Savage Cry (26 page)

From where he stood, on the rocky crown of the hill, he could not see the Blackfoot camp some three or four miles distant. But he could see the faint wisps of brown smoke that wafted up from the lodges by the water’s edge, and he could imagine his sister working as a slave in one of those lodges. The thought prompted him to turn and cast an accusing glance at the sun. It would still be hours before dark. Other, darker, thoughts crowded his mind. And he wondered if Robert was still alive or if Martha had been forced to witness her husband’s slow torture at the hands of Black Elk. “Damn,” he swore, his impatience about to get the best of him.

In the Blackfoot camp, the women were preparing meat for the feasts that many of their husbands were
calling for. It had been a good day hunting, and there was fresh antelope roasting over the fire. Throughout the camp, men were calling out invitations to their friends to join them in a feast. Martha sat before her fire, watching her supper boil in a new iron pot that had been among the trade goods on Charley’s packmules. She was preparing food for herself only, since Black Elk had accepted an invitation to feast in Jumping Horse’s lodge. As she stared at the shiny black pot, she wondered if the day would ever come when she could look at it and not be reminded of Charley and the violent ending of his life. For that reason, she had been tempted to give the pot to Red Wing, but she could not bring herself to part with it, since her old pot had a crack in the side. Without a good pot, she couldn’t cook the meat until it was thoroughly done. Only a few women in the village had no metal containers. For those unfortunate few, meat had to be boiled in a crude stone pot, or a hole in the ground with a green hide for a liner and hot stones to heat the water. As a result, the meat was never cooked thoroughly, usually only long enough to lose the red color.

Ridding her thoughts of Charley, Martha sat back and gazed at the last rays of the setting sun as they streamed through the notches in the mountains to the west, setting a thin layer of clouds ablaze with shades of red and gold. Life was good. She had found a perfect peace here. And while she often had thoughts of her father and mother and her brothers far, far away on the little Rapidan River in Virginia, she would not choose to give up this life she had found here. They would never be able to understand this. In fact, they might be horrified to know that she would choose to live with Black Elk rather than return home to Virginia. For this reason, she knew that she would never see her
parents again. The thought always made her feel melancholy, and she would find herself trying to picture each member of her family in her mind, memorizing each face so she would never forget. The one she always saved for last was Clay. Clay was her favorite—tall and strong, always sure of himself. She whispered a little prayer that he would return from the war safely.
The war,
she thought.
I have forgotten about the war.
It had once been the most important event in her young life, now it had not crossed her mind in well over a year. Virginia was so far away, packed away in another lifetime like an old trunk in the attic.

She realized then that the clouds she had been gazing at had lost their gilded edge, and were now only dark blue-gray streaks floating over the distant peaks, as the last rays of the sun faded away. It would be dark soon.
I hope Black Elk does not linger.
The coming darkness did not frighten her; she simply longed for her husband’s return.

Lost in her reverie, she had almost forgotten her supper. Turning her attention back to the iron pot, she tested the meat with a wooden spoon to see if it was tender. Satisfied, she dipped it out of the pot into a stone bowl. Placing it before her, she smiled in a brief moment of reflection as she looked at the bowl. She traced the rim of it with her fingertip. Moon Shadow had helped her make the bowl. She had helped her search for the right size rock, a soft rock found along the bluffs of the river. Together, they had pounded it and ground it with a harder stone until it was shaped into a bowl. The memory brought a sad smile to her face. She missed Moon Shadow. She was sure Black Elk missed her, too, but he never spoke of her. It was not polite to speak of the dead.

A soft whisper of buckskin told her that her husband had returned. Without looking behind her, she
teased, “I hear my clumsy husband tromping his way home. Or maybe it is one of the horses coming up from the pony herd.” She took great delight in their gentle teasing, especially when he attempted to affect his stern expression, pretending he was offended by her playful remarks.

