Now Featherman was dead. He had no woman but he got to stay here. And his nagi would never go home to be with the long-ago people. Charging Elk felt a sharp shiver go up his back and he knew he would have to stand up. As he contemplated his move, he wondered if he could find Featherman. In Paris, he and the others had toured a big stone field where the white men buried each other in the ground. If he could find Featherman’s stone, maybe he could perform a ceremony, just as he had seen the wicasa wakan do many times at the Stronghold, to release his friend’s spirit. The thought brightened him for an instant, until he remembered how many stones there were in such fields.
Charging Elk steadied himself against the wall, rolling his shoulders and flexing his knees. He was too cold to feel the pain in his ribs. He had thought earlier, after his escape from the sickhouse, that he should undo the tight cloth around his abdomen, but he hadn’t, and now he was grateful for the skimpy layer. But the coat was good and heavy and he soon felt a little warmer. He pulled the lapels closer under his chin and looked at the yellow light coming from the open side door. The smell of the bread made him weak and he knew he would have to try for some or he might go hungry all day.
Just as he took a step toward the door, he heard the clop-clop-clop of a horse’s hooves against the cobblestones of the street. He flattened himself against the wall and listened to the clop-clop-clop come closer. Then he saw the horse. It was pulling a wagon filled with something under a bulky covering. A man sat bundled up in the seat, holding the reins, a pipe between his teeth. As Charging Elk watched the wagon disappear beyond the alleyway, he smelled something sharp and unpleasant. It was a smell he recognized. The smell of the sea.
But now he knew it was light enough for anyone coming by to see him, so he eased himself toward the door. He held his breath, alert and unafraid. He glanced quickly around the corner and he saw a woman bent over a table. She was rubbing some raw bread into a long shape. As he stood against the wall, he thought of what else he had seen. Two heavy black ovens in the wall, a sink, another table, three or four long baskets. Then he heard a voice, a man’s voice. The woman said something and the voice answered, then it was quiet. Charging Elk peeked around the corner again. And he focused on the baskets. There were three of them and they were filled with the longbread. He knew this bread. Sometimes he and his friends would eat at the big grub tent at the Buffalo Bill compound in the Bois de Boulogne and they would have this longbread. It was crackly and soft at the same time and it was good to dunk into their pejuta sapa in the morning.
The woman was of middle age and small. Her sleeves were rolled up and her arms were strong and wiry. Her hair was tucked up under a white cap and she wore a white apron. She was standing sideways to the door and Charging Elk knew that she would see him right away if he tried to sneak behind her. He thought of just running in, and if necessary, throwing her aside and grabbing a longbread. But he knew he couldn’t run in, much less run away, and they would catch him and take him back to the sickhouse, or worse, the iron house, where they kept the bad ones.
Just as Charging Elk thought of getting away from there, he heard the mans voice calling from another place. He heard the woman answer and she sounded annoyed. He peeked again and he saw the woman wiping her hands on her apron. Then she walked slump-shouldered and grumbling to the front of the store with its glass cases. Charging Elk wasted no time. He stepped up into the room and sneaked as quickly as he could to the baskets. He took two longbreads, tucked them into his coat, and left as quietly as he had come.
The cobblestones of the narrow alley were damp and grimy as he hurried away in the direction opposite that which he had entered. It was dark in the lee of the tall buildings and he had to watch his step, but the bread felt warm against his chest. Any moment he thought he might hear some shouting and steps running after him. He couldn’t run and even now his ribs were aching with a sharpness that caused him to catch his breath in shallow gulps.
Finally he reached the opposite end of the alley and he slipped into an alcove that had been a doorway but was now bricked up. He glanced back. There was no one there. He stood for a moment until he could breathe almost normally, then he slid down until he was squatting on his haunches. He didn’t want to sit because it took so long to get up.
He reached into the coat and broke off a piece of longbread and chewed it greedily. It was warm and good and it reminded him of his mother’s bread. Doubles Back Woman had learned to bake bread in the iron stove in her little shack. When he and his good kola, Strikes Plenty, went to visit his parents, she would bake bread for them. They would eat bread with butter and honey and drink pejuta sapa. She always had a pot of black medicine on top of the stove and they would drink it out of tin cups with handles. Then she would fix some boiled meat, if they had meat, and turnips and potatoes. Even as his mouth was full of good bread, he longed for the boiled meat. He and Strikes Plenty could eat as much food as his mother put in front of them.
Charging Elk now chewed less greedily and more thoughtfully as he remembered the day Buffalo Bill’s scouts came to Pine Ridge to select the young Oglalas who would go away and tour with the Wild West show. Charging Elk and Strikes Plenty had been visiting his parents when his father, Scrub, casually mentioned that the young men of the village were to gather in three sleeps to show themselves off for the scouts. They were very excited because the show would take them to a land beyond a big water. It was the favored land to the east where the white men came from. They had never seen Indians and they would treat the Indians like important chiefs. A handful of the men had gone to another land across the water two years before and they saw Grandmother England and her man. This Grandmother had many children in many lands. She was called a queen and her man was a prince. The prince had ridden in the show’s stagecoach while the Indians chased it around the arena. Then all the white chiefs wanted to be chased by the Indians. They may have been important bosses in their land but they were like children who wanted the Indians to chase them. One of the Indians, Red Shirt, even got to shake hands with these royal chiefs. It was he who told the Oglalas that the queen was Grandmother to all the Indians across the medicine line to the north. He said it was a small world to the white men.
Charging Elk and Strikes Plenty went back into the hills after learning this news, but they did not return to the Stronghold. Instead, they camped along a small creek and talked for two days. The second day it rained, a light cold spring rain, and they built a small shelter of willows, draping their canvas groundcloths over it. They sat before a fire and chewed on drymeat and frybread that Charging Elk’s mother had given them. They were young and had never been out of their country. The thought of crossing a big water frightened them. Scrub had told them that, according to Red Shirt, it took several sleeps to cross this water in a big fire boat. Sometimes the water was angry and tossed the boat like a twig on a river during runoff time. That’s when everybody got sick and wanted to die. This is what Red Shirt said.
Such a frightening prospect was tempered by many good things: The Indians were treated well, they got enough to eat, they saw curious things, they got to show off before thousands of people, and they made more of the white man’s money than they could spend. The bosses sent much of their money home to their parents.
Still, Charging Elk had hesitated. The thought of dying on the big water terrified him. What good would such a journey be if you didn’t come back from it?
Strikes Plenty, though, was tired of life at the Stronghold. Sometimes the meat was scarce. The winters were always harsh in the badlands. He was beginning to feel isolated from his family at the Whirlwind Compound. When he went there, he felt more and more like a stranger, as though he were of a different band, the Stronghold band. “What good is this life we now lead?” he had said to Charging Elk. “What good will come of it? One day we will be old men and we will have nothing but memories of bad winters and no meat and no woman. I do not want this.”
Charging Elk had been surprised to hear his kola talk