XXVII
The Dark Hills of Water
The wind had sharpened, shifting eastward in the night, and now it filled the dull gray morning with the prickling smell of snow. When I arrived, Eagle Voice was up and eager to continue, beginning where he had ceased the day before, as though there had been no interruption.
“Dho,” he said when I had placed a cottonwood chunk in the stove, “it is a road that leads across the world.
“After Against the Clouds and his woman came and took her home to the world of spirit the land was strange again. Sometimes I rode all day, but there was nothing. Everywhere the valleys were empty, and if I stopped to listen, they would be listening too. The hills looked, and did not know me. Sometimes I thought I would go back home; but there was no home yonder. Sometimes I thought I would ride down to see the Rosebud and the Greasy Grass again, and maybe I would go over to the Little Piney country where my father’s scaffold stood. Then I would think maybe there would be many Wasichus yonder, too many to kill. Or if there were no Wasichus, the valleys would be empty and I would be a stranger and the hills would stare. The bones of my father would be scattered and the blowing of the wind would be like mourning. So I did not go.
“The snow came and fell deep.
“Dreams came to me when I slept, and when I sat alone beside my fire and the wind whipped the smoke-flap, dreams came to me awake. Sometimes I would be sitting there looking at the fire, and she would be sitting yonder across the fire, maybe sewing quills and beads on a moccasin. Then I would look, and there would be nothing I could see; but when I looked away she would be there again sewing by the fire.
“I hunted much and got fresh meat for my grandparents and other old people. Often people invited me to come and eat with them, and there would be stories, so that I would be back in the good days awhile. But I liked to be alone too. I wondered much about the great water reaching to the sunrise and the strange people in a far land and the little girl crying far away. Maybe the little girl was Tashina when I was a little boy. But I was a man, and how could she grease my feet?
“One night when the winter was old, Plenty White Cows came while I slept, and I saw her clear. She was standing by the plum brush, and she was smiling at me. Plums were red in the thicket and there were some in a fold of her blanket. She smiled at me and said, ‘Shonka ’kan, you made me proud.’ Then I saw that it was not Plenty White Cows standing there. It was Tashina. And just as I knew her, horses snorted and broke sharp wind. Then there was only starlight and a voice that said, ‘Hold fast, there is more.’ And I was awake in the dark and the wind was whipping the smoke-flap.”
The old man paused, fumbling in his long tobacco pouch. After a leisurely tamping of the pipe, he lit it, passed it to me and sat gazing at the ground. When it seemed that he had lost me in his meditation, I prompted him, ‘And the long road, Grandfather?’
“Ah,” he said, his gaze slowly focusing upon me; “the long road. I started south before the young grasses appeared, going to see my people, the Oglalas, again. Maybe there would be soldiers, so I rode nights, slept days. No soldiers. I saw the new iron road [Northern Pacific] that the Wasichus had made, and for a while I was afraid to cross it. My horse was afraid too; but we crossed it on the run. I was hiding when the great iron horse went by snorting smoke and pulling many big wagons. I rode down across the flat-lands, past the White Buttes and Bear Butte and Pa Sapa.