Maybe it was the sound of wind rustling the tall grass. Or perhaps the heat of a late morning sun. It burned so warm and bright that Elaine could no longer will herself back into that strange, deep dreamless sleep. Soon, all these elements combined to draw her back to the world of the waking. It was then that she suddenly jolted with alarm and the realization that she was far from the bed she had laid in mere hours before. No, instead she was outdoors, laying in a field of high grass.
Had she been sleepwalking again only to find herself in her neighbor's pasture? She stood on shaking legs and despite the warmth of the day, a chill shot through her as she surveyed the land and saw she was in the middle of a vast, rolling prairie. This clearly wasn't Georgia.
She looked down and scanned her body for signs of injury or struggle, wondering if perhaps she had been kidnapped, raped, then carried and dumped far from home. But her thin silk slip showed no damage, her was skin pristine, and her was body free of pain or injury. The relief was short-lived as she registered that she was far from home with no cell phone, no shoes, no money, and no sign of humanity in sight. Until suddenly, it appeared there was.
In the distance Elaine could just make out what appeared to be a group of people on horseback drawing nearer by the moment. As they came within sight, she saw they were men, six or so in number, trailing 3 riderless horses behind them. Salvation.
She shouted and flailed her arms and in the distance she could see as one of the men raised his hand to the others before riding ahead to meet her. As he came closer Elaine saw that the man was dressed as an American Indian might have 140 years prior – nay, the man WAS an Indian and his face bore something akin to confusion or concern as Elaine came more clearly into sight.
Why,Red Grouse mused, would a near-naked wasicun winyan call to him? Was she holy or simply mad? She was certainly unusual. She stood and looked at him directly as he approached, showing no fear. Her skin was glowing white in the sun but her hair was long, straight, and night black. She looked young and her finely sculpted face bore the broad plains of cheekbones and a jawline he would expect to find among his own women. She was unusually beautiful for a wasicu. And unusually bold.
Elaine couldn't have been more perplexed, was she on the set of a film? In the midst of a reenactment? When she greeted the man in English he responded in a tongue that sounded like the languages she had heard in films and documentaries about Indian peoples, a field she had studied with rapt fascination since childhood and later delved into more extensively in college. She had always wondered about these people the history books had simplified, maligned, or neglected and whose blood she had been rumored to share along with her motley European ancestry.
Listening more carefully, she realized that the words he spoke were Lakota Sioux, for she recognized them from her short-lived pursuit of learning a little of the melodic tongue herself. The more he spoke, the more it became clear to her, however unlikely it seemed in this day and age, that the man didn't understand a lick of English. She was at a loss, she knew so few words and most were useless in this situation. "Han," she said. "Yes." She didn't know how to ask for help so instead she gestured with her fingers to her open mouth, indicating hunger, hoping the man might bring her back to civilization where she might find someone who understood her and could get her home.
It worked. Extending a deep bronze arm, the man hoisted Elaine onto the back of his paint. As soon as she settled behind him and clasped her hands to his waist she was hit with the overwhelming odor of smoke, sweat, and animal grease. It wasn't altogether horrible, but it was strong. Moreover, it wasn't a smell she had ever encountered. She was reminded of a passage she had once read in a book regarding the clash of the invaders and the Lakota – something about how the Indians had a smell that when the wind was blowing right, whites could detect a mile off. The smell was repugnant to them. It was of grease and buffalo chip fire.
No modern person, Indian or otherwise, she had ever met had that smell, and suddenly, Elaine was gripped with the unthinkable. As they trotted toward the other men her eyes frantically scanned her savior for anything modern – plastic parts, synthetic materials, bright artificial dyes. But she found none. His waist-length braids were entwined with ermine and tied off with sinew. The feathers in his hair were natural and undyed. The leather clout he wore had rough patches and irregular color and it appeared to have been tanned by hand. His arrows, his bow, and his Winchester rifle all looked like museum artifacts.
At last, when they reached the other men, they called to each other fluently in Lakota and none let on it was a ruse. No one broke into a smile and told her in English it was all a joke. Elaine then realized that she wasn't in the 21st Century at all, and for the first time in her life she swooned and swayed back, caught just before she slid off the paint and her world went black.
