Dances with Wolves

By now, Dunbar knows Fort Sedgewick has been abandoned by the Army, but he keeps it in repair against a possible return of soldiers. He even makes short journal entries, if only to keep up appearances. He no longer wishes to report back to Fort Hays, as his adventure with the Comanche has only begun. He goes for walks by the river, Two Socks at his side. He always wears his breastplate but also his Army pants and boots. His hair has grown long, his skin burnished by the sun.

For several weeks at camp he spends most of his time sitting in the arbor with Stands With A Fist and Kicking Bird. She becomes more fluent in English and he in Comanche. Dunbar begins to converse directly with Kicking Bird, and in all the conversations he realizes the medicine man has a brilliant mind.

Kicking Bird, on the other hand, realizes with disappointment that Dances With Wolves knows next to nothing about the Army’s intentions. Dunbar knows that, if the whites come in great numbers, the Comanche will be “hopelessly overmatched,” but he can’t bring himself to say this. Instead, he suggests that the whites just want to pass through, but Kicking Bird has seen them settle in Texas, break promises to the Comanche, and kill them.

Stands With A Fist worries that her work as interpreter takes her away from other duties, but the new respect she receives from the villagers encourages her, and she stands taller and feels more cheerful. One morning, she sees Dances With Wolves ride out of camp on his way back to the fort, and her heart sinks. She turns to see Kicking Bird watching her.

Stands With A Fist realizes that she likes Dances With Wolves for his honesty, humor, and great deeds. The next day, Kicking Bird is called away, and she and Dances With Wolves are alone in the arbor. Awkwardly, he asks her about herself. Slowly, she tells her story, but each time she tries to end it, he asks another question.

She explains how she got her name: When she first came to the Comanche, the women picked on her until one day she slugged one and knocked her out. The women ceased their taunts, the villagers treated her with more respect, and she acquired her Comanche moniker. The lieutenant asks where she hit the woman, and she brushes his jaw with her hand. He pretends to be knocked out. Later, he asks if she’s married; upset, she shakes her head, gets up, and leaves.

She goes for a ride beyond the river, trying to shake the constant thoughts about Dances With Wolves from her head. Recently, she hated him; lately, she hasn’t even thought about her dead husband. She decides to keep her translation work businesslike, with no more thoughts about the lieutenant. 

Dunbar kicks himself for upsetting Stands With A Fist. He gathers Cisco and rides north to clear his head. They come to a canyon in a cliff and enter it; deep within they find a peaceful cottonwood glade. Cisco drinks from a spring while Dunbar explores a cleft in the rocks that leads into a large cave, its ceiling covered with the soot from many campfires. Suddenly tired, he lies back and stares up at the low ceiling, which is marked with manmade symbols: a buffalo, a hunter, a spear.

He dreams of a wintery day and a circle of frozen soldiers. He inspects each one and finds an old friend who died young, then sees his father, his mother, General Grant, and several other people from his memories. Cannons fire on the Comanche, sending their lodge tents tumbling through the air. The army attacks the defenseless villagers, shooting and cutting them open, skewering the children on tree branches. Gold coins and dollars spill from the bodies. The soldiers gather up the riches and travel away, but fighting breaks out between them as they disappear beyond the mountains. Dunbar walks among the villagers; their hearts still beat, throbbing in a musical rhythm. He lies down and moans; the sound swirls loudly with a message he cannot understand.

Dunbar wakes up. It’s night, and he’s chilled from a cold breeze. He jumps up, hits his head on the low ceiling, staggers in pain, and scrambles out of the cave. He finds Cisco and they ride back out onto the moonlit prairie. They gallop away, Dunbar feeling at one with horse and landscape. His life now is a blank slate, ready to be filled with wonders.

Kicking Bird, worried about the lieutenant, dispatches scouts, but they return with no sign of him. The medicine man is relieved to see the young soldier ride up to his campfire and dismount, looking uncommonly serene. The lieutenant greets the group assembled there. Then: “In perfect Comanche he said, ‘I’m Dances With Wolves’” (231). 

The Comanche decide to raid the Pawnee, and Kicking Bird’s translation meetings are set aside. He and Wind In His Hair will accompany a party of 20 men that includes first-time warriors. Dances With Wolves observes the preparations. The lieutenant’s command of Comanche and sign language is good enough that Stands With A Fist is rarely needed to translate. Kicking Bird hands out various war tasks; Dances With Wolves notes the medicine man’s ability to make each man’s job, no matter how small, seem important. He also listens to Wind In His Hair’s descriptions of previous battles against the Pawnee and soon wants to join them in their fight.

