Michael Blake - Dances With Wolves

The women and children must have gone inside already, for her father and his friend were alone in the yard. Three Indians had come all the way up. The others were waiting at a respectful distance.

Christine’s father began to talk in signs to one of the three emissaries, a big Pawnee with a scowl on his face. She could see right away the talk was not good. The Indian kept motioning toward the house, making the sign for drinking. Christine’s father kept shaking his head in denial.

Indians had come before, and Christine’s father had always shared what he had on hand. These Pawnee wanted something he didn’t have . . . or something he wouldn’t part with.

Willy whispered in her ear.

“They look sore. . . . Maybe they want whiskey.”

That might be it, she thought. Her father didn’t approve of strong drink in any form, and as she watched, she could see he was losing patience. And patience was one of his hallmarks.

He waved them off, but they didn’t move. Then he threw his hands into the air, and the ponies tossed their heads. Still the Indians did not move, and now all three were scowling,

Christine’s father said something to the white friend standing by his side and showing their backs, they turned for the house.

There was no time for anyone to yell a warning. The big Pawnee’s hatchet was on a downward arc before Christine’s father had fully turned away. It struck deep under his shoulder, driving the length of the blade. He grunted as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him and hopped sideways across the yard. Before he’d gone even a few steps, the big Pawnee was on his back, hacking furiously as he drove him to ground.

The other white man tried to run, but singing arrows knocked him down halfway to the door of the sod house.

Terrible sounds flooded Christine’s ears. Screams of despair were coming from inside the house, and the Indians who had held back were whooping madly as they dashed forward at a gallop. Someone was roaring in her face. It was Willy.

“Run, Christine . . . run!”

Willy planted one of his boots on her behind and sent the girl rolling down to the spot where the roof ended and the prairie began. She looked back and saw the raw, skinny boy standing on the edge of the roof, his squirrel gun pointed down at the yard. It fired, and for a moment Willy stood motionless. Then he turned the rifle around, held it like a club, jumped quietly into space, and disappeared.

She ran then, wild with fear, her skinny seven-year-old legs churning up the draw behind the house like the wheels of a machine.

The sun was slanting into her eyes and she fell several times, scraping the skin off her knees. But she was up in a wink each time, the fear of dying pushing her past pain. If a brick wall had suddenly sprung up in the draw, she would have run right into it.

She knew she couldn’t keep this pace, and even if she could, they would be coming on horseback, so as the draw began to curve and its banks grew steeper, she looked for a place to hide.

Her frantic search had yielded nothing and the pain in her lungs was starting to stab when she spotted a dark opening partially obscured by a thick growth of bunchgrass halfway up the slope on her left.

Grunting and crying, she scrambled up the rock-strewn embankment and, like a mouse diving for cover, threw herself into the hole. Her head went in, but her shoulders didn’t. It was too small. She rocked back onto her knees and banged at the sides of the hole with her fists. The earth was soft. It began to fall away. Christine dug deliriously, and after a few moments there was enough room to wriggle inside.

It was a very tight fit. She was curled in a fetal ball and, almost at once, had the sickening feeling that she had somehow stuffed herself into a jar. Her right eye could see over the lip of the hole’s entrance for several hundred yards down the draw. No one was coming. But black smoke was rising from the direction of the house. Her hands were drawn up against her throat and one of them discovered the miniature crucifix she’d worn ever since she could remember. She held it tight and waited.

When the sun began to sink behind her, the young girl’s hopes rose. She was afraid one of them had seen her run away, but with each passing hour her chances got better. She prayed for night to come. It would be all but impossible for them to find her then.

An hour after sundown she held her breath as horses passed by down the draw. The night was moonless and she couldn’t make out any forms. She thought she heard a child crying. The hoofbeats slowly died away and didn’t return.

Her mouth was so dry that it hurt to swallow, and the throbbing of her knees seemed to be spreading over the whole of her body. She would have given anything to stretch. But she couldn’t move more than an inch or two in any direction. She couldn’t turn over, and her left side, the side she was lying on, had gone numb.

As the young girl’s longest night ground slowly on, her discomfort would build and break like a fever and she would have to steel herself against sudden rushes of panic. She might have died of shock had she given in, but each time Christine found a way to beat back these swells of hysteria. If there was a saving grace, it was that she thought little of what had happened to her family and friends. Now and again she would hear her father’s death grunt, the one he made when the Pawnee hatchet sliced through his back. But each time she heard the grunt she managed to stop there, shutting the rest of it out of her mind. She’d always been known as a tough little girl, and toughness was what saved her.

Around midnight she dropped off to sleep only to wake minutes later in a claustrophobic frenzy. Like the slipknot on a rope, the more she struggled, the tighter she wedged herself.

Her pitiful screams rang up and down the draw.

At last she could scream no more and settled down to a long, cleansing cry. When that, too, was spent, she was calm, weak with the exhaustion an animal feels after hours in the trap.

Forsaking escape from the hole, she concentrated on a series of tiny activities to make herself more comfortable. She moved her feet back and forth, counting off each toe only when she could wiggle it separate from the rest. Her hands were relatively free and she pressed her fingertips together until she had run through every combination she could think of. She counted her teeth. She recited the Lord’s prayer, spelling each word. She composed a long song about being in the hole. Then she sang it.

When first light came she began to cry again, knowing she could not possibly make it through the coming day. She’d had enough. And when she heard horses in the draw the prospect of dying at someone’s hand seemed much better than dying in the hole.

“Help,” she cried. “Help me.”

She heard the hoofbeats come to an abrupt halt. People were coming up the slope, scuffling over the rocks. The scuffling stopped and an Indian face loomed in front of the hole. She couldn’t bear to look at him, but it was impossible to turn her head away. She closed her eyes to the puzzled Comanche.

“Please . . . get me out,” she murmured.

Before she knew it strong hands were pulling her into the sunshine. She couldn’t stand at first, and as she sat on the ground, stretching out her swollen legs an inch at a time, the Indians conferred amongst themselves.

They were split. The majority could see no value in taking her. They said she was skinny and small and weak. And if they took this little bundle of misery they might be blamed for what the Pawnee had done to the white people in the earth house.

Their leader argued against this. It was unlikely that the people at the earth house, so far from any other whites, would be found right away. They would be well out of the country by then. The band had only two captives now, both Mexicans, and captives were always of value. If this one died on the long trip home, they would leave her by the trail and no one would be the wiser. If she survived, she would be useful as a worker or as something to bargain with if the need arose.