Bill Dugan Read Online Free Page B

the bow was already in the wood. It was up to the warrior to find it, to cut away all that was not the bow from the bow itself. Only in that way would the weapon be as perfect as it could be and must be. He thought of his father’s words as he smoothed the wood, making sure not to pare away too much, coaxing the perfect curves out of the ash.
    When Curly’s bow was almost done, Crazy Horse pulled the boy onto his lap and held it out to him. He watched as the boy grasped it almost precisely, his short fingers curling around the grip. He adjusted the fingers, then watched as Curly moved the nearly completed bow from side to side, turning his wrist this way and that, the ash almost whispering in the quiet.
    Taking it back, Crazy Horse pared a little more away from the grip, then set the small bow on the ground to finish carving the larger one.
    That night, when Curly was asleep, Crazy Horse stayed up late, working with a small brush of horsehair, painting the curves of both bows. The front of each was daubed a bright yellow, the inner curve a softer blue. Then, taking the smaller bow in hand, he wrapped the grip in strips of deer hide. He did the same for the larger, and now had a pair, identical in every attribute but length.
    Thinking back on it now, it seemed as if it were a lifetime ago. Four winters. Not much, maybe, but when any given day can see life end, impaled on a Pawnee shaft or ground to bloody gristle under thehooves of the buffalo, four years was eternity and then some.
    Now, he smiled, watching his son send an arrow through the cactus heart then run, his hands cupped over his buttocks as the boy with the target chased after him, flailing the spiny weapon closer and closer. He looked up then to see White Deer, also watching Curly run for his life.
    “Do you remember his first bow?” he asked.
    The sad smile she returned told him more than he wanted to know. She remembered the first, and hoped not to live to see the last.
    Sighing, Crazy Horse prayed her wish would be granted. Then he said another for himself.

Chapter 4
August 1850
    A S C URLY GREW OLDER , he found himself spending more and more time with another boy a few years older than himself. Named, like almost all Sioux children, for an aspect of his physical appearance, the boy was called High Backbone, or Hump, for short. As they mastered some of the arts of the Sioux warrior, or so they thought, Curly and Hump spent more and more time together, wandering farther from the village with each passing month.
    Each fed the courage of the other, and their natural curiosity, drawing them into the world outside the village, seemed to goad them both into behavior that neither would have risked on his own. Each of the boys knew that his play with his friend had a serious purpose. It was training for the harsh and unforgiving existence that would be their lot for the rest of their lives.
    Armed with bows and quivers made from bobcat skins, they were learning to understand the world around them in the only way that really counted—by direct experience. No amount of firelight storytelling by the older women, even tales of Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit that oversaw the universe,and cautionary parables about Iktomi, the Trickster, enlightening as they were, could be a substitute for following the zigzagging flight of a rabbit through the buffalo grass, or tracking a coyote to its lair.
    Crazy Horse, as a Wicasa Wakan, as the holy men were called, saw the world of the Plains in a broader context, the way all holy men did. To him, each blade of grass had meaning, every pellet in a mound of rabbit droppings had its own significance, a role to play in the great cycles of life and death, the wheels within wheels on which the great plains revolved, taking the Sioux with them on every revolution.
    Every night, after the evening meal, Crazy Horse would sit by the fire and ask Curly what he had seen during the day. Curly had a sharp eye, and never failed to have noticed