The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (21 page)

We crawled along, an Indian village on the move, chief in front and everybody hopping from side to side seizing on valuables. It was pathetic but catching. I don’t know why, but found things are
better than articles you acquire by honest effort; they’re more prized. If my hands hadn’t been laced up high, I could have collected enough to open a store. It wouldn’t have had any customers, though; there was enough on the ground for all.

The farther we got, the slower we went, because of the load these vultures took on. And right here I want to say a word for that chief. I’ve written a lot about how reduced the Pawnees were, but I’d make a poor book if I didn’t give credit where it was due. This chief wasn’t any chief by accident. He was the sharpest-eyed fellow in the tribe; some said he was the fastest runner, too. And his age, as nearly as I got it, was fifty-seven. One reason I mention this is because he was the first man there to pounce on something of real value. We hadn’t filed out on the trail two minutes before he darted to one side and came up with the remainders of a very nice striped silk umbrella, with only a few rents of any size and a couple or three spokes sticking out. Moreover, he knew exactly what to do with it. The day had turned cloudy cool, but he got the umbrella up, after sticking himself in the eye with a spoke, and sailed up the road as pleased as a girl with her first party gown. Still and all, conditions weren’t perfect. The main trouble was, he had his chief’s bundle under one arm, and the umbrella kept folding up and hitting him over the head, so he stumbled and fell in the bushes now and then, since he was more or less proceeding blind, but he stuck to it like a man, weaving back and forth, flapping like a bird, and having a very painful time altogether. Everybody admired him, he had got so involved.

Dead cattle were strewn along here thick enough to walk on like steppingstones. And we came to mounds of thrown-out beans and bacon and flour, and every utensil you could name, including pots and pans and a ten-gallon water cask. I wondered how much had come from our train, up there ahead, and how much from others. The first pile of bacon we came on, these potbellied Indians hove to and organized a feast. It wasn’t more than ten o’clock in the morning, but they dug in as if they hadn’t eaten for a week. The bacon was spoiled to the point where it was kind of slippery, and
the stench would have frightened a polecat, but that made no difference to these fellows. They grabbed up pieces—soapy lumps, rather—and stuffed them in, and a good many ate the beans, entirely raw. I’ve seen some vomity sights among Indians since, particularly with the Utes, which live on a caterpillar mash, and the Diggers, which will eat anything as long as it’s filthy, but these Pawnees fighting the flies for that bacon topped everything.

Once they were filled, they lolled awhile in the shade; then we went on again, picking up as before. The women were anxious to find cloth, and the men did a fair amount of arguing over harness. But they all decorated themselves in some way. I saw one woman wriggle into a copper band off a keg, to make a nice belt, though it seemed to pinch her and made her bulge out above and below, and the tallest brave of the bunch made a tolerably good pendant out of a teething ring. They were the simple-mindedest fools I ever met, and I swore I’d be rid of them soon. But it wasn’t so easy. Without seeming to, they watched me. By and by, this Afraid of His Horse, who I got chummy with when he wasn’t cuffing me, let out that they hoped to trade me for horses.

“Don’t count on it,” I said, exasperated almost to death by the bugs that lit in places where I couldn’t get them with my hands tied. Nearly everybody else, except some of the nicer-looking women, had that rancid fat rubbed on, but I’d rather had the bugs any day.

“Wagons people pay.”

“I doubt it. They’re overstocked on boys, and horses are pretty scarce. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“Four horses, possible with five.”

“Not one red cent. If I know my father, he isn’t the kind to throw away money on a boy when he can buy a horse.”

“Then maybe burned at stakes.”

I changed my tune when he said this, but I was so cocksure, I thought he was bluffing. Later on I knew better. I never got used to the contrary ways of these Indians; their thinking was just the opposite of ours.

For instance, when I had to go to the outhouse, they sent a young
girl along as a sentinel. They said she was some kind of chief’s daughter, but that’s what Indians always say. Anyhow, this girl was called Pretty Walker, about two years younger than me, not ratty-looking like the others. I complained so much about being trussed up, they finally removed the harness and fixed my feet again. And this time I could take steps about a foot and a half long. I don’t know which was worse—having my hands up all day or crow-hopping along like a quail protecting its eggs. But as I said, this girl Pretty Walker left the trail with me when I had to go out, and we didn’t make it at all.

