicking Bird realized the full depth of what he was saying good-bye to. He looked over his shoulder and the white man wagon was suddenly more than just a wagon. It was the life awaiting him, and, to his horror, Kicking Bird understood with crushing finality that he could never live successfully in a world of wagons. He looked again at the scaffold swaying in the wind and the pair of eagles high in the cottonwood and realized that he was saying good-bye to the country that had been his whole life.