Cheyenne Madonna. Eddie MDiv Chuculate
EDDIE
CHUCULATE
CHEYENNE
MADONNA
A BLACK SPARROW BOOK
DAVID R. GODINE · Publisher
Boston
This is
A Black Sparrow Book
published in 2010 by
DAVID R. GODINE · Publisher
Post Office Box 450
Jaffrey, New Hampshire, 03452
Copyright © 2010 by Eddie Chuculate
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact permissions, David R. Godine, Publisher, Fifteen Court Square, Suite 320, Boston, Massachusetts 02108.
Acknowledgments appear at the end of the book.
The Black Sparrow pressmark is by Julian Waters.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CATALOGING – IN – PUBLICATION DATA
Chuculate, Eddie D.
Cheyenne Madonna / by Eddie Chuculate. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-57423-216-5
1.Cheyenne Indians—Fiction. 2. Creek Indians—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.H833C47 2010
813'.6—dc22
2010008780
SOFTCOVER ISBN: 978-1-57423-216-5
E-BOOK ISBN: 978-1-57423-220-2
Dedicated to Della Ruth (Youngbear) French, my biscuit
Galveston Bay, 1826
ON THEIR SECOND DAY, Old Bull’s party began to see many wolves and coyotes in the distance, slung low to the ground, throwing backward glances. They appeared in the midafternoon as mirages through a heatwave gauze that rose off the plain and made things shimmer and seem not as they were. One stopped and sat on his haunches and looked behind him. He licked his chops then looked right at Old Bull before slinking away. Something extraordinary was happening, plainly, but Old Bull was unconcerned. There were many days to cover before this Great Lake he had heard so much of. They were Old Bull, Red Moon, Sandman, and Whiteshield. Other than strips of dried meat wrapped in skins, they carried no excess baggage other than an extra horse each on a side rope. Their horses were lean and muscled and born to run. But this wasn’t a war party or a scouting trip. This was plain-and-simple joyriding – an adventure – and who wants to be bogged down on an adventure? Privately, Old Bull thought the stories were exaggerated – days and days of water in either direction? The absolute end of the earth? Surely if this was true, this would be the very origin of their existence, he thought.
The water was very low in the Red River, and they let the horses drink after they crossed. Toward evening the antelope came – sand-brown like the terrain and splotched with white. First one, then in groups of twos and threes. Soon, Old Bull’s party was surrounded front and back by the usually very skittish animal. They stopped their horses and looked in all directions. Old Bull liked the way the antelope sprang in long graceful arcs, one after the other, like they were playing children’s games. But Sandman drew and shot an arrow into one’s neck right at the top of its jump. It fell on its two front legs and lay quivering in the grass. He got down and pulled out his arrow then cut its neck with a quick jerk. He did all this calmly. Old Bull shook his head. Red Moon laughed. That damned Sandman.
Later on, Whiteshield was almost thrown from his horse when it nearly stepped on a rattlesnake. The horse dipped suddenly and reared up, but Whiteshield brought him down and calmed him, scratching the side of his neck. Old Bull told him he better watch where he was going next time. They splashed through a small creek, and on top of the next rise a grasshopper flew into Old Bull’s face. Old Bull felt its scratchy little legs on his cheek. He went to flick it away but it leapt off. Sandman pointed. Old Bull looked and saw waves of flying insects coming toward them, heard their wings fluttering. There were locusts, grasshoppers, crickets. The riders hid their faces on the sides of their horses and galloped through the cloud of bugs. They slowed to a lope. The horses smelled the smoke first, raising their heads and flaring their nostrils. Old Bull’s horse sneezed sharply. Then Old Bull himself smelled the smoke. At the top of the hill, where they could see for miles all around, they saw the fire to the west. It rose up like the bluffs of a red canyon, lapping and advancing with thirsty orange flames. It was driving away animals as it progressed – more animals than Old Bull had ever seen at any one time. That night under a cottonwood grove with the remnants of the antelope fat spitting and sizzling on coals, they dozed on their pallets. A strand of Red Moon’s hair had wisped around and was caught in his lips. It went in and out as he snored. Breezes came and went, trembling leaves and making music.
* * *
The fire behind them, they rode on at sunup. Sometimes they rode in a lazy zig-zag, taking it easy, or abreast in an easy lope. Sandman’s horse would always begin to gallop when it smelled water, and Sandman had to check him in. They came to a hilly, elevated country after two days, and had to dismount and lead their horses around granite boulders and rocks and under clumps of juniper and pine. This landscape came upon them unexpectedly, protruding from the wildflower and grass-whipped prairie like a miniature mountain range. They bedded down near the top, with a wide open view of the plains to the south. Taking a leak, Red Moon saw a line of three or four schooner wagons, insect-like, crawling into the sunset. He joked with Old Bull that they better not tell Sandman. No telling what he’d do.
After two days their horses began to smell the water, raising and dipping their heads, wild-eyed, snorting, difficult to control. They were back down on flat ground now, on marshy lowland, and saltgrass and wispy cane had taken the place of wild cotton and tumbleweeds. A sudden gale slung Old Bull’s hair forward around his face, and he traced the wind ahead of him, its current visible as it curled through stands of Johnson grass and willow. Soon there was water everywhere: low-lying lakes, bayous, and swamps. They stopped and surveyed. Nearby, geese and crane covered a shallow pond, and more were dropping in, falling with spread wings and extended feet, settling with soft splashes. The birds bobbed upon the water, their mild puttering and clucking reminding Old Bull of a flock of wild turkeys he spied on once, up north. He was mildly disappointed though. There was a lot of water, but this couldn’t be the Great Lake. There were many lakes like this up north. Whiteshield said that they would probably have to cross here to make it farther south, because soon they would be too deep. With a yell, Sandman whipped his horse suddenly into the backwater, and his piercing scream, the splashing and frantic hollering of the geese, began to fill the universe. One by one, the entire raft of wildfowl rose up and blotted the sky, it grew dark, and Old Bull felt the wind from their wings on his skin.
They started out before sunrise, and as they rode the stars paled and the sky turned a deep clear blue. Red Moon halted and pointed out the Indian. A figure, apparently smeared in clay, knelt at the edge of a mirror-surfaced black-water lagoon. The riders stroked and whispered to their horses, keeping them silent. The Indian rose and carried water up and over a hill, out of sight. They untied and secured their spare horses, and followed. They were very quiet; steam trailed from the horses’ nostrils. There were about a dozen Indians facing them with bows drawn when they topped the hill. Sandman reached for his bow but