them. John Natani felt fragile in the presence of such massive animals. He was curiously unafraid. Two bulls moved by, large as his jeep, ignoring him, then several cows and a calf, the rest of the herd thundering by beyond the edge. John’s heart quickened when a cow lurched to the edge, glared down at him angrily, and pawed at the clay with sharp hooves as a calf pressed against her. A part of him screamed in fear, another part freezing him calmly in his place, raising his arms towards the frenzied animal and speaking to it.
“I come to find the buffalo woman; I seek Ptesanwin. Lead me, so I may make Ihamblecya.”
The cow had no chance to answer. Behind her the monstrous lead bull suddenly appeared, head lowered, one terrible horn disappearing up the female’s anus, and she jumped screaming, scrambling ahead of her tyrant and away from the cliff edge. The ground trembled again, and was still.
John took the few remaining steps up to the high plateau and saw the herd moving quickly across it towards the west, through ripe buffalo grass covering the treeless plain to the horizon. When he passed them at great distance, two hours later, they were paralleling his course. John Natani found significance in this. The Ptepi were with him, and Ptesanwin would be near. He lowered his head and trudged onwards across the endless plateau.
When he reached the end of the grassy plain the sun was high. His lips and tongue felt swollen, and pack straps chaffed his shoulders raw. He stopped for a moment, took a long pull of warm water from the bottle, hoisted his pack once more and began picking his way carefully down narrow, sloping clay ledges into a canyon with no name. One moment a gentle breeze was cooling his face, but as he dropped below the edge of the plateau it seemed the furnaces of hell were unleashed upon him. His first breath of hot air rising from the canyon floor made him gasp, and his eyes were suddenly dry. There was no water in this canyon, but it had seen better times of green forests and sparkling streams. Along the bentonite shelves that were the canyon walls lay silicified remains of giant trees that had once cast shade here. Volcanoes to the south and west had killed them with ash and poisonous gases, and now their crystalline bodies glistened in the sunlight. Small Junipers clung tenaciously to scoria outcroppings in the gray clay, a hopeful sign of life and splash of green in a world of alkaline white, red and gray.
John moved across the clay, feeling it crackling beneath his feet, listening for a sound of other life and hearing nothing. The canyon laid barren, dead beneath him. Loneliness descended like a heavy cloud, urging him to turn away from this evil place. But it was a place of cleansing, he told himself, a place for turning inwards, asking questions, exploring goals and motivations. A place for Ihamblecya.
He climbed to a sandstone shelf near the canyon rim, scrambled up onto it and removed his pack. There was a commanding view of the canyon towards the west, and what breeze there was he would feel here. John removed his shirt and headband; let his black hair spill over his shoulders. He took a long pull from the water bottle, stowed it carefully in his pack and turned, sitting cross-legged to face the west rim of the canyon. Behind him, from somewhere out on the high, grassy plateau, there was a coughing sound. John smiled, raised his arms and closed his eyes to a descending sun, knowing he was not alone. As the heat seared his flesh, he began to pray.
It was ritual, prayers taught to him by mother and grandfather. He repeated them over and over until his mind drifted along with the words, observing but not hearing, present but somehow detached from the incantations. The words began to lose meaning as his mind drifted away, wandering far from the canyon heat, back to the dusty roads and grasslands of the reservation, a place of belonging far removed from the college campus he had despised and fled.
John was filled with a sense of regret, of failure. He’d only stayed a month, leaving before first exams. Of what use to his people would he be as an engineer? They didn’t need computers or high technology; simple work and dignity had been enough for thousands of years. A corner of his mind nagged at him. Of what use are you to your people just sitting here on a rock and talking to the wind and snakes and trees of stone? Why are you really here? John felt hot sweat running into his eyes and mouth, opened the water bottle and took another long drink from it. “Ptesanwin, wise one, please speak to me. Show me the way I must follow.”
He watched a blood-red sun descend beyond the western rim of the canyon, and ate a few of the Fig Newtons to silence his noisy stomach. A night breeze chilled him, but he did not put on his shirt and shivered on the ledge until the breeze subsided. His tongue felt swollen again, and he drank more water, holding it in his mouth for a long time before swallowing.
Behind him on the grassy slopes near the canyon, a coyote family emerged for the night’s hunting, greeted each other with a symphony of yelps and howls that filled him with a sense of oneness with all life. Soon after, he heard the scratching of toe-nails on rock, saw dark shapes moving among the petrified logs and stumps below him, then a yip and low growl as one of the furtive creatures sensed his presence. “Miyacapi, little four-legged ones, tell Ptesanwin I am here.” He prayed until a full moon had crossed the star-filled sky, and as the coyotes returned to their dens he succumbed to the exhaustion of unanswered prayers and fell into a dreamless sleep.
By the evening of the following day he had used up all his food and water, and he was consumed by doubt. His body was stiff and aching; dry lips had cracked open, and when he licked them he tasted blood. His mind seemed a blank. There were no answers, no thoughts, voices or visions. He was not worthy or ready, or Ptesanwin was a myth for ignorant people of the distant past. There was a coughing sound and low growls from the plateau behind him; the buffalo were still there, agitated. It was rutting season. “Ptesanwin, where are you?” he whispered. Even the coyotes avoided him that night, and he fell asleep with tears in his eyes.
He awoke when the sun was high. He was drenched in sweat. His vision was blurred by a white veil before his eyes, and there was a buzzing sound in his ears. His heart was pounding, skin turning cold, instinct screaming within him to find shade. He scrambled from the ledge and over rocks towards the canyon floor. Stepping over a rocky log, he felt a searing pain when something struck his leg. He looked down numbly as the venomous snake struck him again in the same place, and he staggered backwards onto a flat of alkali sand in shock. The snake glared at him a moment, then crawled back under the log. John felt no malice, sensing a purpose in the pain already moving up his leg. Perhaps this was his answer; he would die in this place rather than live in the white man’s world. In a coldly rational way he realized this was likely in his weakened state. But a part of him wanted to live, while the remainder dwelled in self-pity. He limped across an alkali flat and along game trails towards a Juniper-covered escarpment jutting out over a scoria-lined canyon filled with thick underbrush. The escarpment was near an occasionally used horse trail, and shade was there. His death could be comfortable; more than he deserved for an ill-spent life. Ptesanwan would hide her face from him, and smile as he died. This was truth. Tears came. Must it be this way? He pondered the question, and felt numbness creeping into his groin. Please don’t let me die, he thought. There are things I should do—but what are they?
He found a shady hollow beneath two intertwined junipers and crawled into it, dragging his violated leg behind him. Someone had camped here. He found match sticks and a piece of aluminum foil. The vacationers were gone and usually it was only rangers or ranchers who ventured this far into the backcountry. Perhaps they would check the buffalo herd, and come within signaling distance. The numbness was now in his abdomen, and he knew soon he would begin the fight to breathe as paralysis reached into his chest to suffocate him. To sleep was to die. John pushed himself up into a sitting position, back against a juniper, and stared out at the rolling hills and colorful buttes. The country he loved so dearly was killing him. Or was he killing himself? Was there no place for him in the world? Must he be thrown out? He felt sudden anger. I have done nothing wrong, he thought, to which his mind answered, you have done nothing at all.
A red sun touched the western rim of the canyon and shadows lengthened around him as John Natani fought to live, consciously willing his chest to rise and fall, forcing air in and out of parched
