Running Horse put out his pipe, and so did Chance, and Chance pulled off his boots, and the two men tugged their blankets about them and with the dying fire between them lay down.
“Tomorrow,” said Joseph Running Horse, speaking in the red darkness, “I will show you the Ghost Dance.”
Chance lay still for a while, then spoke. “Is it all right to see the dance?” he asked.
He heard Running Horse speak in the darkness. “You may die,” he said.
“Oh,” said Chance.
“But I do not think so,” said Running Horse.
There was a long time of darkness between them.
“Why not?” asked Chance.
“You have seen the Sun Dance,” said Joseph Running Horse. “That is strong medicine. It will protect you.”
Chance thought about this for a time. Then he said, “I hope you’re right.”
“Yes,” said Running Horse, after a bit. “It is also my hope.”
Chance pulled the blankets up under his chin. The ground seemed hard. The saddle was not the softest of pillows. The sweat in his socks began to feel as though it might freeze, and so he pulled off his socks, rubbing one foot against the other.
So tomorrow he might see the Ghost Dance, and might die, all in one day, he mused.
And Chance laughed in the darkness.
“White men are crazy,” said Joseph Running Horse.
“All men are crazy,” said Chance.
“Maybe,” said Joseph Running Horse, and turned over to go to sleep.
Later, after he could no longer see the black of the cottonwoods against the black of the sky, and had counted more than a thousand stars in that glistening, frosty October night on the Dakota prairie, Edward Chance, physician from New York City, spoke again.
“Running Horse,” he said.
The young Indian, to Chance’s surprise, was not asleep.
“Yes,” he said.
“When you danced to Sun Dance,” asked Chance, “-did you learn what you wanted?”
“Yes,” said Running Horse. His voice was sad in the darkness.
“Is the Ghost Dance a true dance?” asked Chance.
“No,” said Joseph Running Horse.
Chance ached, each muscle stiff, each bone not wanting to bend at the joints.
He was wet through, from a few minutes of rain shortly before dawn, that and the dew that covered the grass with cold, glistening drops.
He wished he had slept naked.
He sat up in the wet blankets and shivered. He stretched his legs and arms, painfully. Everything was gray, and quiet and wet.
A snap of twigs to his left startled him.
A tiny flame, the size of a hand, was biting its hot, bright way through some shavings Running Horse had cut the night before and wrapped in leather.
Running Horse was kneeling before the tiny fire, snapping his fingers over it, as if by this sound to encourage it to grow.
The world seemed less gray then, warmed by that spark of fire and the crouching body of Joseph Running Horse, who was his friend.
Running Horse looked at Chance, and drew his knife.
“I dreamed,” said Running Horse.
Chance had not.
Running Horse lifted the knife and approached Chance, who watched him, but did not move.
Running Horse held the knife poised.
“Be my Brother,” said Running Horse.
The young Indian took Chance’s arm, pulling the sleeve back.
Chance felt the warm sting of the blade enter his arm.
“I am proud to be your Brother,” said Chance.
Chance took the knife and slowly, with a surgeon’s firmness, drew its blade across the forearm of Running Horse.
The two men then held their cuts together, that the blood might mingle and be the same, as the blood of brothers.
“It was so in my dream,” said Running Horse.
“I am glad,” said Chance.
“Now,” said Running Horse, “I will take you to see the Ghost Dance.”
About noon Chance and Running Horse kicked the flanks of their horses, moving them through the leisurely eddies of the Grand River, and climbed the low, wet sloping bank on the other side to the buffalo grass of the rolling prairie above.
Across the river the men dismounted and shared some strips of dried beef which Running Horse extracted from a beaded, leather bag he had tied in the mane of his pony.