I stopped singing, but the song continued. I listened to make sure it wasn’t some sort of echo, but the tune persisted without mine. Standing there at the point of one of the dunes, this one knife-edged by what must have been a powerful wind, I turned my head and could see what looked like a swale that curved like the crescent of a moon; at the top, an enormous black bear was hunched over and striking at something.
It was only when my hand was drawn from my side in sharp yanks that I realized he was pawing at the twine attached to my hand. I froze and then began backing down the opposite side of the dune, rapidly unwinding the string.
I felt the pull again and started untangling myself at a higher speed, when I heard someone speak to me in the standard Cheyenne, man-to-man expression.
“ Ha’ahe!”
“ Ha’ahe!” Having used up a good portion of my formal Cheyenne, I spoke again, this time in English. “Hey, I’m not sure where you are, but there’s a bear over here, so I’d be careful.”
“Is it a black bear or a white bear?”
I remembered that the Cheyenne old-timers used to refer to grizzlies as white bears and yelled back. “He’s a black one, but as big as a grizzly.”
The twine that I had unrolled in my scramble to get away began retracting at an incredible pace as if it were on a fishing reel, yanking me toward the summit of the dune where the gigantic bear towered on his hind legs.
“Good,” the bear said. “For a moment I thought we were in trouble.”
The bear sat next to the crescent dune and grunted to himself as he wove the twine between his enormous claws like a cat’s cradle. “The line is connected to you.”
I was still trying to get used to the idea of carrying on a conversation with a bear, but he was pleasant enough. I stared at him and figured that it was all a part of some kind of dream. His voice sounded familiar, but I kept getting distracted by the fact that it was a bear talking.
He grunted again. “Of course, it is only your line in the sense that you picked it up.” His massive head turned toward me, and I was struck by the smallness of his eyes in the context of his enormous head, but the eyes seemed familiar, too. “Why did you choose this string?”
I shook my head, unsure. “It was the closest.” I studied him for a moment as he played with it. “Do you mind telling me where I am?”
“What?”
“This place, do you think you could tell me where it is? I mean, I can see the mountains, but I’ve never seen sand dunes like this out in the Powder River country.”
He nodded but said nothing.
“Are we in the Powder River country?”
He shrugged.
“I mean, from the angle of the mountains…”
He suddenly growled and shook his great head. “How should I know; I am a bear.” He glanced around. “This place is not mine, it is yours.” He nodded at the string, threaded through his claws, and I noticed that he did not hold the end of it, that the one end was wrapped around my hand but the other disappeared over the next dune. “Perhaps it is the one that interested you the most?”
“What?”
He sighed. “The string.”
I answered carefully, aware that I might not want him agitated. “I suppose.”
The furry hump shifted. “Have you considered what is on the other end?”
“Not really.”
He smiled with close to fifty teeth, some of them exceedingly large, and I noticed that there were strands of gray in his fur. “This is the strength of your character, and you do not know?”
I looked down at the twine still wrapped around my palm and closed my hand into a fist. “The strength of my character is string?”
“The strength of your character is in following this string.” He adjusted his forelegs, and the twine sprung loose. Then he rolled onto his front legs and lifted himself up on his hind ones like a running back, turned toward the direction of the disappearing twine, and sniffed the air. “The string is like the bread crumbs in your mind, consumed until the mystery of this thing becomes a part of you. You have no choice but to follow it until it gives a secret up to you or reveals another mystery, both equally irresistible-it is your nature.”
I stood and walked past him, taking up the string as I went and thinking about what he was saying. “What if I don’t like what I find?”
His voice echoed through me. “There is always that chance.”
I nodded. “This quest you are talking about is not why I’m here, you know.”
He studied me but said nothing.
I took a deep breath and climbed up the side of the dune, pulling the twine out of the sand. “I don’t have time to follow strings; I’ve got things to do. My daughter is getting married.”
“Yes, she is.”
I turned back to look at him, now only a couple of yards away. “And I’m standing in an imaginary desert with a talking bear.”
He nodded but now refused to speak, his feelings hurt, I guess.
“What if I just let it go?”
This got a rise out of him. “You will not.”
“But I could.”
“It is possible, but what would become of the living thing that is on the other end-have you asked yourself that?” His wide head canted in a quizzical manner. “The mystery, the story of whatever is on the other end, would be lost forever.”
I was traipsing around in my own head, both the conscious and the unconscious, and pretty sure that the events of late were all products of my mind, but they seemed so real that I was becoming distracted. He was watching me when I looked back up. “Have you ever heard of a fellow by the name of Virgil White Buffalo?”
His smile broadened. “I knew him well.”
“I bet you did.” I chewed the inside of my lip. “How about Henry Standing Bear?”
“I know him, too.” He grinned, but I’m not sure if it was a smile or if he was just showing his teeth. “But not as well.” He looked off into the distance, away from the mountains.
I had a feeling that our time together was coming to a close and I was sorry for that, in that I was enjoying his company, cantankerous as he was. I held up the hand with the twine wrapped around it. “So, you’re saying that whatever I do I shouldn’t let go of the string?”
He shrugged again.
“Well, what use is a talking bear if you’re not going to carry on the conversation?”
The lips curled back, and he continued to smile.
I lifted my hand, clearing the string from the edge of the dune. “Are you coming?”
He shook his enormous head and finally spoke. “That is not my nature.”
I nodded. “And if you don’t mind my asking, what is your nature?”
He lowered himself to all fours and slowly ambled back in the direction from where I had come, pausing at the top of the dune to look over his shoulder. “To question.”
The bear picked up his pace, and I was left there with the twine wrapped around my hand, trying to fight the feeling I was a puppet. I could follow him, I could stay, or I could go on. I stood there for a moment more, knowing there really wasn’t a choice in all of this-the decision had been made when I’d picked up the end of twine in the teepee. As the Bear had said, our natures are our natures.
Kneeling down, I tried to get a general idea of the size of the bird that had made the tracks-something not too small but not too large either. The bird moved easily on the ground, which led me to believe that it was comfortable walking, and there are only a few of those.
There was a hop, however, and this time the bird’s talons were buried deeper in the sand. There must have been some sort of threat, and I could see where the wing tips had brushed the ground and where the edges of the pinfeathers had swept the sand.
Bigger than I first thought-a large wingspread, two and a half feet at least.
There were no more tracks-it must have taken to the air-so I just followed the string. Sometimes you just had to follow blind. Beyond the next few dunes I saw an outline of a burned-up cottonwood, rising out of the sand like a grasping hand.