Bill Dugan by Crazy Horse Page A

cryptic intelligence would guide him for the rest of his life, if he were lucky enough to have a vision at all.
    In order to be ready, custom required that the young man about to seek his vision receive intensive instruction for many weeks from a holy man. This would prepare his mind to receive the critical information the vision would impart. It was also a prerequisite to undergo a ritual of purification. Since purification was deemed essential before attempting to establish contact with the controlling spirits, the forces in nature and above it that controlledmen’s lives, a shaman would officiate at a purifying sweat bath, held in a dome-shaped sweat lodge built for this purpose. A shaman would accompany the prospective seeker to supervise the purification. Fasting was a part of the preparation, as well.
    But Curly was impatient. Desperate for an explanation of the confusing things around him, he decided to seek his vision on his own. He rode into the hills of western Nebraska without telling anyone where he was going. Deep in the Sand Hills, he found a lake, overlooked by a steep hill. Tethering his horse at the lakeside, giving it enough lead to feed itself on the thick grasses on the shore, he climbed the hill until he reached the top, where a flat table of unbroken stone jutted out toward the lake far below.
    He lay down on the stone and began to fast. Determined to keep himself awake, he placed sharp stones under him. The points digging into his back and shoulders, the backs of his thighs, and his calves were torture, but they served their purpose. For two days with no food or water he lay there, staring at the sun in the daytime and the stars at night.
    On the third day, his body sore, his lips cracked and his throat parched, he was beginning to fear that he would not have a vision after all. He began to worry that his lack of preparation had doomed his quest. Maybe it wasn’t right to seek so powerful a thing without the right prayers being said. Maybe he wasn’t pure enough. These thoughts, sharper than any of the stones poking into his flesh, tortured him for the rest of the day.
    Getting to his feet, Curly looked at the lake far below. It seemed to shimmer in the sunlight, as if the waters were trying to part, giving birth to something deep beneath the surface. Dejected, he backed away from the rim and started down the hill. His head spun, and as he looked at the sky, the clouds began to swirl. Bright light seemed to pour like liquid out of them, thick waves of it sweeping toward him. The light rippled like the sea of grass far across the lake, shifting, undulating. He shook his head, but the sensation wouldn’t leave him.
    He stumbled, fell to one knee, and reached out to catch himself. A sharp pain stabbed through his hand, the shock made his elbow buckle, and he gasped with the pain, fell headlong and began to slide over the rocks and gravel. The hiss of sand in his ears was like the voice of a rattler, and he twisted his head from side to side, trying to see where it came from. His arms spread like wings, he clawed at the ground, but kept on sliding.
    Halfway down the hill, on a little belly ledge in the slope, he slowed enough to arrest his fall. Rolling onto his back, he looked up to see a man on horseback. The man shimmered, his horse pawing the earth. Curly blinked, trying to clear his vision, but everything looked watery, as if the world were dissolving.
    The great horse began to change colors, first a dark roan, then a brilliant, almost silvery gray. It turned dark again, black as night, a white blaze on its forehead, then it turned colors Curly had never seen anywhere, not on a horse, not on a bird’s wing or the wings of a butterfly.
    The man on horseback said nothing. He wasdressed in plain clothing—unadorned leggings, fringed but otherwise unremarkable, a plain buckskin shirt, unpainted and without even beadwork to relieve the ordinariness of its color. His face was unpainted, and he wore a