Plenty Proud

by Jeanie P Johnson

  It was early evening, and she envisioned reaching her home to find the windows glowing with light, smoke coming out of the chimney stack, and the aroma of someone cooking the evening meal. When she knocked on the door, her father and brother would greet her and be so surprised that she had survived the avalanche. Then they would be a happy family again. That thought kept one foot following another, until she reached the small house she had grown up in.

  Only it wasn’t what she had expected. The windows were still shuttered, the way they had left them, and there was no smoke, or signs of life coming from the house. Her throat ached, as tears threatened to spill. Maybe her father and brother never made it out after all, and they were eaten by wild animal like Griz suggested. She suddenly felt exhausted and wondered if she could make the last few steps that would bring her to the front door.

  When she reached the door, there was a paper tacked to it. It was too dark to read, so she folded it up and put it in the pocket on her dress. She hoped it was a note from either her brother or father, telling her where they were, or someone else who knew what had happened to her family. She retrieved the key to the house from under a potted plant sitting on the front step. It had been a year since she had entered that familiar door, and she couldn’t wait to get inside.

  The house was dark, because all the windows were shuttered, but she knew how to find her way to the kitchen where matches were kept to light the wood cook stove. There was an oil lamp on the kitchen table. She hoped there was still oil in it. Mackenzie struck the match, illuminating the familiar room. She walked to the table and lit the lamp, which flared up, smoking at first until she turned down the wick. Then she slumped into one of the chairs at the table and caught her breath, slowly looking at the welcoming sight of the kitchen. She was finally home! She could barely believe it.

  After sitting and just staring around her, taking in the sight of her surroundings that she had missed so much the whole time she was away, she finally brought the note out of her pocket and began reading it in the light of the lamp. When she saw what it said, she gasped. She wanted to burn the piece of paper, but she knew it wouldn’t change anything. Her head fell onto the table on top of the note, and her tears began to smear the ink. It couldn’t be true! She was certain her father owned their house. He had built it himself. Only the paper wouldn’t lie. He must have taken out a loan on the house to fund his way to where he had been trapping. Once her mother died, she had stopped paying on the loan, and then she and Caleb had joined their father. No one had been paying on the loan for a year, and the notice was an eviction notice, telling them the house would be put up for sale if the full amount was not paid within six months. According to the date on the notice, the six months was almost up. Mackenzie had no place to live, and no money, to pay the loan in full or even in part. She wondered how much her buffalo robes would sell for, but she didn’t think it would be enough to satisfy the loan.

  Mackenzie picked up the lamp and dragged herself to her bedroom. The quilts smelled dusty, but it didn’t bother her. She had slept in worst places than this over the last year. This was heaven compared to Griz’s cabin, or sleeping in a Tepee on the ground. She didn’t even feel like looking for some food to eat. She was sure there was dried rice or beans that had been left behind, which she could cook. Only she had gone without food for so long, her stomach had shrunk, and she felt more tired than hungry at the moment. She fell upon the bed, not taking off her dress. Now her tears spilled out again, and her whole body shook.

  She was not only crying for the loss of her childhood home, but she was crying for everything that had happened to her since the avalanche. Had she known this was going to happen, she never would have left Plenty Proud. Only she believed it was too late to go back to him now. Even if she did, he may not want her back, for taking off the way she did. She didn’t even know if Eagle Eye was even still alive. There was nothing for her here and nothing for her in that Sioux village either. She would be homeless and alone. She blew out the lamp and closed her eyes. She might as well just die and get it over with, she thought before sleep overtook her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Plenty Proud breathed in the burning pine needles. His skin was covered in white clay. His chanting, to bring on a vision echoed against the walls of the cave he had chosen. It was the second night, after his purification that he had been praying to Wakan-Tanka for a vision. His head felt light from having no food for the last several days, and his body seemed to feel separated from his head. He couldn’t even feel it now. His eyes remained closed as he lifted his face towards the roof of the cave, continuing his chants. Then he seemed to be flying away. He was like an eagle soaring up out of the cave, following the river. He spotted a canoe. Two people rode in it, and he saw the red hair of a woman. He knew it must be Firelight. The brave in the canoe must be himself. It must mean that he was to return Firelight to her home.

