Scarlet Plume, Second Edition (43 page)

He climbed back on his horse, sitting in front of Ted. With Ted’s arms around his middle, he said, “Come, let us return the children. The time has at last come for me to throw my body away.”

“I’ll never let them touch you,” Judith said fiercely. “Never!” Scarlet Plume pointed west. “The white chief waits. He lives in a white lodge but a short distance away.”

2

Scarlet Plume and Judith and the children rode under elms along the top of the bluff. Flocks of crows rose cawing from barren branches. Far to the west, along the entire horizon from north to south, hung a pall of churning smoke. Here and there distant swords of flame jumped red and menacing. Soon black ashes, riding the northwest wind, began to fall around them like black snow. The defeated Indians in a last desperate act of defiance had fired the prairies.

They rode as if into the outer reaches of hell itself. The velvet wind whipped Scarlet Plume’s black pony hair. It tugged at Judith’s loose flowing gold hair.

Scarlet Plume began to sing a death song in a high, quavering voice.

A patrol of blue soldiers suddenly blocked their way. The soldiers came springing out from behind a plum thicket. They stood leaning forward, bayonets at the ready, arms tense, lean brown faces taut. Two were but boys, but the others were old men with most of their teeth missing. There was a raggle-taggle look about the patrol: day laborers wearing second-hand soldier suits. Most bizarre of all were the blue-bearded chins of the older men.

It was with a wrench of her mind that Judith recalled all the patriotic furor when Vince and the other boys in blue left St. Paul to put down the rebellion. Even the taste in her mouth was suddenly offish, as if there had been a violent change in the weather around. Scarlet Plume’s eerie death song abruptly took on new meaning.

The nearest soldier took dead aim at Scarlet Plume’s broad chest. “Will you shut up, you howlin’ banshee?”

“Wait!” Judith cried. “Don’t shoot. He’s a friendly.”

A soldier with a corporal’s stripe on his arm cried, “Biggs! Wait!” The corporal whacked Biggs’s gun down and away. “There’ll be no shootin’ now. You know the Gen’ral’s orders. ‘No undue or unnecessary violence toward the Indians.’”

Scarlet Plume quit singing. He seemed to understand what was being said. He raised his left hand in greeting. “Houw!” With his right hand he held up his bow and war shield.

“Hey, there,” the corporal cried. “Be careful with that bow now.”

Judith said quickly, “Scarlet Plume comes in peace. He wishes to give you his arms. Don’t you see? Holding up his left hand like that means peace. It is the hand nearest the heart. It has shed no blood.”

“Lady,” the corporal said, “we ain’t takin’ no chances. If the red devil comes in peace, fine and dandy. But we’ve already lost too many people, not bein’ careful.” The corporal squared his eyes at Scarlet Plume, going over him point by point. “’Pears to me he’s got a good-sized war bump, men. Like a panther even. And around panthers a man has got to be mighty careful.” The corporal gave an order in a low voice. In a flash all six bayonets were trained on Scarlet Plume’s belly. “Now, lady, I’m Corporal Deloss. Who be you, and where you from?”

Judith gave her name. “These little boys are my nephews and we’re all that’s left of Skywater.”

“Everybody murdered t’ Skywater? So that town’s wiped out too.”

“Everyone.”

“Where you been all this time? That happened way back in August, didn’t it?”

“I was taken captive by the Indians.”

“You was?”

Biggs said, “Poor woman, aww.” Biggs’s eyes turned damp like an amorous dog’s.

Judith resented Biggs’s thoughts. “Most of the terrible reports you may have heard are not true. I was not outraged,” she said thinly.

“So you warn’t raped then, eh, ma’am?” Corporal Deloss exclaimed. “Beggin’ your pardon—I meant outraged.”

“No. Not by this friendly Indian, at least. This man risked his life for me helping me get back to the white settlements. If it had not been for him, these two little nephews of mine would have died too. He found us all, wandering alone and near crazed.”

“Then this red devil here—”

“No!” Judith’s eyes turned hail-white. “What you don’t seem to understand is that it is taboo for a member of a soldiers’ lodge to molest a woman, whether she be red or black . . . or white.”

