Running Wolf mounted the knoll and raised an arm. “Hear me, my brothers,” he called. Wrapped in a buffalo robe, he seemed even taller than he was. He had gashed his cheeks for mourning and painted black bars across his face for vengefulness. The wind fluttered the plumes in his headband.
“We know what we have suffered,” he told the eyes and the souls that sought him. “Now we must think why it happened and how we shall keep it from ever happening again.
“I say to you, the answers are simple. We have few horses. We have hardly any men who are good hunters upon them, and we have no skilled warriors at all. We are poor and alone, huddled within our miserable walls, living off our meager crops. Meanwhile other tribes ride forth to garner the wealth of the plains. Meat-fed, they grow strong. They can feed many mouths, therefore they breed many sons, who in turn become horseman hunters. They have the time and the mettle to learn war. Their tribes may be strewn widely, but proud brotherhoods and sisterhoods, oath-societies, bind them together. Is it then any wonder that they make booty of us?”
His glance fell hard on Deathless, who stood in the front row under the hillock. The shaman’s gaze responded, unwavering but blank. “For years they stayed their hand,” Running Wolf said. “They knew we had one among us who was full of spirit power. Nonetheless, at last a band of young men resolved to make a raid. I think some among them had had visions. Visions come readily to him who rides day after day across empty space and camps night after night beneath star-crowded skies. They may have urged each other on. I daresay they simply wanted our horses. The fight became as bloody as it did because we ourselves had no idea of how to wage it. This too we must learn.
“But what the Pariki have found, and soon every plains ranger will know, is that we have lost whatever defense was ours. What new medicine have we?”
He folded his amis. “I ask you, Deathless, great one, what new medicine you can make,” he said. Slowly, he stepped aside.
Indrawn breath whispered among the men, beneath the damp chill that streaked from the stonnclouds. They stared at the shaman. He stood still an instant. Thereafter he climbed the knoll and confronted Running Wolf. He had not adorned himself in any way, merely donned buckskins. Against the other man, he seemed drab, the life in him faded.
Yet he spoke steadily: “Let me ask you first, you who take leadership from your elders, let me ask you and let you tell us what you would have the people do.”
“I did tell you!” Running Wolf declared. “We must get more horses. We can breed them, boy them, catch them wild, and, yes, steal them ourselves. We must go win our share of the riches on the plains. We must become skilled in the arts of war. We must find allies, enroll in societies, take our rightful place among folk who speak Lakotan tongues. And all this we must begin upon at once, else it will be too late.”
“Thus is your beginning,” said Deathless quietly. “The end is that you will forsake your home and the graves of your ancestors. You will have no dwellings save your tipis, but be wanderers upon the earth, like the buffalo, the coyote, and the wind.”
“That may be,” replied Running Wolf with the same lev-elness. “What is bad about it?”
A gasp went from most listeners; but several young men nodded, like horses tossing their heads.
“Show respect,” quavered an aged grandson of the shaman. “He is still the Deathless one.”
“He is that,” acknowledged Running Wolf. “I have spoken what was in my heart. If it be mistaken, tell us. Then tell us what we should do, what we should become, instead.”
He alone heard the answer. The rest divined it, and some wrestled with terror while others grew thoughtful and yet others shivered as if in sight of prey.
“I cannot.”
Deathless turned from Running Wolf, toward the gathering. His voice loudened, though each word fell stone-heavy. “I have no further business here. I have no more medicine. Before any of you were born, rumors came to. me of these new creatures, horses, and of strange men who had crossed great waters with lightnings at their command. In time the horses reached our country, and that which I feared began to happen. Today it is done. What will come of it, nobody can foretell. All that I knew has crumbled between my fingers.