TC41

Tatanka, already wroth, grew infuriated at the defiance. He brandished the only steel blade among the People. “This will loosen your tongue, Hole In Heart!” he cried, and he moved toward Takoda, fully expecting the hunter to run as he had done so many times before. But Takoda knew he had the favor of the Great Mystery so he stood his ground fearlessly, which fact unnerved the Chief. Everyone saw him hesitate. The Chief lost precious face with each passing heartbeat, and he knew it.

Takoda calmly reached into an in inner fold of his raiment and withdrew the the Shahar Haruach, gift from the hand of Wakan Tanka. At the top of the black staff an even darker ball of hissing unlight grew to the size of a man’s head.

Tatanka had no comprehension of the astonishing sight confronting him but his rage was already boiling over. He closed the gap between himself and Takoda but never reached striking distance. On the hunt Takoda had taken only the animal’s head, offering it to the Father of Lights rather than allowing it to be dishonored by Tatanka in his usual way. But here before the eyes of all the Kuwapi he took away the Chief, the whole Chief, and nothing but the Chief, all the way down to his moccasins, leaving the very ground he stood upon untouched.

The group of men who had been with Wanica on the recent hunt had already watched the Windgate in action, but the rest of the People had never seen such an obvious and deadly display of real magic. Everyone, not excepting his wife Yuha, was deathly afraid. Even so, she came to stand at Takoda’s side. To his left stood Jashen, arrayed in the fine ceremonial dress that had been painstakingly embellished by artisans in Anshar over the course of a year. And towering over them all at nearly seven feet in height was his new bride, the Ophan Leliel.

“I sent the Chief to answer to the Great Spirit,” Takoda said in a loud voice. “I lead the People now.” Takoda crossed his arms regally, with the staff of the Windgate grasped by one of his hands.

One after another the hunters, warriors, and braves of the Kuwapi sank to their knees before Takoda, with hands open to show they carry no blade. After that their wives, the widows, and unmarried girls of the People hit their knees before Takoda as well.

Soon after these things came to pass, the Northern Raiders paid their last visit to the People. When the warriors of the People confronted them the enemy saw how Chief Takoda’s black shield neatly absorbed all the arrows they fired at him. In this way the Kuwapi chief was able to draw near enough to slice his enemy’s leader in half, he and the horse he rode in on.

Takoda knew the Dakota operated like pack animals with no stomach for sticking around after losing their own leader. Sure enough in the wake of their defeat they fled into the grasslands to the north, never to return. Takoda said, “In the morning we will decamp and march south, to dwell near the place where the Great Spirit came and made himself known to me.”

So it came to be that the Kuwapi, first among all of the original inhabitants of the high plains and the only ones to do so of their own free will, ceased to be a wandering people. At the source of the New River they awaited the coming of the followers of Joshua Lange.

It took all the next morning for the oxen to toil just three miles up a ravine feeding the Blue River to intersect the infant Oregon Trail running south from Raytown. There the twenty oxen pulling the wagons were released from their burdens, and the twenty beasts that made a leisurely walk out of the Blue River valley were put under harness. After another eight miles the Oregon Trail bent sharply to the west, and in another half mile they stopped.