(Money for Nothing by Dire Straits) MTV...
(hammering)
(German and Slavic chatter)
(music)
(clicks tongue)
- I told you not to teach her.
- I didn't teach her nuthin'.
Elsa: This was our third day here.
The longest we'd stayed in one place
since the journey started.
One trait all animals share, people included:
no matter where we are or where we wish to be,
if we're there longer than a day,
we try to make a home of it.
But the Plains are not for home building,
not enough resources.
No shelter...
The Plains are for the vagabonds, wanderers,
and cowboys.
Their home is a saddle.
The sky is their roof.
The ground is their bed.
What they lack in material comfort
is regained in the knowledge that they are always home.
To them the journey is the destination.
Should they find gold at the end of the rainbow,
they would leave it there and seek another,
choosing freedom over the burden of the pot.
I haven't thought once of Oregon.
No dreams of the ocean or snow covered mountains.
I only dream of the journey.
That is all.
No gold for me.
Just the rainbow.
- You ready?
- Yessir.
(music)
- Well, joined up with some mustangs, I see.
- Mustangs are tricky to herd.
This is your world, Sam. What do you think?
- I think we run the trick out of them.
Carve out that stallion and get him caught.
They'll follow us to camp like sheep.
(music)
(whistling)
- Get up against it on the other side!
Push in on it.
Whoop at him to keep him moving.
- Whoop at him?
(whooping)
- (whooping)
- Girl's starting to ride like a Comanche.
(Elsa whooping)
- That is a compliment, James.
(music)
- Hup!
Elsa: Hey! Colton: Come on!
Shea: Ya! Hyah!
- Hup!
- Hyup! Hyup!
Shea: Ya! Hyup!
(shushes)
- Hyup! Hyup!
- Now you know how to steal horses.
- Hm. Could come in handy some day.
- (chuckles) If you stick with me it will.
- Ow... Damn.
(speaking Comanche)
(chuckles)
- Yeah, ha ha.
- He says you ride too good for white man pants.
He's right.
(chuckles)
- Thigh tore out.
- You have another dress.
- I'd rather wear a bean sack
than be choked by a damned dress.
- It should be double stitched.
Let me see it. Let me see it.
(fire crackles)
- I hear things are bad around Laramie.
- Yep.
Well, the Arapaho and the Lakota are pretty fed up
with the thieves and the government's lies
taking matters in their own hands.
Who can blame 'em?
They won't be your worry, though.
The winter is your worry,
and with all those folks afoot,
winter's when you're passing through.
(German and Slavic chatter)
- Well... It's too much.
I think I ought to take them to Denver.
- Denver would be wise.
(speaks Comanche)
Let's tend to the horses.
- Where they go ain't up to you.
You even ask them what they want?
- Want ain't got nuthin to do with it.
They won't survive.
- Then they don't survive.
That's their choice. It ain't yours.
- You're going anyway.
- I don't know where I'm going.
But I ain't going to Denver.
And I sure as hell ain't going back.
- Do you want to go to Denver?
- I haven't factored what I want into this once.
There is a map in your father's mind,
and no one's gonna stop him from following it.
No sense in trying.
He said to trust him. I'm trusting him.
- Do you trust him?
Know why he lets you run wild, don't you?
- 'Cause he trusts me, too.
- 'Cause he knows dresses is your future.
No matter where we go, you're wearing dresses.
And raising babies, and sweating over a garden,
and swallowing every dream you've ever had,
because that's all the world wants from you.
He may find some place where we can hold the world off
for a while, but it'll find us there too,
and bring all their rules with it.
(music)
(German and Slavic chatter)
- Indians! Indians!
(German and Slavic clamoring)
Shea: Put your rifles down!
Put 'em down!
(German and Slavic chatter)
(cocks gun)
- Now that's not very friendly.
- We don't know they're friends.
- If they weren't our friends, we'd already be dead.
- We asked them to come. They're here to trade.
No matter which way we go we need provisions.
(German and Slavic chatter)
- Wait. Wait!
Are we going somewhere different?
(singing in Comanche)
(speaking Comanche)
- She will help you with rip in pants.
- They're fixed.
(speaking Comanche)
(chuckles)
(music)
(German and Slavic chatter)
- Thank you. - Mm-hm.
- Good.
(speaking Comanche)
- What's that?
- That's not for sale.
- What is it?
- From the Spanish.
You know, they tried to take our land too.
- I ain't taking nuthin', I'm just passing through.
- Our land cannot be taken.
White man thinks he took it.
White man is like the wolf.
He kills everything until only the wolves are left,
then the wolves kill each other.
Then there is nothing.
And the land is free again.
- That sounds about right.
