Scarlet Plume, Second Edition (19 page)

Whitebone walked over. “What is this? What has he done?”

Scarlet Plume snarled around at Whitebone. “After all were gone, the after guard and I buried the child Angela in the proper manner beside the lake. At that time her hair had not been troubled.” Scarlet Plume jerked spasmodically, he was so outraged. “This Bullhead that you wish to keep in the band because you think he is a brave warrior, he has scalped the body of a dead child after it was buried.”

Whitebone fixed glittering eyes on Bullhead. “Is this a true thing? Speak with a single tongue.”

Before Bullhead could answer, Theodosia let go with a strangled scream. She dove for the door of the council lodge.

Bullhead was determined to block her. He tucked Angela’s silver-blond scalp in the belt of his clout, and crying, “This is your die day,” hit Theodosia an awful wallop over the head with his war club. The blow rocked Theodosia back a step. Her head suddenly seemed to be lopped over on one side and the level of her brows broken. Her hazel eyes slowly sharpened, and darkened, slowly became like the eyes of a fire-crazed mare determined to re-enter a burning barn. Again she lunged for the door of the council lodge.

Again Bullhead clubbed her. This time her head seemed to bulge out on the other side and the level of her eyes became even more broken.

The people stood beside their lodges, hands still clapped over their mouths.

Blood began to ooze through Theodosia’s light-brown hair. Her whole head seemed to work like a mound of stirring bread dough. It rose to a peak. And her eyes slowly became popped as if something were pushing them out from behind.

Theodosia stood tottering a moment. “Sister?”

“Yes, oh, my pet.”

“They will not let me enter the place of refuge as promised.”

“Oh, Sis.”

“I shall have to strike out for myself. I shall walk to the fort on the Minnesota River. God will help me.”

“Sis.”

“God keep thee until I return. For I will return with help. I am determined that at least you and Mavis shall be saved.”

Mavis broke out of her stiff trance and ran to embrace Theodosia.

A stern-eyed warrior blocked Mavis’ path.

“Good-bye, sister. Good-bye, Mavis. Help will soon be here.” Theodosia looked at the rising sun, got her bearing, and, staggering, headed directly northeast.

“Good Book Woman,” Scarlet Plume cried, “the wild wolves will devour thee if you travel alone. They will smell the blood and come from the four quarters of the earth.”

Whitebone held up a hand. “My son, let the Good Book Woman go. It is a good thing. We must not quarrel over her. The band must survive. We are the Shining People. We are they who live in the center of the world and carry one of the seven sacred fires of the Dakota. This we must preserve.”

Bullhead was not satisfied with the turn of events. “The manes of my dead wife need the blood!” he cried, and he started after Theodosia.

A signal passed between Whitebone and the dark-browed guards. Two of the guards stepped forward to block Bullhead’s path.

Judith caught the signal. She gasped. “Ahhh.” She understood suddenly. Whitebone had been in control all along. He had perhaps even arranged what had come to pass.

Theodosia staggered to the cutbank across the narrow meadow. She started to climb the cutbank. She scrabbled up through clumps of bluejoint grass. Gravel rattled down.

Theodosia had almost reached the top, and made a grab for a final clump of grass, when she lost consciousness. Toppling backward, she fell to the bottom, her head landing on a pink rock with a mashing sound. She lay still.

Judith pushed past the stern armed guards. Running, she fell upon her sister.

Theodosia was dead.

Whitebone gestured, sharp, once.

Four guards went over and stood over the two women.

There would never be any escaping Whitebone’s band.

3

Walking Voice went crying around the circle of the tepees. “Strike the lodges. We remove to the foot of a high place where there has been built up a man of stone. We will rest beside the River Of The Rock while the scouts climb the high place to see if the enemy follows. Make haste. Strike the lodges. The sun rises in the sky.”

Down came the tepees. Bundles were loaded onto horses and dogs and squaws. Braves emptied their guns, muzzles close to the ground to deaden the report, and reloaded with fresh powder.

