The simple act of talking seemed to refresh Dances With Wolves. Color was returning to his face and little explosions of light shone in his eyes as he spoke.
"I alone can move among the whites and not be seen.”
"But you are a Comanche."
A small, sly smile spread across Dances With Wolves' lips.
"That is true," he said, "but the color of my skin has not changed.”
Ten Bears' face tightened in concentration. He had never heard such a wild idea.
"But how will you talk? How will you eat?" He looked Dances With Wolves up and down. "You cannot look as you do now.”
"I won't look like this."
Ten Bears dropped his gaze to the flickering fire. That men could turn into animals or animals to men was not unheard of, but such a thing as Dances With Wolves spoke of now — this he could not imagine. To think that a Comanche could turn into a white person was beyond him.
The children suddenly burst through the door. Rabbit was with them.
"Father," Snake In Hands started breathlessly, “Rabbit knows where to find snakes near the stream — lots of snakes. He wants to show me.”
"Go then," Dances With Wolves said. "Take your sister.”
Snake In Hands pushed Rabbit and Always Walking through the door and they hurried off to the stream, shouts of excitement fading in their wake.
“Have you spoken to your children of this? " Ten Bears asked.
“No."
"What will you do with them?"
"They will stay in camp."
Ten Bears shook his head.
"I always thought that one parent is better than none," he said.
"There will be two when I return. That is the best."
"I cannot see how that can happen," Ten Bears said stubbornly. “All I can see is two Comanche children with neither mother nor father.”
“But, Grandfather. ." Dances With Wolves leaned forward a little, with more life in his voice and eyes than Ten Bears had seen since the ranger attack. “They are alive. If they were dead we would continue. They are not dead, but speaking their names only brings sorrow. No one can live like that. I know the whites. I can do this thing. I can get her back. I can get Stays Quiet back. Maybe I will die, but we cannot live as we are living now."
Again the sly smile flitted across Dances With Wolves' face. "Maybe I will succeed, Grandfather. . maybe we will all be together again.”
For a moment Dances With Wolves looked like a mischievous boy and Ten Bears chuckled at his audacity.
"Maybe you will,” the old man said, "maybe you will. Who am I to say you won't? I am not the Mystery."
Chapter XXII
When Kicking Bird departed, taking the staunchest advocates for peace with him, Wind In His Hair's war agenda, having nothing to blunt it, became the single topic of discussion in Ten Bears, village. As always there was debate, but the open, free-flowing talk of war with the whites seemed to invigorate everyone's spirits.
Talk alone, however, was not enough to pull people out of the stagnancy they had become accustomed to. A spark of ignition — some sign or event that would set off the frenzy necessary to take the war trail — was missing. There was nothing inside a village laden with grief to provide combustion, and the likeliest possibility for such impetus lay to the north. That was where White Bear would be coming from. But a week after Kicking Bird had gone, there was still no sign of them and war talk began to flag.
Wind In His Hair grew more and more frustrated. Though most warriors agreed that a war must be made, the majority had assiduously avoided the kind of blazing commitment that would galvanize the village, and seeing that his zeal alone would not be sufficient to move men out of their lodges, Wind In His Hair curtailed his advocacy of war. If he kept on and the talk did not boil into action, the idea of war would never amount to anything more and his standing would plummet.
The great warrior seemed to become more sullen with each day the Kiowa did not turn up. His conversations were curt and acerbic, and instead of spending his evenings calling on fellow warriors, he withdrew to his lodge. There he chewed bitterly on his fading prospects, wondering if the Mystery was abandoning the Comanche. It had been almost a moon since he had sent his runners north, and Wind In His Hair began to think that if he had stayed in the becalmed camp much longer his smoldering frustration might catch fire and consume him.
On a day when his restlessness was near the breaking point a runner appeared with the exciting news that the Kiowa were coming. A powerful line of horsemen from the north were sighted that afternoon, and an hour later the Comanche band that had suffered so terribly was in a delirium as nearly eighty solemn Kiowa fighters, led by the formidable White Bear, entered the village.
The heavily armed warriors were painted, many of them from head to toe, in the brilliant reds and blacks of war. Their ponies were decorated with symbols of hail and lightning and, as Ten Bears' people swarmed around the procession that snaked its way through the village, the Kiowa maintained the bellicose expressions of men determined to meet and vanquish any enemy.
For the remainder of that day and long into the night, fear and doubt were suspended as the village recalled the unchallenged supremacy they had enjoyed for generations. A huge group of women and children, carrying all that was needed for a temporary camp, had traveled in the van of the great procession, and a large Kiowa camp was erected adjacent to that of Ten Bears'.
Feasting and visiting were conducted almost as an afterthought as the combined camps exulted in a feverish daydream of a war against the whites that would bring honor to individuals and retribution for a whole people — a blow delivered straight to the heart that would send the enemy reeling, wounding him so vitally that all thought of further incursion would be forgotten.
Women worked with revitalized spirit as they made sure their men would lack nothing when they went into battle. Gangs of children staged mock battles all over the outlying prairie, and cells of warriors met constantly to trumpet their worthiness and compare strategic experience in fighting whites.
Toward twilight, women and children put finishing touches on the huge fire that would blaze in the center of the village while the war party's leaders, Wind In His Hair, White Bear, and a dozen others including Dances With Wolves, paid a visit to Owl Prophet.
The prophet handed out pinches of mole dirt to each man, instructing them to sprinkle the grains of freshly excavated earth over the withers of their ponies before engaging the enemy. Then he had them wait outside his lodge while he consulted with the Mystery.
Silhouettes of owl and man glowed behind the skin of the medicine man's tent and a long, indecipherable conversation commenced. Though they understood nothing, the warriors hung on every word until at last, in a cacophony of unearthly screeching, the outlines of man and bird fell out of view.
A few moments later, Owl Prophet emerged to give a short, exhausted account that told the warriors what had transpired.
"You will meet two forces of white men. The first you must let pass. Attack only the second. Attack the first and disaster will befall you. Attack the second and you will kill many whites. Attack the second and you shall have victory."
A chorus of unruly cheers erupted and, as Owl Prophet stumbled back into his lodge, the excited leaders hurried back to their homes to prepare for the great dance of bravado that was to begin shortly.
As darkness fell, the populace watched Ten Bears pause in silent prayer before applying a glowing faggot to the tinder at the edge of the great fire. At the same moment, as flames licked upward and sparks spewed into the blackness of the night sky, four Kiowa musicians sitting cross-legged around a drum began to beat out an ominous cadence that reverberated through the village like approaching thunder. The deliberate cadence grew stronger and stronger, its insistent pulse gradually insinuating itself into the bloodstreams of the waiting warriors.