Far as the Eye Can See by Robert Bausch Page B

except for the cicadas and tree frogs.
    Big Tree said, “What is daddy?”
    “It means father,” I said.
    He nodded. “I know where my people hunt. When I go with Theo, I leave my father like wasichu leave father.”
    That was a pretty revealing thing to say and it set me back a little. He didn’t express it with regret nor nothing, but I sensed it anyway. I said. “I would like to of known my mother.”
    “You have not known your mother?” He tamped the tobacco down in his pipe.
    “My mother died when I was very young,” I said.
    His eyes softened. He told me how he was adopted a third time by a medicine man with medicine so powerful he kept it in a pack and let it hang from a stand of three branches tied together at the top. He always did this so his medicine wouldn’t never touch the ground. Touching the ground would rob his medicine of its power. “He was called Stone Hands,” Big Tree said. “He fought the Sioux, the Southern Cheyenne. He counted many coups on the Sioux and they shoot at him. All try to kill him. He ride right in front of their eyes and then come back and no arrows touch him.”
    “I am a orphan,” I said. “I was raised by my aunt.”
    He nodded, his eyes gleaming. Then he said, “I tell you about Stone Hands.”
    I said nothing.
    “One day he put his medicine on his stand and a young brave, racing his horse through the village, knock down the stand and Stone Hands’ medicine fall to earth.” He looked at me with the most serious expression, like I should understand something a lot more than I did. I almost said, “So?” But then he said, “Very bad thing when medicine fall to earth. All its power gone. Now it is nothing but bones and thread, and feathers and tobacco ash.” I remembered he’d told me that, and I felt bad for making him repeat it.
    “I know,” I said.
    “Stone Hands hold his head high, he look in the face of white moon with the same strength and fire, but he know then he no longer have good medicine. He tell the women and children, ‘I will die before new moon.’ But none of the people believe him. One of his fathers tell him to take his pack to the top of the hill on the other side of the Yellowstone. To set it out again on the stand, high among the mists and clouds. ‘You will get your medicine back,’ his father say. ‘You go on another vision quest with that medicine and it will be good again.’ And the next day, when we hunt for buffalo, he ride out toward the top of the ridge. He leave his lodge and all of his wives and horses. He just ride out on one horse carrying a lance and the medicine pack.”
    “What’s a vision quest?”
    “You go out by yourself,” he said, a mite annoyed to have to explain it to me. “You take no food. Only water. You stay long time—many days. You wait for dream. Vision. You see outside who you are.”
    “I don’t much attend to spiritual things and such,” I said. “It’s enough to keep breathing out here.” He stared at me for a long time, then I said, “Go on. Finish the story.”
    “A man must be worthy to hear about these things.” He sat back against the cottonwood and puffed on his pipe. He seemed to be finished with me.
    “No,” I said. “Tell me. I’ll try to be worthy.”
    He studied the bowl in his hands, then raised the canteen and drank a huge gulp of the whiskey. I asked him again to go on and tell me the story.
    He said, “Stone Hands walk in mountains and in the hills. He follow the Yellowstone, he go across many rivers and climb to high clouds above water and earth.” The whole time Big Tree spoke he waved the pipe around, took quick puffs on it, pointed with it. I never seen him so animated. I felt relaxed and kind of privileged, if you know what I mean—like I was being gifted with something pretty well valuable and unusual to boot. “Stone Hands follow the backbone of the earth,” Big Tree went on, “and then go west a long, long way into evening. Then he make camp in highest