Michael Blake - Dances With Wolves

Dances With Wolves stood stock-still, too fatigued to retreat into the breaks, too repulsed to move forward.

One of the warriors saw him and then cried out.

“Dances With Wolves!”

Before he knew it, Comanche fighters were all around him. Like ants rolling a pebble uphill, they pushed him onto the battlefield. They were chanting his name as they went.

In a daze he allowed himself to be carried along, unable to comprehend their intense happiness. They were overjoyed at the death and destruction lying at their feet, and Dances With Wolves could not understand.

But as he stood there, hearing them shout his name, understanding came to him. He had never been in this kind of fight, but gradually he began to look at the victory in a new way.

This killing had not been done in the name of some dark political objective. This was not a battle for territory or riches or to make men free. This battle had no ego.

It had been waged to protect the homes that stood only a few feet away. And to protect the wives and children and loved ones huddled inside. It had been fought to preserve the food stores that would see them through the winter, food stores everyone had worked so hard to gather.

For every member of the band this was a great personal victory.

Suddenly he was proud to hear his name being shouted, and as his eyes focused again, he looked down and recognized one of the men he had killed.

“I shot this one,” he yelled out.

Someone shouted in his ear.

“Yes, I saw you shoot him.”

Before long, Dances With Wolves was marching around with them, calling out the names of fellow Comanche men as he recognized them.

Sunshine spilled across the village, and the fighters began a spontaneous dance of victory, exhorting each other with back slaps and cries of triumph as they cavorted over the field of dead Pawnee.

Two of the enemy had been killed by the force defending the front of the village. On the main battlefield there were twenty-two bodies. Four more were found in the breaks, and Stone Calf’s team of pursuers managed to kill three. How many had gotten away wounded, no one knew.

Seven Comanches had been wounded, only two seriously, but the real miracle was in the number of dead. Not a single Comanche fighter had been lost. Even the old men could not remember such a one-sided victory.

For two days the village reveled in its triumph. Honors were heaped on all the men, but one warrior was exalted above all others. That was Dances With Wolves.

Through all his months on the plains the native perception of him had shifted many times. And now the circle had closed. Now he was looked on in a way that was close to their original idea. No one came forward to declare him a god, but in the life of these people he was the next best thing.

All day long young men could be found hanging around his lodge. Maidens flirted openly with him. His name was foremost in everyone’s thoughts. No conversation, regardless of subject, could run its course without some mention of Dances With Wolves.

The ultimate accolade came from Ten Bears. In a gesture previously unknown, he presented the hero with a pipe from his own lodge.

Dances With Wolves liked the attention, but he did nothing to encourage it. The instant and lasting celebrity pressured the management of his days. It seemed that someone was always underfoot. Worst of all, it gave him little private time with Stands With A Fist.

Of all the people in camp, he was perhaps the most relieved to see the return of Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair.

After several weeks on the trail they had yet to engage the enemy when sudden and unseasonable snow flurries caught them in the foothills of a mountain range.

Interpreting this as a sign of an early and savage winter, Kicking Bird had called off the expedition and they had flown home to make preparations for the big move south.

If the party had any misgivings about returning empty-handed, they were washed away with the incredible news of the Pawnee rout.

One immediate side effect of the homecoming was that it reduced the heat of celebrity that Dances With Wolves had been subjected to. He was no less revered, but because of their traditional high standing, much attention was shifted back to Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair, and something approximating the old routine was reestablished.

Though he made no public demonstration, Kicking Bird was astounded by Dances With Wolves’s progress. His bravery and ability in repelling the Pawnee attack could not be overlooked, but it was his progress as a Comanche, particularly his mastery of the language, that moved the medicine man.

He had sought only to learn something of the white race, and it was hard, even for a man of Kicking Bird’s experience, to accept the fact that this lone white soldier, who months ago had never seen an Indian, was now a Comanche.

Harder to believe was that he had become a leader of other Comanches. But the evidence was there for all to see: in the young men who sought him out and in the way all the people talked.

Kicking Bird could not figure out why all this had happened. He finally came to the conclusion that it was just another part of the Great Mystery that surrounded the Great Spirit.

It was fortunate that he was able to accept these rapid developments. It helped pave the way for yet another surprise. His wife told him about it as they lay in bed on his first night back.

“Are you certain of this?” he asked, thoroughly confounded. “This is hard for me to believe.”

“When you see them together, you will know,” she whispered confidentially. “It is there for all to see.”

“Does it seem a good thing?”

His wife answered this question with a giggle.

“Isn’t it always a good thing?” she teased, squeezing a little closer to him.

First thing next morning Kicking Bird appeared at the celebrity’s lodge flap, his face so clouded that Dances With Wolves was taken aback.

They exchanged greetings and sat down.

Dances With Wolves had just begun to pack his new pipe when Kicking Bird, in an unusual display of bad manners, interrupted his host.

“You are speaking well,” he said.

Dances With Wolves stopped working the tobacco into the bowl.

“Thank you,” he replied. “I like to speak Comanche.”

“Then tell me . . . what is this between you and Stands With A Fist?”

Dances With Wolves nearly dropped his pipe. He stammered a few unintelligible sounds before he finally got something coherent out.

“What do you mean?’”

Kicking Bird’s face flushed angrily as he repeated himself.

“Is there something between you and her?”

Dances With Wolves didn’t like this tone. His answer was framed like a challenge.

“I love her.”

“You want to marry her?”

“Yes.”

Kicking Bird thought on this. He would have objected to love for its own sake, but he could find nothing to disapprove of so long as it was housed in matrimony.

He got to his feet.

“Wait here in the lodge,” he said sternly. Before Dances With Wolves could reply, the medicine man was gone.

He would have said yes at any rate. Kicking Bird’s brusque manner had put the fear of God into him. He sat where he was.

Kicking Bird made stops at Wind In His Hair’s and Stone Calf’s lodges, staying about five minutes in each tipi.

As he walked back to his own lodge, he found himself shaking his head again. Somehow he had expected this. But it was still baffling.

Ah, the Great Mystery, he sighed to himself. I always try to see it coming, but I never do.