The Yanktons started out with an impromptu parade in the old-time way. Whitebone and three elderly men mounted their horses and in solemn ceremony made a slow circuit of the camp, going out through the horns. Whitebone carried his emblem and the three elderly men carried the fire of the village. The four elders went ahead to select the places for resting and smoking en route. Behind them rode the various soldiers’ lodges and war societies in paint and feathers, singing their favorite war songs. Spear points and guns flashed in the sun. Old women cried out the names of the warriors as they rode past and recited their glorious deeds. Maidens looked shyly down. Boys got themselves willow sticks to represent horses and rode behind the warriors. Some boys barely managed to keep their willow sticks from running away. Other boys pretended to be brave warriors afoot, fighting a running battle, jumping from side to side as they had seen their fathers do, dodging violently, hard to hit, slapping their mouths with the palms of their hands and lifting their voices into high, thin caterwauling cries. One youngster pointed toward the far-off enemy whites and offered as ultimate insult the jerking away of his clout in their direction. Naked bodies gleamed a deep rosy brown in the morning sun.

Judith saw Bullhead riding by. He wore Angela’s flowing silver scalp at his belt, deliberately flaunting it so that she would see it. His black eyes burned straight ahead. He was still gorged with rage. He had had to take his own tepee down.

Judith walked along as one numbed. Once again she found herself weighted down with the papoose.

Mavis walked beside Judith. Smoky Day and Tinkling had also dressed Mavis out as a squaw: moccasins, doeskin tunic, leggings, two heavy larded braids, a painted face.

After a last lingering drink in the clear, purling stream, the band headed straight west. Leathers creaked. Dogs whimpered. Children romped through the deep grass. Squaws gossiped and laughed as they walked along. The Yankton heart beat in magic unison with the heart of the earth. The sun had come up again and it gave them good light and they were happy.

Slowly the band straggled out.

When they came to a rise in the land, Judith looked back.

She could just make out the dead cottonwood beside the cut-bank. Something seemed to be caught in the cottonwood’s branches that wasn’t there before. It reminded her of a squirrel’s nest. Then it came to her. The Good Book Woman had been put up on a tree scaffold, buried according to Stone Age rites. A mile behind the band rode the afterguards—Scarlet Plume, Traveling Hail, and two others.

Mavis’ face, stained brown, was sharper than ever. Mavis made a perfect Sioux woman. She had exactly the right features and the proper form and height.

“Judith?”

“Yes?”

“Now it’s just the two of us.”

“Yes.”

“That was awful back there.”

“Yes.”

“I feel so guilty about it.”

“You?”

“I just couldn’t move to help her. I tried and tried but I couldn’t.”

“Yes.”

“I was perfectly paralyzed. All those terrible things—they were of the devil himself. Hellish.”

Judith held her stomach. Her womb hurt. With her free hand she adjusted the pack strap over her forehead. Born By The Way had fallen asleep on her back.

“You think we’ll be able to escape?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s going to happen to us, Judith?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are we going to do—just go along as if everything is as nice as pie, and let them do with us whatever they want?”

“I guess so.” Judith managed a wan grimace with her cracked lips. “Where there’s life there’s hope.”

“Ha.”

They walked side by side.

Judith soon learned that moccasins made for easier walking than did high leather shoes. Her legs felt solid and tireless.

Breaths of wind moved across the grass in silverish waves. Wild flowers lay on the surface of the prairie like flecks of iridescent scud—asters, goldenrods, brown-eyed susans, wild onions. Perfume cloyed the breath at every step. There were myriads of prairie birds. Song sparrows spurted from underfoot. Meadow-larks flew in a dipping motion from wolfberry bush to wolfberry bush. And the deeper wet grass exploded even more birds—yellow head blackbirds, redwing blackbirds, plain blackbirds. Bird song cloyed the hearing on every side.

There was a sudden shrill call from the rear. Then came four quick sharp barks as from a coyote.

Everyone disappeared. Horses, squaws, dogs, children, all dropped into the deep grass.

Judith and Mavis were astounded. It was like watching partridge vanish into a slough.

Two Two crawled toward them in the deep grass like a very fast blue-runner snake. “Hide!” he cried in desperate whisper up to them. “Hide, or the camp soldiers will kill you. Hide in the grass.”

Judith and Mavis dropped. It was harder for Judith because she also had to think of Born By The Way on her back.

