The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (22 page)

You couldn’t say we were friends, but we had an understanding. As long as I didn’t make any move to escape, we jollied together and tried to talk with the Indian words I was learning. Once in a while we played games with the others, but my heart wasn’t really in it. After the business of the puppy, I wouldn’t have trusted this bunch as far as you could throw a buffalo. Sometimes in the afternoons, after a morning scavenging the trail, the women would sew garments and the men smoked something called “Kinek-Kinek,” out of red stone pipes. For a short space, or until the effect wore off and they returned to their natural state, it seemed to make them less ornery, and not quite so cautious. I kept my eyes peeled and sure enough, on the seventh or eighth day, I got what I was looking for—a knife, and a beauty, too. It was a silver-mounted bowie, in a case, lying beside the trail. When I spied it shining in the bushes, I was walking near Afraid of His Horse and in front of the girl, with my feet tied to a line. I didn’t waste a second but pretended to stumble on a rock and fell headlong, covering it with my body. And when I got up, grumbling and brushing myself off, I had it safely inside my waist. Now all I had to do was get away from the band,
cut loose, and shinny up the trail toward the train. It was rumbling along somewhere ahead, no telling how far.

But I didn’t get a chance all that day, and not that night, either. One bad move in the tent with those devils and I’d never get another whack at it; I knew that well enough. So I had to bite down on my anxiousness and wait, but I do believe that’s the worst amusement on earth, if you’ve got something to do at the end. I once read in a Schoolbook how some people in India manage to put in time resting in a kind of trance, brain perfectly empty, nothing stirring at all, but by and by the article let out that they were standing on their heads. I lost interest; it seemed extreme, somehow. Besides, it wouldn’t have won favor in the important places like railroad depots, so what practical use was it?

The first thing you knew, the tribe ate so many beans and other scooped-up truck they had to knock off a day to recover. A lot of these western tribes had stationary summer lodges as well as winter lodges, but this gang mostly just marched along, breaking camp when an area got thinned down on things to steal or beg, so kept moving nearly all the time. But today we loafed around, the women catching up on chores, the men either asleep or crawling off for a quiet vomit—because the beans and bacon had been so wormy even the birds passed them up—and the children playing the usual games, which were an imitation of adult meanness of some kind: clubbing dogs, shooting toy bows or spears, using ropes, and the like. By and large, they were an unusually woodenheaded collection, and had names to match. The biggest boy in our bunch of about six was called, “Luh-sah-cov-re-culla-ha,” meaning “Particular as to the Time of Day,” but the name was such a stumper, I didn’t call him very often.

The children looked on me as a novelty, a kind of slave-prisoner, and had fun snarling up my feet with a shove and making me fall. Other times, they let me join in, mainly to laugh at my clumsy arrow-shooting and such. Well, I didn’t mind being the tribe jackass as long as I had hopes of advancement.

We played in a rocky stream bed with steep mudbanks on then
sides, and I edged farther and farther away from camp. Shooting the arrows, throwing the spears, me hopping along like a mother bird leading intruders away from chicks, we went around a bend and out of earshot, I judged, of the main tribe of braves and squaws.

About the only one that didn’t take joy in tormenting me was Pretty Walker, so I’d begun to have an idea she might let me escape after all. She wasn’t any bad-looking girl, for an Indian. She kept her black hair coiled in two long pigtails, and her skin was smooth, not dark and pitted the way some were. In addition to that, she was clean; she kept so by bathing. I knew it for a fact because she once slipped out of her hide blouse and skirt and splashed in the river right before me. Stripped down that way, she didn’t look as young as I thought, but rounder, like Jennie, and it was disgusting to see anybody so proud of growing up like that, ahead of other children. She didn’t have any more modesty than my goat Sam.

The girl’s most noticeable trait was the way she looked at you. People generally are shy or scared of each other, I’ve observed; and no matter how friendly they seem, their eyes always change a little if you peer at them close, then pull down some shutters in back. This is maybe because everybody wants to show themselves in a particular kind of way, the person they’d like to be, and whatever they say is put forward carefully to make up the picture. But not this Pretty Walker. She looked clear into you and saw everything you felt, so you could loosen up and be comfortable. She said my name in two parts, “Jay-mee” and I could have been sore about it, but wasn’t. Just the same, she was an enemy, appointed by the tribe, and I knew where she stood. Most always. At other times, her hazel-colored eyes, deep as a well with no bottom, seemed waiting for a signal.

