Dances with Wolves

The sole passenger on a horse-drawn wagon traveling west into the Great Plains, Lieutenant John Dunbar is awed by the land’s immense majesty. On the third day, he thinks, “This is religious” (1); in his late twenties, he has fallen in love with the simple vastness of the region.

As they rumble along, Timmons, the driver, constantly spits into the tall prairie grass. He smells nearly as bad as a dead body. Sometimes Dunbar detaches his horse, Cisco, and rides ahead on the buckskin beast, scouting. At one point, they come across a human skeleton lying bleached under the hot sun, many arrows sticking out of it.

Dunbar wants to fulfill “a long-standing dream of serving on the frontier” (11). Days earlier, at Fort Hays, he requested and received, from a mentally unstable major, assignment to Fort Sedgewick, 150 miles to the west, and set off immediately for the outpost.

At Fort Sedgewick—two pitiful crumbling sod buildings on a ridge above a creek, its corral empty, the horses long since stolen by Comanche—Captain Cargill assembles his men. They emerge from caves dug into the cliff below the ridge. Eighteen bedraggled soldiers are all that remain of an original contingent of 58. Many of the missing deserted; others set out in search of them and never returned. Cargill orders that the remaining cavalrymen will march back to Fort Hays. Fifteen minutes later, the fort lies abandoned. As the soldiers march east, Dunbar and Timmons pass them, a mile to the south, each group completely unaware of the other. 

The major who signed Dunbar’s papers is the only person who knows about the lieutenant’s posting to Fort Sedgewick, but he makes no notations about it, suffers a mental breakdown—he babbles about being a king of the realm—and gets shipped back East. Cargill’s men find their way to Fort Hays, where they praise Cargill and he receives a Medal of Valor. Fort Sedgewick is officially decommissioned. Only one man knows of Dunbar’s whereabouts—his driver, Timmons.  

Dunbar and Timmons arrive at the abandoned Fort Sedgewick. Timmons wants to turn around and head back, but Dunbar, his sought-after frontier at hand, decides to stay. For one thing, he’ll need to investigate the mystery of the disappeared soldiers. Timmons refuses to budge; Dunbar, eyes dark with anger, fingers his sidearm; Timmons backs down. They fill the tiny storage shack; the overflow goes into Captain Cargill’s old quarters. 

Expecting a full moon to light his way, Timmons leaves at twilight. That night, Dunbar sleeps fitfully, his ears alert for all the strange new sounds. Though filled with doubts, Dunbar finally dozes off in the early hours.

To the east, six mounted Pawnee observe smoke but can’t make out its source. They’re returning from a disastrous hunt for Comanche horses to steal, a hunt that cost five of their original party of 11. Normally “the most terrible of all the tribes” (21), and feared by all the others, today they hesitate. One of them, the bravest, decides to investigate the smoke; the others follow.

Timmons has made a hurried breakfast fire from green twigs that smoke badly. The Pawnee shoot Timmons in the buttocks with an arrow; he runs from the camp. The other Pawnee begin looting the wagon, but the bravest one catches up to Timmons and splits his head open with a war club. With his death, no one in the world knows the whereabouts of Lieutenant Dunbar. 

Dunbar wakes, makes coffee, and sits on a camp chair, contemplating his odd situation. On a bluff across the river, he notices a wolf watching him. He gets up to attend to Cisco; the wolf disappears.

The river is clogged with the fort’s accumulated trash. All morning, Dunbar cleans it out, loads the stinking stuff onto a large canvas, ties it up, and, using Cisco, drags it up to the top of the bluff and burns it. Then he realizes that the greasy, smoky fire will attract attention. For the rest of the day he keeps watch on the surrounding hills, but no one comes. Dunbar feels marooned. He makes dinner, then fills out his first daily report, noting the cleanup and his refusal to abandon the empty fort.

