Michael Blake - Dances With Wolves

An hour after dawn, when the camp was being dismantled, he started thinking about how relieved he was to be going. The winter camp would be even more remote a place than this. Stands With A Fist thought she was pregnant and he was looking forward to the protection a faraway camp would give his new family.

No one would be able to reach them there. They would be anonymous. He himself would no longer exist, except in the eyes of his adopted people.

Then it hit him, hit him hard enough to set his heart into a sudden, crazy fluttering.

He did exist.

And he had stupidly left the proof behind. The full record of Lieutenant John J. Dunbar was written down for everyone to see. It was lying on the bunk in the sod hut, secure between the pages of his journal.

Since they had little to do, Stands With A Fist had gone off to help some of the other families. It would take a while to find her in the confusion of the move, and he didn’t want to lose time with explanations. Every minute of the journal’s existence was now a threat.

He ran for the pony herd, unable to think of anything but retrieving the telltale record.

He and Cisco were just coming into camp when he ran into Kicking Bird.

The medicine man balked at what Dances With Wolves told him. They wanted to be under way by noon and would not be able to wait if the long round trip to the white soldier’s fort took longer than expected.

But Dances With Wolves was adamant, and reluctantly, Kicking Bird told him to go ahead. Their trail would be easy enough to follow if he was delayed, but the medicine man urged him to make haste. He didn’t like this kind of last-minute surprise.

The little buckskin was happy to be racing across the prairie. During the last few days, the air had turned crisp, and this morning the breeze was up. Cisco loved having the wind in his face, and they breezed over the miles to the fort.

The last familiar rise loomed ahead of them, and Dances With Wolves flattened down on his horse’s back, asking him to take the last half mile at a full run.

They blew over the rise and shot down the slope to the old post.

Dances With Wolves saw everything in one stupendous flash.

Fort Sedgewick was alive with soldiers.

They covered another hundred yards before he could pull Cisco up. The buckskin pitched and whirled madly, and Dances With Wolves was hard-pressed to calm him. He was struggling himself, trying to comprehend the unreal sight of a bustling army camp.

A score of canvas tents had been thrown up around the old supply house and the sod hut. Two Hotchkiss cannons, mounted on caissons, were parked next to his old quarters. The tumbledown corral was jammed with horses. And the whole place was seething with men in uniform. They were walking and talking and working.

A wagon was sitting fifty yards in front of him, and in its bed, staring at him with startled faces, were four common soldiers.

The outlines of their faces were not clear enough for him to see that they were boys.

The teenage soldiers had never seen a wild Indian, but in the few weeks of training following their recruitment, they had been reminded repeatedly that soon they would be fighting a deceptive, cunning, and bloodthirsty foe. Now they were actually staring at a vision of the enemy.

They panicked.

Dances With Wolves saw the rise of their rifles just as Cisco reared. There was nothing he could do. The volley was poorly aimed and Dances With Wolves was thrown clear as they fired, landing on the ground unhurt.

But one of the bullets caught Cisco square in the chest, and the slug tore through the center of his heart. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Oblivious to the shouting soldiers rushing toward him, Dances With Wolves scrambled back to his downed horse. He grabbed at Cisco’s head and lifted his muzzle. But there was no life in it.

Outrage took him over. It formed a sentence in his mind. Look what you’ve done. He turned to the sound of rushing feet, ready to shout out the words.

As his face came around, the stock of a rifle slammed into it. Everything went black.

He could smell dirt. His face was pressed against an earthen floor. He could hear the sound of muffled voices, and a set of words came to him distinctly.

“Sergeant Murphy . . . he’s coming to.”

Dances With Wolves turned his face and grimaced in pain as his broken cheekbone made contact with the hard-packed floor.

He touched his injured face with a finger and recoiled again as the hurt shot along the side of his head.

He tried to open his eyes but could only manage one. The other was swollen shut. When the good eye cleared he recognized where he was. He was in the old supply house.

Someone kicked him in the side.

“Here, you, sit up.”

The toe of a boot rolled him onto his back, and Dances With Wolves scooted away from the contact. The rear wall of the supply house stopped him.

There he sat staring with his good eye, first at the face of the bearded sergeant standing over him, then at the curious faces of white soldiers clustered around the door.

Someone behind them suddenly shouted, “Make way for Major Hatch, you men,” and the faces in the doorway fell away.

Two officers entered the supply house, a young, clean-shaven lieutenant and a much older man wearing long, gray side whiskers and an ill-fitting uniform. The older man’s eyes were small. The gold bars on his shoulders carried the oak leaf insignia of major.

Both officers were looking at him with expressions of repulsion.

“What is he, Sergeant?” asked the major, his tone stiff and cautious.

“Don’t know yet, sir.”

“Does he speak English?”

“Don’t know that either, sir . . . Hey, you . . . you speak English?”

Dances With Wolves blinked his good eye.

“Talk?” the sergeant queried again, putting his fingers to his lips. “Talk?”

He kicked lightly at one of the captive’s black riding boots, and Dances With Wolves sat up straighter. It wasn’t a threatening move, but as he made it, he saw both officers jerk back.

They were afraid of him.

“You talk?” the sergeant asked once more.

“I speak English,” Dances With Wolves said wearily. “It hurts to talk . . . One of your boys broke my cheek.”

The soldiers were shocked to hear the words come out so perfectly, and for the moment, they faced him in dumb silence.

Dances With Wolves looked white and he looked Indian. It had been impossible to tell which half was real. Now at least they knew he was white.

During the silence, other soldiers had again crowded around the doorway, and Dances With Wolves spoke at them.

“One of those stupid idiots shot my horse.”

The major ignored this comment.

“Who are you?”

“I’m First Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, United States Army.”

“Why are you dressed like an Indian?”

Even if he’d wanted to, Dances With Wolves couldn’t have begun to answer the question. But he didn’t want to.

“This is my post,” he said. “I came out from Fort Hays in April, but there was no one here.”

The major and the lieutenant held a brief conversation, whispering into one another’s ear.

“You have proof of that?” questioned the lieutenant.

“Under the bed in that other hut, there’s a folded sheet of paper with my orders on it. On top of the bed is my journal. It will tell you all you need to know.”

It was all over for Dances With Wolves. He dropped the good side of his head into a hand. His heart was breaking. The band would leave him behind for sure. By the time he got clear of this mess, if he ever did, it would be too late to find them. Cisco was lying out there dead. He wanted to cry. But he didn’t dare. He just hung his head.