own dark hand while looking at her white bonnet.
She drew her hand back and touched her dress just above her breasts and said, “Je m’appelle Sandrine. C’est mon nom.” Charging Elk looked at her lips and they were the color of wild rose. “Sandrine”, she said. “Moi.”
Then Charging Elk heard Featherman’s voice behind him. “That is her name, I believe. Sandrine. Now you must tell her yours. In American.”
He looked at the young woman called Sandrine and touched his own chest and said, “Charging Elk.”
She said, “Charging Elk.” When she said it again, the first part of his name was soft and flowing, but the Elk was firm and emphatic. He had not heard it that way before. “Sandrine,” he said, pointing to her. Then he laid his fist against his chest. “Charging Elk.” And he heard Featherman’s high laughter ring out in the closeness of the afternoon heat.
Charging Elk opened his eyes and he was still in the small room with the glaring light from above. He was thirsty and hungry and he had to piss. He hadn’t had a drink since he had stopped at a fountain sometime before dark. It seemed a long time ago that he had sat in the arcade and eaten the bread and cheese. He unfastened the bottom two buttons of the coat, crossed his legs, then closed his eyes again to block out the cold light.
Sandrine had led him out in back of the camp into an airy forest of tall trees with heavy leaves and hard, green trunks. Bushes grew among the trees but there were cinder paths that wound around and among the bushes. They came to a lake with an island in the middle. On the island, he could see a cave carved out of a large boulder. He had been to this lake several times before—the show Indians often took walks out here to sit and smoke, to eat bread and meat sticks, away from the curious white people, although they were often followed by children. It was out here, while smelling the grass and looking at the cool surface of the lake, that the young men talked openly of home. The relative peace of the forest reminded them of all the quiet land of home, the open plains, the river bottoms, the pines of Paha Sapa. Quite often they would talk and smoke for an hour, then fall silent, each remembering home in his own way, all sick for home. But when they returned to camp to dress for the next performance, they would make self-conscious jokes, tease each other, perhaps wrestle, all the time putting on their bravado, along with their paint, for that evening’s show. And when they entered the arena for the grand entry, they were dignified young warriors, ready for anything.
Sandrine and Charging Elk sat in the grass on the edge of the lake, looking at the island but stealing glances at each other. Sandrine picked up a small stone and looked at Charging Elk and said, “Caillou.” She held it between two fingers and repeated the word. Then she gave him the stone, dropping it into his palm. “Inyan,” he said. She said, “Inyan,” and they both smiled. It was the first time he could remember feeling warmth for a wadichu. She looked up at the hazy blue sky and said, “Ciel” And he said, “Mahpiya.”
They had spent a pleasant hour naming things for each other—horse, dog, earth, water—but rarely looking into each other’s eyes. If she looked at him, he was looking at the cave. If he stole a glance at her, she would be looking down at a blade of grass between her fingers.
Finally she stood and brushed the back of her flower-print dress. Charging Elk watched this and he thought, She is a different woman from the one I first saw—the formidable one with the tight metal-gray dress and the hat that looked like a many-colored duck. He liked this one better. He wished they could have stayed there into the evening and then the night. Even when they were quiet, he had felt at ease, as though they were two people with one cante, with one being. He had never felt like that with a woman. He had never really been with a woman, except the crazy woman out at the Stronghold who lived alone and opened her thighs for a bottle of holy water. Only twice was he able to bring her the mni wakan and those were the only two times he had entered a woman.
He stood reluctantly and watched Sandrine sort through the contents of her bag. He heard the click and clatter and jingle of things and he told himself he didn’t want this woman as he had wanted the crazy woman. It was enough to be with her on a warm afternoon in this gentle forest. He watched a small boy duck behind a bush and he thought of a conversation with Strikes Plenty, the time they were trying to decide whether to try out for the Buffalo Bill show. When he had asked his kola what they would do when they returned home from the tour, Strikes Plenty had said, with his challenging smile, “What if we don’t come back?”
Charging Elk had thought the idea of not returning was foolish talk, but now, as he looked at the sorrel hair of the busy Sandrine, he thought the unthinkable and it frightened and thrilled him at the same time. Would it be possible? Would she take care of him, here in her own land? Foolish, he thought, this is foolish to think. . . .
Sandrine had been muttering to herself as she clattered around in the bag. Suddenly she cried out with pleasure and held up a small, square piece of paper. She looked at it for a moment, then kissed it and handed it to Charging Elk. It was shiny and hard. He looked at it and saw that it was a picture of a bearded man in a red robe. He wore a white gown beneath it and on the white gown was a heart. The heart had a cross growing from its top and there was a woven chain of thorns around it. Blood dripped from the heart.
He looked at Sandrine, his eyes blank with ignorance. Her own eyes were green and moist with some sort of pleasure. “Jésus,” she said. Then she took the card from him and turned it over. It was full of the white man’s neat looping writing. She said something long, something he didn’t understand, but he knew her words came up from her heart and he felt slightly embarrassed. She put the card into his hand and closed his fingers over it with her own small hands. They stood there for a moment, looking at their hands, then she said, “Adieu, Charging Elk—mon ami,” and walked away, up the path toward the arena and Paris. That was the last time he saw her.
But he kept the picture of the man with the bloody heart. He carried it with him, in the pocket of his vest or in a small leather sleeve he made to attach to his belt when he was performing in his breechcloth. He didn’t understand the picture, but it had been given to him by Sandrine, the woman who had warmed his spirit, and so it had become part of her nagi that he must carry always, just as he always wore his badger-claw necklace.
Charging Elk’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps, and he looked up to see three men entering the room. Two of them were dressed in the akecita uniforms, but it was the other one who made his eyes go round. It was Brown Suit! The American. But now he was wearing a black suit with the winged white tie that wasichus wore for dress-up. A round black hat with a short upturned brim rested on his head. Only his mustache that curled around the corners of his mouth was as it was that day at the sickhouse.
“Charging Elk. Hello, my friend.” Brown Suit stuck out his hand, and Charging Elk lifted his. The man pumped the Indian’s limp hand up and down and he smiled, but he was startled to see how thin and drawn Charging Elk was. The hollows under his cheeks were almost black beneath the harsh light. He turned to the younger policeman with the sergeant’s stripes on the collar of his tunic. “Have you given this poor man anything to eat?” Franklin Bells French was quite passable, despite his having been the American vice-consul in Marseille for only two years. He was annoyed. It was Christmas Eve—or had been—and his last guests had been walking out the door when the gendarme arrived with news that an American, a Peau-Rouge, had been arrested.
The other, older man wore several ribbons and three medals on his tunic. He was a small, neat man with sparse graying hair parted in the middle and combed