That night, Dunbar dreams of his time in a field hospital, where doctors fight each other with amputated limbs as they argue about whether to cut Dunbar’s own leg off at the ankle or knee. Dunbar escapes, running through a field covered in dead soldiers who sit up and try to shoot him, but he is faster, shooting them in the head, each head exploding like a melon. Behind him, calling out “Sweetheart…sweetheart” (30), a handsome woman clad only in pants runs toward him, in her outstretched hands Dunbar’s missing food. Dunbar awakens, sweating, and feels for his foot. It’s still there.

He recalls being wounded during the Civil War by shrapnel to the foot. The doctors want to cut it off, but Dunbar escapes back to his unit, holed up behind a wall across a field from similarly situated enemy soldiers, from where they snipe back and forth. After two days, he can take the pain no longer, and, hoping to die, volunteers to ride out and draw enemy fire.

Dunbar picks out a new, strong horse named Cisco and mounts it. They leap over the wall and gallop straight at the Confederate line. The Rebels open fire, but no bullet strikes Dunbar. Turning at the enemy wall, Dunbar rides along their line, bullets continuing to miss, though one grazes his arm. He turns and gallops back the other way, raising his arms in submission to death, but the Union soldiers take it as a signal and rush forward, attacking and routing the Confederates.

Dunbar collapses to the ground, unconscious. The commanding general, Tipton, rushes to Dunbar, whose bravery is the greatest the general has ever seen. Dunbar awakens, sees the general, and says, “Don’t take my foot off” (34). Tipton has Dunbar moved to his quarters, where the general orders his physician to save the foot or be cashiered.

Tipton keeps watch on Dunbar’s progress for two weeks, and the foot is saved. The general wants Dunbar to retire from the war, having done more than any soldier could be asked, but he wonders if Dunbar has any requests. Dunbar asks for a posting to the frontier, and he wants to keep Cisco. The general grants both requests. Dunbar feels guilty; he wasn’t a hero but a suicide who survived. He decides never to talk about it. 

The first order of business is to set up an awning over the sod hut’s door. In the storehouse he finds canvas; near the river he recovers bone fragments for needles. Rope, unraveled, provides thread. The work is slow, and his fingers become very sore. On the third day he requisitions two posts from the corral fence and sets them in the ground in front of the sod hut, where they will support the canvas.

With nothing that he must do, Dunbar sets a leisurely pace. His pocket watch stops, and he decides that time doesn’t matter as much in the wilderness. He lets himself nap and enjoys it. Lying abed after, musing, he’s interrupted by Cisco, who has wandered over from the now-open corral. Dunbar realizes his horse wants some exercise.

The lieutenant has a way with horses; he and Cisco ride “with the grace of a dance team” (40). With no one to tell him otherwise, Dunbar elects to ride bareback. As they move out, he sees again the wolf on the cliff across the river. It stares back. Its forepaws are white. Dunbar urges the horse forward; the wolf keeps pace for a while. Something in its eyes betrays longing, then it yawns and trots away. Dunbar writes in his field journal that he’ll ration his supplies, in case missing soldiers or replacements arrive. He mentions the wolf, which he names Two Socks. 

The awning finally goes up, but a breeze promptly knocks it down. Feeling foolish, Dunbar figures out a workaround involving ropes as guy wires. The new system works. Next, he carves a window from one wall of the sod residence. He tries to repair the storehouse, but its sod crumbles. He covers the gaping wall hole with canvas and gives up for now.

The days are warm and mild, and Dunbar passes them pleasantly, doing a few chores, napping each afternoon, enjoying his coffee and handmade cigarettes, and watching Two Socks watch him. One evening, Dunbar leaves a hunk of meat at the edge of the fort’s little plateau; in the morning, the meat is gone.

Dunbar misses human company, but he also enjoys the freedom of his new life. Without the straitjacket of civilized rules and directives, he begins to see things differently. On his daily rides on Cisco, Dunbar ranges several miles, but he never sees humans or buffalo. One day, riding across the prairie, he discovers that Two Socks is pacing him at a distance. Dunbar stops; the wolf stops; he starts up, and the wolf continues to follow. They startle a herd of antelope, which sprints away. Dunbar looks around, but Two Socks is gone.