(speaking Comanche)
(music)
- Come up from the west now heading north.
- Got a good look at the Comanche camp,
decided easy pickins weren't so easy.
I'll follow 'em.
You get those people out of here, Shea.
No matter where you take 'em.
- Thank you.
- Come across any barbed wire yet?
- Never heard of it.
- It's twisted steel wire with little barbs woven into it.
Sharp as a knife's tip.
It is the one fence cattle will not push through.
They're going to carve this country into little rectangles.
Then fence them off.
And just like that,
two of our great pleasures are gone.
- Next time I see you I hope it's in a saloon
and not a gunfight.
- If you see me in a saloon, I followed a cattle thief in it,
a there will damn sure be a gunfight,
or a hanging, one of the two.
- Church picnic then, maybe.
- When we meet again, it will be on a trail,
if there's one left.
- I think this is my last trail, Charlie.
(music)
- Well, then, I guess this is adios.
- Adios, my friend.
(music)
(German, Slavic, Comanche chatter)
- Ow.
(speaking Comanche)
- They must be tight. They will stretch.
(speaking Comanche)
- What is she saying?
- I ask why you wear clothes like a horseman.
She says you are one.
But you are a white woman, so I don't understand.
- No more rip.
- He already pay. - (chuckles)
Thank you.
(German, Slavic, Comanche chatter)
(music)
- Got her some chaps.
It's official.
You're all cowboy now.
(music)
(clicks tongue)
(kisses)
- I have no home.
Which is to say, my home is everywhere.
(German and Slavic chatter)
- I need you to translate.
We've got eight wagons to make the trip.
To accommodate your belongings,
only the very young and old can ride in the wagons.
The rest of you must walk or sit a horse.
And if you don't know how to ride,
this ain't the place to learn.
If we're lucky, and we haven't been yet,
we'll reach Fort Laramie in October.
That means crossing South Pass in the snow
or staying the winter at the fort.
Neither are safe.
Another option is...
We head to Denver.
We can be there in six weeks.
There's a lot of good land in those valleys.
It's a good place to call home.
- No Oregon?
- When was this decided?
- It wasn't. Not by me.
We ain't stopping.
(speaking German)
(German and Slavic chatter)
(speaking German)
(arguing in Slavic)
- The land in Denver is free?
- It is not.
- Then we are maids and miners
the same we were at home.
- But you're alive.
If you want to push on, we'll push on in the spring.
- I'm heading north.
Anyone wants to ride with me is welcome.
A good remuda of horses and plenty of beef,
and I can't think of a better place to learn to ride.
You come with me, I ain't gonna baby you like he did.
You're gonna work and you're gonna keep up,
'cause I ain't crossing the mountains in the snow
and I ain't winterin' at no fort.
- You're gonna get 'em all killed.
- Well, people die in Denver, too.
It's their choice.
The question is:
what are you going to do when they make it?
What's it gonna be?
- We go with you.
- We head out in the morning.
Come ready.
(Josef speaking German)
- I don't want to leave.
- You want to stay.
- I don't need to see mountains.
- Mountains are worth seeing.
- You saying I should go?
- I'm saying mountains are worth seeing.
But you don't need wagons to see them.
I can take you.
(music)
- It's settled.
You'll take me then.
Where are you going?
- I must offer your father something.
- For what?
- For you.
(music)
- Buffalo.
(speaking Comanche)
- Everywhere you go, a blessing follows.
You know how to steal horses.
Now I teach you to hunt..
Lightning with the Yellow Hair.
(music)
Up to his shoulders!
Shoot behind his ears!
(buffalo groans)
(whoops)
(panting)
(praying in Comanche)
(heavy breaths)
- Hoh...
(speaking Comanche)
Eat.
Bite into it.
His strength is your strength.
(speaking Comanche)
Lightning with the Yellow Hair. - (laughs)
Horse thief and hunter.
(music)
(speaking Comanche)
(whooping) (shouting in Comanche)
(music)
- What have you done?
- I killed a buffalo.
- You packed up?
- No, Captain.
- Better get to it.
- Ain't gonna do it.
I promised I'd see her to Oregon
and that's what I'm gonna do.
- Well, free country.
- It's gonna be hard enough with you,
but we ain't got no chance without you.
I ain't ever asked you for nothing
but I'm asking you now.
Don't leave us, Captain.
Elsa: Where you going?
- What happened to you.
- I killed a buffalo.
We ate its heart to keep its strength.
Where you going?
- Oregon, honey.
With you.
- I'm not going to Oregon.
I'm staying here.
Margaret: What time we pull out?
James: First light.
No more crack of 9 am for this outfit.
- New sheriff in town ain't gonna take it anymore, huh.
