We strapped Deadwood down to the plank like a litter, and betwixt the old prospector’s scrawny shoulder blades, we stuffed a shirt I’d hived off of a fallen emigrant. We stripped off his filthy old coat and pants, leaving him in a kind of handmade union suit he probably hadn’t took off since he put it on, and begun trying to do something about his busted bones. It was slow work, stretching all the bones apart and settling them back together best we could, then splinting and bandaging them up, and time was exactly what we hadn’t got near enough of. Which was why Eeteh was gabbling on about it. We was both scared, but we neither of us was trying to show it.
Eeteh says that Time used to be lost in empty space and nobody growed old, until Sun and Moon come along. Sun and Moon they worked for Time. Time was the boss. He could talk to you, mostly just to push you around, but you couldn’t talk to him. There warn’t no stars yet and Moon was always either shining or not shining, so there was only two days in each month and they flew by, tick-tocking back and forth like Deadwood’s fob watch. People growed old so fast they didn’t hardly have time to get born before they was dying. It was how Time wanted it. Dying warn’t a particular concern a his and he didn’t have to learn to count past two.
Coyote was feeling very sad about it, Eeteh says, so sad he thought he might kill himself to stop growing older, but he was a coward as bad as we was and couldn’t make himself do that. He reckoned the only other solution was to stop Time or at least stretch him out somehow like we was doing to old Deadwood.
Time kept Sun and Moon apart, they lived in separate lodges and warn’t noway allowed in the same one together. Only one a them was let out into the sky at the same time, though Moon sometimes lurked about like a shy ghost in Sun’s sky, wishing Sun would look her way. Wishing didn’t do her no good. Sun was only in love with his own self. This was before Coyote sent Turtle diving down in the ocean to bring up earth for people to live on, Eeteh says, so the world was still slopped over with water, and Sun spent all his days smiling down at his own reflection. He would a kissed it if he could. Moon stared at her reflection, too, but only because her sky was dark and there warn’t nothing else to look at. Her reflection was pale as death, a-floating in pure blackness, and it only made her feel more lonelier’n ever.
I says I thought it was Duck dove down. Eeteh, making a sling out a some loafer’s muddy shirt, says he didn’t know for sure if Coyote ordered Turtle down or else it was Duck or Water Beetle or Muskrat, or even if he went himself, like Kiwi always said. Kiwi was a Crow and Eeteh reckoned the Crows knowed more about the beginnings and endings of things than the Lakota done, so he thinks maybe Coyote swum down himself. I says that either way it sounded like right down bullwhacky to me, even though it warn’t near so foolish as the stories folks back in St. Petersburg took stock in, declaring them to be the Gospel Truth, and Eeteh says stories is stories and got their own rules about the truth.
The tribe was most always all asleep when Moon was let out in the sky, and people never even seen her, Eeteh says, easing Deadwood’s shoulder bone into its socket with a crunchy noise, but Coyote he stayed up and watched. We put the broke arm in the sling and strapped it to his chest and Eeteh set about working on the fingers. They was most all busted. Sun was proud like a warrior chief, Eeteh says, and he lit up the water world like it was on fire. He lorded it over everybody and didn’t need nobody else. But Moon she was lonely and sad and was always chasing after Sun, Coyote seen that.
Eeteh made a little ball out a mud and leaves and fitted Deadwood’s fingers round it, pinching each bone carefully into place. It was like he could see Deadwood’s bones with his own fingers. The problem, Coyote judged, was dawn. It there warn’t no dawns, people wouldn’t have to die no more. So he stitched up a curtain of rain and fog so’s Sun couldn’t see himself on the waters no more and nobody couldn’t see him. That was how clouds and rain begun, Eeteh says, wrapping a rag round Deadwood’s balled hand and settling it into the sling. His hair, hanging loose and tangly from the headband, kept getting in his face, but he let it.
Then we set about working on the busted leg, which was a good sight harder. Deadwood was a sinewy old bird, and pulling his leg bones apart to refit the broke ends was most more’n we could do. We needed eight hands, not only four. Sun was terrible lonely, Eeteh went on, grunting from the stretching work, and he went hunting around for that bright face he admired so. He couldn’t find it. It had plain disappeared. But Sun seen a face looking like it, Eeteh says, only ghostlier and sadder and beautifuller in a less showy way, and he could not only look at it, he could kiss it, and he knowed then he warn’t never going to be lonely again.