Michael Blake - Dances With Wolves

“If you were a white soldier,” the old man said wryly, “and you had all these men with guns, what would you do?”

Dances With Wolves quickly thought this over.

“I would hide in the village . . .”

Cries of derision flew from the mouths of the warriors who had been within earshot. Ten Bears quieted them with a raising of his hand and an admonishment.

“Dances With Wolves has not finished his answer,” he said sternly.

“I would hide in the village, behind the lodges. I would watch only the breaks and not those coming from the prairie. I would let the enemy show himself first. I would let the enemy think we are fighting on the other side and that taking the camp will be easy. Then I would have these men hiding behind the lodges jump out and shoot. Then I would have these men charge the enemy with knives and skull crackers. I would drive the enemy into the river and kill so many that they would never come this way again.”

The old man had been listening carefully. He looked out over his warriors and lifted his voice.

“Dances With Wolves and I are of the same mind. We should kill so many that they will never come this way again. Let us go quietly.”

The men moved stealthily through the village with their new rifles and took up positions behind lodges that faced the river.

Before he took his place beside them, Dances With Wolves slipped into Kicking Bird’s lodge. The children had been herded under robes. Sitting in silence beside them were the women. Kicking Bird’s wives were holding clubs in their laps. Stands With A Fist had his rifle. They said nothing, and neither did Dances With Wolves. He’d only wanted to see that they were ready.

He stole past the arbor and stopped behind his own lodge. It was one of the closest to the river. Stone Calf was on the other side. They nodded at each other and turned their attention to the open ground in front of them. It sloped for about a hundred yards before it met the breaks.

The rain was much lighter, but it still served to obscure their view. Clouds hung thickly overhead, and the halflight of dawn was almost no light at all. They could see little, but he felt sure they were there.

Dances With Wolves glanced up and down the line of tipis to his left and right. Comanche warriors were packed in behind each one, waiting with their rifles. Even Ten Bears was there.

The light was stronger now. The storm clouds were lifting and the rain was going with them. Suddenly the sun broke through, and a minute later steam was rising off the ground like fog.

Dances With Wolves squinted through the fog at the breaks and saw the dark shapes of men, sifting like spirits through the willows and cottonwoods.

He was starting to feel something he had not felt in a long time. It was that intangible thing that turned his eyes black, that turned on the machine that could not be shut down.

No matter how big, how many, or how powerful the men moving in the mist were, they were nothing to fear. They were the enemy and they were on his doorstep. He wanted to fight them. He couldn’t wait to fight them.

Gunshots rang out behind him. The diversionary force had hit the small group of defenders on the other front.

As the noise of the fighting increased, his eyes checked the line. A few hotheads tried to break away and run to the other fight, but the older warriors did a good job of holding them in check, and no one bolted.

Again he scanned the mists clinging to the breaks.

They were coming up slowly, some on foot, some on horseback. They were inching up the incline, shadowy, roach-haired enemies dreaming of a slaughter.

The Pawnee cavalry was behind the men on foot, and Dances With Wolves wanted them at the front. He wanted the mounted men to take the brunt of the fire.

Bring up the horses, he pleaded to them silently. Bring ‘em up.

He looked down the line, hoping they would wait a few more seconds, and was surprised to see many eyes riveted on him. They kept watching, as if waiting for a sign.

Dances With Wolves raised an arm over his head.

A fluttering guttural sound came up the slope. It rose higher and higher, blasting through the quiet, rainy morning, like hot air. The Pawnee were sounding the attack.

As they charged, the cavalry surged ahead of the men on foot.

Dances With Wolves dropped his arm and sprang out from behind the lodge with his rifle raised. The other Comanches followed suit.

The fire from their guns hit the horsemen at a distance of about twenty yards, and as cleanly as a sharp knife cutting skin, it wrecked the Pawnee charge. Men tumbled from their horses like toys shaken off a shelf, and those not actually hit were stunned by the blistering concussion of forty rifles.

As they fired the Comanches counterattacked, streaming down through the screen of blue smoke to pounce on the dazed enemy.

The charge was so furious that Dances With Wolves crashed square into the first Pawnee he met. As they rolled awkwardly on the ground he thrust the barrel of the Navy into the man’s face and fired.

After that he shot men where he could find them in the turmoil, killing two more in rapid succession. Something large bumped him hard from behind, nearly knocking him off his feet. It was one of the surviving Pawnee war ponies. He grabbed its bridle and swung onto its back.

The Pawnee were like chickens being set upon by wolves and already they were falling back, desperately trying to make the safety of the breaks. Dances With Wolves picked out a tall warrior running for his life and rode him down. He fired at the back of the man’s head, but there was no report. Flipping the barrel around, he clubbed the fleeing warrior with the butt end of the revolver. The Pawnee went down right in front of him, and Dances With Wolves felt the pony’s hooves strike the body as they passed over. Just ahead of him another Pawnee, his head turbaned with a bright red scarf, was picking himself off the ground. He, too, was going for the breaks.

Dances With Wolves kicked viciously at the pony’s flanks, and as they pulled abreast of the runaway, he threw himself at the turbaned man, taking him in a headlock as he slid from the pony’s back.

Momentum sent them careening across the last of the open space and they slammed hard against a large cottonwood. Dances With Wolves had the man by both sides of his head. He was bashing his skull against the tree trunk before he realized that the warrior’s eyes were dead. A broken branch low on the trunk had skewered the Pawnee like meat.

As he stepped back from this unnerving sight, the dead man slumped forward, his arms flopping pitifully against Dances With Wolves’s sides as if he wanted to embrace his killer. Dances With Wolves skipped back farther and the body fell flat on its face.

In the same instant he realized that the screaming had stopped.

The fight was over.

Suddenly weak, he staggered along the edge of the breaks, picked up the main path, and trotted down to the river, sidestepping Pawnee bodies as he went.

A dozen mounted Comanches, Stone Calf among them, were chasing the dregs of the Pawnee force up the opposite bank.

Dances With Wolves watched until the skirmishers disappeared from sight. Then he walked slowly back. Coming up the incline, he could hear yelling. When he reached the slope’s crest, the battlefield he’d lately occupied opened wide to him.

It looked like a hastily abandoned picnic site. Refuse was scattered everywhere. There were a great number of Pawnee corpses. Comanche warriors were moving among them excitedly.

“I killed this one,” someone would call.

“This one still breathes,” another would announce, prompting the arrival of whoever was close by to help finish him off.

The women and children had come out of the lodges and were scurrying down to the battlefield. Some of the bodies were being mutilated.