Conquering Horse by Frederick Manfred Page A

Ancient of Darkness and so had worked out the design of a dark cloud moving across an empty land, with below a band of deepest black from which reared the dark head of a buffalo.
    No Name stooped through the door of his father’s lodge. “I am here.”
    “When you come I am glad,” his mother said. “The meat is ready.”
    No Name sat down before the steaming earthenware pot with his father. Cross-legged, knives in hand, they each speared up a piece of dripping buffalo meat, the fat on it globular and grayish. They chewed solemnly together, with smacks of satisfaction. No Name consciously tried to imitate his father’s delicate way of turning his knife around as he ate. Star brought them both a chip of baked prairie beans. She served the bread on a wide piece of cottonwood bark. Then she sat back, folding her arms inside her loose wing sleeves.
    “My mother, the bread is very good,” No Name said.
    “I am glad.” Star sat in the woman’s way, knees and feet to one side. Her hair and braids shone from combing. The part down the middle, from the forehead back to the nape of the neck, had been neatly painted with vermilion. Copper earrings dangled from her ear lobes.
    “The bread is very light, mother. It is like the lungs of a dog.”
    “Eat, my son. You are very thin.”
    Finished, both men stabbed their knives into the sandy earth to clean off the fat. They washed their hands in a jar of water.
    Next they prepared the toilet for the day. No Name loosened his two fat braids, as well as the finely plaited scalp lock in back, and combed them out with the rough side of a dried buffalo tongue. Tangles he cut through with his knife. He found a few lice, as well as nits, and killed them by placing them on a flat smooth stone and whacking them with the handle of his knife. The larger lice made a light pop of a sound when hit just right. Redbird reclined on his willow back-rest and held up his long hair to the light of the smokehole, looking for gray hairs. When he found one he jerked it out with a quick, deft snap of fingers.
    Again Thunder Close By, the crier, made the rounds of the camp, roaring out more orders for the day. “Clean up! Our helper the sun is here again. Clean up!” Almost immediately Star along with all the other women in camp bustled about,dragging out the sleeping robes to give them an airing and sweeping the grass floors with rush brooms. They rooted out the mice and their nests, with eager yipping dogs killing as many as the women. The women next rolled up the leather bottoms of the tepees a foot to let the air pass through and freshen the interior. Mothers also checked over the little children, examining them for lice, redoing their braids, looking for dirt in the ears. All the while Thunder Close By kept up his roaring, making the rounds four times to make sure all the laggards had been routed out. “Clean up! Our helper the sun has come again. Clean up!”
    At last Redbird looked at No Name. “My son, the horses wait and the night herder wishes to be relieved. Take Swift As Wind and bring her to the best grass with the other horses. Let her have water where it runs cool and clear.”
    “I will go, my father.”
    While Star packed his lunch in a heartskin, No Name drew on his clothes: clout and leggings and buckskin shirt and fresh moccasins. He tested the string on his bow, culled out the better arrows, slung bow and quiver over his back.
    Just then there was a cry outside. The cry was of such a nature that No Name, Redbird, Star, all three, started. Their eyes became suddenly the glittering eyes of alert wolves.
    Redbird rose up from his back-rest with a rush, poked his head out through the doorflap.
    “What is it, my father? What do you see?”
    After a moment Redbird heaved a huge sigh and withdrew his head. He gave his son a sad twisted look.
    No Name looked for himself.
    There, from behind the council lodge in the center of the camp, came Circling Hawk’s fat mother, Soft Berry,