As to Caroline, she sat on her robe in pretty much of a daze from the time of Shooting Star’s investigation and even ate her dog in the same spirit. Old Lodge Skins paid her no more attention at all. He wasn’t insulting, just not interested.
At length the fire dwindled because Buffalo Wallow Woman wasn’t throwing any more chips on it, having gone to a well-deserved bed if I ever saw one. As I found out the next day, me and Caroline had hers, next to that of Old Lodge Skins; so she displaced one of her kids further on, and so it went around the circle like musical chairs until my admirer Little Horse was short man and had to go next door to the tepee of his brother, who was none other than Burns Red in the Sun.
Eventually my sister and me was sitting there alone looking at the dying fire, from which the smoke clumb in a skinny thread to the hole at the junction of the lodgepoles and there met the night, a sky colored dark blue, rather than black, by virtue of a dust of yellow stars.
Next to us, Old Lodge Skins was taking his murmurless rest, his hat dangling overhead from a rawhide line, the silhouette of his big beak pointing up in the perpendicular. You could hear a number of strong breathings but no snores, on account of Indians are trained from birth not to make noise when there ain’t a purpose to it. Also a faint sifting now and again as a last piece of buffalo dung dissolved into ash.
It was queer to be there, but speaking for myself no longer scary. You may think the worse of me, away from my home such as it had been and my father killed and all, but I had begun to feel as thoug hit wasn’t so desperate. It was warm in that lodge and the people had turned out to be tolerant. If they hadn’t offered us violence that night, I couldn’t figure them doing it next day: you don’t feed a fellow by dark and then murder him next morning. On the other hand, though, you couldn’t get away from the fact they wasn’t white.
“A penny for your thoughts, Caroline,” says I to the slumped figure of my kin, whose jaw was in her splayed hands and whose hat was way down to her fanned ears. She appeared very glum in the shadow, and her voice sounded in the same vein.
“Savages ain’t much of a lot, Jack,” she answers, inconsiderately loud, I thought, with her hosts trying to catch their sleep. “See how they done in that little dog? Following which they was feeling me as if maybe I was next for the pot, though I never heard Indins was cannibals. I don’t think you can count on them, Jack.” With a grunt she struggled to get her soles to the ground, which ain’t the easiest thing when you have had your rump on it for some hours with your legs crossed.
She repeated almost the same remark, with a significant difference that did not strike me at the time: “You better not count on them, Jack”; and stumbled stiff-legged towards the door flap-I figured, to go relieve herself before bedding down for the night. For myself, I determined to hold it till morning because of being scared of the roaming dogs outside.
Well, that was the last I saw of Caroline for a time. She went over to the meadow, cut a pony out of the herd, rode away, and it was years before I ran into her again, which event we will come to in order. Meanwhile, you have to understand I considered her for a spell as missing and then forgot about her altogether. Nobody could say I owed her more.
I probably could have heard the hoofbeats as she fled had I not fell asleep directly, there being little else in the way of wrapping so cozy as a buffalo robe when you get the hang of it. Though at first it tends to be stiff on the skinned side, whereas the hair on the other is rough as a brush, it soon cleaves to the body from your natural warmth and becomes as if you have growed it on yourself.
Next thing I knowed, that young boy Little Horse woke me up in the dawn. “Come on,” he indicated; and shivering off the remains of my sleep, which wasn’t hard to do because of the cold of that time of morning, I followed him out to the field where the ponies was pastured. There was markedly fewer than when I had seen the herd the day before: Caroline’s theft of one was nothing to what some Ute had come and stole a little later on, or maybe it was the Pawnee this time. Anyway, unless Old Lodge Skins’s crowd went out soon and stole some horses back, they would all be walking.
Little Horse already knowed, as an Indian would, that Caroline had run off and figured correctly that I was going to stay and be part of the tribe, having no alternative, and he had woke me to go with him because that was the duty of the boys of my age: tending the ponies first thing every morning. Which is to say, he knew more about me than I did myself at that moment, but his grin was in no wise mocking or mean as we left the tepeeful of sleeping Cheyenne grownups. Indians don’t rise especially early when nothing’s doing, except for the boys.
Outside the dawn was blue, and chill to go with it. I hadn’t had one particle of my clothes off for a couple days, and not washed for the same space of time, enjoying my deficiency. I mention that because I recall thinking about it and feeling luxurious. Even as a small boy, a white man gets that sort of idea when he goes among Indians: What the hell does anything matter? I’m with savages, don’t have to wash, can go to the toilet right where I stand, and so on. My point here is that, on the contrary, a Cheyenne takes a bath every day in the nearest water, and even if they hadn’t observed that custom, there would have been another requirement to take its place. If you’re a human being, you can’t get away from obligations.
On the route to the meadow, me and Little Horse encountered various other lads going to the same chore, aged eight to twelve; and on account of the thefts, there was so few ponies left that the herdsmen almost outnumbered the stock. Our job turned out to be leading the animals to the creek for watering. After which we took them to a new pasturage, for they had ate quite a bit of grass from the old one, and after all, the plains belonged to us far as the eye could see.
Little Horse and the other boys did a lot of gassing and laughing among themselves, and for all I know it might have been at my expense. I was alone insofar as wearing pants, shirt, boots, and hat; but after we rehobbled the lead mare to keep the herd from straying and went back to the creek and stripped down to take that bath I mentioned, I was distinguished only by my skin, and when we come back out of the water-which was fairly cold to start with but warmed once you were in, especially because of the horseplay that Indian boys give a lot of time to-why, I left off all my duds except the wool pants. Gave everything away, in fact, which made me a lot of immediate friends.
When we got back to the lodges, the recipients went inside and brought out Cheyenne stuff in return. That was when I finally took off the pants and got into the buckskin breechclout that one of the boys give me, and secured it with the belt I had from another. Also put on moccasins; and received a dirty yellow blanket from a tall kid named Younger Bear, who accepted my trousers and straightway amputated them for use as unjoined leggings, throwing aside the waist and seat. Nobody had use for the boots, which just laid there on the ground and were left behind in the same position when the camp moved away. If an Indian isn’t interested in an item he does not so much as see it, will stumble over it repeatedly without ever considering he might kick it aside.
We never did get breakfast that first morning, for the simple reason that there wasn’t any food to be had. The antelope had been ate up totally the night before, and they couldn’t afford to do in no more dogs for a spell, seeing as how the ponies was fast disappearing and a certain number of pack animals was required when camp moved. Also Caroline had not returned-for I still thought she might be back at that point; though never once did I entertain the idea she might be killed-and I had nobody to jaw with in my own language.