Michael Blake - Dances With Wolves

It didn’t occur to the shortsighted officer that he could have used Dances With Wolves to great advantage as a bargaining tool. He wanted only to get rid of him. His presence had already unsettled the command.

Shipping him back to Fort Hays seemed a brilliant idea. As a prisoner, he would be worth much more to the major back there than out here. The capture of a turncoat would stand him in very good stead with the top brass. The army would talk about this prisoner, and if they talked about the prisoner, the name of the man who caught him was bound to come up just as often.

The major blew out his lamp and pulled up his covers with a self-satisfied yawn. Everything was going to work out nicely, he thought. The campaign couldn’t have asked for a better beginning.

They came for the prisoner early the next morning.

Sergeant Murphy had two men pull Dances With Wolves to his feet and asked the major, “Should we put him in uniform, sir, spruce him up some?”

“Of course not,” the major said sharply. “Now, get him in the wagon.”

Six men were detailed for the trip back: two on horseback up front, two on horseback in the rear, one to drive, and one to guard the prisoner in the wagon bed.

They went due east, across the rolling prairie he loved so much. But on this bright morning in October there was no love in Dances With Wolves’s heart. He said nothing to his captors, preferring to bump along in the back of the wagon, listening to the steady clank of his chains as his mind considered the possibilities.

There was no way to overpower the escort. He might be able to kill one, or perhaps even two. But they would kill him after that. He thought of trying it anyway. To die fighting these men would not be so bad. It would be better than landing in some dismal jail.

Every time he thought of her, his heart would begin to crack. When her face would start to form as a picture in his head, he forced himself to think of something else. He had to do this every few minutes. It was the worst kind of agony.

He doubted that anyone would be coming after him. He knew they would want to, but he could not imagine that Ten Bears would compromise the safety of all his people for the sake of a single man. Dances With Wolves himself would not do that.

On the other hand, he felt certain they had sent out scouts and that they knew by now of his desperate situation. If they’d hung around long enough to see him leave in the wagon, with only six men to guard him, there might be a chance.

As the morning dragged on, Dances With Wolves clung to this idea as his only hope. Each time the wagon slowed to gain a rise or lurched down into a draw, he held himself breathless, wishing for the swish of an arrow or the crack of a rifle.

By midday, he had heard nothing.

They’d been away from the river for a long time, but it was coming up again. Searching for a place to ford, they followed it for a quarter mile before the soldiers up front found a well-traveled buffalo crossing.

The water wasn’t wide, but the breaks around the river were exceptionally thick, thick enough for an ambush. As the wagon creaked down the incline, Dances With Wolves kept his eyes and ears open.

The sergeant in charge called for the driver to stop before they entered the stream, and they waited as the sergeant and another man crossed over. For a long minute or two, they probed the breaks. Then the sergeant cupped his hands and called for the wagon to come along.

Dances With Wolves clenched his fists and shifted to a squatting position. He could see nothing and he could hear nothing.

But he knew they were there.

He was moving at the sound of the first arrow, far faster than the guard in the wagon, who was still fumbling with his rifle as Dances With Wolves looped the hand chain around the man’s neck.

Rifle fire exploded behind him and he yanked the chain taut, feeling the flesh beneath it give as the soldier’s throat caved in.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the sergeant tumble forward off his horse, an arrow deep in the small of his back. The wagon driver had jumped over the side. He was knee-deep in water, firing wildly with a pistol.

Dances With Wolves landed on top of him and they grappled briefly in the water before he could work himself free. Using the chain like a two-handed whip, he lashed at the driver’s head and the soldier turned limp, rolling slowly in the shallow water. Dances With Wolves gave him more vicious whacks, stopping only when he saw the water turning red.

There was yelling downstream. Dances With Wolves looked up in time to see the last of the troopers trying to escape. He must have been wounded because he was flopping loosely in the saddle.

Wind In His Hair was right behind the doomed soldier. As their horses came together, Dances With Wolves heard the dull thud of Wind In His Hair’s skull cracker as it crushed the man’s head.

Behind him it was quiet, and when he turned he saw the men of the rear guard sprawled dead in the water.

Several warriors were jabbing lances into the bodies, and he was overjoyed to see that one of them was Stone Calf.

A hand grabbed his shoulder and Dances With Wolves spun into the beaming face of Kicking Bird.

“What a great fight,” the medicine man crowed. “We got them all so easy and no one’s hurt.”

“I got two,” Dances With Wolves yelled back. He lifted his chained hands into the air and cried out, “With these.”

The rescue party didn’t waste any time. After a frantic search, they found the keys to Dances With Wolves’s chains on the body of the dead sergeant.

Then they jumped on their ponies and galloped away, taking a course that swung many miles to the south and west of Fort Sedgewick.

An inch of early snow fell fortuitously on Ten Bears’s fleeing people, covering their tracks all the way to the winter camp.

Everyone made excellent time, and six days later the splinter groups had reunited on the bottom of the mammoth canyon that would be their home for several months.

The place was steeped in Comanche history and was aptly named The Great Spirit Steps Here. The canyon was miles long, a mile wide in most places, and some of its sheer walls ran half a mile from top to bottom. They had spent the winter here for as long as most people could remember, and it was a perfect spot, providing forage and plenty of water for the people and ponies and ample protection from the blizzards that raged overhead all winter. It was also far from the reach of their enemies.

Other bands passed the winter here, too, and there was great rejoicing as old friends and relatives saw each other again for the first time since spring.

Once they had reassembled, however, Ten Bears’s village settled in to wait, unable to rest easy until the fate of the rescue party was known.

At midmorning on the day after their return a scout thundered into camp with the news that the party was coming down the trail. He said that Dances With Wolves was with them.

Stands With A Fist sprinted up the trail ahead of everyone. She was crying as she ran, and when she caught sight of the horsemen, riding single file high on the trail above, she called his name.

She didn’t stop calling it until she had reached him.

The early snow was the prelude for a fearsome blizzard that struck that afternoon.

People stayed close to their lodges for the next two days.

Dances With Wolves and Stands With A Fist saw almost no one.

Kicking Bird did the best he could for Dances With Wolves’s face, taking down the swelling and trying to speed its recovery with healing herbs. There was nothing to be done with the fragile, shattered cheekbone, however, and it was left to mend on its own.