When she came to, her savior had propped her up against a cottonwood by a stream and was thrusting something that smelled of meat and dried fruit beneath her nose. Pemmican. She took the proffered bite, said thanks in Lakota, and looked around at her hosts as they watered the horses.
The group of men were, for the most part, tall and lean. A few wore leggings, but most were clad only in a clout. Some had long loose hair, the others wore braids. Some had feathers tied in their hair, others had none. They appeared lightly armed, though two carried coup sticks. Too small for a war party, perhaps a raid? That would explain the excess ponies and lack of bodies.
The leader, her rescuer, was an attractive man. Perhaps 6 feet tall with a dark, finely boned face. He was lean like the rest, but clearly sinewy and strong. Likely in his mid-40's, though it was hard to tell. He seemed friendly, sitting back on his haunches he smiled broadly as she ate, revealing a row of unexpectedly healthy, if somewhat imperfect, teeth. Elaine was educated enough to know that the Lakota took hospitality as seriously as they did warfare, and clearly she was being treated as a guest and not a captive, for her hands were unbound and the words the man spoke were gentle and inquisitive. She couldn't understand him, but she liked his manner and she smiled in turn.
The others soon gathered about her and began asking many curious things she could not understand. She only shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, smiling. The men offered water from buffalo bladders and some reached out to touch her hair and the fabric of her slip. Only one man did not approach her. He stood away from the rest, at least 20 paces down by the river, watering his horse and watching her with suspicion.
He was smaller than the leader, though still taller than her 5'5" by several inches. He had a slight but fit build and his hair hung loose to his waist. His eyes tilted slightly upward at the corners like a cat and like the other Lakota, his cheekbones and jawline were well-defined and his lips lush and full. He was somewhere between handsome and pretty, with red-brown skin marred only by a few scars. Warrior's scars, but others, too. Scars like lash marks across the lean muscles of his back. And, unlike the others, his face was serious and hard to read. He frightened her.
Looks Far had seen enough wasicus and had learned enough of their treachery to last a lifetime. As a child just on the verge of manhood his family had been massacred and he had been taken prisoner, forced into a frontier mission school where his hair was cut and his language forbidden, beaten with a cane every time he uttered the words or resisted their instruction which sought to rub out the Lakota he was. At 16 winters he fled in the night and rode for days to seek out his people, the Oglala, in their summer place by the river that turned like a snake. Red Grouse, one of their great men, had taken the boy in as a son to replace the one he lost to the white man's sickness the autumn before. He dubbed the young man Looks Far because his eyes were always searching the distance, wary of what lie beyond the horizon.
Now, 12 years on, he watched as this strange wasicun winyan ate their food, smiled to their faces, and mounted one of their fine ponies to ride beside Red Grouse. No wasicu, man or woman, would have behaved as she. They came in two varieties he had seen: fearful or cruel. Her manner was surely a ruse, a trick he had not seen before. Red Grouse was too trusting, too kind, and Looks Far feared that for all his wisdom, he did not understand the ways of the wasicu.
As Elaine rode, gripping the pony with sweating thighs long removed from her childhood dressage instruction, she turned back slightly to see the strange, wary man trailing back from the rest, his thousand-yard stare fixed just part her. Facing forward once more she saw a haze of smoke in the distance and could make out the outlines of the tall lodges of the people. Once more, the realization struck anew that she was out of time entirely, though she did not know how it came to be.
But Elaine didn't waste time fretting; she was acutely aware of the alien environment and was running in pure survival mode. Be friendly, be calm, be courageous and stay alive. Past the discarded heaps of bone and animal skin they rode into camp where women and children rushed to greet the party, shouting words and trilling their calls. Within a few moments, Elaine had become the star attraction. Women and children crushed around her, touching every part of her hair and dress. At the leader's behest, an older woman pushed forward and gently led Elaine into a lodge where she was implored to sit. The woman gestured quickly that Elaine remove her dress. Unsure, she obeyed nevertheless and seeing this, the woman appeared pleased and left the lodge.