- Not if we're gonna beat winter.
- Let's talk about your daughter.
- Uh oh, she's mine again.
What did she do?
- Ran off with that Comanche boy, killed a buffalo.
Mm-hmm. Came back, her face covered in blood
'cause I guess they ate half of it in the field.
(chuckles)
- Go ahead and laugh. She is feral.
You always talked about how you'd raise our boys
to be men and you started with her.
When we get back to any form of civilization
I'm gonna have to undo all of that.
- Do you really want to?
- Oh, please. James...
Let me deal with one dreamer at a time.
- You're a dreamer, too.
You wouldn't be with me if you weren't.
- I'm a believer, honey. There's a difference.
- Fair enough.
(horse snorts)
(music)
- What is this?
- It's for you.
- Why is it for me?
- Whatcha doin'?
- I'm trading these things.
Got no use for 'em anymore.
James: Elsa.
- Stay in here. You don't want to see this.
- Are you aware of what he's asking?
- I'm aware.
Take the horse, daddy.
- Young lady, I will not allow this.
- You're not allowing it?
I'm eighteen years old.
I'm allowing it.
- You think being 18 makes you a woman?
- Law thinks it does.
(music)
- Don't just stand there. Stop him.
Shoot him.
Do something!
- I understood my mother's worry.
My choices make no sense in her world,
where customs and prejudice rule, where law cannot reach.
There will be customs and prejudice here too, I'm sure.
But they were born of this world and belong in it.
To import the traditions of the place you fled,
the place that failed you,
is to condemn the place you seek with the same failures.
(music)
- We saw your daughter.
Cookie thought you might want a swig or two of this.
- I guess she's gonna fall in love with every man
she meets till one of them sticks.
- Hell, I don't know.
- After a night or two without you,
I bet she'll point that fast horse north
and catch us before we leave Kansas.
- You don't know my daughter.
So, no Denver for you.
- These folks don't trust me anymore.
And I don't trust them for making
a right choice for themselves.
Can't lead people I don't trust.
But you trust them.
- They came a long way.
I trust their desire to see it through.
- I'm gonna trust you.
I think I can live with that.
But you're gonna have to lead 'em.
I'll guide 'em and I'll protect 'em, but you lead them.
- I can do that.
- I'm gonna leave that with you.
- Hell, no.
I'm liable to crawl in the son of a bitch
trying to figure out what to do with that girl.
- It's looking like you might have to trust her too, James.
(music)
- I barely recognize you.
- Barely recognize me either.
And I'm happier for it.
What's the worst that could happen to me, mama?
- Mark my words, you will get hurt.
- How many dead lovers have you laid against?
I've been plenty hurt.
- Don't talk to me about love.
You barely understand the concept.
I worked a sharecropper farm for three years,
pregnant with you, while your father lay rotting
in a war prison.
- And how old were you then? - Seventeen.
- Somehow you knew love at my age,
but I don't understand the concept.
- It's different. - It's not different.
It's exactly the same.
- Here's the difference.
You are my child. When you fall down, and you will
it is my duty to pick you up.
I can't do that if I don't know where you are,
and if I don't know what you've become.
- It's not your duty anymore, mother.
I love you.
But I'm a woman.
I pick myself up.
I'll ride with you to Oregon,
then I know where to come if I ever need a place to start over.
Or maybe I'll just visit, bring your grandchildren.
- So, um...
Is there...
Some form of ceremony?
- No ceremony.
- All I ask, have a ceremony.
Say vows before God...
so this at least has a chance.
- He saved my life.
Twice.
Saved your husband's life too.
I don't need to ask God's permission to love him.
God sent him.
(music)
- How you doing there?
- He goes where he wants. Not where I say.
- Horse goes where you look.
You're looking at his head.
He don't know how to go there.
Look up at the cattle.
There you go.
- What if I want to look at you?
- You can look anywhere you want now, he knows where he's going.
- You just say he goes where I look,
now you're saying I can look anywhere.
- 'Cause he knows where he's going.
- You make no sense.
- (chuckles)
Pretty good way to travel, huh?
- I'm terrified.
- Now that you got the steering figured,
it's time you find yer seat.
- How do I find my seat?
Ah!
(speaking German)
- Stop speaking German. We're American now.
- Is it okay? The horse?
(kisses)
- Your turn next.
- No, no, not me.
- Yes, you. You will be a cowboy.
- You be the cowboy. I drive the wagon.
(woman screams)
- Whoa, whoa, whoa.
- You got to keep your feet off his flanks.
That's like tickling you under the arm.
You're gonna run from the tickle.
So will he.
- They're learning.
- Yeah, I'm watching the lesson.
And it is skunk ugly.
