At first the roan wanted to have nothing to do with the warrior, trotting first this way, then that, moving along the short corral fence walls. Finally Porcupine reached inside his woollen capote and took something out. Holding it aloft and speaking soothingly to the pony at the same time, he gradually moved closer and closer.
She could not tell what it was at first, until the warrior finally reached the pony, looped an arm over its short neck, and stroked its mane. Then she recognized what Porcupine held in his hand—the horse medicine. A small skin bundle, trimmed with red wool, two small hawk’s feathers strung from the drawstring at the top.
High-Backed Bull’s horse medicine.
Her hands gripped the top pole of the pen to keep from falling. “Where did you get my son’s horse bundle?”
“From his pony.”
“The pony his father killed at the entrance to Bull’s resting place?”
He nodded, still stroking under the jaw of the pony, then tied the bundle into the roan’s mane before walking back across the trampled snow to stand near her, on the inside of the corral.
“Shell Woman,” he began, laying a hand atop one of hers, “this pony was not mine to give.”
Already her eyes had filled with tears from the cruel slash of the wind as the light died behind the mountains far to the west and twilight failed in this cottonwood grove beside the river. But more than the sting of the wind, she sensed the sting of something else rising within her.
Porcupine continued. “My friend’s father buried his son as only a Shahiyena father could treat his warrior son.”
“You told me. But why did you follow him?”
“I followed, afraid of what a white man might do to the body of my best friend.” He bowed his head. “Soon I was sorry that I had doubted the father of High-Backed Bull.”
“This is why you took the horse medicine from the pony Rising Fire killed by our son’s resting place?”
“Yes. And I kept it all these years, wanting to bring it to you—but not knowing what to say to you.”
“You have been here many times since my son was killed. And still you did not give it to me—even when Pipe Woman took her things and rode off to the north with you!” The anger and sadness rumbled through her belly.
With a wag of his head Porcupine answered, “Only because I selfishly wanted to keep Bull with me—not wanting to give him back to you. Not just yet. If I kept something special of him—something of his love for ponies and the special way the animals loved him back—then maybe I could in some way keep Bull alive.”
“If you remember him, he will always be alive in your heart.”
“Yes, Shell Woman.” He stared off into the darkening sky to the east. Perhaps conjuring up those places whence the enemy came. “Bull died hating the white man.”
“No, Porcupine. My son died only because he hated the white man in himself.”
He seemed to contemplate on that, then bent and came through the corral poles to stand beside her. “Perhaps you are right. Many times Bull told me he would rather die than father any children who would carry the white man’s blood in his veins. He vowed he would never marry, never have a child of his own. To do so, he said, would be to stop cursing the man who was his father. To have his own child would be to accept his own legacy.”
“Then, tell me—is it true you did not send the pony to me with my husband?”
He shook his head and looked directly at the woman beside the pole corral in the growing darkness.
“No.”
“But it is one of your ponies, is it not?”
“No, Shell Woman. It belonged to High-Backed Bull.”
“I don’t … understand. The one Rising Fire says he killed beside the resting place—”
“Was a favorite of your son’s.”
She gazed at the strawberry roan, its thick winter coat a dark umber against the snowy ground and white-shawled tree branches illuminated with the dim starshine come of a winter evening.
“And this red one … if not yours—why did my husband bring it to the mother of High-Backed Bull?”
“This one,” Porcupine explained softly, “he is the animal Bull always rode into battle against the white man.”
*Yellowstone River
31
TO SOME THIS was the Moon of Popping Trees. To those Lakota and Cheyenne who stalked the northern plains.
But down here in the panhandle country where the southern tribes had for generations followed the migrations of the buffalo, Jonah figured they would call it something on the order of the freeze-up moon. Lord, was it cold. And it didn’t take a farmer to know a brutal winter always made for one miserable summer. Jonah was too frozen, and summer was still too far away for him really to dread July and August on the southern plains, anyway.