I told her to stay behind a tree.

She shook her head and pointed to my feet.

“I couldn’t undo these thongs in a month of Sundays,” I told her.

But it wasn’t any use; she couldn’t understand a word. No matter how clear I pronounced things, nor how loud I hollered, she never caught on. She was more than ordinarily thickheaded even for a Pawnee. What’s more, she had the audacity to throw some of that Indian talk, which sounded like cocking a rifle, at me. She was pretty brash; I’d like to have seen her taken down a peg.

“You’ll have to shove along a way, otherwise we’re stuck,” I said, but she only smiled and said approximately, “Moo-wah-rick-tok-goo-sah,” which I took to mean, in a general sense, no.

Finally, after a good deal of palavering, I got her to stand behind a tree, and then things went better. Afterwards, I found out that Indians nearly all set a pretty young girl to watch a prisoner like that, the idea being that the braves are too dignified and the squaws are too busy doing the braves’ work. Also, a young girl is supposed to kind of lure a prisoner from
trying
to escape, but I didn’t understand this part.

Certainly it didn’t work with me. The minute I was behind
my
tree, I tackled those rawhide straps as fast as I could. It was no good. The skunks had tied them and wet them, so that they’d drawn up like fiddle strings.

When I got back out, she smiled again—she had very nice white even teeth, so I imagined she was as much of a bore with the willow
twig as Jenny was with the brush—and said on the order of “Na-noh-kik-tik-seh-goony-la.” Then I realized she was suggesting I’d tried to escape, after more or less giving my word. I turned red and got angry. It was exactly the style of these Indians; they wouldn’t trust their own mothers. It’s the way they’re taught; they haven’t got the morals of a coyote.

That evening when we made camp, I struck up an acquaintance with a boy of my own age named, as they said, Shorter than the Crane. He was playing with a brown-and-white-spotted puppy and didn’t mind when I stopped to pet it. I had just finished hunting firewood with the women. Shorter seemed fond of the dog, and affectionate toward him, and I began to think a little better of the tribe, or at least the young ones. This pup was frisky and cute; he made me homesick for Sam. We threw some sticks, which he failed to bring back, and told him to sit up, which missed connections, and nudged him to shake hands, which he ignored, and then we tried to balance a piece of meat on his nose, but he ate it. He was a real nice pup, and could likely have been trained, if anybody had had thirty or forty years to lay aside for the job. Shorter had patience with his stupidness; he took him in his arms and cuddled him, and was as crazy about him as any boy with a dog.

Then an old squaw who had got a fire going grunted something, and the boy stood up and took the pup and hung it over the flames, holding it by the tail. The puppy twisted and cried out, very shrill and piercing, while the boy and the squaw carried on a conversation. Then, when it was dead and all the hair burned off, they gutted it and put it in the pot with the other things for supper. Feeling uneasy in my stomach, I went over in the weeds for a while.

It was all I needed. I made up my mind to get away that night if I had to murder everybody in the tribe, including Pretty Walker. These weren’t humans, they were monsters. When it came time to eat, I poked in the kettle, then fished out a bird—a quail or a partridge—and when nobody was watching, put it on a stick and roasted away the stew smell. I could have gone without eating if I’d wanted to, but I was hungry.

Before the sun fell below the prairie horizon, both women and boys set fish traps—woven baskets—and night lines for catfish in a stream nearby. I went down and watched them, hoping somebody would lose his footing and start to drown, so I could throw them a rock. But I hadn’t any luck; they were as nimble-footed as a goat. They placed these woven baskets in little places below falls and the like, where leaping trout would fall back, as they do. Some of the boys fished with fiber lines and hooks of thorn or wishbone, using worms or bits of rag for bait. Under other conditions, I might have joined in, but I couldn’t see any fun to these people now. So after a while I went to bed, in the same wigwam with the old fellow that had caught me. I couldn’t exactly make out how I stood. I believed, now, that Afraid of His Horse was telling the truth about trading me for horses, but there was a question about who owned me, whether the first man or the tribe. Generally speaking, things like food and necessaries were shared, but they had private property, too. So I figured he might get his pick of the horses.