  A disappointment overtook him, but then the scene changed. He saw himself in his tepee holding a baby. He looked over to see Firelight also holding a baby. He knew the child must belong to him because of its dark skin. Was it a sign that he had taken Firelight for his wife and she had given him two children? He was confused. If he was to take her down the river, how did she end up becoming his wife? He didn’t know what the Gods were trying to tell him.

  Plenty Proud fell into a deep sleep. When he woke, the sun was streaming into the opening of the cave. His fire was out, and he felt chilled and stiff. He pulled himself up off the floor of the cave, contemplating his vision, if it was a vision. It did not make sense to him. He felt bad for leaving Firelight without saying goodbye. He hoped she would forgive him and understand. He hoped Eagle Eye was taking good care of her, only now he didn’t know what to tell her when he returned.

  He went to the river and drank. He had had little water during his fast, and none during his vision quest. Then he slid into the water and washed the white clay off of his body. Afterwards, he headed to his family’s tepee, eager to see Firelight again.

  It was early morning, but everyone was up going about their daily chores. The buffalo hides were still being fleshed out and tanned. Different parts of the buffalo were being made into useful items for the tribe. The braves were working on making new arrows and strings for their bows. Everyone seemed to be occupying themselves with some sort of task. He wasn’t sure if Firelight would be out in the village helping or not.

  When he looked in the Tepee, it was empty. Then he went searching for his mother, but instead, ran into Little Bird.

  “Have you seen Firelight?” he asked her. He noticed she had a perplexing look on her face, and he was trying to figure out what it meant.

  “She is not here,” Little Bird told him. “Eagle Eye took her in his canoe back to her home. She said not to be angry. She said she loved you, but she could not become your wife. She said not to be upset at Eagle Eye because she had persuaded him to take her.”

  Plenty Proud stood still, staring at Little Bird, not wanting to believe her words. Part of his vision became clear. The brave in the canoe had not been him after all, it had been Eagle Eye. The Gods had shown him that Firelight and Eagle Eye had left and were going down the river, but what of the second part of the vision? What could it possible mean, if Eagle Eye had taken Firelight back to Missouri?

  “When did they leave?” Plenty Proud asked, trying to hold his temper.

  “The same night you went to purify yourself for your vision quest.” Little Bird did not like the look of anger in Plenty Proud’s eyes.

  “I suppose it is too late to try and catch up with them,” he muttered. “I will never forgive Eagle Eye for this!”

  “Firelight begged me to make you understand. She said not to be angry with Eagle Eye. She said she didn’t think she could be a good Indian wife and said it was best for you to choose me. She worried she could not make you happy, and you would regret asking her to become your wife.”

  Plenty Proud glanced at Little Bird, seeing the love
in her eyes, mixed with fear. He felt sorry for her. None of this was her fault. She had expected to come to his village and become his wife. At the moment he was not in the mood to think about it, though.

  “Firelight is the only woman I can love,” he moaned. Then he ran from her, whistled for Fly Away, and leaped upon his back. He rode at top speed away from the village, crying out in anguish, until Fly Away could no longer keep up the speed. Then he fell from Fly Away’s back, burying himself in the tall grass and began to weep. How could he live without Firelight by his side?

  He was weak from not eating, and he fell asleep as the tall grass waved around him. It wasn’t until his father lifted him up and put him back on his horse that Plenty Proud opened his eyes. His father handed him a corn cake and smiled sadly at him.

  “You must forget the white girl. She was a wise person. She knew she could not fit into your life the way you wished she could. Little Bird tells of her generous nature, wishing Little Bird happiness with you. Little Bird said the white girl wanted you to be happy. She must have loved you very much, but now you must go on with your life.”