We played tie-’em-up, with Particular as to the Time of Day taking the lead. He was the noisiest Indian I ever met, then or later, bossy and cruel and loud. He tied everybody up, and I could have got loose but didn’t try hard on purpose. It was my game; I had suggested it, and the idea was to keep him happy with it for a
while. We took turns, and sure enough, blown up with brag as he was, I got mine. I tied the four boys, working just as fast as I could, smiling and talking all the time, and when I came to Pretty Walker she shook her head, no.

“Get loose,” I said to Particular, and gave him a push backwards. There wasn’t a one of them that could have fought free in less than an hour; I’d have bet any money on it.

Pretty Walker stood looking on, with a puzzled frown. Grinning, now, I flashed out the bowie and cut the thongs between my feet.

It isn’t easy for an Indian to turn pale, but she did, after which she ripped back her bodice with both hands and closed her eyes-showing me where to plunge the knife.

“Hurry up,” I said, and seized her by the arm.

For about two minutes, she fought like a wildcat, until I got her down on the ground and held her, but I had the feeling she was doing her duty, and not really meaning it.

“Come on, you fool,” I said, and pulled her up roughly. This time she was ready to go, and we crept and ran as silent as we could up the creek and out of sight. The last thing I heard was Particular howling like a coyote for his father, but his father was two miles off and upwind at that. So I just let him howl; it sounded kind of meloderous.

I estimated we’d have an hour’s start, but I hadn’t counted on the weather. We hadn’t been going ten minutes before it began to pour rain. It was warm—I didn’t mind it—but it came down so thick you couldn’t tell where you were going. This was about the worst luck I’d had since I left home, and nearly all my luck had been sour, or so I felt right now. As soon as the creek bank shallowed, I got us out of these rocks and turned in the direction the trail ought to be. We picked a path in the grasses and pushed, and how it did rain and lightning and thunder! But it was good for one thing—in this sop we wouldn’t leave any more track than a snake, nor be easier to find. After a mile or so, when it hadn’t slackened any, I figured we could find shelter without running much risk. One thing, we didn’t want to overshoot the trail in the downpour, and besides,
we were beat out. In a little hollow I found scrub pine growing and cut branches with my knife to make a lean-to. It was perfectly snug when we crawled in; I’d laid the branches over each other in such a way that the water poured off, exactly as we used to do on the riverbank back home. We were nice and dry, except on the ground.

It was interesting to be there with this girl who wouldn’t have been considered bad-looking back home, if she was white. But as far as conversation went, she was a total loss; she was worse than Afraid of His Horse. She hadn’t learned only a few words and they didn’t seem to fit in somehow.

“Are you sorry you came?” I said.

“Jay-mee.”

“We ought to catch the wagon train tomorrow, if we have any luck.”

“More whiskey.”

I figured this was something she’d heard the men say, and paid no attention. It was hard to puzzle out how much she knew. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, so I decided to go on a way, no matter how ridiculous it sounded. There was a chance she might get the hang of it.

“My father will take you in and adopt you, if you behave yourself.”

“Indians stink.”

I couldn’t think up a good argument, although she herself didn’t have any bug fat on; I’d noticed that from the start. The trouble was that, so far, she was only repeating odd words they’d picked up from white men, and a low grade of white man at that. But she was enjoying it—I could tell from the way her eyes and teeth gleamed in the cloudy dark.

“We’ll find the trail and camp just off it tonight, then go up fast tomorrow.”

“Dirty horse thieves.”

“You won’t have to work so hard among white people.”

“How about it?”

“We’ll find gold in California, and all be rich.”

“Come on, honey.”

I could see she was running out of words, so I thought I’d take one more whack at it and give up for the day. It would be foolish to tire her out; she might get discouraged. Neither had she done too bad on the first attempt—she was coming along fine.

“It’s eased off,” I said, sticking my head out. “We’d better make up some time.”

