Scarlet Feather

by Joan Grant

  I put my hand on his forehead. “Barakeechi, I know you can hear me because you have always been a friend to Raki and Piyanah. You are the first of the Feathers to go beyond the sunset. Will you tell my mother about the tribe, Barakeechi? Tell her that Raki and I have always remembered the Before People, and that if they are lonely for Earth they can come back as the children of the Feathers, because our people are going to be happy together even as they used to be. Farewell, Barakeechi, until we laugh on the other side of the water, when Raki and I have joined you.

  “There shall be two enemy scalps in the Tepee of the Elders in your name. They killed you, Barakeechi, so I am glad that I helped them to die. …You are smiling, because you have discovered that death is only the crossing of another mountain into a valley where there is no winter. I will remember your smile when I am afraid. …Tell my mother that we will remember.”

  At noon the bodies were carried down to the funeral pyres, which had been lit since dawn so that when dry wood was heaped on the core of glowing logs it would flare up into a great intensity of heat. Each Brave was carried by two men, on a litter which had long poles so that the bearers could stand one on each side of the fire and lower it gently into the flames.

  Na-ka-chek had given permission for Raki and me to perform this last service for Barakeechi. For the first time in five years we were dressed alike, in the doe-skin tunics of Young Braves, and at the back of our forehead thongs were knots of hair from an enemy scalp, a symbol of authority nearly as important as a Feather.

  Narrok had been sounding the death rhythms since dawn. Squaws lined the path to watch the progress of the dead: some of them should have been in grief for a son or the father of their child; yet though the hair was covered with the white ashes of mourning there was curiosity instead of sorrow in their eyes. Even our women, who stood a little apart from the others, showed no sign of emotion…why should they, when Barakeechi was the only one of the dead to whom they had spoken, the only one with whom they might have shared their future? They had often seen hunters bring home a kill; and to most of them a man was a more unfamiliar animal than a deer…and strangers are neither loved nor pitied.

  The heat of the fire was so strong that it was difficult to lower Barakeechi gently. The stench of burning flesh made me want to retch. I found myself wondering how long it would be before I could eat roast meat without the same smell creeping into my nostrils.

  Barakeechi was only the shape of a man, black and red with fire. Soon he would fall into ash, and only a few charred bones would show that a man and a tree had joined to light this torch of stars. In silence we stood to watch while the embers cooled.

  Then came the Chief, in company with the Elders, to take from the place where each body had been consumed a handful of ashes. These were to be placed in the Death Canoe, which was carried on the shoulders of eight Scarlet Feathers. Na-kachek held the ashes up to the sky, speaking aloud the name of the man who had died that the tribe might live: telling of his courage and his woodcraft; telling of rapids he had conquered in a time of river’s anger; telling of the animals he had killed and the bear’s claws on his neck-thong. Then did he call on the Great Hunters to accept this man, his emissary, the Brave of Na-ka-chek, Chief of the Tribe of the Two Trees.

  As he let the ashes fall into the Death Canoe the name of the hero echoed and re-echoed, as we who had been his companions sent his herald to the hills.

  At sunset the bearers waded into the river until the Death Canoe was borne from their shoulders by the current. Gently, and then faster it swept away towards the Great Rapid. In the West I saw a falling star; and knew that Barakeechi and my mother smiled together because we had remembered.

  PART THREE

  Brown Feathers

  Now that Raki and I were Young Braves, Na-ka-chek said that we could undertake the ordeals of the brown feather without waiting until we were seventeen. We hated being separated even more than we had done before the Birch Grove, so we accepted his offer eagerly…it might reduce the last year we must stay apart by several moons, and the Brown Feather had the right to claim his squaw!

  The ordeals had to be undertaken alone, although the training for them was in company. I did not recognize how much I had relied on the presence of Gorgi or any of the others until I discovered how much more difficult it was to drive myself beyond what had seemed the limit of my endurance, or to make myself choose the more difficult of two ways up a cliff, without having someone to share his courage with me. And I knew it was not only their courage I wanted, but their admiration…the swift reward of pride felt by a friend, or the envy of someone who still refused to accept me as an equal.

