“Do you run to the fort every day?” I ask.
He nods, his eyes ahead, his stride long and easy. He continues this way for a couple of miles, the river to our right, an endless rolling prairie to our left. He takes me across the tufted swales, up one low rise and down another, until I can’t stand it any longer and pull up short. Charlie slows to a stop too, his hands on his hips, his gaze quizzical.
“Your turn,” I say. He is hardly winded, but his eyes widen at my command.
“Oh, no. No, Mr. Lowry.” He shakes his head, adamant. “We don’t have much farther to go.”
“Good. You ride. I will run.”
“You will run?” he squeaks. His teeth flash in his brown face, and I grin back.
“I used to run just like you, all the way back to my mother’s village. You think I can’t?”
“You are wearing boots. You will be slow.”
I slide off Dame and hand him the reins, but he is still reluctant.
“This way, your village will know that I am a friend,” I insist.
He doesn’t look convinced, but his desire to ride my horse is too great, and he scrambles up on her back. He flaps his legs and yips like he has spotted a buffalo herd. Dame bolts, and Charlie whoops, leaving me behind without a backward glance. I break into a dead run that isn’t nearly as easy or fast as the one I relieved him from. It has been a while since I used my own two legs to travel any sort of distance, and my limbs protest, stiff from days in the saddle and nights stretched out on the hard ground. I pray Dame doesn’t step in a hole and break her leg. The homes of the prairie dogs dot the expanse, and I keep my eyes on the ground so I don’t step in one myself. I continue to cover the ground as fast as I dare, trusting that Charlie will return, hoping the village is not as far as I fear.
Minutes later, Charlie comes back, still kicking up dust. He circles me in celebration, his arms raised, his face wreathed in triumph. He is a fine horseman for a man with no horse. He points at a suggestion of lodges in the distance, and for the final stretch, he trots along beside me, enjoying his ride.
I expect flurry and interest when we enter the village, but no one seems to notice we’ve arrived. A sheep bleats, and a few children chase it, stopping briefly to stare at me before resuming their game. The village feels empty, occupied only by the dogs, the sheep, and the handful of children. The corrals are empty too, not a single Indian pony anywhere, and I wonder if Charlie runs every day because there is literally nothing for him to ride. Several brush huts are burned to the ground, the blackened grass around them the only indication of where they stood. The earthen lodges have fared better, and they circle a big center lodge, where I know the men gather, talk, and pass the pipe. It is something I’ve never done.
“Where is everyone?” I ask Charlie.
“Many are still at the fort. The warriors are gone. They’ve gone to fight the Sioux and recover our horses and cattle.” His voice is glum, like he doesn’t believe it will happen. Or maybe he fears they won’t return.
“Then why am I here?” I mutter. “Who will I talk to?”
“The brothers are here. You can talk to them,” Charlie reassures me.
“The brothers?”
“They do not run anymore. They don’t even ride. They sleep, and they eat, and they pass the pipe. When the Sioux came, they did not even leave their lodge. They say they are ready to die. But for some reason they never do.” He shrugs.
“How many brothers?”
“Three. They are the oldest men in our village—maybe the oldest of all the Pawnee. So old they have outlived their sons and their daughters. My uncle, Chief Dog Tooth, is the grandson of one of the brothers.”
“Is he a good chief?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie says slowly. “What is a good chief?”
I’m not sure I know the answer either and remain silent, following Charlie toward the big lodge. He ducks through the door, telling me to wait, and I can hear the murmur of voices, though I can’t make out the conversation. After a moment, two women scurry out, their eyes darting from me to the ground, and I am ushered inside. It is dark inside and warm, and though it is only midday, a fire burns, the smoke rising up toward the hole above the center pit.
The three old men sit beside it in their buffalo robes, sleepily peering at the coals. They don’t have shaved pates or bristled forelocks in the old Pawnee way. Their hair is long and white, their hoary heads almost identical—their faces too—and I can see why they are simply called the brothers, with no distinction between them.
I sink down across from them, waiting silently for them to acknowledge me. Charlie sits beside me, his thin legs folded, his hands loose at his sides, but I am not fooled. This is a first for him too. After an interminable silence, I state my purpose, eager to be gone.
“Captain Dempsey wants you to move north of the Platte.” There. I have done my duty.
The old men mutter, puffing away with bowed backs and bent heads. I don’t think they have heard me. I don’t really care. I begin to rise, but the brothers lift their heads in affront.
“And how long before they ask us to move again? Does Dempsey speak for all the whites? Does he speak for the Sioux or the Cheyenne?” one asks, his trembling Pawnee words pricking my conscience.
“Ka?ki?’，” I answer. No.
“Do you think we should move? Did your people move?” the same brother asks.
I think of my mother’s village. Missouri is no longer the land of Pawnee. I’m not sure it ever was, though my Pawnee grandmother told me the Pawnee nation spread from sea to sea when her great-grandfather hunted the buffalo. I don’t know if that is true or if it was simply the wistful myth of a dying people. But Missouri is no longer the home of the Shawnee or the Potawatomi either. It belongs to others now and is dotted with homes made of brick and stone. The Pawnee don’t migrate like the Sioux. The Pawnee grow corn and build lodges from the earth.
“There are not many Pawnee in Missouri,” I say.
“Soon there will not be many Pawnee anywhere,” another brother replies. “Dempsey wants us to leave so he does not have to deal with us. We are a nuisance to him. But if we move, we will never stop moving, and we were here first.”
I have no doubt that what he says is true, and I have no response.
“Who are your people?” the last brother asks me.
It is a question I have never been able to answer, and it is the question everyone eventually asks. “My father is a Lowry. My mother was Pawnee. I am . . . both. Pítku ásu’。” I shrug, turning my palms up.
“Pítku ásu’，” the brothers murmur, nodding their heads as if it makes complete sense, and they fall silent again. I think they have fallen asleep, and Charlie wriggles beside me.
“What should I tell Captain Dempsey?” I ask. “I will tell him whatever you wish me to say.”
They all begin speaking at once, mumbling over the top of one another, and I don’t know who says what.
“Tell him the Kanzas are below us. The Sioux above. Cheyenne too.”
“They steal from us. We steal from them. We understand each other. But we don’t understand the whites.”