Ghost Dance Read online

  "Are you all right?"

  The voice came from far away.

  It was Chance's voice.

  "It's damn hot tonight," said Grawson.

  "Yes," said Chance.

  They had walked for some time when Chance turned left again.

  Halfway down the street, between two four-story brick buildings, Grawson saw the alley. The yellow light of a street lamp flickered like a moth's wing on the bricks.

  There, said Grawson to himself, there.

  Like an avenging eagle with arrows in its claws.

  As they passed the alley Grawson's hands seized the collar of Chance's coat and hurled him into the darkness against the bricks, and Chance struck the wall and reeled along the wall, turning twice, kicking over a garbage can and sending a startled cat screeching down the dark corridor.

  Grawson cursed at the noise.

  Chance moaned, his hands going to his head, and slipped to the surface of the alley, and Grawson sent a kick into the stomach of the huddled coat slumped at his feet; then he jerked it to a sitting position and hand in its hair struck the head once against the bricks. Then again. Chance shook his head, his hands groping out.

  "I am the law," whispered Grawson. "The law!"

  Grawson's heavy hands closed on the throat of the stunned man. Chance's fingers tried to pry apart the massive hands that clutched his throat.

  Chance tried to slip down, his hands grasping for a weapon, a brick, stone, piece of glass, and closed on the handle of his bag.

  The light of the street lamp became only a pinpoint in surging blackness.

  Chance's hand thrust into the bag and closed on the handle of the weapon.

  Grawson, drunk with the kill as he might have been, heard the hammer click and felt the pressure of the steel barrel on his Adam's apple.

  Sweat sprang out of every pore on the large man's body and his hands released Chance's throat. Chance struggled to his feet, not moving the pistol. His eyes were wild, bewildered.

  "There is no warrant for my arrest," said Chance.

  Grawson held his hands out from his body, and backed away a step.

  "No warrant," said Chance. "No arrest." Chance's voice was no more than a tight whisper. His neck could still feel the talons of Grawson locked on it. The hangman's noose, thought Chance. The hangman's noose. "No arrest," said Chance.

  "You're under arrest for murder," said Grawson.

  Chance shook his head. "No," he said. "No."

  Grawson's shovel-steel eyes glowed with pleasure. "Shoot," he said.

  Chance noticed that Grawson's face seemed strangely quiet. His gaze was level. The face did not move. The movement was gone.

  Chance shook his head. The pistol wavered in his grasp. "I can't," he said.

  Grawson's left eye suddenly jerked shut and opened and his face seemed contorted with rage.

  "You're a murderer," he said. "Shoot." Grawson's fists clenched. "You killed once–you're a killer–shoot."

  Chance backed away.

  Grawson advanced a step.

  "I can't," said Chance.

  With a cry of rage, almost a berserk fury, the huge body of Lester Grawson lunged at Chance, those great hands opened like the clawed paws of the grizzly he was, but Chance shoved the barrel of the pistol sharply, deeply into the diaphragm of the lunging figure, and Grawson doubled up in agony, his hands moving out to clutch at nothing. With the butt of the pistol Chance struck Grawson across the back of the neck, and then, carefully, holding the dazed man by the collar, he struck the man again, a dangerous blow, but with a physician's skill, not to open nor injure the skull, and the body of Lester Grawson lay on the stones of the alley.

  Chance stood over the man, his own head a terrifying whirl of images. Chance stood over the man, scared. He held the muzzle of the pistol to the back of the man's neck, where the bullet would sever the vertebrae, but he did not fire, he could not, nor did he want to.

  Once before he had stood thus, on a field north of Charleston, and had known that he would run, and that somehow he would never escape.

  Once again his hand moved, and his finger touched the trigger, but gently, and the weapon did not fire.

  Chance replaced the weapon in his bag, and turned away.

  Grawson would come after him.

  Once before he had run.

