'They do,' said the old man. 'They ran us out of this region long ago. They think this mountain is sacred. So do we. We just have to commute farther.'
'Do you live near here?' asked Baedecker.
The Indian took his knife and cut off a small section of new cactus growing between the rocks, peeled it, and set the leaf on his tongue like a wood-wind player readying his reed. 'No. I travel a long way to come here. It is my job to teach things to young men who will someday teach them to other young men. But my young man is a little late.'
'Oh?' Baedecker looked down at the distant parking lot. His Civic was still the only vehicle there. 'When were you expecting him?'
'Five weeks ago,' said Robert Sweet Medicine. 'The Tsistsistas have no sense of time.'
'The who?' said Baedecker.
'The People,' said the old man in his amused, husky voice. 'Oh.'
'You also have traveled a long way,' said the other. Baedecker thought about that and nodded.
'My ancestors such as Mutsoyef traveled a long way,' said Robert Sweet Medicine. 'Then they fasted, purified themselves, and climbed the Sacred Mountain to see if a vision would present itself. Sometimes Maiyun would speak to them. More often he would not.'
'What kind of visions?' asked Baedecker.
'Do you know of Mutsoyef and the cave and the Gift of the Four Arrows?'
'No.'
'No matter,' said Robert Sweet Medicine. 'That does not concern you, Baedecker.'
'You say the mountain is also sacred to the Sioux?' The old man shrugged. 'The Arapahoes received a medicine here they could burn to make sweet smoke for their rituals. The Apaches received the gift of a magic horse medicine; the Kiowas the sacred kidney of a bear. The Sioux say they received a pipe from the mountain, but I do not believe them. They made that up because they were jealous. The Sioux lie frequently.'
Baedecker shifted his weight and smiled.
Robert Sweet Medicine ceased his whittling and looked at Baedecker. 'The Sioux did claim to have seen a great bird on the mountain, a true Thunderbird, with wings a mile across and with a voice like the end of the world. But this is no great medicine. This is Wihio trickery. Any man with even a little bit of medicine can call up the Thunderbird.'
'Can you?' asked Baedecker.
The old man snapped his fingers.
Two seconds later the earth shook with a roar that seemed to come from the sky and ground at the same time. Baedecker caught a glimpse of something huge and gleaming behind him, its shadow hurtling toward them and covering entire hillsides, and then he was up on one knee and watching as the B-52H finished its bank and roared off to the north at less than five hundred feet altitude, lower than the Butte, its eight jet engines leaving a black wake of smoke in the afternoon air. Baedecker sat back down, still feeling the vibrations of the aircraft's passing in the rocks under his thighs.
'Sorry, Baedecker,' said the old man. His teeth were yellow and strong looking, with only one of the lower ones missing. 'That was a cheap Wihio trick. They come by here from Ellsworth Base every day at this time. I am told they use this mountain to make sure their radar device tells them the truth as they travel.'
'What's a Wihio?' asked Baedecker.
'It is our word for the Trickster,' said the Cheyenne, cutting and chewing a new cactus leaf. 'Wihio is Indian when he wants to be, animal when he wants to be, and always is up to no good. He can show a very cruel sense of humor. It is the same word we use for spider and for White Man.'
'Oh,' said Baedecker.
'Many of us also suspect that he is the Creator.' Baedecker thought about this.
'When Mutsoyef came down off this mountain,' said the old man and paused a second to remove a bit of plant from his tongue. 'When he came down, he brought with him the Gift of the Sacred Arrows, he taught us the Four Songs, he told us our future — even of the passing of the buffalo and the coming of the White Men to take our place — and then he gave his friends the Arrows and said, ‘This is my body I'm giving you. Always remember me.' What do you think of this, Baedecker?'
'It sounds familiar,' he said.
'Yes,' said the old man. He had been cutting a root into small pieces, and now he frowned at it. 'Sometimes I worry that my grandfather and great-grandfather borrowed a good story when they heard it. It does not matter. Here, put this in your mouth.' He handed Baedecker a small piece of root with the outer layer removed.
Baedecker held it in his hand. 'What is it?'
'A piece of root.' The old man's voice was patient.
Baedecker put the small chunk in his mouth. There was a faint bitterness. 'Do not chew it or suck on it,' said Robert Sweet Medicine and put a slightly larger piece of root in his own mouth. He worked it around until it bulged like a small wad of tobacco in his cheek. 'Do not swallow it,' added the old man.
Baedecker sat a minute in silence, feeling the sun on his face and hands. 'What is this supposed to do?' he said eventually.
The old man shrugged. 'It keeps me from getting too thirsty,' he said. 'My water bottle is empty and it is a long walk down to the pump by the visitors' center.'
'Could I ask you something?' The old man paused in his cutting of more root and nodded.
'I have a friend,' said Baedecker, 'someone I love and suspect is very wise, who believes in the richness and mystery of the universe and does not believe in the supernatural.' Robert Sweet Medicine waited. After a minute he said, 'What is the question?' Baedecker touched his forehead, feeling the sunburn there. He shrugged slightly, thinking of Scott as he did so. 'I just wondered what you thought of that,' he said.
The old man cut two more pieces of root and popped them in his mouth, moving them to the other cheek and speaking slowly and clearly. 'I think your friend is wise.' Baedecker squinted. It might have been the result of several days without food or the time he had spent in the sun, or both, but the air between him and the elderly Cheyenne seemed to be shimmering, rippling like heat waves above a highway on a summer day. 'You don't believe in the supernatural?' asked Baedecker.
Robert Sweet Medicine looked out to the east. Baedecker followed his gaze. Far out on the plains, sunlight glinted on a window or windshield. 'You may know more science than I do,' said the old man. 'If the natural world is the universe, how much do you think we know of it, understand it? One percent?'
'No,' said Baedecker. 'Not that much.'
'One percent of one percent?'
'Perhaps,' said Baedecker although as soon as he said it he doubted it. He did not believe that the universe was infinitely complex — one ten-thousandth of an infinite set was still an infinite set — but he felt in his gut that even in the limited realm of basic physical laws, humans probably had not glimpsed a ten-thousandth part of the permutations and possibilities. 'Less than that,' he said.
Robert Sweet Medicine pocketed his folding knife and opened his hands, fingers spreading like petals in new sunlight. 'Your friend is wise,' he said. 'Help me up, Baedecker.' He stood and grasped the older man by the arms, prepared to lift hard, but Robert Sweet Medicine weighed nothing at all. The old man came to his feet with no effort from either of them, and Baedecker had to thrust a leg back to keep from falling backwards. His forearms tingled where the Cheyenne's fingers gripped him. Baedecker felt that if they were not holding on to each other, they could have floated off the ground at that instant, two untethered balloons drifting over the South Dakota prairie.
The Indian squeezed Baedecker's forearms once and released him. 'Have a good walk up the mountain, Baedecker,' he said. 'I have to go all the way down the hill to get water and to use their smelly outhouse. I hate squatting in the bushes; it is not civilized.' The old man picked up a three-gallon plastic jug and moved slowly down the hill, walking in a comical, flatfooted shuffle. He stopped once and called back, 'Baedecker, if you find a deep cave up there, a very deep one, tell me about it on the way down.' Baedecker nodded and watched the old man shuffle away. It did not occur to him to say good-bye until Robert Sweet Medicine was out of sight around a curve in the trail.