(laughs)
- There's good water up here. Good place to rest.
Good place to break that stallion.
- What the hell's water got to do with breaking a horse?
- I'll show you when we get there.
- Come on.
- Come on. Hup, hup, hup.
- Lightning with the Yellow Hair.
You think you can catch me?
(music)
(German and Slavic chatter)
- You're going to cook it?
- Naw, I'm gonna make sandals out of it.
- You expect us to eat that?
- Don't they got deer where you're from?
- Pigs.
- Pigs?
A pig is one of the nastiest animals on this planet.
You are what you eat and a pig will eat anything.
Like a raccoon.
- What does deer eat?
- Grass.
- What does deer taste like?
It tastes like this place.
And the grass and the dirt
and the water from the creek over there all mixed together.
- You eat dirt? - So do you.
Every meal.
If you really want me to bake yer biscuit,
think about this: one day yer gonna be dirt.
(speaks Slavic)
- Dirt? When will they be dirt?
- Depends on when they go in the ground, ma'am.
(muttering in Croatian) Cookie: Don't it?
- Hey, not telling them don't mean it ain't true.
(music)
(speaking Comanche)
- Whoa, whoa.
He's broke now.
- (laughs)
Naw, he's a couple weeks from being broke.
- He's broke. Run him.
If you want him to give you his heart, you must run him.
(music)
- This place is beautiful.
(German and Slavic chatter)
- That's where she gets it from.
- Where who gets what?
- Your sister.
- What did she get?
- Her spirit.
- What's a spirit?
- The thing that drives you.
- What drives me?
- I don't know yet, honey.
- What drives Elsa?
- Hmmm... The wind.
(clicks tongue)
- Ya!
- Strong.
Fast...
- A good horse for war, that one.
- Where will she live?
- My land is with Quanah Parker.
South of the Wichita Mountains.
I will build her a house if that's what she wants, but...
I think she would rather chase bandits with me.
- She would.
But she's young.
The young change their minds.
What if she changes her mind about you?
- Then I will bring her back to you.
- How will you find me?
- White men think the world is so big
because you fight against it when you travel.
We move with it. Like the wolf.
It is small to us.
I will find you.
- No chance you'd want to come to Oregon?
- I fought too hard for what land we have left.
Doubt the fighting's over.
I marry your daughter, but I still belong to the people
and the people belong to this land.
We don't dare leave it.
Maybe some day you find land to belong to,
and you'll know what I mean.
- I could make her go with us.
- How you gonna do that?
If you tie her to the back of the wagon
she'll just chew through that damn rope.
She said she'd ride with us to Oregon
then come back to him in the spring.
Let's just hope she falls in love in Oregon.
- With the pattern she's established
she'll fall in love again by Nebraska.
(laughing)
- It's not funny.
- You're the one laughing.
- You think our daughter is the only one out here
falling in love?
I bet there's emigrant kids fooling around
behind every bush along this creek.
Ours just doesn't hide it.
If she loves something she will hold its hand
in front of the whole world.
- She gets that from you.
- She gets racing up that hill from me.
But the way she loves...
she gets that from you.
That's why it scares you so bad.
- You're not scared?
- My fear is selfish.
I just want to be with her.
- Yeah.
- Know her children when she has 'em.
But I...
can't alter the course of her life
just because of how bad I'm gonna miss her.
- She'll change her mind.
- How do you say "I love you?"
- Kah-Muk-Kun-Tun Nuh.
- Kah mun...
- Mah kun tun nuh. - Kah mah kun tun nuh.
- (laughs)
Pretty good.
- How do you say my name?
- Lightning with the Yellow Hair...
(speaking Comanche)
- (speaking Comanche)
Teach me more.
- (speaking Comanche)
Eere.
Huku.
Tsunipuh.
Mura.
(music)
- At least we have a path to follow.
- How far to Fort Caspar?
- Couple a weeks.
We just might pull this off.
- We meet here when the flowers bloom.
- When do the flowers bloom?
- In your new home it's April.
Here it is June.
- I'll meet you here in June.
(music)
- Sam!
Ah kah mah kun tun nuh!
I love you!
(speaking Comanche)
(whooping)
(music)
- I felt their eyes move over me.
Felt their pity and disapproval...
And it meant nothing to me.
The only thing that mattered was riding away,
just as I was riding away from him.
As I pondered the new journey before me,
making it back to him.
They watched the tears run my cheeks and I let them.
I didn't turn my face or wipe them away.
Tears we can't control,
sobs and weeps are little surrenders,
and I will surrender nothing to the pain.
Tears may flow, but I will not weep.
I am the wife of a warrior now.
Which is to say, I am a warrior.
And warriors don't cry.
We're wasting time.
(music)