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like a mystical road.
    â€œMy grandmother wasn’t born then,” said Harold. “
Her
mother rode in the wagons, and she was only thirteen.”
    The old Indian grunted. “Maybe I met her,” he said.
    It seemed impossible to Harold. His great-grandmother had kept a diary of the trip. He had peered at her penciled writing until his eyes ached, puzzling out stories of broken-down wagons and river crossings and buffalo by the million.
    â€œI remember when the ground was covered with buffaloes,” said the old Indian, as though reading his mind. “I remember thinking they would last forever.”
    â€œI wish I lived back then,” said Harold.
    â€œIt was the best time to be alive, I think.”
    Harold sat beside him, close to the fire, smelling the grass that was burning. “Did you meet Jesse James?” he asked.
    â€œOnly once. Didn’t care for him much.”
    â€œAnd Custer?”
    The old Indian stretched out his leg. He pulled the fringes aside and pointed to a button that kept the leggings fastened. “That was Custer’s,” he said. He rubbed the button with a gnarled old finger, and the tarnish came away, showing silver swords. “I wove a string from his yellow hair, but it turned to brown and then to black, and I threw it away. People laughed; they said it was my own hair, not the Son of the Morning Star’s.”
    â€œDid you know Crazy Horse?”
    â€œLike a brother,” said the old Indian. “He used to sit me on his knee and tell me legends.”
    â€œWhat sort of legends?”
    â€œI don’t want to talk about it,” said the old Indian. “We’ve talked enough.”
    â€œJust tell me one,” said Harold. “Tell me why they named you Thunder Wakes Him.”
    The old Indian placed his grass on the fire, and the smoke became so thick that Harold couldn’t breathe. He staggered from it, blinded and choking, but the old Indian stayed where he was. The smoke wrapped him up and made a ghost of him as he poked at his pot of water.
    They ate their breakfast, slept and carried on.
    All that day they rode to the west. As the sun rose higher their shadows shortened ahead, as though they somehow overran them and, at noon, trampled them under the hooves of the big chestnut horse.
    And then the old Indian spoke, the first time since that morning.
    â€œAll right,” he said. “I’ll tell you one.” And he began the legend of Buffalo Woman.
    Harold wriggled forward. He pressed himself against the old Indian and
felt
the words that rumbled from his chest.
    â€œShe appeared before my people on a summer’s day,” he said. “She came walking from the clouds, dressed in white skins. A warrior saw her and thought she was so beautiful that he would carry her off and take her for his wife. But a cloud descended on him, a swirling cloud that caught him up and turned him into dust and bones. Then Buffalo Woman came to the village, and she showed my people how to live in peace, all together, all the people and all the animals and all the world we shared. And then she left again, and she rolled once across the ground and became a black buffalo. She rolled a second time and became a brown buffalo. And the third time that Buffalo Woman rolled across the ground she rose again as white as snow.”
    The old Indian raised his arm. “She went across the prairie at a walk and then a run. She left the ground and galloped through the sky.” His hand rose higher. “She ran up and up. A white buffalo calf running through the clouds. She vanished in the clouds.”
    The old Indian’s fingers closed in a fist, as though he clutched at the sky. Then he lowered his hand and took up the reins. “The legend is that one day she’ll return. And the buffalo will roam again, the fences will be gone. It will be as it used to be in the days I can’t remember.”
    â€œWill she come back