  “I will never be happy again,” Plenty Proud grumbled.

  “Yet it is your duty to take a wife. If the one you love is not here to become your wife, take another that loves you just as much.”

  “Not until I can talk to Eagle Eye,” Plenty Proud told him. “I want to make sure Firelight has no intentions to return to me. I saw a vision, but I wasn’t sure what it meant.”

  “Very well, but if Firelight does not return with Eagle Eye, you must follow through with taking Little Bird as your wife, and forget about the white girl. Even if she returned, it would not be safe if the white man discovered she was here. The last time one of our braves took a white girl from a wagon train, the soldiers came and threatened all the white army to come down on our tribe and destroy us. He had to return the girl to save our tribe.”

  “Only Firelight has not been captured. If she comes back, it would be willingly,” Plenty Proud pointed out.

  For the next several days, Plenty Proud spent time away from the village hunting, only not shooting anything even when he spotted it. He would not come back until after dark, crawling under his buffalo robe, remembering his time spent there with Firelight. He didn’t want to look into Little Bird’s sad eyes, knowing she wished he would just forget about Firelight and ask her to become his wife. Then he would rise early, before anyone else woke up, even before the sun rose to start the day, and would be off again.

  If he got too hungry, he would shoot a rabbit or small animal and eat it, spending long hours merely contemplating on what his life would bring him. Mostly, he thought of the fire-headed girl with the emerald green eyes that haunted his days and nights. He had known her so briefly, and yet, he felt like he had known her his whole lifetime. She felt a part of him, and he didn’t know how he was going to let go of her and his dashed dreams of their future together.

  He tried to figure out what the vision meant, but it always eluded him. He was so angry at Eagle Eye for taking his only true love from him, that he vowed to end their friendship when he returned to the village. He felt he could never be happy again if Firelight didn’t come back.

  It was a week later, when Plenty Proud saw someone at a distance, coming towards the village. The person walked slowly, stopping every so often, as though he needed to catch his breath. He was bent and limped as he walked. Plenty Proud thought it to be an old man, so he rode out to help the traveler. When he got closer, he drew in his breath in surprise. It was not an old man. It was Eagle Eye, only he was thin and gaunt, and Plenty Proud noticed he could barely walk.

  In spite of his anger with Eagle Eye, Plenty Proud helped him up on the back of Fly Away and walked beside the horse back to the village.

  “Why didn’t you return in your canoe?” Plenty Proud asked. “Where is Firelight?”

  “The canoe was lost in a storm. I don’t know where Firelight is,” he answered, barely able to talk.

  Plenty Proud gasped. “Was she drowned?”

  Eagle Eye shook his head. “No, we both swam to shore, only later…” he didn’t finish as he slumped over the horse’s neck.

  Plenty Proud brought Eagle Eye to his own tepee. Eagle Eye lived alone after his father was killed during a buffalo hunt, and his mother decided to go back to her own clan. Plenty Proud laid his friend out on the buffalo robes, gave him a drink of water from the skin next to his bed, and then went for the medicine man.

  The medicine man looked closely at Eagle eye. “He needs food and water,” he told Plenty Proud. “He needs rest. I will shake the sacred rattle to break up bad energy and make his heart beat return to normal. You beat the drum to help Eagle Eye’s heart beat correctly again.”

  Plenty Proud picked up a small drum and started beating it in the rhythm of his own heart, wishing his friend back to normal health, if for nothing else but to discover what happened to Firelight. He would deal with his anger at Eagle Eye later, he decided.

  For three days, Eagle Eye lay listless, not speaking and barely opening his eyes, when Little Bird fed him. Both Plenty Proud and Little Bird attended to Eagle eye, trying to help him regain his health. Plenty Proud could see bruises on Eagle Eyes face and arms. He wondered what his friend had been through. He began to admire the way Little Bird cared for Eagle Eye, and his feelings for her softened. He was able to witness her good traits as she cared for his friend, and appreciate her beauty more, only in the back of his mind, Firelight overshadowed it all.