  His choice seemed to him, standing in the alley, that hot night in a New York summer, to kill or to flee, and he had known what he would do.

  He looked down at Grawson. "Why did you want me to kill you?" he asked. But the mute form lay like a mound under its coat, inert on the bricks of the alley. Chance bent down and felt the man's pulse. Grawson was strong.

  Chance stood up again. "I am not a killer," he told himself. And he said it to himself very simply, and was a little surprised, and found that he had no reason to disbelieve it. And for the first time in five years, Edward Chance, though he was ready to run, and would, stood as straight as a man can.

  He saw a milk cart trundling by down the street, looking yellow in the light of the street lamp.

  He turned away and walked down the alley.

  It was Sunday morning.

  Three hours later, Edward Chance, unshaven, hungry, his coat torn, a bit of blood matted in his hair on the left side of his head, crouched in the straw in the corner of a boxcar of the New York Central Railroad and watched New York slide past the open wooden door.

  He heard church bells.

  He knew little more than the fact that the train was heading west.

  What does it matter, he thought. What does it matter?

  Chapter Three

  One month had passed since the Sunday morning when Kicking Bear had first come to Standing Rock, the same morning that Edward Chance, a physician of New York City, some half a continent away, had fled from an ex-lawman of South Carolina, a man named Lester Grawson who pursued him in connection with the killing of Frank Grawson, his brother.

  Lucia Turner, a slender, blue-eyed birch of a woman, her pale face flaked red by the Dakota wind, her blondish hair faded in the prairie sun, trudged from her soddy to the one-room, plank school where she would begin another day's teaching.

  She carried a broom handle and swept it through the grass in front of her where she could not see her step. That way the rattler, if any should lie in her path, would strike at the stick.

  At least that was what someone had said. She had forgotten who. She hoped that he was right.

  There were plenty of rattlers on Standing Rock, as elsewhere on the prairie. William Buckhorn, one of her students, a Hunkpapa boy, not much taller than her broom handle, perhaps nine years old, killed them and cut the rattles off for her. She had had a coffee mug filled with them, before Aunt Zita had discovered them and thrown them out into the prairie. She had spent an hour looking for them, in case young William might wonder where they had gone, and she had recovered many. She now kept them in an empty baking-powder can behind the soddy.

  Lucia paused on the top of the long, sloping hill that lay between the soddy she shared with Aunt Zita and the school.

  It was desolate, the land, and the sky was huge and gray, and the wind was always blowing.

  She could see the school from where she stood, the broomstick in her hand, the sandy wind cutting her face.

  Two years ago it had been painted white, but now the paint had chipped, and the wind had pitted the walls with sand, and the sun and the rain, and the winter and the heat of the summer, had buckled and warped the wood. Rags and mud had been wedged into the cracks. On the north side, an abandoned wagon box had been leaned against the wall for extra protection. The one window, on the south, had been broken by a rock, and tar paper covered the hole.

  Lucia missed Saint Louis, and the stone house that her father had built, and the calls of the young men on Sunday afternoon.

  The school was cold in the winter, and it would be winter soon. The grass was already high and brown, and the wind more sharp, and the day shorter.

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bsp; The squat, secondhand stove in the building, which Lucia tended herself, did not furnish much heat. There was no coal for fuel, and very little wood. Some of the boys would twist grass for her or gather cow chips. When the stove was lit it smoked, and the cow chips, predictably, smelled. Still it was better than the cold, the simple cold.

  In the winter Lucia would add petticoats, wrap a blanket around her high shoes, and knees, and tie a heavy scarf over her head.

  At least in the winter one didn't have to worry about the rattlesnakes.

  Lucia feared snakes, dreadfully.

  But she thought it kind of young William Buckhorn to think of her, and the baking-powder can filled with rattles was one of the few things that she cared for on this forsaken prairie.

  Lucia, sweeping the broomstick before her, started down the hill toward the building.

