But he had been sick before the evening’s performance and he became more ill during the course of the several acts. The night chill of December went right into his bones and his back was so tight it felt like someone had strapped a lodgepole to it. But he had performed the several acts before the chase—burning the settlers cabin, chasing the Deadwood stage, fighting with the soldiers in the big show of Custer’s Last Fight. But as he waited behind a barrier for the buffalo to be released, he suddenly felt very weak and almost fell from his horse as he leaned over and vomited. He knew then that he had the sickness that had swept through the Indian camp as well as the village of the white performers and workers. Badface had eased his horse next to Charging Elk’s and he asked if Charging Elk was all right, but just then the gateman pulled back the barricade and the Indians leaped forward, digging their heels into their horses’ flanks, yipping and yelling to the roar of the crowd.
But there was another Oglala in the sickhouse when Charging Elk arrived. As the helpers were lifting him into the bed, he had a sudden moment of intense pain which cleared his head and he saw a friend in the next bed. It was Featherman, an Oglala who had three winters on Charging Elk and who had caught the sickness two sleeps ago and now was quiet and unmoving as his eyes followed the activity of the helpers as they lifted Charging Elk from a rolling bed. The eyes seemed not to know what they saw.
Even as the pain of movement was subsiding into a deep ache, Charging Elk had looked over at Featherman and seen that his friend was going away. “Featherman,” he whispered as he looked into the flat eyes. “Stay. Don’t leave me.” But he could not hear his own words and soon he too was gone.
But Charging Elk did come back, several times, and now he knew he was back to stay. He knew he was back by the heavy throbbing pain in his left side. Now he felt that side, those ribs, through the bandage that had been wrapped around his torso. His breath wasn’t so shallow now, even though the bandage was tight against his chest. He had broken some ribs before in another fall from his horse. That time had been in the badlands, a hot summer day, when his running horse had stepped in a badger hole. He and Strikes Plenty were heading for the Stronghold after some trouble with the miners in Paha Sapa. Sometimes the miners shot at them, either to keep them away or just to kill them. Charging Elk had been laid up for a few days with those broken ribs but they healed up, with the aid of the yuwipi’s medicine, and he soon was out riding again. Sometimes he and Strikes Plenty sneaked back to Pine Ridge Agency to visit his parents. They would make the two-day ride and wait for dark before entering the small settlement.
And always it was the same. His parents would try to talk him into staying. They told him there would be no punishment, that the white chief just wanted the young ones to come back and stay go to school and learn the ways of the white god. They lived in a one-room house with a door and two windows, neither of which contained glass. Squares of canvas were tacked to the top of the windows and rolled up to let in light. They had a table and two chairs and a white man’s sleeping bed. And a cross on the wall beside the cooking stove. But no children. Charging Elk’s brother and sister had died, a year apart, one of the great cough, the other of consumption.
Charging Elk loved his mother and could understand why she wanted him to come live with them and go to school and to holy ceremonies. He was all she had left. Sometimes he felt guilty and thought how it would be to eat her food and watch her do her quill-work. But he couldn’t figure out his father. Scrub had been a shirtwearer, one of the bravest and wisest of the Oglalas. He had fought hard at Little Bighorn and had provided meat when the people were running from the soldiers. But that winter when the people were starving and sick, he had become a peacemaker, just like the reservation Indians who were sent out by their white bosses to try to talk the band into surrendering. Charging Elk had been ashamed of his father that winter. And when he saw his father sitting idly in his little shack, drinking the black medicine and sometimes telling the holy beads, he could not believe his father had gone from shirtwearer to this. It was always this image of his father that drove Charging Elk time and time again back out to the Stronghold.
Charging Elk had to take a leak and he did not want the iron pissholder. It shamed him to have one of the healing helpers roll him onto his side so he could hit the slop pan. And it was hard to piss with the helper standing there, looking away but listening. He didn’t like their face coverings. Although he had become adept at looking at their eyes without them seeing, he couldn’t tell the hidden expressions and this troubled him. Furthermore, he hadn’t taken a crap since coming to the sickhouse but he still didn’t need to and this worried him.
He pulled himself higher in his bed until he was sitting up without the aid of the pillow. His ribs ached and the bandage seemed even tighter against his chest, but the pain was bearable and he could breathe a little deeper. He watched another man get out of bed, put his robe on, and walk down the corridor between beds. He too disappeared through the swinging door at the end of the room.
Charging Elk threw back the covers and tried to swing his legs over the side of the bed. It was the first real bed he had slept in in his life. Even in France, the Indians slept in blankets and robes in their lodges. Charging Elk and his friends used to make fun of the soft white men who needed to sleep in feathers on a platform of wood or iron. Now, Charging Elk couldn’t make his legs obey him. He pursed his lips into a straight seam, put his arm under one knee, and pulled it sideways. A sharp pain in his side made him inhale sharply, deeply, almost a cry, but he kept his lips tight. He lay back on his elbows and worked his legs one way, his upper body the other, until he could feel the cold floor with one foot. He stopped, panting, and looked around, but nobody seemed to pay attention. He worked his other leg over the side and, with a sharp intake of breath, he slung himself up, until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. The pain in his ribs was intense, his whole side seemed on fire, but he held himself rigid, eyes and lips closed tightly, trying to concentrate on staying conscious. Then he opened his eyes and looked down to the other end of the room, where at night he saw the yellow light. He expected someone, maybe the woman with the white wings and gold cross, to come running. But again, he was undiscovered.
He stood slowly, awkwardly, using his hands to push himself up from the bed. He leaned against the bedframe for a moment, then drew himself up to his full height, aware of the stiffness in his back. His legs were heavy and his head felt light, but he could breathe easier and his ribs didn’t hurt so much. He knew he would have to move soon, before one of the healing helpers spotted him.
He took the robe from its hook and wrapped it over his shoulders. He was wearing a thin gown and the heavy robe felt good on him. He glanced down and saw the shoes tucked under the bed. He slid into them and they felt stiff and fuzzy, but warm. He slowly turned and began to make his way down to the foot of the bed, where he grasped the footboard and looked up and down the long room.
He was surprised to see so many beds, maybe a hundred of them, virtually all of them occupied. As he surveyed the room, he suddenly remembered Featherman. The night he had come to the sickhouse, Featherman had been in the next bed. Now there was a wasichu with a waxy face and thick sandy hair in the bed. But where was Featherman? Had he really been there? Or had he been a dream? Charging Elk’s heart fell down as he remembered the dull, flat eyes. Yes, he had been there. And now he was dead. But perhaps there were other Buffalo Bill Indians in the other beds. His heart lifted again and he thought he might shout “All my relatives!” in Lakota, but he knew the healing helpers would come running if he did. So he began the slow journey down the aisle between beds, moving from one iron footboard to the next. Each time he stopped to rest he would glance at the faces in the beds. Most of them had beards or mustaches, all of them were pale. Some of the faces watched him with great curiosity, perhaps even apprehension. By the time he reached the end of the beds, his heart was as heavy as his legs.
The thin hope that someone from the Wild West show, perhaps the interpreter, Broncho Billy, along with a couple of white chiefs, or even one or two of his Oglala friends, would come and take him away with them was a flickering, surely impossible dream. He knew that the show was only scheduled to be here in