But what short stubble of hair there is looks very light, although as much reddish as yellow. Could this possibly be Long Hair? Could it be the ghost of Long Hair that Paha Sapa now carries like some terrible fetus? It seems unlikely. Certainly some Lakota or Cheyenne warriors would have recognized their old enemy Long Hair and treated his corpse with either more outrage or more honor than this all-but-ignored body has received.

Someone, probably a woman, has jammed an arrow far up the corpse’s flaccid-in-death, forever plump, pale ce.

Paha Sapa goes to his knees, feeling expended cartridge shells ripping the skin of his knees, and leans forward, pressing both his palms against the Wasicun’s pale chest, setting his hands near a large, ragged wound where the first rifle bullet struck the man’s left breast. The second and more lethal bullet wound—high on the man’s pale left temple—shows as a simple round hole. The corpse’s eyelids are lowered, eyes almost closed as if in sleep, only the narrowest crescents of white visible under surprisingly full lashes, and this Wasicun’s countenance, unlike so many of the others, looks composed, almost peaceful.

Paha Sapa closes his own eyes as he gasps the words that he hopes are ritual enough.

—Ghost, be gone! Ghost, leave my body!

As Paha Sapa repeats this gasping incantation, he presses down firmly on the naked corpse’s chest, hoping and praying to the Six Grandfathers that the pressure will invite the ghost to flow back down his arm and hand and fingers and into the cold white form.

The wasichu corpse’s mouth opens and the dead man emits a long, satisfied belch.

Paha Sapa jerks his hands back in horror—the ghost seems to be laughing at him from its safe nest inside Paha Sapa’s brain—until he realizes that he’s only pressed some last bubbles of air up and out of the dead Wasicun’s bowels or belly or lungs.