30- Delicated into his arms

The girl was heavy in his arms, and when Dunbar shifted his stance, a buzz rose and died in the crowd. But no one moved forward to meet him.

A group of older men, apparently men of importance, went into a huddle as their people stood by, whispering amongst themselves in guttural tones so foreign to the lieutenant’s ear that they hardly seemed to be talking.

He let his attention wander during this lull, and when he glanced on a knot of about ten horsemen, the lieutenant’s eyes fell on a familiar face. It was the same man, the warrior who had barked at him so ferociously on the day of the raid at Fort Sedgewick. Wind In His Hair was staring back with such intensity that Dunbar almost turned around to see if someone was standing at his back.

His arms were so leaden that he wasn’t sure if he could move them anymore, but with the warrior’s glare still fixed on him, Dunbar lifted the woman a little higher, as if to say, “Here . . . please take her.”

Thrown by this sudden, unexpected gesture, the warrior hesitated, his eyes darting about the crowd, obviously wondering if this silent exchange had been noticed by anyone else. When he looked back, the lieutenant’s eyes were still on his and the gesture had not been withdrawn.

With an inward sigh of relief Lieutenant Dunbar saw Wind In His Hair leap off the pony and start across the clearing, a stone war club swinging loosely in his hand. He was coming over, and if the warrior had any fear at all, it was well masked, for his face was ungiving and uncaring, set, it seemed, on doling out a punishment.

The assembly fell silent as the space between the immobile Lieutenant Dunbar and the fast- striding Wind In His Hair shrank steadily to nothing. It was too late to stop whatever was going to happen. Everyone stood still and watched.

In the face of what was closing on him, Lieutenant Dunbar could not have been braver. He stood his ground unblinking, and though there was no pain in his face, he wore no fear there either.

When Wind In His Hair was within a few feet and slowing his pace, the lieutenant said in a clear, strong voice:

“She’s hurt.”

He shifted his load a little as the warrior stared into the woman’s face, and Dunbar could see that he recognized her. In fact, Wind In His Hair’s shock was so plain that, for a moment, the awful idea that she might have died flashed through his head. The lieutenant looked down at her, too.

And as he did, she was torn from his arms. In one strong, sure motion she’d been ripped from his grasp, and before Dunbar knew it, the warrior was walking back toward the village, hauling Stands With A Fist roughly along, like a dog would a pup. As he went he called something out that prompted a collective exclamation of surprise from the Comanches. They rushed forward to meet him.

The lieutenant stood motionless in front of his horse, and as the village swirled around Wind In His Hair, he felt the spirit run out of him. These were not his people. He would never know them. He might as well have been a thousand miles away. He wanted to be small, small enough to crawl into the smallest, darkest hole.

What had he expected of these people? He must have thought they would run out and throw their arms around him, speak his language, have him to supper, share his jokes, without so much as a how-do-you. How lonely he must be. How pitiful he was to entertain any expectations at all, grasping at these outlandish straws, hoping hopes that were so far-flung that he could not be honest with himself. He had managed to fool himself about everything, fool himself into thinking he was something when he was nothing.

These terrible thoughts were going off in his head like a storm of incoherent sparks, and where he stood now, in front of this primeval village, mattered not at all. Lieutenant Dunbar was swaying under the crush of a morbid personal crisis. Like so much chalk wiped from a board with one swipe, his heart and his hope had deserted him all at once. Somewhere deep inside, a switch had been thrown and Lieutenant Dunbar’s light had gone out.

Oblivious to all but the hollowness he felt, the unhappy lieutenant swung onto Cisco, reined him around, and started back the way he had come at a brisk walk. This happened with so little fanfare that the already occupied Comanches didn’t realize he was going until he had covered some distance.

Two teenage braves started after him but were held back by the cool-headed men of Ten Bears’s inner circle. They were wise enough to know that a good deed had been done, that the white soldier had brought back one of their own, and that nothing was to be gained by chasing after him.

four

The ride back was the longest and most agonizing of Lieutenant Dunbar’s life. For several miles he rode in a daze, his mind churning away with thousands of negative thoughts. He resisted the temptation to cry in the way one resists vomiting, but self-pity bore in on him relentlessly, in wave after wave, and at last he broke down.

He slumped forward, letting his shoulders bunch up at first, and his tears fell without a sound.

But when he began to sniffle, the floodgates swung wide. His face twisted grotesquely and he began to moan with the abandon of a hysteric. In the midst of these first convulsions he gave

Cisco his head, and as the miles piled up unrecorded, he let his heart bleed free, sobbing as piteously as an inconsolable child.

five

He never saw the fort. When Cisco stopped, the lieutenant looked up and saw that they had halted in front of his quarters. The strength had been wrung from him, and for a few seconds it was all he could do to sit comatose on his horse’s back. When he finally lifted his head again, he saw Two Socks, stationed at his usual place on the bluff across the river. The sight of the wolf, sitting so patiently, like a royal hunting dog, his face so sweetly inquisitive, brought a new lump of sorrow into Dunbar’s throat. But all of his tears had been spent.

He tumbled off Cisco, slipped the bit out of his mouth, and lurched through the door. Dropping the bridle on the floor, he flopped onto his bunk, pulled a blanket over his head, and rolled into a ball.

Exhausted as he was, the lieutenant could not sleep. For some reason he kept thinking of Two Socks, waiting out there so patiently. With a superhuman effort he dragged himself off the bed, staggered into the twilight, and squinted across the river.

The old wolf was still sitting in his place, so the lieutenant sleep-walked his way to the supply house and carved a big hunk of bacon off the slab. He carried the meat out to the bluff and, with Two Socks watching intently, dropped it on the grassy ground near the top of the bluff.

Then, thinking of sleep with every step, he threw some hay for Cisco and retreated to his quarters. Like a soldier hitting the dirt, he pitched onto the pallet, pulled up the blanket, and covered his eyes.

A woman’s face came to him, a face out of the past that he knew well. There was a shy smile on her lips and her eyes shone with a light that can only come from the heart. In times of trouble he had always called upon the face, and it had come to comfort him. There was much more behind the face, a long story with an unhappy ending, but Lieutenant Dunbar didn’t get into that. The face and the wonderful look it wore were all he wanted to remember, and he clung to it tenaciously.

He used it like a drug. It was the most powerful painkiller he knew. He didn’t think of her often, but he carried the face around with him, using it only when he was close to scraping bottom.

He lay unmoving on the bed, like an opium smoker, and eventually the image he held in his mind began to take effect. He was already snoring by the time Venus appeared, leading a long parade of stars across the endless prairie sky.