“Pretty please,” teased Lucia.
Chance decided, definitely, it would not be indecent, not at all, to spank a fully grown woman, especially a wench that deserved it like Lucia Turner, especially not if she were your wife, especially not if you could finish it up by removing her clothes and dropping her on the nearest bed.
“Nonsense,” said Chance.
“All right,” said Lucia, “I’ll marry you anyway.”
“Good,” said Chance.
“Not that I have any choice,” she said.
“Why not?” asked Chance.
“You didn’t ask me like a true gentleman,” she said, “you just said ‘Marry me.’ “
“So?” asked Chance.
“I must do what I’m told,” said Lucia.
“Why is that?” asked Chance.
“Because,” responded Lucia loftily, “I am an excellent squaw.” She looked at him archly. “You have not forgotten, have you?”
Chance looked about, confused. The Indians were watching him. McLaughlin seemed puzzled. The colonel was looking off somewhere, studying cloud formations.
“Please, Lucia,” whispered Chance.
“Have you forgotten?” demanded Lucia, one eyebrow quite high.
He kissed her to silence. “No,” he mumbled, “excellent-excellent.”
“Good rifle, good horse, good woman,” Lucia was mumbling into his teeth.
“Please shut up,” said Chance.
“Later,” said Lucia breathlessly. “Please later.”
“Pretty please,” mumbled Chance.
“Pretty pretty pretty pretty please,” said Lucia.
Mr. McLaughlin coughed rather loudly, twice, the second cough somewhat louder than even the first.
Chance disengaged Lucia’s arms from his neck, which he had to do again.
“Well, Chance?” asked McLaughlin. “The proposition stands. What about it?”
Lucia was looking up, at him.
“We want you here,” said the colonel. He gestured to the gathered Indians. “They want you here-Medicine Gun.”
Chance smiled.
“My fiance,” Lucia was saying, “is leaving immediately for California.”
“Lucia, will you please shut up,” said Chance.
“Certainly,” said Lucia.
“You will stay with us, won’t you?” asked McLaughlin.
“My Brother,” said Running Horse, “you will not leave us?”
Chance looked at the young Indian.
“No,” said Chance. “I will stay. You are my people.”
McLaughlin was shaking his hand, and the colonel, and Lucia kissed him; the Indians were shouting; they stamped their feet and crowded about him, to touch and hold him.
Chance felt Lucia’s lips against his cheek; she was crying; her warmth was marvelous in his arms; her happiness.
It was good, Chance decided, it was good.
In the spring the grass came as usual to Standing Rock, thrusting itself up green between the melting snow and the black earth. The prairie became sweet and flowed with grass and wind. The Grand River, swollen in its banks, rushed its cold, muddy waters downstream to the wide Missouri.
The Messiah had not come and the Ghost Dance was only a memory of the Sioux.
On an April Sunday, a day the white men called Easter, Old Bear, a chief of the Hunkpapa, rode his pony across the sweet-smelling spring prairies.
He had not ridden very far when he stopped his pony and dismounted. Heavy and sharp in the damp earth was the print of a hoof, wide, deep and fresh. Old Bear knelt beside the print and bent close, inhaling even the smell of the earth in which the print lay. His heart leaped. In many years he had not seen such a print. It was the print of a buffalo. Most likely the animal had drifted south from Canada, separated or driven from its herd; probably for days it had been browsing southward across the North Dakota prairie; at last it had come to Standing Rock.
Old Bear began to follow the sign. He sang softly to himself as he rode, an old buffalo hunting song. His right hand carried his unstrung bow. The quiver at his side held four hawk-feathered arrows and one long, fine arrow, an eagle-feathered buffalo arrow which Old Bear had been saving for many years.
Toward noon his eye found a place where the buffalo had rubbed its back on an outcropping of stone. Old Bear trembled as he looked at the stone. Caught in the chinks of rock and fallen to the grass, here and there, were coarse hairs from the animal. These hairs were white. Old Bear had found, at last, the trail of the white buffalo, the Medicine Buffalo. He had seen the old robes that proved such animals existed, but he had never spoken to a man who had seen one alive.
Without stopping to eat or drink, Old Bear urged his pony ahead in the hunt. At last, near dusk, he saw the animal shambling along in front of him. It was a thin, shaggy buffalo, an old animal, a bull, one ready to die. It didn’t hear him nor did it smell him.
Old Bear, heart pounding, strung his bow quickly; he fitted the long buffalo arrow to the string.
Trembling, Old Bear edged his pony close to the old animal, until they were side by side.
The old bull, its wide, pale eyes understanding nothing, watched Old Bear draw his bow taut. For a long time Old Bear held the bow taut, the arrow poised over the heart of the bull. He watched the shaggy white hair lift and fall with the beating of the heart; he listened to the buffalo’s slow hard breathing; he watched the muscles of its neck swell and fall.
At last Old Bear lowered his arm, slowly relaxing the bow. “Old Warrior,” he said, “do not be afraid. I will not kill you.”
Old Bear unstrung his bow and put the long buffalo arrow back in his quiver. Then he turned his pony and began to ride slowly away, leaving behind him the thin, shaggy bull. The animal stood, its hoofs planted wide in the dust, watching him go. There would be no white robe in the lodge of Old Bear. The time of the white robes was gone.