  Yes, she said to herself, it has seen its better days. And, she said, I am only twenty-two, and I look like I was thirty, and the prairie does that to a girl, a woman, and there are no young men here, and I am lonely, so lonely.

  In what was supposed to be the play yard of the school Lucia had arranged for two swings, but the timbers from which they should have hung were as lonely as Hunkpapa burial poles. The ropes of the swings had been stolen the first night, two years ago, presumably to be applied to some more utilitarian purpose.

  It was morning, a few minutes before the time to ring the bell. The children would be waiting in the draw behind the school. They would come when the bell rang. They had no wish to jeopardize their family's share in the rations, distributed every second Saturday.

  There was a single teeter-totter in the play yard, but it had not been popular with the students.

  It had been pointed out to Lucia by several of them that it was poorly built, for there was a leg in the middle rather than one at both ends, and of a consequence it was unstable, and perhaps dangerous.

  Nonsense, had said Lucia, and had attempted to demonstrate its use, which was not easy alone.

  But then she had placed two of the younger boys on the other end and had bounced up and down several times, grimly. It is fun, had said Lucia, feeling very silly. But it does not go anywhere, had said William Buckhorn. It just stays where it is.

  And then he jumped up and down for her.

  Just the same, he said.

  And Lucia and the two boys had climbed off the teeter-totter, and, to the best of her knowledge, no one had been on it since.

  But she had firmly refused to permit it, or the swing frames, to be chopped into kindling for the stove. Not even on the coldest days. Some things, Lucia had told herself, are matters of principle. Besides, under the snow, there were plenty of cow chips. But perhaps this winter? It was, after all, not of much use. No, said Lucia. Someday–someday perhaps–the children will learn to use the teeter-totter–and someday I will buy some more rope and they will learn to swing. My children will learn how to play.

  Of course, as Lucia was forced to admit to herself, the children–the younger ones–could and did play, with pieces of string and sticks, and tumbleweeds, and by throwing rocks, and running after one another–but it was not the same.

  There will come a time for the swings and the teeter-totter, she told herself. If we don't burn them first, she added. But we could always build others.

  Lucia was not a great deal older than some of her pupils. The oldest was Joseph Running Horse, who was nineteen. The youngest was William Buckhorn, who was probably about nine. There were twenty pupils in all, crowded indiscriminately onto the same tiny benches, regardless of their age or size. There was only one girl, who was seventeen, Winona, the daughter of a subchief named Old Bear, whom Lucia had never seen.

  Lucia would have liked to have had more girls in the school. She was pleased that Winona was an apt and dutiful student. It would do her good, and the boys good, that she should study with them, and show them that girls were quite as good at schoolwork as they. The Sioux had too little respect for women. Unfortunately the fact that Winona was quite as good at schoolwork as the boys had convinced some of the boys that schoolwork must be unfit for men, as must be anything a woman could do as well as a man.

  Aunt Zita–God's crowbar, as Lucia called her, in her own thoughts–was a missionary, one of several whom God had appointed to illuminate the heathen with diverse and contradictory messages. It was because of Aunt Zita that Lucia had come to Standing Rock. Lucia had taught school in the East, in Saint Louis, in a large stone building with three floors and four high windows, with shades, in each classroom. Thus she was a woman of prestige at Standing Rock. The reservation needed teachers. The pay was eight dollars a month. But Lucia had had a small inheritance from her parents, and Aunt Zita had had the call. Without Lucia, Aunt Zita would not have been permitted on the reservation. The spiritual needs of the Indians were already amply supplied. But a teacher, a real teacher, that was something different.

  Lucia reached the door of the schoolhouse. She leaned her broomstick against the side of the school. She took a heavy metal key from the pocket of her cotton dress and opened the door. Inside she went to her heavy oak desk and from the bottom left-hand drawer took out a wooden-handled brass school bell.

  The room was cool, but Lucia decided it was too early in the year to light the stove. She glared at the stove. There would be time enough later to fight those battles.