  After sleeping almost the whole three days, as he recovered, Eagle Eye finally started to get his strength back. He appreciated the help Little Bird and Plenty Proud was giving him. He dreaded having to tell Plenty Proud what happened, but eventually, it would have to be done, so he braced himself to face Plenty Proud’s anger at him. Not only had he taken Firelight down the river before Plenty Proud finished his vision quest, but he had not watched over Firelight the way he had promised he would do. He felt he was a failure as a friend and a brave.

  At last, when Plenty Proud saw that Eagle Eye was well enough to speak, he asked him the inexplicable question as to what happened to both Eagle Eye and Firelight. He was trying to prepare himself for the worst.

  Eagle Eye began explaining how Firelight had begged him to take her down the river, because she didn’t think that Plenty Proud actually loved her, and even if he did, she felt she was not able to become an Indian wife. She also did not want to make it any harder to leave him than it already was. He described the beginning of their trip and the storm, and how the canoe had washed away and they were searching for it, or thinking of turning back.

  “I left Firelight to go hunt, and she told me she would follow the shore to look for the canoe while I was away. When I got back I was to pack up our belongings, and follow her tracks to catch up with her. While I was out hunting, there were some white military men riding through the area and they spotted me. They wanted to know why I had strayed so far from Indian Territory. I explained I was helping a white girl get back to Missouri. Only they did not believe me. I took them to our camp to show them, but when they saw that there wasn’t a white girl at our camp, they took me captive.

  “They beat me and threatened to hang me, but I managed to escape. Only by the time I got back to the camp, it was no longer there. Firelight had taken everything, thinking something must have happened to me. She had given me her gun to hunt with, but the white soldiers took it away from me. I followed her tracks along the shore, hoping to catch up with her. Then I came upon a place where I knew she had found the canoe. I could see where she had pushed it into the water. It appeared that she had decided to go down the river on her own.

  “I had no way of following her then, so I headed back to our village, only I had to walk and it was difficult because of the beating I had received. I had no supplies or the gun to hunt with. They had also taken my knife, so I had no way to start a fire or to make a bow and arrows. I ate what I could find,
as I headed back here.”

  Plenty Proud stared down at his life-long friend. He realized he would never see Firelight again. Although it was not Eagle Eye’s fault that he got captured and separated from Firelight, he was supposed to have waited so they could all three make the journey down the river together. It would have been safer, and during that time, he felt he could have persuaded Firelight to come back with him, if her father and brother had not been at her home when they got there. Her main concern had been to find out what happened to them. She may not have wanted to remain at her home if her father and brother were not there. She may have wanted to come back to look for them and find out if they were actually dead or not. He could have helped her do that.

  Now there was no way of knowing what Firelight had found, if she made it to her home in Missouri, and he didn’t’ even know where she lived so he could go and discover if she made it there safely.

  He hung his head in despair, glaring at Eagle Eye for having gone against his wishes.

  “I have lost the one I love,” he said quietly. “Now you have lost my friendship. I wish never to look upon your face as a friend again.”

  He turned abruptly, and left the tepee, and Little Bird followed. Eagle Eye sank down onto his buffalo robe. He deserved worse than that he thought sadly to himself. He had not only gone against Plenty Proud’s word, but he had made love to the woman Plenty Proud wished to take as a wife. Plenty Proud should have killed him. He didn’t feel lucky that Plenty Proud hadn’t killed him, though, because now he wished he was dead. Like Plenty Proud, he wondered what Firelight was doing. He felt neither of them would ever see her again.

  Plenty Proud looked down at Little Bird walking beside him. His heart was aching. He had to face the fact that Firelight was gone out of his life and he would have to struggle to find any happiness. He felt Little Bird take his hand in hers, trying to comfort him.