“Go to bed plenty cloth and beads.”

It couldn’t have been more than noon, so I knew she was overstrained, and no wonder, on her very first lesson.

“Come along.” I took her by the hand.

“Jay-mee dirty horse thieves more whiskey.”

We went out in the drizzle and headed for the trail. Considering her foundation, I was very well satisfied with her progress. There were half a dozen girls in Louisville to my knowledge that couldn’t have done anywhere near so well. She wasn’t any slouch, for an Indian.

We angled toward the trail, or where I thought it was, and sure enough, we struck it after two hours of beating bushes that reached clear to our necks at times. I didn’t care for them; it was too easy to step on a snake. It rained off and on, too, coming down in sheets after a lull that made you think it was over. The water hit you so hard it seemed to come right on through the skin. I don’t recollect when I was ever so wet before, even in swimming.

When we got to the trail, I was careful not to strike right up. If I knew that tribe, they’d fan out and cover every bet, and the trail back to the train was the best of all. So we went along, parallel, about a hundred yards off, creeping very cautious and quiet. It was lucky we did, for in a while we heard voices and dogs barking, and there they came, about twenty of them, tracking in the wagon ruts, sicking the dogs and looking in a poison bad humor, what with the rain and the inconvenience. I recognized Sick from Blackberries, and Afraid of His Horse, as well as several others; they were that close.

We crouched behind a bush and watched, trying to keep from
breathing. For a minute I was all a-tremble for fear the dogs might spot us, but it was too wet. Besides, I doubt if they could smell much outside their own precinct; whatever was around, unless it was something as hearty as a skunk, would be drowned out by the bug fat and by the braves’ natural stink, which laid over everything in range, and had a kind of paralyzing effect on the nose. So they passed on, grunting, motioning, making little darting runs from side to side of the trail, bending over low. Now and then they fetched the dogs a kick, and it seemed to put them in cheerier spirits.

“They’re going on by,” I said, holding the girl’s shoulder to keep her from getting up too fast. One of those buzzards
might
just look back and ruin everything.

Except to whisper “More whiskey,” which didn’t seem to cover the case, she didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was having fun seeing the tribe outwitted. I hate to say so, but if this Pretty Walker had been a boy, and, of course, white, she would have been downright companionable. There was something enjoyable about her, of a sort I’d never noticed in Herbert Swann. She made you feel
warm
, somehow.

It was along toward four-thirty now, and getting dark, what with the rain and the clouded-over sky, so we had to hole up. It was colder, too. I hoped to go to bed early and be up around midnight, to get a good jump while the tribe still slept. In spite of some night marauding they do—horse-stealing, camp-raiding and such—an Indian isn’t any account before dawn, on account of the spirits. When the dark closes down, and the spirits begin to whisk around, he prefers to crawl in his wigwam till things blow over. Dawn is his great time; that’s when he attacks, and I wanted to be home long before then.

For another hour we followed beside the trail, then I said, “We’ve got to fix up a shelter—sleep,” and did “sleep” in the sign language that all the tribes understand—hands folded alongside, the head tilted over. I figured I was in for a number of references to whiskey with a few sidelights on horse thieves, but she caught on right away.
What’s more, she grabbed my arm and pointed with great excitement in a direction just right of the trail ahead.

She began to pull me along, and, after a bit I gave in, she seemed so positive she was right. In about twenty minutes we came onto a beautiful fast-running stream, green and with smooth white stones in the middle, and beyond it was a clearing of pasture grass and upwards of fifteen wigwams. I dropped like a shot and pulled her down with me. But she kept jabbering and pointing and insisting, the way women do, so I rose up again to have another look. Well, I thought, maybe she’s right—nobody appears to be around.

Nothing troublesome in sight, no children playing near the stream, nobody fishing, no women working, no smoke coming from the tepees. This was one of those villages that Indians left to go hunting, then.

“They come back?” I said, not really expecting an answer.

“No, no, no, no.” She took a stick and made some marks in the mud so that I could get the idea. First she made a straight line:
that I finally saw was the horizon, then a round globe:
that was the sun; and then she made thirty marks in a row and pointed several times at the sun.