  The first ordeal sounded very easy…if someone else did it: to take a canoe up-stream as far as one could travel in three days. A Brown Feather watched your progress, but you never saw him. Dare you collapse exhausted, or was Dorrok watching, ashamed because you displayed this weakness? We had many other tests of endurance in canoes, but always a definite landmark had been assigned which must be reached in a given time. Knowing the distance you could say, “Only one more bend of the river: only two hundred more strokes…only one hundred, before I can drop into the deep sleep that follows hard endurance.” But now I should not know how much was expected of me: would I dare to sleep a quarter of the time between sunrise and sunrise, or must it be a much briefer rest than this? If I went too far on the first day, should I be so tired on the third that I made little progress, and so betrayed that I had not learned how to use my strength to the best advantage?

  Raki had completed this ordeal and returned to the encampment the night before I was to start, but Dorrok forbade me to see him, so I had no idea how far he had been.

  I left at dawn and did not reach a rapid until the evening. The canoe was heavy to carry alone on the portage, but the bank shelved gently and gave firm footholds. This was further than I had ever before reached in one day, so I decided it would be safe to eat some of the bread and pemmican I had brought with me and then to rest until moonrise.

  The river was low, for the autumn rains had not yet begun, so by keeping close to the bank where the current was sluggish I could drive the canoe steadily forward. Only the even beat of my paddle broke the stillness. To keep the strokes at an even pace, I listened to one of Narrok’s drum rhythms inside my head; it would have been a waste of breath to sing aloud. There was a long stretch of river through open country and the moon laid a path for me to follow over the black water. Sometimes a fish rose with a splash, or a coyote barked in the distance; then again there would be only the faint sigh of my paddle leaving the water.

  I slept in the canoe for a little while before dawn: I had tied it to the bank, intending to sleep on the ground, but the grass was sodden with dew and I could not find any other shelter from the chill wind. I wished I had brought a second tunic to sleep in, even though its extra weight might have delayed me, for I was too cold to sleep properly.

  After sunrise I went on up-stream. The canoe seemed heavier at the next portage: perhaps because my feet kept on slipping in the loose gravel beside the rapid, or else my arms were getting tired. By noon I was so sleepy that I tied the canoe to a tree which overhung the water and dived until I felt more refreshed. I made myself chew some pemmican, though I was not hungry, and then lay on a sun-hot rock, longing to go to sleep but knowing that if I did so it would be sunset before I woke. If someone had been with me we could have slept in turn while the other watched, and this would have made the journey much easier.

  Again I allowed myself to sleep until moonrise, but when I woke, the moon was high and I knew precious time had been wasted. Still half blind with sleep, I stumbled down the bank and dragged the canoe into the water. The paddle was heavy, as though it were made of cedar instead of birch. It was difficult to keep my strokes at an even rhythm, and several times I veered off the course and knew I had lost several paces of distance in needless effort.

  A scream tore through the dark woods. “It is only a bad
ger,” I said aloud. But did a badger ever make a noise like that? A noise like a child in pain or terror? I wanted to reach the next bend which would hide me from the source of the noise. I quickened my stroke. The moon was obscured by clouds and only a fitful silver broke the darkness. I knew I ought to rest, but I kept on; to avoid going near the woods that suddenly held terror for me. I could not land on the far side of the river for a low cliff fell sheer into deep water where the current was swift.

  The canoe jarred against something and nearly capsized. “Of course it is only a submerged log,” I said loudly. “You are not a squaw who believes in water demons! You did not see a hand clutch at the prow, Piyanah. It was only a shadow. …It was not a hand; if you think it was, you must be dreaming.”

  The sound of my voice scolding me only made the darkness wider and deeper…and it was not a friendly darkness.

