The next morning the long trek of people and horses formed up again and we headed south-west. Sometime in the afternoon we stopped. No sooner had the women pitched their tents than the men prepared to hunt: they just donned their belts and loincloths and smeared their bodies with bear fat until they shone. They readied their buffalo horses and weapons and discussed one last time how the hunt should be conducted.
When Ohitika entered the tent to get his arrows and bow, I stopped him. "Ohitika?"
He turned to me.
"Will we also be able to see the buffalo from the camp?"
He said no. “The women and girls stay behind. Only the boys accompany the warriors to guard the pack horses and help us cut up the booty."
"Can't I come too?" I asked. "I'll stay with the boys too, and I won't get in anyone's way."
Ohitika cocked her head slightly. "Why does Malie want to come with you?"
"I'd love to see buffalo."
He hesitated, then shook his head. “Buffalo hunting is a dangerous business. She is not for women and girls." With that he turned and disappeared from the tent.
I hated being a girl at that moment. Restrictions have always been imposed on us. This was especially difficult for someone like me who came from another age to accept.
I watched furtively as the men gathered at the edge of our camp and eventually rode away, led by the chiefs of our two groups. The boys with the pack horses followed.
"It's going to be sirloin and buffalo tongue tonight," enthused Wihinapa, suddenly appearing next to me.
"I'd rather see the buffalo alive than chopped up into their one-line," I muttered. She gave me a confused sidelong glance, but I didn't elaborate. Eventually, she slipped into the tent to unpack the rest of our stuff.
I started wandering around the village, drifting, maybe on purpose, maybe not, towards the creek where we had stopped. The shore was lined with a few bushes and trees that provided wood for our fires. Not far away, on the other side of the ford, the horses were grazing. I knew the boy who guarded her. He was a little younger than me and hadn't really paid any attention to me until now — because I was a girl, of course.
I wondered if I should try it. So far I had not been forbidden to move freely in and around the camp. I just wanted to go horseback riding, that's all. Why should he mind?
I waded across the shallows of the stream over to the herd, looking for the chestnut mare among the many bay, piebald, red, and tawny horsebacks. The boy looked my way, but he left me alone. He was probably just as upset as I was about having to stay home and not being allowed to join the hunt.
The mare grazed near the shore. She turned her ears towards me as I approached her. But she seemed to recognize me, because she didn't shy away from me, let me stroke and scratch her and continued to eat comfortably. Her front legs were tied together at the ankles with a leather strap, so she could only take small steps but still move freely. I quickly crouched down and untied the ribbon.
Then I got ready to sit up. The boy strolled towards me. I tried to look as natural as possible, as if it was all planned.

"I'll be right back," I told him. "I lost something along the way that I really need to find."
His eyes narrowed a little. He didn't know if he could believe me.
"You're welcome to ask Tatanka Wakon, or Ohitika when he's back," I added, hoping that tip would do. Secretly, I felt shabby lying.
Finally he nodded and let me go. However, I was sure that he would keep an eye on me until I disappeared from his line of sight. So I rode at a walk towards a bend in the creek, beyond which he could no longer see me, before I turned in the direction in which the hunting party had disappeared.
The next hurdle was the scouts, who were strategically placed around the camp to keep an eye on the area. But here, too, I bet that they would think nothing of it. In her eyes, no girl would be so bold as to disregard a warrior's prohibition. Besides, they wouldn't be able to stop me if I was on a horse. It couldn't have gone more wrong.
I grabbed the mare's mane and urged her on. Although she too must have been exhausted from the trail behind us, she willingly went into a slow gallop. After a while she even seemed to enjoy flying freely across the prairie, which she could neither do in the migration train nor in the herd.
I braced myself with my knees as best I could. Gradually I got used to the rocking gait, which was quite easy to ride - better than some horses with a saddle. The afternoon sun blinded my eyes, the wind whipped my hair. When I felt I had escaped the scouts' perimeter, I slowed the mare, not wanting to collide with the chasing party and be sent home again.
But how would I find the herd of buffalo without her?
The question became superfluous after a few kilometers: this track could not be missed, even for a pathetic tracker like me. From a distance it looked like a wide, bright road that ran through the prairie. The yellow-green grass was completely trampled there, the ground was dusty and rutted, and the whole area was covered with flat brown pats, the excrement of the buffalo. As I got closer, I saw that they hadn't fully dried in the sun, so the herd couldn't be far from here.
This swath ran north to south to the horizon and was up to a kilometer wide if I guessed right. Based on the dimensions, I could hardly imagine how many buffaloes this trail must have left behind. I spurred the mare on and followed the trail south.