Corporal Deloss looked Scarlet Plume up and down, and thought he knew better. “Like I say, ma’am, the war bump is much more developed in some critters than in others, and if I don’t miss my guess, his is really developed.” Corporal Deloss considered again; spat tobacco juice to one side; considered some more. “Well, we’ll turn him over to the camp guard. Gen’ral Sibley will decide if he’s innocent like you say. Now tell that red devil to get down offa that horse.”

“He rides until we meet the General,” Judith said. “I’m sorry.”

Corporal Deloss’ lip curled. “Lady, I hate to say this, but the truth is, we’ve been between a shit and a sweat for nigh unto two months now and we don’t take nonsense from nobody. Including even Queen Victoria if she was here. So I say he gets down. He is now a prisoner of war. Until the military court says different.”

“Are they holding military court here?”

“They’re right now trying all the red-nigger culprits to see which one gets hung and which one gets whipped.”

Judith shivered. She knew the Dakota considered hanging the most horrible of all punishments, with whipping hardly any better. Both hanging and whipping were to the Indian mind certain sign that the whites were an inferior race. Only an inferior race would think of so degrading the human spirit and the human figure. She remembered the suddenly shut faces of the Yanktons when hanging and whipping were mentioned.

Corporal Deloss lightly pricked Scarlet Plume in the belly with his glittering bayonet. “Get down. I don’t trust ye up there.”

Before Judith could say anything, Scarlet Plume of his own accord leaped nimbly to the ground. He handed over his bow and arrows, his war shield, and his knife. He spoke in Sioux. “Give these to the chief of the Long Knives.”

“That’s better,” Corporal Deloss growled. “Much better.”

Tears bit in the corners of Judith’s eyes like stinging medicine. “Promise you’ll treat him decent? Like he did us? Really, if it had not been for him, all three of us would have died.”

“Lady, we promise nothing. He’s a prisoner of war. It’s out of our hands now.”

Biggs spat to one side. “And I still say, the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Biggs snorted. “Haven’t seen one yet that looked much like a man. They all look like they’re part woman. Narrer hands. Persnickety way of walkin’. And all of ’em as poor as skim piss. Have to follow the buffalo like a pack of wolves to make a livin’. By God, I wouldn’t trade my broken pipe for a live one.”

Judith bristled at the rough talk.

“Biggs,” Corporal Deloss said. “Biggs, don’t get your nose out of joint now. There’s a lady present.”

Biggs gave Judith an ogling roll of the eye. “Her? Ha. If you don’t dare ask her, corporal, if she thinks an Indian buck is as good as a white man, by God, I will. It’s pretty clear to me she likes her liver raw.”

Ted sat alone on Old Paint, holding the reins loosely. “Auntie, are they going to kill Scarlet Plume?”

“No, my boy.”

“The hell we ain’t,” Biggs bawled, shaking his gun over his head. “The rapin’ son of a bitch.”

“Hup, march!” Corporal Deloss commanded, pricking Scarlet Plume again with the point of his bayonet, gesturing him forward.

Scarlet Plume stepped along calmly. Four of the six soldiers formed a guard around him. Despite the bayonet pricks, Scarlet Plume kept an iron control of his face. The fringes of his buckskin shirt thrashed at every step. The single scarlet feather at the back of his head quivered.

Judith and Johnnie on Buckskin Belly and Ted on Old Paint rode quietly behind, a soldier on either side of them.

Looking ahead, Judith saw the encampment, some thousand white tents spread out like a city on the wide, high prairie, all doors facing inward, with cattle and horses and wagons in the center.

The trees along the edge of the bluff suddenly came alive, wiggling and snapping. Some of the tough oak leaves came off like apples shaken from a tree. And then a great blast of wind was upon them, almost tearing Judith and the boys from their horses. The blue soldiers had to bend at the hips to stay on their feet. Scarlet Plume scorned escape in the uproar. It was fated. On the veiling wind came the acrid smell of grass burning. Black flakes flew past like shot. The vast prairie fire was now plain to see, a rising tumult of racing flames against the evening sky, with an onrushing throw of yellowish-black smoke already leaning over the flames.

“By the Lord,” said one of the men. “I hope the Gen’ral has the sense to backfire. Or we’ll be roasted alive.”

The General had. Little groups of men with burning fagots could be seen racing along the west and north rim of the camp, starting little fires, while other men ran behind them with wet blankets, slapping out the little fires when the wind threatened to explode them toward the camp. The only flames allowed were those backing into the wind toward the oncoming red terror. Judgment day was at last at hand.