  “If you are too much of a coward to land, you will have to go on paddling, Piyanah, or else you will drift backwards on the current. Do you want Dorrok to be ashamed of you? Do you want to betray Raki and the Feathers, just because you are too lazy to paddle a little further?”

  My shoulders ached as though they had been flogged. I began to chant a war song, to keep in rhythm, to keep awake. I saw a bar of yellow light reflected in the water: gradually the darkness dissolved to show the grey ghosts of trees, kind ghosts with whom singing birds were not afraid. Mist swirled up from the water like smoke. If it had only been smoke! Smoke of a fire by which I could sleep and be warm; smoke of a cooking-fire that would give me hot broth instead of a strip of pemmican I was too weary to chew.

  The canoe was too heavy to drag up the steep bank, so I had to go on until I found a strongly rooted bush where I could make it fast. I could find nowhere dry to sleep; even under the trees the ground was sodden, but I saw a drift of dead leaves and crawled into it to get warm. “I must only sleep a little while; tomorrow I can sleep…not now. Tomorrow at dawn I can sleep.”

  It was noon before I woke: a noon which blazed with the heat of autumn whose flames had already begun to colour the woods. I dived into the water, but did not waste strength by swimming. The long sleep had refreshed me: I was greedy for bread and even pemmican was pleasant to chew.

  At sunset I had to rest, but dared not sleep. I took a sharp thorn, and when I felt my eyelids getting too heavy for me to hold them open I drove it into my leg until I jerked into wakefulness. It is difficult to lie completely relaxed, so that your muscles can gather strength, when the ground is cold and hard; when rain is dripping off the trees, slow monotonous rain which makes it more difficult for your body to refuse the sleep for which it aches, sleep that it knows will be punished by the sharp pain of a thorn. I began to hate my body for tempting me to sleep, and to hate myself for being so unkind to it.

  The rain stopped before moonrise. The canoe slid forward between dark ranks of trees that were no longer menacing. I pretended that they were people who had come to see whether I was worthy of the Feathers.

  “They are sneering at you, Piyanah. Listen, they are saying that Piyanah is a squaw who pretends to be a Young Brave. Tell your arms, Piyanah; tell the muscles of your back and your thighs that if they plead with you to let them rest the watchers will hear and mock you. Do not betray me, my arms! Look, the moon has travelled a long way across the sky. Watch for the dawn which will soon come to tell you that we have won our rest. No, Piyanah, you must not look back; you will see the reflection of the sunrise in the water ahead. They should call it the Land beyond the Sunrise, that land where people go when their night has been long, and they are so very weary. Count the strokes, Piyanah, each hundred shall make a filament of your brown feather. On and on. …The beat of the paddle is getting slow as the heart of a dying man. I can hear a rapid. Will the sunrise release me before I reach angry water? I shall never be able to carry the canoe even if there is a wide path without any rocks to climb. The moon is still very bright. No, Piyanah! It is the dawn; the dawn, Piyanah!”

  I was close to the bank: I think if I had been in midstream I should have collapsed and let the current snatch from me some of the distance I had gained. I watched my hands making the canoe fast to a tree that grew close to the edge of the water. Slowly and deliberately my feet climbed the bank. I fell face downwards on the kind turf, and sleep wrapped me like a robe of beaver pelts.

  I thought I was dreaming. There was a fire, and the smell of food cooking; and I was lying on a heap of dry grasses and covered with a blanket. I sat up and saw Dorrok putting another log on the fire; beyond him the river was red with the setting sun.

  “Raki came as far as this, and so did I,” he said. “None of the others came further than the place you reached at sunset yesterday. I thought you would reach the same place as Raki and I. That is why I waited here for you.”

  “So you are not ashamed of me? Oh, Dorrok, I am so glad!”

  “No, Piyanah,” he said gently; “I shall never be ashamed of my Chief.”

  I had already killed five stags which were beyond their fifth year, so Dorrok said I need only kill a grizzly to fulfill my ordeal of the hunter, and that with my tracking and woodcraft he was already satisfied.

