Heartsong by James Welch

some more. He wanted to be with these people, inside where it was warm and holy. But he knew that as soon as he entered, the people would stare at him, or maybe they would throwhim out because he wasn’t one of them. Or worse, they might think he was an enemy.
    Charging Elk was sunk inside of himself, thinking of his loneliness in the cold dark while the wasichiu were in the sacred room with their holy woman and the golden leaders, and he didn’t notice the slow, measured steps which clumped dully on the wet cobblestones. If he had heard the steps, he could have just stepped farther into the shadows or walked deliberately around the corner and toward the harbor. He had observed that people who walked deliberately in these big towns were seldom seen.
    But he was caught unawares and he jumped when he heard the voice behind him. “Pardon, monsieur.” The voice was calling for his attention, and so he turned.
    The man wore a shiny dark cape that fell down past his knees and a small flat cap with a visor and a curtain that covered his neck and ears. He said something else, something that seemed to be a question. Charging Elk looked down at the man’s silver buttons, which were attached to a tunic beneath the cape. He shrugged uselessly and he saw that the man carried a long stick. He knew that the man was an akecita , for he had seen many of them patrolling the streets of Paris, and even Marseille. He had avoided them these past sleeps and now he was disappointed that he had been surprised by one. Again he shrugged, and again he avoided looking into the policeman’s face. But he had sized him up and saw that the policeman was taller than the people of this town, but still half a head shorter than Charging Elk. He was also slighter and the knuckles that gripped the baton were sharp and white. Charging Elk thought he could take him with a quick move that would allow him to spin the man and get a grip that would break his neck or his windpipe. One of the older men at the Stronghold, one who had fought many times with enemies, had shown him and Strikes Plenty how he had used this move when an enemy thought he had him cornered.
    But Charging Elk stood, still looking at the buttons, while the akecita continued talking. The voice was becoming louder and faster, slightly more threatening, and Charging Elk felt his body go tense with anticipation of the policeman’s first move.
    He had been in three or four fights in his life, only one with a white man, a miner who had caught him stealing food from his shack. He had knocked the miner down and hit him on the head with a half-full coffeepot. Then he had run away. He and Strikes Plenty had laughed about the incident, but afterward Charging Elk had wished he had lifted the miner’s hair. But the thought had not occurred to him then as he sought only to escape. Anyway, there was no glory in scalping enemies anymore. There were no real enemies anymore. The old days when one rode into camp with an enemy’s scalp and the people sang an honoring song were gone. Now the reservation people would be angry and frightened of reprisal.
    Charging Elk felt the rush of anticipation leave his body. He knew he was just as powerless in this country beyond the big water as the people were on their own land. He knew that his badger medicine would not help him here. All he had left was his death song and now was not the time to sing it.
    The policeman grabbed him by the biceps and pushed him toward a street that led away from the square.

    C harging Elk sat for a long time under a single yellow wire in a small room in a place of many rooms. He sat on a hard chair with his coat buttoned to his neck and his beret pushed back so that it perched on the crown of his head. His long hair fell over the coat collar to his shoulders and his eyes were slitted and without expression.
    Many policemen came to look at him, in twos and threes, chatting among themselves, gesturing toward him,