Free Lord Grizzly, Second Edition by Frederick Manfred

everything: mirrors, awls, ribbons, red silk from the Great White Father in Britain, porcupine quills, necklaces, woolen blankets from the English mills, all such fine things. Nor could she complain that he wasn’t a brave man in battle. He counted many a coup, brought home many an enemy scalp.
    â€œNot a coward then.”
    She shut up.
    Hugh laughed. “Shut up, Reed.”
    â€œHe was a brave man full of wise council. His tongue was short, his arm was long. But he was not a father.”
    Then Bending Reed told Hugh something that made his jaw drop.
    One day Can’t Father came home from a hunt and fell upon her and almost beat her to death. When she’d recovered enough to crawl around again, Can’t Father made her cut off some of her beautiful blueblack hair, shorten it until his own hair was at least two hands longer. A couple days later Bending Reed found out what it was all about. On the hunting party Can’t Father and his friends had run into a small party of hostile Sioux braves. The Sioux braves were from her band and they, knowing her to have long braids, and seeing his were short, taunted him with not having as much medicine in his hair as Bending Reed had in hers. And if there was one thing Can’t Father was touchy about, aside from his fatherlessness, it was his pride and glory, his glossy black braids of hair. When he wasn’t hunting he was always busy preening his raven horsetail hair with a rough-cut ivory comb he’d gotten in trade with the English in Canada.
    Of course a squaw prided herself on her hair too. And Bending Reed promptly fell into a pet. For dim in her memory and out of her tribal pantheon came a god called Heyoka and he took possession of her. The god Heyoka was a little old man with a short body and very long legs who went naked in the winter suffering intensely from the heat and who went about warmly clad in the summer suffering intensely from the cold. Suddenly after Heyoka the contrary god had taken possession of her, Bending Reed felt full of power and purpose. She could do anything. Defy Can’t Father even if he beat her. Defy even the chief of the Arikaree tribes, Grey Eyes. Defy all of the Rees in fact. She had great medicine. The Rees were astounded by her conversion to a life of going about butt-first. But because they respected superstitions they respected her curious new religion. All day long the old squaws thought of things for her to do just to see her do the opposite. Many times too they had her do something they wanted her to do by telling her its contrary.
    Strangely enough, shortly after the god Heyoka had taken possession of her, Can’t Father changed subtly, both in person and manner. He could once more satisfactorily perform the role of the male. He was no longer Can’t Father but Man-Who-Wants-Many-Sons.
    Listening, Hugh hunkered down over the fire. First his eyes opened a little; then they closed. He nodded sagely. He understood it. He had heard of such things happening. He knew of a case where two men went into the mountains together to trap beaver, one of them having a bad case of the rheumatiz and the other not—and lo and behold, the one who’d always complained of the rheumatiz came back out of the mountains completely cured while the healthy one came back a cripple. The rheumatiz spirit or devil, or whatever rheumatiz was, had jumped across to the other.
    It was as a result of the Rees respecting her contrary religion that Bending Reed got away. One day her husband, being of an amorous frame of mind, and she not, told her to come in under the bull buffalo robe with him. She refused; did the opposite. She ran out of the breast-shaped dirt-covered lodge. Then Man-Who-Wants-Many-Sons in his male frustration and rage leaped up and ran after her, yelling, “You she-dog, you she-wolf, you she-coyote, you mouse of a squaw, come back to my lodge and woman with me or I’ll lodge-pole you!” His yelling,