Corporal Deloss and his three guards led Scarlet Plume toward a long white tent in the middle of the encampment, while the other two soldiers led Judith and the children toward the white-refugee camp, a cluster of tents set apart by itself.

Judith watched Scarlet Plume go. Her eyes were dry, but her heart pounded. There was no good-bye. The Indian never said good-bye. As Scarlet Plume walked across the trampled dead grass, he looked more like some foreign prince attended by servile guards than what he really was, a hated prisoner of war. With choking pride she watched him diminish in size. Spumes of yellowish-gray smoke and flying black soot soon hid him from view.

A welcoming committee of three white women in the refugee camp helped Judith and the children down from their horses. The two soldiers led the horses away. The three women had young bodies but old faces.

Two of the three women had been uprooted and outraged so often they were hardly more than sodden drudges. The third woman still had some spunk left, and showed it in her hennish eyes.

“I’m Alva Axtell,” the spunky one said. “May we help you?”

“If you wish.”

Alva Axtell gave Judith’s Indian clothes a wondering look. “We’ll have to make you some clothes. The soldiers gave us some needle and thread. And some rough sacking.”

“These clothes are all right. I don’t mind them.”

Alva Axtell looked at Judith’s flowing gold hair. “Well! At least they didn’t make a decoration out of your hair for some horse’s tail.”

Judith winced. Poor Whitebone. It had been his hope that she would live forever amongst the Yanktons as their white goddess. “I’m not of a mind to wear sackcloth and ashes yet.”

“But those leather clothes smell Indian.”

“And what is that smell, pray?”

“You sound as if you don’t like being rescued.”

“True. I was brought here against my wish.”

Alva Axtell shot Judith a venomish look. It was as quick as the peck of a hen. “Then why didn’t you stay with your red pets?”

“I had the children to return.”

“Well, at least the mother in you is still alive.”

“The boys are my nephews. My own child was killed.”

“Oh.” Alva Axtell couldn’t resist giving the sleeve of Judith’s tunic a feel between her fingers for its texture. “Have you et? All we have these days is hardtack and fat pork.”

“I’ve had a great plenty, thanks. But the children haven’t.”

A circle of pale, starved faces surrounded Judith and the two boys as they stood on the beaten gray grass. There were fragments of families. Their eyes all had the wild, blanched look of having lived too long in constant dread and alarm. Not a word, not even a hiccup of compassion, came from them. The eyes of the women were especially haunting. There wasn’t a woman there but what she didn’t read into Judith, into her flesh as well as into her private thoughts, all the atrocities she herself had suffered. The women stared and stared. The two men in the crowd had the cowed look of just-castrated bulls. Most of the refugees had been given such white clothes as the soldiers had recovered from the Indians. In some cases coarse sacking had been cut into dresses for the women and horse blankets into pants for the men. There wasn’t a good fit in the lot. Most were barefoot. All were ill at ease with each other. The little children were the worst off. They reminded Judith of the terror-stilled grouse she had found in the grass below Lost Timber.

The two women drudges who made rough sacking into clothes for Ted and Johnnie crooned over them and stroked them, touching their bristly heads again and again. The two women were like sad cows, who, having lost their own calves, were yet excited that other calves had been found. Ted and Johnnie suffered them.

The raging prairie fire hit their neck of the prairie at last. The storm of smoke was suffocating, and everyone turned his back to it, a hand to the mouth, coughing. But the earlier backfiring did the trick, and presently the fire raced around them rather than over them, and went on down the river, enveloping stands of wolfberry and elm and ash, and exploding through sloughs. The bur oaks still had most of their leaves, brown, and they sometimes took fire, reddish purple, making them appear to be scarlet oaks for the moment.

Over in the circle of tepees where the captured Sioux were under guard, the death song of the braves and the lamentations of the squaws filled the black evening sky with a wild, raw cacophony. The little Sioux children skirled around and through the quarters of the white soldiers, shrilling, “Sibilee! Sibilee!” To them it was all great fun.

When Ted and Johnnie were fed at last, Judith managed to nibble down a piece of hardtack. It was like eating a shingle. It took a tin of river water to get it down.

She made a bed for herself on the bare ground, Ted and Johnnie on either side of her, a smelly red-and-black horse blanket over them for covering.

A man spoke in the dark. “We will make them pay the forfeit with their lives yet, you can bet your sweet life on that.”