Michael Blake - Dances With Wolves

He tugged on Cisco’s reins, but if the buckskin felt it at all, he paid it no mind. His neck was stretched out straight, his ears were flat, and his nostrils were flared to their fullest, gobbling the wind that fueled him ever closer to the herd.

Lieutenant Dunbar had no time to think. The prairie was flying past his feet, the sky was rolling overhead, and between the two, spread out in a long line directly ahead, was a wall of stampeding buffalo.

He was close enough now to see the muscles of their hindquarters. He could see the bottoms of their hooves. In seconds he would be close enough to touch them.

He was rushing into a deathly nightmare, a man in an open boat floating helplessly toward the lip of the falls. The lieutenant didn’t scream. He didn’t say a prayer or make the sign of the cross. But he did close his eyes. The faces of his father and mother popped into his head. They were doing something he had never seen them do. They were kissing passionately. There was a pounding all about them, a great, rolling rumble of a thousand drums. The lieutenant opened his eyes and found himself in a dreamlike landscape, a valley filled with gigantic brown and black boulders hurtling in a single direction.

They were running with the herd.

The tremendous thunder of tens of thousands of cloven hooves carried the curious silence of a deluge, and for a few moments Dunbar was serenely adrift in the crazy quiet of the stampede.

As he clung to Cisco he looked out over the massive, moving carpet of which he was now a part and imagined that, if he wanted, he could slip off his horse’s back and make it to the safety of empty ground by hopping from one hump to another, as a boy might skip across the rocks in a stream.

The rifle slipped, nearly falling out of his sweaty hand, and as it did, the bull running on his left, no more than a foot or two away, veered in sharply. With a thrust of his shaggy head he tried to gore Cisco. But the buckskin was too deft. He jumped away and the horn only grazed his neck. The move nearly dumped Lieutenant Dunbar. He should have fallen to his death. But the buffalo were packed so tightly around him that he bounced against the back of a buffalo running along the other side and somehow righted himself.

Panicked, the lieutenant lowered his rifle and fired at the buffalo who had tried to gore Cisco. It was a bad shot, but the bullet shattered one of the beast’s front legs. Its knees buckled and Dunbar heard the snap of its neck as the bull somersaulted.

Suddenly there was open space all around him. The buffalo had shied away from the report of his gun. He pulled hard at Cisco’s reins and the buckskin responded. In a moment they had stopped. The rumble of the herd was receding.

As he watched the herd fall away in front of him he saw that his fellow hunters had caught them. The sight of naked men on horseback, running with all these animals, like corks bobbing in high seas, held him spellbound for several minutes. He could see the bend of their bows and the puffs of dust as one after another of the buffalo went down.

But not many minutes had passed before he turned back. He wanted to see his kill with his own eyes. He wanted to confirm what seemed too fantastic to be true.

Everything had happened in less time than it took to shave.

It was a big animal to begin with, but in death, lying still and alone in the short grass, it looked bigger.

Like a visitor at an exhibit, Lieutenant Dunbar circled the body slowly. He paused at the bull’s monstrous head, took one of the horns in hand, and tugged at it. The head was very heavy. He ran his hand the length of the body: through the wooly thatch on the hump, down the sharply sloping back, and over the fine-coated rump. He held the tufted tail between his fingers. It seemed ridiculously small.

Retracing his steps, the lieutenant squatted in front of the bull’s head and squeezed the long, black beard hanging from its chin. It reminded him of a general’s goatee, and he wondered if this fellow had been a high-standing member of the herd.

He stood up then and backed up a step or two, still taken with the sight of the dead buffalo. How just one of these remarkable creatures could exist was a beautiful mystery. And there were thousands of them.

Maybe there are millions, he thought.

He felt no pride in having taken the bull’s life, but it brought him no remorse either. Aside from a strong sensation of respect, he felt no emotion. He did feel something physical, however. He could feel his stomach twisting. He heard it grumble. His mouth had begun to water. For several days his meals had been skimpy, and now, gazing down at this large pile of meat, he was acutely aware of his hunger.

Barely ten minutes had passed since the furious charge, and already the hunt was over. Leaving their dead behind, the herd had vanished. The hunters were hanging about their kills, waiting as the women and children and elderly poured onto the plains, hauling their butchering equipment along with them. Their voices were ringing with excitement, and Dunbar was struck by the idea that some kind of festival had begun.

Wind In His Hair suddenly galloped up with two cronies. Flush with success, he was smiling broadly as he vaulted off his heaving pony. The lieutenant noticed an ugly, leaking gash just below the warrior’s knee.

But Wind In His Hair didn’t notice. He was still beaming grandly as he sidled up to the lieutenant and whacked him on the back with a well-intentioned greeting that sent Dunbar sprawling onto the ground.

Laughing good-naturedly, Wind In His Hair pulled the stunned lieutenant to his feet and pressed a thick-bladed knife into his palm. He said something in Comanche and pointed at the dead bull.

Dunbar stood flatfooted, staring sheepishly at the knife in his hand. He smiled helplessly and shook his head. He didn’t know what to do.

Wind In His Hair muttered an aside that made his friends laugh, smacked the lieutenant on the shoulder, and took back the knife. Then he dropped to one knee at the belly of Dunbar’s buffalo.

With the aplomb of a seasoned carver he drove the knife deep into the buffalo’s chest and, using both hands, dragged the blade back, opening it up. As the guts spilled out, Wind In His Hair stuck a hand into the cavity, groping about like a man feeling for something in the dark.

He found what he wanted, gave it a couple of stiff tugs, and rose to his feet with a liver so large that it flopped over both his hands. Mimicking the white soldier’s well-known bow, he presented this prize to the dumbstruck lieutenant. Gingerly, Dunbar accepted the steaming organ, but having no idea what to do, he fell back on his trusty bow and, politely as he could, handed the liver back.

Normally, Wind In His Hair might have taken offense, but he reminded himself that “Jun” was white and therefore ignorant. He made yet another bow, stuffed one end of the still warm liver into his mouth and tore off a substantial chunk.

Lieutenant Dunbar watched incredulously as the warrior passed the liver to his friends. They also gnawed off pieces of the raw meat. They were eating it greedily, as if it were fresh apple pie.

By now a little crowd, some mounted, some on foot, had gathered around Dunbar’s buffalo. Kicking Bird was there, and so was Stands With A Fist. She and another woman had already begun to skin the dead bull.

Once again wind In His Hair offered him the half-eaten meat and once again Dunbar took it. He held it dumbly as his eyes searched for an expression or a sign from someone in the crowd that would let him off the hook.

He got no help. They were watching him silently, waiting expectantly, and he realized it would be foolishly transparent to try to pass it off again. Even Kicking Bird was waiting.