He asks Kicking Bird to bring him with them, arguing that he has more battle experience than the younger Comanche warriors. Kicking Bird replies that Dances With Wolves isn’t yet trained in the Comanche way of war. Dances With Wolves wants to know how else he will learn. Kicking Bird agrees to bring the question to Ten Bears, but the chief concurs with the medicine man.

The women make a new tent lodge next to Kicking Bird’s. Kicking Bird presents it to Dances With Wolves, asking that he keep watch over his family while he’s away fighting the Pawnee. Proud of his assignment, Dances With Wolves forgets the sting of being kept from the battle. 

At the going-away dance, Wind In His Hair gifts Dances With Wolves with a good bow and a set of arrows. Dances With Wolves asks an older man, Stone Calf, to teach him how to shoot, repair weapons, and make simple medicines. He learns quickly, including how to scout for buffalo. He also finds himself busy monitoring and assisting Kicking Bird’s family in its daily activities.

Dances With Wolves and Stands With A Fist continue their conversations, at first holding them in Kicking Bird’s lodge as Kicking Bird requested. Soon, though, they walk daily through the village while Stands With A Fist names the various objects around them. Before long, they have fallen in love. Dances With Wolves learns from Stone Calf that Stands With A Fist is married but her husband is recently dead, and that she was in mourning when Dances With Wolves found her out on the prairie. Dances With Wolves decides to go for a head-clearing ride all the way back to his fort.

The awning has been torn apart by storms; the storehouse contains only the jerky given him by the band, now a moldy, mice-eaten ruin. Two Socks is still there, and Dances With Wolves gives him the meat he had brought with him. He writes one last entry in his journal: “late summer, 1863—I love Stands With A Fist” and signs it “Dances With Wolves” (250). He looks about, says goodbye in Comanche, and gallops away.

Stands With A Fist realizes that Dances With Wolves has gone to his fort. She walks down to the river to cool off. Suddenly Dances With Wolves is standing beside her, smiling. She leads him to the private place she found when first struggling to recall English words. There, they make love over and over. In between, they talk. He tells her he has learned that she lost her husband. She replies, “I had a good life with him. He went away from me because you were coming. That is how I see it now” (254). They walk back toward the village. She tells him she is in her official mourning period until Kicking Bird releases her, and they must be discreet. They reenter the village separately. 

Outwardly formal, Stands With A Fist and Dances With Wolves meet privately every day, sometimes before dawn in his lodge, where they lie together and talk quietly. Careful though they are, everyone in camp soon knows they’re in love: It’s written on their faces.

Late one night, a commotion wakes everyone, and they gather at a central campfire where several Kiowa warriors lie, many of them wounded or dead. These allies of the Comanche were set upon by 80 Pawnee 10 miles to the north. The Pawnee are only a few hours out and will likely attack the Comanche camp at dawn.

Dances With Wolves remembers the guns he buried at the fort. Time is short, but he convinces Ten Bears that, with a few men, he can bring the weapons back for use against the Pawnee. The group rides hard for the fort, then struggles for 20 minutes searching for Dunbar’s old markers before finding one. They dig up two cases of rifles and hurry back to the camp through a fierce thunderstorm.

As they near their village, a huge bolt of lightning illuminates the landscape, and they can see the Pawnee advancing through the river trees just north of camp. In the village, Dances With Wolves passes out 48 rifles and suggests that they wait behind their lodges until the Pawnee are almost upon them, then fire on them.

As dawn breaks, the Pawnee emerge from the river trees and attack, and the Comanche ambush them with rifle fire and jump down among them and fight them. Dances With Wolves kills five, one in hand-to-hand combat. The battle ends quickly. Suddenly exhausted, he walks back up the hill, where he’s greeted as a hero by the other warriors, who dance and chant his name. Thirty-one enemy fighters lie dead; the rest escape, many of them wounded. All the Comanche survive, though seven are injured. The old ones can’t remember a more lopsided victory.

The village celebrates for two days. Top among the heroes is Dances With Wolves: Men hang around him, and women flirt with him. The villagers regard him as something close to a god. In a great gesture, Ten Bears gives him a pipe.

Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair return with their warriors. For weeks they searched for Pawnee but found only unseasonable snow flurries, which they took as a bad omen. They hurried back to prepare for the trip to the winter camp.