Bill Dugan Read Online Free PDF Page A

something he had never seen before. Eagerly, he would tell his father everything. Then Crazy Horse would question the boy on what it meant. Sometimes, it was nothing more than an observation of clouds and what kind of weather they might foretell. Other times, it might be some trick played by a
heyoka
on one of the members of the
tiyospe.
The
heyoka
were special people, the clowns of the tribe, but more often than not there was a point to their tricks. Like Shakespearean fools, they always meant something by what they said and did, but it was left to the others to figure it out if they could.
    Slowly and steadily, the way a tree grows imperceptibly taller day by day, Curly was getting an education as good as that of anyone in the whole Oglala nation. His mind was curious, but impatient.He jumped from place to place, point to point, zigzagging like a bee in a field of flowers, but sooner or later, as Crazy Horse knew, the boy would pay a visit to every blossom.
    The holy man was proud of his son, but frightened for him, too. More than once, he had had a vision, not always the same, but always with the same meaning—Curly was special. Crazy Horse would awaken from one of these dreams with his head spinning. It felt as if the ground were whirling faster and faster beneath him, trying to throw him off. It left him dizzy and a little nauseated. He would feel the cold sweat on his brow, trickling down under his shirt. His breathing would be short and sharp, rasping in his throat. In his ears, his blood beat like thunder and in his chest he could feel the hammering of his heart like an angry fist bashing at the bones that held it prisoner.
    And as he would lie there, forcing his breathing back to normal, his hands folded over his chest as if to keep the ribs intact until the heart calmed down, he would try to understand the meaning of the latest dream. Always it centered on Curly, and always its meaning was tantalizing, elusive as a trout in fast water. Curly would achieve great things, for himself and for his people, but he would pay a terrible price. It was never clear what those great things were, and it was never clear what that terrible price might be, only that it was high. The details, Crazy Horse understood, were not meant for him to have, they were for Curly alone.
    One day, he knew, his son would wander out into the wilderness and stare at the sky for hours on end, day and night, until Wakan Tanka saw fitto crystallize the vision, make the meaning hard and clear, bright as a bird’s eye. And then it would be up to Curly. His son would have to decide whether to accept the weight of the vision with humility or try to fight it off. Such a fight, as Crazy Horse well knew, could not be won, but some men were tempted to try.
    Late one summer, when Curly was nine years old, he and Hump, who was almost eleven, followed the tracks of a deer in a forest near the Black Hills. They could see the high peaks of the Paha Sapa in the distance, and the deer was heading that way. Neither boy had seen the deer, but the evidence of the earth was indisputable. The imprints of the hooves were crisp and fresh in the damp earth alongside a creek, where it must have come to drink.
    Armed with short bows and the short arrows to match, the two boys followed the tracks deeper into the forest. They knew, by the depth of the prints, that the animal was of good size. And they could tell, by the spacing of the prints, that he was neither frightened nor in a hurry.
    The ground was rocky, and the prints were scarce as they started uphill. The slope was long and rather steep. They could not see the Black Hills now, because they were hidden by the ridge above them. Trees, mostly in clumps, were scattered over the hillside, and clusters of large boulders filled many of the open spaces between the stands of trees. Their visibility was as good as they could ask for, but it also gave an advantage to the deer. If they were to get close enough to fire an arrow,