  Carrying the bell, Lucia then went outside, and stood looking down toward the draw where the children would be waiting.

  She didn't want to ring the bell yet.

  Aunt Zita had been the one with the call, she told herself, not me.

  Aunt Zita–who would never even let the Indians inside the soddy.

  Once Joseph Running Horse had been invited in by Lucia, and Aunt Zita, seizing a broom, had ordered him from the room. Afterwards, Aunt Zita had spent fifteen minutes sprinkling Sanitas into every nook and corner of the soddy. I am interested only in his soul, had said Aunt Zita, which–thank God–does not smell. If it did, she added, God help me, I do not know what I should do. Lucia wondered if Joseph Running Horse truly smelled, and granted that he probably did, though she had never noticed. She did know that she could, upon occasion, particularly in July and August, smell Aunt Zita, who continually wore the same, high-collared black dress, with the long sleeves and the four blue buttons on each cuff, and the petticoats over petticoats, sometimes as many as five. I suppose I smell, too, thought Lucia. There isn't enough water, or soap. To her disappointment, Joseph Running Horse never approached the soddy again–nor did any of her pupils–with the exception of young William Buckhorn, who, when Aunt Zita was absent, would occasionally come to the door, drop his head shyly and put up his hand to drop a pair of rattles into her hand, and then she would give him a piece of brown sugar, and he would turn and run away as fast as he could.

  Lucia lifted the school bell and swung it up and down at arm's length.

  Her pupils emerged from the draw, wearing their hats, in their overalls and cotton shirts.

  Last to emerge, following the boys, as she always did, was slim Winona.

  How lovely she is, thought Lucia.

  The first one to the school was Joseph Running Horse, because he was the oldest and strongest of the students, and thus by right their leader and first.

  Joseph Running Horse–or "Little Joe" Running Horse, as some of the horse soldiers from Fort Yates called him–was small for his age, but his frame was supple and wiry, and his face old beyond his nineteen years.

  He, like the others, was Hunkpapa Sioux. His father had had him baptized by a white man who had worn a black dress and had given two handfuls of bullets and a quart of sugar for each head on which he was permitted to pour water while mumbling words that many white men themselves did not understand, medicine words. This had occurred several years ago, and the bullets had then been needed very badly, and the squaws liked sugar.

  As the pupils filed past, it occurred to Lucia that the only religion not represented off
icially on the reservation, except for some of the minor Christian organizations, was the traditional Sioux faith. Lucia smiled a heretical smile to herself

  The old ways, she knew, had not been forgotten. Water on the head and two handfuls of bullets and a quart of sugar and words did not change a man's heart. The old faith was not forgotten and the tiny crosses handed out usually ended up in the skin medicine bags which hung in the cabins, or in the summer, from the poles of the skin lodges. If the medicine of the white men was strong medicine, it would do no harm to let it work too for the Sioux.

  Lucia entered the school last and checked to see that all the boys had removed their hats, and then went to the front of the room, and rapped sharply on the desk with her knuckles. The gesture was she recognized, unnecessary, for no one was not paying attention, but somehow it reassured her, making her seem more prim and teacherly, making this handful of planks on the windy prairie seem more of a school.

  "Joseph Running Horse," she said, "come to the board and write your name."

  This was a morning ritual for the entire class.

  The first thing the Indians were to be taught was the marks for their own name. There would be papers for them to sign. After this one could teach them to read, and later to write the words they read. Finally they might be taught to do simple sums.

  Lucia usually managed to avoid the geography lesson, particularly since the time the class thought she had lied to them. Probably they had never forgotten it. She had said the earth was round and that there was water in great seas on the other side of the earth. But, they had reasoned, even a white, woman should know that the water would fall out if that were the case, and besides, they had listened to warriors who had ridden for more than three moons and these old warriors assured them that the earth was still flat, even so far away.