When the tree flowered

by John G. Neihardt

“I was thinking about my father,” he said, looking through me and far away. “I was thinking how young he was then. If he could come back now, he would be like my grandson.” Then he fell to brooding again with his chin on his chest.

“And did the horses go over at last?” I urged.

He came slowly out of his daydream, as though reluctant to continue.

“It was the new medicine power,” he said, “and they were afraid; but our warriors were very brave. They had gone away from the creek valley below us, and only a few were lying along the top of the creek bank, waiting for something.

“Then there was a great wind of singing all at once over to the right towards where the sun goes down. They were coming out of a draw there, all afoot and packed together like a wedge pointed at the ring of boxes; and it was a death-song they were singing all together! I have seen a mountain meadow full of flowers high up in the Pa Sapa [the Black Hills], and their war bonnets were like that meadow walking in a wind, and the wind was a death-song. It was long ago and I am old, but I see it and hear it yet. The high sun stared; the hills listened, the ring of boxes slept in the drowsy dung smoke.

“They did not hurry; but they came and came, swaying together in the wind of singing that they made—a loud wind dying, a low wind rising—loud and low, loud and low.

“Some horsebacks charged from over by the Little Piney, and a great cry went up from the women on the hills. And then—the ring of boxes was a whirling cloud again with that ripping thunder in it.

“They were coming faster now and we could hear their singing high above the thunder. We could see the point go dull and sharpen again, go dull and sharpen, until it was hidden in the whirling smoke. Then there was nothing to hear but the voices of the women like one great voice.

“Now our warriors would go over, and it would be finished. They had given themselves to death, and what could stop them? They would go over now, and it would be finished at last.”

The old man sat tense and breathless for a moment, peering narrow-eyed through and beyond the tent wall. Then the look of battle left his face and his eyes returned to mine. “It was the new medicine power,” he said wearily, “and it was stronger than ours. When they came out of the smoke, fleeing back towards the draw, they were like that blooming meadow in a hailstorm. Many, many were carrying their comrades on their backs, the wounded and the dead.”