“Maybe I have returned to throw my lazy wife out of my lodge—send you back to your mother.” He tapped her playfully on her head. “I think I should get myself a wife like Jumping Horse’s, one who really knows how to take care of her husband.”

Martha laughed. She knew that Black Elk did not think much of Brown Calf. “How did you enjoy the feast?” she asked, a mischievous gleam in her eye as she turned to look at her husband.

Black Elk crumpled his mouth, making a sour face. “The meat was roasted black. It had the taste of ashes. I don’t understand why that woman cannot see when the meat is cooked.”

Martha laughed again. “Maybe when you invite them to your lodge, they go back and tell each other that your wife doesn’t let the meat get done.”

“Maybe,” he said, rubbing his stomach as if trying to soothe it. He reached into the bowl beside her and picked up a piece of the boiled meat. She slapped his hand playfully. “Wagh,” he blurted, pretending to be enraged. “You are long overdue for a good beating.” Then he reached down and snatched her off the ground, lifting her up in his arms as easily as if she were a baby. Laughing delightedly, she threw her arms around his neck as he carried her into the tipi.

Clay made his way slowly through cottonwoods that bordered the wide creek. Moving from tree to tree, he worked his way in close to the outer ring of lodges. Taking cover behind a screen of low bushes, he lay on
his belly, watching the Blackfoot camp as the evening approached. His eyes darted from tipi to tipi, searching for the familiar face of his sister among the women tending their cook fires. He started to move on to another vantage point when his eye caught sight of a powerfully built warrior returning to a lodge some twenty yards from his spot. A handsome all-white pony grazed peacefully on the sparse grass by the tipi. Badger had said that it was a common practice among the warriors of many tribes to keep their favorite war pony tied by their lodge. Clay could easily understand why the white horse was a prized possession.

Clay turned his gaze back to the warrior. He lingered a moment to watch as the man stopped to speak to the woman seated before the fire. She was, no doubt, the warrior’s wife. It was difficult to see her face clearly in the flickering glow of the campfire, but she looked to be a typical Blackfoot woman. They talked for a few minutes, then Clay could not suppress a smile when the man playfully picked her up and carried her into the lodge.

Moving again, slowly working his way around the perimeter of the camp, Clay cautiously avoided the large pony herd near the bank of the creek for fear they might announce his presence. Crawling on his belly, he made his way up to the rear of a lodge decorated with paintings and buffalo tails. Peering around the edge of the tipi, he could see a great part of the center of the village. So close was he to the back of the lodge that he could hear voices inside, and was even able to catch a few words through the cowskin outer covering.

With evening lengthening, the casual comings and goings in the village began to decrease as the people retired to their lodges for the night. Among all the women busy with their evening chores, there was not
a sign of a white woman, and no sign of Robert, either. Maybe, he thought, Badger would have better luck on the opposite side of the village. Disappointed, but not discouraged, Clay remained behind the tipi for almost half an hour, moving only when he heard a man’s voice inside announce that he was going outside to relieve himself. Pushing away from the tipi, Clay crawled backward until he felt it safe to get to his feet and make a quick retreat to the safety of the cottonwoods.

By the time a large silver moon emerged from behind the hills, the village was quiet with only an occasional soul venturing out. Clay retraced his path until he came to the edge of the creek, where he found Badger waiting for him.

“See anything?” Clay wanted to know as soon as he glanced around him to make sure no one was in earshot.

“Nary a thing,” Badger replied. “Leastways nuthin’ that looked like a white woman.” Feeling the disappointment his report brought, he added a word of encouragement. “We can’t tell much slipping around here at night, anyway. Just ’cause we ain’t seen her don’t mean she ain’t here. Maybe we can find a spot close enough to see in the daylight. If she’s here, that’s when she’ll be out workin’ on hides, or diggin’ up roots, or whatever they make her do.”