Soon I heard occasional dull roars in the distance. The mare looked excited. She probably smelled the proximity of the herd. As we climbed a hill and I could see the prairie ahead from the top, I stopped abruptly. A few kilometers in front of us the light trail ended and everything was dark with buffalo. A single brown-black mass as far as the eye could see. Thousands, maybe millions of them. I could not distinguish individual animals from this distance. The sight took my breath away.
That had to be the main herd. So the hunters would be elsewhere because, as Ohitika had explained, they wanted to hunt a smaller group in a river valley. Good, so I wouldn't get in their way if I rode a little closer—just a little more.
I cheered my pony on again. We followed the buffalo highway down the hill at a gentle canter. The distance between us and the herd quickly shrank. Before me lay a wall of brown bodies, a moving wall, heaving backs and slapping tails, and the sound of many hoofs pounding on the dusty ground. The pace of the herd was leisurely and I also slowed down so as not to startle them. A safe distance from these huge horned monsters was fine with me. The wind was blowing in my face so I assumed they wouldn't smell me and if I kept quiet I hoped they wouldn't be disturbed.
I could feel the mare getting more and more nervous beneath me, her ears swiveling in all directions like little radars. I calmed her down with words and a few strokes. We followed the herd at a walk and little by little I could make out more and more details. Now I saw that the solid wall wasn't that solid after all. There were even quite large gaps between the individual animals, which scattered around the edge foraging for grass that had not yet been trampled. A little off and behind the rest of the herd, under a lone tree, I spotted a mother buffalo with her calf, whose coat was lighter and legs long and thin. Both peacefully grazed the grass around them.
I stopped and watched her for a while. They were still too far away for me to really see any detail. I wished for binoculars.
Eventually a dull noise in the distance caught my attention. My horse also raised its head to listen. It sounded like an unceasing rumble of thunder. Far beyond the herd I saw the sky darken. Is there a thunderstorm coming up? So suddenly?
The dark cloud was rapidly approaching and the thunder was growing. The mare below me whinnied nervously and the mother buffalo also stared at the sound. No, that wasn't thunder. It was the sound of thousands of hooves stomping across the grassy ground. And the cloud wasn't a storm cloud, but the dust they kicked up.
My stomach lurched as I realized that both the many thousands of pounding hooves and the cloud of dust were clearly coming my way. Now the stragglers I had been watching got restless and started a nervous gallop. The startled head of the herd seemed to turn and run back here from the east. What must have happened to startle the leaders so much and set this whole huge herd on the move?
The mare, who had been waiting for my instructions the whole time, probably decided that it was too colorful for her. She turned and raced away in the opposite direction. I just managed to cling to her mane and pressed my knees into her sides as hard as I could, trusting her instincts.
I didn't dare turn around. The thunder of the pounding hooves and the hoarse roar blended into a single loud whoosh that completely filled my ears. The wind was already blowing the dust around me in dense clouds. My vision blurred and all I could see was the brownish grass flying beneath me and then... the first buffalo. At a distance they galloped past us, tails erect, massive humps bobbing up and down.
Soon the crowd thickened around me; somehow they surrounded us from all sides, taking us between them, leaving us no choice but to run with them. The mare was completely panicked now, running ahead with her head out and her eyes wide. I had no control over her, so I'd be lucky if I could stay on the horse at all. I almost fell on my horse's neck and clutched her mane with all my strength. If I fell, I would be crushed under the trampling monsters within seconds.
I tasted the dust in my mouth, blinked it out of my eyes, breathed it into my lungs. As the mare lunged sideways to avoid the horned head of a huge buffalo brushing her flanks, I almost lost my footing. I slid sideways and only held on with one leg over my back. My hands were sweaty and I felt my strength fading more and more. If I fell, it was over.
The thought sent fresh adrenaline pumping through my body. With a last effort, I pulled myself back onto the Mustang's back, breathing heavily and coughing. My eyes watered. When I blinked them clear, I saw a shadow scurrying past beside me, not in the shape of a buffalo but much slimmer and more agile.
Now I also thought I heard the quiet but shrill and unmistakable calls of the Lakota hunters above the thunder and roar. They were here! They were among the animals and hunted. And they had no idea I was in their midst.
A buffalo diagonally in front of me stumbled and fell, probably struck by an arrow. My mare ran straight at him, wedged between the bodies of two other beasts. Oh no, she would jump! I didn't know if I could hold onto her.
Before I could think about it, she was already beginning to overcome the obstacle in front of us. As her front legs and body shot into the air, I felt myself slide backward on the smooth, sweat-covered horseback.