The only thing you could recommend about this collection of camp-following hyenas was their tents, or wigwams. They were nearly eighteen feet high, shaped like a cone, twelve feet across at the bottom, and held upright by straight poles called lodge poles, which were drawn together at the top, leaving a hole for smoke to get through. Over the lodge poles they had tanned buffalo robes stitched together to form one big airtight skin. A fire was made on some raised ground in the center, and what smoke couldn’t get out swirled around and made things tough for the mosquitoes. It also made things tough for the sleepers, because if it was a windy day when the draft didn’t work, they lay on their robes and spent their time sneezing and coughing. What between the bugs singing in a rage for blood and the people suffocating, it made a very melodious night. Still and all, these wigwams were workable dwellings, roomy and rainproof, and if it wasn’t for the odorous nature of the residents, a person could live inside in comfort. They were pretty on the outside, too, some of them. A number of Indians that seemed to have more energy than the others had decorated the hides with
paintings, very spidery and graceful, of hunting scenes—mounted braves shooting arrows into buffalo, deer running, and things like that. They were handsome, and would have made a nice decoration on the wall of a library or study back in Louisville.

Going to bed, I noticed two more buffalo robes inside, and wondered who the new sleepers were. This old rascal who’d grabbed me, named Sick from Blackberries, had a wife once, according to what Afraid of His Horse told me, but she cavorted with somebody else when Sick was off hunting, so they gave her a perfectly straightforward trial, but she was guilty, right enough, and had a papoose to prove it, so they cut off her nose. Since then, she and Sick had been pouting at each other, Sick because he had another mouth to feed that he hadn’t sent for, and she because she missed her nose, which seemed natural. Just the same, she was required by law to fix his meals, and did, though he had a stomach-ache most of the time, so everybody figured she was poisoning him.

Anyhow, I turned in, ready to put my escape plan into action. My feet still were tied with drawn-up thongs, and Sick had fastened them to a lodge pole, but I figured I’d pretend sleep and steal his knife sometime in the night. After that, I could cut loose, slit the tent again and hike out of there. I’d get back on the trail, which was only a few hundred yards away, and follow forward until I hit the right camp this time. It was a good program.

But I had a pesky hard time to keep from going to sleep. Outside I could hear the summer night sounds, cicadas, locusts, crickets and such, and the stream made a soft rustling that lulled you so you could hardly hold your eyes open. Way off somewhere I heard a hoot owl going, then a wind came up and made a kind of song in the grasses. Tired like that, it was more than I could stand.

Next thing I knew I heard voices and two more Indians were in the wigwam. Sick with Blackberries was sitting up talking with them. They were young, lean fellows, and it was easy to see they’d had some kind of adventure. They were stark-naked except for a knife string and flap, and they’d thrown a couple of wolfskins to one side. I didn’t understand at all, particularly since one of the men had a
red, bleeding furrow alongside of his head and the other had hurt his ankle. They’d been up to something. And all of a sudden they took it out on me. Saying a word I’d come to recognize as “white” or “paleface,” they began to kick and beat me. I covered my head with my arms, but they yanked them away and slapped me hard several times. Then they kicked me in the ribs and stomach until I got dizzy and wasn’t wholly conscious for a few minutes.

When I got back my senses, they had finished tending their injuries and were on their way to bed. I lay as far removed as I could, in a kind of corner, sore and miserable and homesick. I wanted my mother to tell these mean dogs where to head in—she could have done it better than anybody—and I wondered if Sam was happy at the farmer’s. I cried a little. Then, after a while, I went to sleep and dreamed it had all been a dream—we were home peaceful and safe, my father was off for the Marine Hospital, my mother was in the back yard chiding Aunt Kitty, Sam was eating a pair of linen drawers off the line, and I was up in the cool summer morning, barefoot in the dust, headed for Herbert Swann’s.

Several days ran by, with me watching for a chance to get away. But these Pawnees were crafty about some things. So far, they’d made no motions to trade me, and I was beginning to wonder what was up. At night, I had to sleep with the old man and the two marauders; in the daytime I worked alongside the women, with Pretty Walker close at hand.