When the tree flowered

by John G. Neihardt

“All at once the brush cracked. The horses snorted. The two young ones reared and broke away, running and kicking and making sharp wind when they kicked. It was just like the other time I told you about; that time after my first sun dance when the people were getting ready to scatter and my horses broke away at the creek.

“She was standing there at the edge of the plum brush, and my heart jumped in me; for all at once it was that other time back home. Then I saw that it was Plenty White Cows standing there. She had red plums in a fold of her blanket, and she was looking at me and smiling. She was pretty.

“Our party was small, so I had seen her often since her family came to camp with us. Against the Clouds and his woman were dead, and she was living with her real parents. I had noticed her more than other girls because I knew the story about her and the strange power she had. That was not the only time she had smiled at me that way. The first time was when I was riding by her tepee and she was cooking out in front of it. She was bent over, stirring the pot, and she looked up at me surprised. Then she looked happy and smiled, and she was pretty, and she did not seem strange any more.

“Yes, it was like the time back home that I told you about. Maybe that is why I said it, or maybe I was bashful all at once. My mother and grandmother wanted me to get married, and they said I was too bashful because I did not notice girls much. Maybe I was bashful then. I said, ‘Hold this horse for me while I catch the others.’ So she took the lariat and I rode away on the run after my horses. While I was chasing them, I was wondering if the horse would be tied to the brush when I got back. The young horses felt good, and I had a long chase before I caught them in a bend of the creek against a high bank. It was dark before I got back with them, and I thought surely the other horse would be tied to the brush, just the way it was that other time.

“It was not so. She was standing in the same place, holding the horse. There was starlight.”

The old man fell silent and began fumbling in his long tobacco pouch. When he had filled the pipe and tamped it with a leisurely thoroughness, he said, “That is how it was, Grandson; that is how it was.” Then he lit the pipe, his lean cheeks hollowing.

When we had sat in silence for a while he began talking in a low voice, with little expression at first, as though remembering aloud with no thought of sharing.

“She was a good woman, and she made the strange land almost like home. She was always working and never angry. She would make low songs for herself when she was working. I think she could tan deerskin as soft as my grandmother could; and she made clothing of it, beautiful with beads and dyed porcupine quills. I always got plenty of tender meat for us, plenty for my grandfather and grandmother too. They would come to eat with us and bring other very old people with them. I could always get plenty, because she could tell me where to hunt. Sometimes she would be working and singing to herself; then she would stop singing and tell me where she saw some fat young deer drinking when the sun was going down. Maybe that would be in the morning, but she would see it. So I would be there waiting for the sun to set, and the fat young deer would come.

“She always looked after my moccasins, and when I had been hunting on foot and was tired, she would grease the bottoms of my feet by the fire. She was patient and wise, and sometimes she was more like my mother than my woman; maybe because she was older.

“She could see what others could not see, and what was going to happen, she could tell it. When someone was going to die, she would tell me, and it would be so. If somebody lost some horses, she could sit still with her eyes shut and dream, and in the dream she would go to where the horses were then; and when she opened her eyes, she would tell how she went there, and it would be so.