“Who is it?” Mavis asked.

“We do not know,” Two Two whispered.

Judith hoped it might be white soldiers.

Two Two gave them a troubled look through the grass. “Please do not talk together in the white man’s tongue. The braves murmur against it. Also, prepare to die should it be the blue soldiers. It will be bad for the Yanktons should the blue soldiers find white women captives in our midst.”

Judith heard rustling. She looked. Through the tips of the deep grass she could just make out Bullhead and another brave, their guns aimed at them. Judith pushed herself down as low as she could in the grass. So did Mavis. They lay as still as scared prairie chickens. Not an eyelid moved. Even Born By The Way hardly seemed to breathe.

They waited.

There was a second shrill call. This time it was a call as from a high-flying eagle. The alarm was over.

Everyone jumped up. Horses, half-gagged by boy hands, desperate for air, snorted and cavorted about. Dogs snapped playfully at each other. All the people danced in the grass.

“What was it? Can you tell?” voices called to each other.

Presently Walking Voice, the news walker, came along. “There were some horses. They were not spotted horses. Therefore it was thought they were mounted white soldiers come to get us. But soon it was made out that the horses were some of those which escaped a white man’s camp many moons ago. It is well. Do not fear. Soon we will be at the foot of the hill where there has been built up a man of stone.”

They walked.

The band straggled out again, became almost a mile long and half that wide.

The children thought it an endless picnic. There were sleepy jackrabbits to scare up. It was fun to see the crazy jacks bound from left to right in great leaps. There were meadowlark nests to discover, cozy, with a secret tunnel entrance, and four chestnut speckled eggs. There were the sweet wild onions to suck on. There were tricks to play on each other, hair-pulling, tripping, scaring. The younger ones, even up to five winters, could always run to mother for a little ma-ma. A suck or two on the always available brown nipple and off they would go again, galloping through the grass. The Indian children, Judith decided, were the happiest in the world.

A meadowlark, perched on what appeared to be a stalk of wild sumac, sang a song. “Let the people beware,” it whistled, flashing its lemon breast from side to side, “let the people beware!”

Two Two laughed, full of pride. “You see the Sioux bird of fidelity. He is always full of cheerful warning for the Yanktons.” Two Two’s smile was as clearly cut on his brown face as a quarter moon on a dark sky. “He is warning us now.”

“Ha,” Judith said, short. “What is he warning us about now?”

“He is sitting on a bush called the thunderwood. It is a bad thing. Touch it with a finger, and the finger will swell up and then rot and fall off. See, look at the bush he sits on. It is so ashamed of itself for being evil that it hangs its white berries in a sneaky way, beneath where the leaves have white undersides.”

“Let the people beware,” the meadowlark sang.

“Perhaps he also sings a certain song for the white man,” Mavis said.

Two Two laughed. “Then the white man is a fool not to listen.”

The women walked pigeon-toed under their burdens. The men walked straight-toed. The footprints of the women lay turned in one after the other. The footprints of the men lay parallel to each other.

A single hackberry appeared. The tree stood some thirty feet high, had a fine grayish trunk, delicate greenish leaves, and overall perfect symmetry. It cast a gentle round shadow and the wind soughing under it was cool.

Whitebone and the three elders looked up at the sun almost directly overhead and decided that the whole band could rest awhile near the tree. They would have a bite to eat and then a fine smoke.

Quickly the squaws sent the children scurrying out over the prairie to dig up turnips and various other prairie roots. Horses were staked out to graze. Dogs were commanded to lie down.

Judith thought the single hackberry a godsend. She removed the papoose from her back with a sigh of relief and set it against the foot of the tree.

Soon the children came in with handfuls of roots. The four old men dealt them out to each family in equal shares. The wild vegetables were eaten raw.

Smoky Day came up with a full gourd of honey. She mixed it with water in a small bladder and passed it around. It made for a most delicious reviving drink.

A snake was discovered underfoot. It raised its head and hissed its red tongue at them all. It was a big one, some seven feet long. There were cries of fright from the children. Scarlet Plume made sure it was not a deadly rattler, only a bull snake, and then sat back to let it find its own way out of the resting place.