Panther in the Sky by James Alexander Thom Page A

Star Watcher could see anger and fear and doubt and resolve all marching back and forth in her soul.
    Turtle Mother finished the meal in this tense silence and said nothing while cleaning up afterward. Without a word she scoured the cookpot with sand. And then in the feeble light of the fire she worked for a long time with awl and sinew to repair a moccasin. She was thinking hard. Most of the times when Hard Striker glanced through his pipe smoke at her, her face looked so defiant that he was sure she was preparing her peace speech for the women. He worried and grew irritated by turns but did not try to talk with her again about it, because he thought it would work out better if she thought than if she stiffened in argument.
    It was not until the next morning that he knew. Before full daylight he opened his eyes and saw that she was up on her elbow looking at his face in the gloom. Her naked body was warm against his side, and her musk was strong in his nostrils.
    She said softly, “You tell me that you will punish the Long Knives. You do not say that
they
might win. If they were to win, killing many of our young men, then they would surely come on here to punish our People. And that would be even worse than asking them for peace.”
    He thought. Then he said, “Yes, but they will not win. Because we are better, and we are right. I have told you how we slaughtered the British soldiers in the woods at the head of the Beautiful River in the Long War. They do not know how to fight in the forest.” He talked low, not wanting the children to awaken to this kind of talk.
    She said, “I do not want my son Chiksika harmed or killed. Nor do I want that for you.…”
    “Then do not speak the words of it. That is bad medicine to speak of it.”
    “But you must know how much I do not want that.”
    “So this is what you will tell the women to say? That we should cringe before the Long Knives and let them infest our sacred lands?”
    She stared at him. Her breast was on his arm, and he did not want to die. But he wanted to do right.
    Finally she said:
    “Because I honor you,
wahsiu,
I will not speak out against what you want to do. But listen. If my son dies, if the Long Knives win and then come here to harm my children or molest my daughter, perhaps I will be bitter with you forever.”

     
    A PULSATING SCREAM PIERCED THE STILLNESS OF THE NIGHT . It was taken up by hundreds of other voices, which swelled to such a shriek that Tecumseh felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. A hide-covered drum beat like a huge, fast heart, and the flames of a bonfire soared higher than the roof of the council lodge. All the people of Kispoko Town were gathered around the council ground. In the center were the bonfire and a war post.
    The post was a peeled log as thick and tall as a man. It had been painted red, and it stood there, as yet untouched but nonetheless the focus of everyone’s attention.
    The drumbeats went on like a pulse after the scream had died down. Then the line of warriors shuffled out into the center. The chatter of deer-hoof rattles tied to their feet and ankles joined the rhythm of the drum; then the ululating war cry rose again, pouring from their throats.
    The line of dancers was long. There were several hundred of them, their faces and naked bodies painted in colors, shining in the firelight with oil and sweat. They stepped high, touched their toes to the earth, and then thumped their heels down, their sinewy bodies arching, then crouching, their knives and tomahawks glinting in the light of the blaze. Their eyes were bulging, crazed. At first the dance was a pantomime of stealth, as they stalked their enemy. Then it built in passion and noise. They leaped, swung, and twisted their bodies in the motions of combat, chopping and stabbing the air with their weapons, repeating and repeating the war cry.
    Chiksika had told Tecumseh that when one reached this stage of the dance, one could see his enemies before his eyes,