“I did not want to play war any more. I did not want to eat. The dream would not go away. I thought and thought about it and about my country many sleeps across the dark hills of water. I wanted to die, but there was no enemy to kill me; and I thought if I got weaker and weaker and died, maybe I could not find the way back to my relatives. I wondered how she found the way to me. Maybe it was her yuwipi power that helped her, and maybe I would be lost always out there.
“Then Pahuska said he would send me home, for he was like a father. Two others were going back, and one of these knew the Wasichu tongue, so we went together.
“Then, after many sleeps, I was here again.”
XXIX
The Girl’s Road
When I returned from the woodpile, the old man sat with closed eyes, listening to the random plaintive sounds he was making with his eagle-bone whistle. I fed the stove against the snow-chill that had begun to creep into the tepee. The wind had ceased and the listening world outside was filled with whispering flakes that clad the hills in gauze.
“You walked across the world,” I said, “and then you found the road at last?”
Emerging slowly from his meditation and ignoring my question, he began.
“Looks Twice and my mother had come from Grandmother’s Land. My grandfather and grandmother wanted to come home to their people, for they were very old and they did not want to die up there. So my step-father brought them back. They were all living in a little gray house of logs yonder on White Horse Creek, and I went to live with them. Winter was coming, and people were talking about the Wanekia [Messiah]. Some believed, and some said it was all foolishness. Looks Twice and my mother did not believe yet and I did not believe either; but my grandfather and grandmother said maybe it was true.
“I heard that Kicking Bear had gone with Good Thunder and some others to see the Wanekia far away where the sun sets and a people they called the Paiutes lived. They would come back with the young grass, and then, some said, we would know that it was all true. But others said it was a long way yonder, and stories that traveled far always got bigger. I did not care much about the Wanekia; but I wanted to see Kicking Bear again and talk about the things we used to do together before the hoop was broken. We could remember the time we got all those Crow horses, and we could talk about High Horse and Charging Cat; and maybe we would laugh about the way the fat old woman bounced on her pony-drag.
“It was a hard winter with much snow, and there was not much to eat. There was nothing to hunt, and the Great White Father did not send all the cattle he promised. Sometimes I could kill a jack rabbit. The people grew angry and many were sick. I thought about the dream that came to me across the great water. Maybe this was why Plenty White Cows did not look at me in the dream and Tashina was crying. I remembered what Plenty White Cows told me before she went to her parents in the spirit world. I would go across a great water, and when I came back I would find the little girl she heard crying far away. I was back from across the great water, and there was only hunger and sickness.