It was not possible to move in as close to the village during the day as it had been the night before. So Clay and Badger spent a portion of the morning seeking out a workable vantage point from which they could observe most of the camp’s activities. The frustration of their situation began to work on Clay’s patience almost from the first hour of watching.

“Damn this waiting,” he exclaimed, after lying on
his belly in a stand of young pines for most of the morning. “I’ve got to get in closer. I can’t tell who I’m looking at from this distance, red or white.”

The problem was, as Badger pointed out, Bloody Axe had picked a pretty good spot for his campsite: creek on one side and over a hundred yards of open ground between the cottonwoods where his lodges were set up and the low hills where Clay and Badger lay. It made it next to impossible for anyone, enemy or friend, to advance upon the village without being seen. Knowing the anxiety Clay had to be suffering at this point, Badger tried to keep his young friend calm, for fear he might do something rash. Remembering the fight back on the forks of the Milk River when the Blackfeet shot that big sorrel that Clay thought so much of, Badger knew the young man had a temper.

“Everything looks peaceful enough,” Badger commented. “If she’s in the camp, we’re bound to see her sooner or later.”

“Maybe they’ve got her tied up somewhere,” Clay replied. He felt certain Martha was in the camp. She had to be. If she weren’t with this band of Blackfeet, he didn’t know where else to search. Badger was telling him to be patient, but Clay was finding it extremely difficult, knowing that Martha might be suffering at that very moment, no more than a hundred yards or so away. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed to him that Martha might indeed be tied up inside one of the lodges. Knowing her determination, it was easy for him to assume that she would have tried to escape at every opportunity. For that reason, it was probably necessary to keep her tied. “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” he finally blurted. “I’ve got to come back tonight when I can work my way in close again. I think she’s in one of those tipis.”

“Maybe so,” Badger allowed. “But I doubt it. She’s been travelin’ with this bunch for a long time—too long for them to be keepin’ her tied up. They’da kilt her before now if she kept runnin’ away.”

Clay cocked his head around to look at Badger. He didn’t like to talk about the possibility that Martha was dead. He was about to say as much when Badger suddenly pointed toward the lower end of the camp where a group of women were walking down toward the creek, carrying skin buckets. Instead of stopping at the water’s edge to fill their buckets, they turned and followed the bank downstream toward a sand spit covered with low bushes.

“Berry pickin’, I’d guess if it wasn’t so early in the spring,” Badger speculated. “Ain’t no berries ripe this early. Probably lookin’ for some roots or herbs.” He watched the group as they made their way through the trees on the creek bank, then he looked back at Clay. “There’s about fifteen or sixteen of ’em. Your sister might be one of ’em.”

It took the better part of an hour to retreat from the pines on the hill and work their way around to a point below the camp where they could cross over to the cover of the trees by the creek. Twice they were forced to hide, lying flat, hugging the ground, as a Blackfoot hunting party passed only yards away, talking and laughing among themselves. Thanks to his lessons with Johnny MacGruder’s wife during the long winter months just past, Clay could pick up the occasional word that drifted from the hunting parties. After reaching the concealment offered by the cottonwoods and willows, it was a far easier task to make their way upstream until reaching a point just below the sand spit. The women were already busily digging around the roots of the bushes by the time Clay and Badger were in position.

Laughing and chattering lightheartedly, the women worked through the little point of land jutting out into the water. Clay stared hard at each one whenever he could get a clear view through the foliage. His heart was pounding with the anticipation he felt as his gaze went from one woman to another. It would be the best of situations if she were among the women—a real piece of luck. For if she were one of the party, he could snatch her away and be gone before the other women could get back to the village to give the alarm.

Badger peered at the women, trying to discover a white face. Then after a few moments when he was unsuccessful, he turned to watch Clay’s face for signs of a spark of recognition. There were none. Instead, he saw his young partner’s expression sag with disappointment. “She’s not here,” Clay said.

“You know, son,” Badger began, “I don’t wanna discourage you, but maybe she ain’t with this band.”