Butte, a lone cone-shaped holy hill where many Oglalas had sought their visions in the past but which was now surrounded by settlers and mining claims. Charging Elk had had his hanblechia in the badlands surrounding the Stronghold. He had been prepared well by his wiccua wakan, an old man who made many prayers in the sweat lodge, and when he turned sixteen he went out and made many prayers to Wakan Tanka to help him dream his power animal. He never told anyone what the animal was, not even Strikes Plenty, but he later killed a badger and made a small necklace of its claws.
Now Charging Elk tried to ask the two men what happened to the necklace, and he suddenly remembered the holy card the white woman had given him in Paris, which became his wasichu medicine, but he knew it was impossible. For the first time in his life, he wished he had stayed in school and learned the brown suit’s language. “Buffalo Bill,” he said, without hope. “Wild West.”
After the two men left, Charging Elk sank down into himself. He was alone, and the enormity of what that meant hit him hard. He had no friends here. He couldn’t tell the men in suits where his home was. But they had to know that he was an Indian and he came from across the big water as part of the Wild West show. He was an Indian, an Oglala from Pine Ridge, his home.
Even in his despair, Charging Elk found his mind clearing and he remembered more things. It was like waking up after a night of drinking mni wakan, the white mans holy water, but this night seemed to have lasted a long time.
Charging Elk almost felt the impact again as he remembered falling from his horse and landing on the packed earth. That was the last thing he remembered before he was brought to this healing house. He had been chasing the small buffalo herd around the arena with his friends, an act he had performed hundreds of times since coming to this country of the Frenchmen. They liked to see the wild Indians chase the buffalo because it was one of the few acts in the show that was dangerous. And the Indians themselves made it more dangerous by eventually catching up and riding at headlong speed among the thundering animals. Charging Elk remembered a young bull, one that he had become familiar with in the several moons they had performed in the big Paris arena, suddenly swerve and swing its head. Its horn caught the horse on the left shoulder and the horse squealed and almost went down and Charging Elk tumbled past its head. And that was all he remembered until he got to the sickhouse.
But he had been sick before the evening’s performance and he became more ill during the course of the several acts. The night chill of December went right into his bones and his back was so tight it felt like someone had strapped a lodgepole to it. But he had performed the several acts before the chase—burning the settlers cabin, chasing the Deadwood stage, fighting with the soldiers in the big show of Custer’s Last Fight. But as he waited behind a barrier for the buffalo to be released, he suddenly felt very weak and almost fell from his horse as he leaned over and vomited. He knew then that he had the sickness that had swept through the Indian camp as well as the village of the white performers and workers. Badface had eased his horse next to Charging Elk’s and he asked if Charging Elk was all right, but just then the gateman pulled back the barricade and the Indians leaped forward, digging their heels into their horses’ flanks, yipping and yelling to the roar of the crowd.
But there was another Oglala in the sickhouse when Charging Elk arrived. As the helpers were lifting him into the bed, he had a sudden moment of intense pain which cleared his head and he saw a friend in the next bed. It was Featherman, an Oglala who had three winters on Charging Elk and who had caught the sickness two sleeps ago and now was quiet and unmoving as his eyes followed the activity of the helpers as they lifted Charging Elk from a rolling bed. The eyes seemed not to know what they saw.
Even as the pain of movement was subsiding into a deep ache, Charging Elk had looked over at Featherman and seen that his friend was going away. “Featherman,” he whispered as he looked into the flat eyes. “Stay. Don’t leave me.” But he could not hear his own words and soon he too was gone.
But Charging Elk did come back, several times, and now he knew he was back to stay. He knew he was back by the heavy throbbing pain in his left side. Now he felt that side, those ribs, through the bandage that had been wrapped around his torso. His breath wasn’t so shallow now, even though the bandage was tight against his chest. He had broken some ribs before in another fall from his horse. That time had been in the badlands, a hot summer day, when his running horse had stepped in a badger hole. He and Strikes Plenty were heading for the Stronghold after some trouble with the miners in Paha Sapa. Sometimes the miners shot at them, either to keep them away or just to kill them. Charging Elk had been laid up for a few days with those broken ribs but they healed up, with the aid of the yuwipi’s medicine, and he soon was out riding again. Sometimes he and Strikes Plenty sneaked back to Pine Ridge Agency to visit his parents. They would make the two-day ride and wait for dark before entering the small settlement.
And always it was the same. His parents would try to talk him into staying. They told him there would be no punishment, that the white chief just wanted the young ones to come back and stay go to school and learn the ways of the white god. They lived in a one-room house with a door and two windows, neither of which contained glass. Squares of canvas were tacked to the top of the windows and rolled up to let in light. They had a table and two chairs and a white man’s sleeping bed. And a cross on the wall beside the cooking stove. But no children. Charging Elk’s brother and sister had died, a year apart, one of the great cough, the other of consumption.
Charging Elk loved his mother and could understand why she wanted him to come live with them and go to school and to holy ceremonies. He was all she had left. Sometimes he felt guilty and thought how it would be to eat her food and watch her do her quill-work. But he couldn’t figure out his father. Scrub had been a shirtwearer, one of the bravest and wisest of the Oglalas. He had fought hard at Little Bighorn and had provided meat when the people were running from the soldiers. But that winter when the people were starving and sick, he had become a peacemaker, just like the reservation Indians who were sent out by their white bosses to try to talk the band into surrendering. Charging Elk had been ashamed of his father that winter. And when he saw his father sitting idly in his little shack, drinking the black medicine and sometimes telling the holy beads, he could not believe his father had gone from shirtwearer to this. It was always this image of his father that drove Charging Elk time and time again back out to the Stronghold.
Charging Elk had to take a leak and he did not want the iron pissholder. It shamed him to have one of the healing helpers roll him onto his side so he could hit the slop pan. And it was hard to piss with the helper standing there, looking away but listening. He didn’t like their face coverings. Although he had become adept at looking at their eyes without them seeing, he couldn’t tell the hidden expressions and this troubled him. Furthermore, he hadn’t taken a crap since coming to the sickhouse but he still didn’t need to and this worried him.
He pulled himself higher in his bed until he was sitting up without the aid of the pillow. His ribs ached and the bandage seemed even tighter against his chest, but the pain was bearable and he could breathe a little deeper. He watched another man get out of bed, put his robe on, and walk down the corridor between beds. He too disappeared through the swinging door at the end of the room.
Charging Elk threw back the covers and tried to swing his legs over the side of the bed. It was the first real bed he had slept in in his life. Even in France, the Indians slept in blankets and robes in their lodges. Charging Elk and his friends used to make fun of the soft white men who needed to sleep in feathers on a platform of wood or iron. Now, Charging Elk couldn’t make his legs obey him. He pursed his lips into a straight seam, put his arm under one knee, and pulled it sideways. A sharp pain in his side made him inhale sharply, deeply, almost a cry, but he kept his lips tight. He lay back on his elbows and worked his legs one way, his upper