  Hunting a grizzly would probably follow much the same pattern as when I had found Pekoo, but now I should not have Gorgi and Tekeeni with me. If the grizzly attacked, I should have no hope of rescue; if I were wounded too badly to make my own way home, I should die, alone. The grizzlies were my friends; now I had to kill one of them to prove I was a hunter.

  I think I should have failed in this ordeal if I had not seen the body of a child who had gone into a grizzly’s cave. It was crushed to a bloody pulp, but the face was unmarked except by terror. The track of the bear which had killed her led into the mountains: and Dorrok granted me the right to avenge her death.

  For sixteen days I followed these tracks; twice I saw him in the distance, a solitary male with no white marks, so I knew he was not Pekoo. He was wary, and every day moved to a new feeding-ground. Several times I tried to approach him, but though I kept in close cover he always moved on before I could get within bowshot.

  Would he never choose a cave where I might hope to ambush him? The first snows had fallen. Very soon I should have to go back to Dorrok and admit failure. Unless Dorrok let me kill a spring bear I should have to wait until next autumn before I could hope for the brown feather, the brown feather and Raki.

  To hunt a bear at night was against all the rules I had been taught, and I shall never be sure why I attempted it. I had come to a place where there were many large boulders scattered on the open mountain-side. I knew the bear was hiding among them, but to follow him there would be to give him every advantage. It seemed madness, but I knew it was the only way to avoid another year of separation.

  I walked slowly up-wind; arrow notched to the bowstring, tomahawk hanging ready from my belt. I asked Great Bear and Pekoo to forgive me for punishing this outlaw of their tribe. Perhaps they heard me and held him in sleep, for I saw him stretched out, half hidden by the denser shadow of a boulder.

  A bar of moonlight fell across his shoulder, giving me a clear target to try the difficult shot to the heart. …He tried to struggle up with the arrow buried under his foreleg. …Then he lurched over on his side and blood trickled out of his mouth.

  I waited with another arrow notched, but he did not move. I crouched, watching him until his eyes slowly opened. He did not blink, but was he watching me? Slowly I crept nearer: his eyes had begun to glaze, so I knew I should not be one of the hunters who die because they think a wounded grizzly is dead.

  I hacked off the fore-paws, which would prove I had fulfilled the ordeal and earned the claws to wear on my neck-thong. Then, before I left him, I asked Great Bear to take him back into his tribe, for the feud between his people and ours was ended.

  I put the bear’s paws into the leather sack I had used for bread; on the third day I tied the thong more tightly round the neck of it, to try to keep the smell at bay. Eve
ry night I made a fire, and at dawn sent smoke signals to tell Raki I was on my way home. I knew how eagerly he would watch for the smoke, as I had watched when he was winning his bear’s claws during the previous moon.

  The mountains were already covered with snow, and even on the lower slopes it lay in the deeper gullies. Only two more ordeals remained—the winter journey, and the climbing of The Listener, the highest mountain of the range. I knew Dorrok would not let me attempt The Listener until the spring, but this did not matter because Raki and I could not be given our brown feathers until the ritual ceremony of the Sowing, which took place before the Moon of the Choosing.

  To spend seven days alone in the great cold sounds very easy; seven small wooden tokens branded with the tribal mark sounds a trivial burden. But each token must be put in one of the seven places chosen for the ordeal, to prove that you have been there; and you must spend the seven days without the companionship of fire.

  Cold can be more cruel than cougars: it can gnaw fingers from your hands and cripple your feet; it can rot away your ears and your nostrils; it can be venomous as a rattlesnake and scar like fire. It was bleak comfort that Raki and I were to start the ordeal on the same day, for the places allotted to us were so far apart that there would be no hope of either of us reaching the other in time if we sensed the stealthy approach of this quiet, white death.

  We both chose the same kind of clothes: knee-high moccasins lined with beaver pelt; fur caps which covered the forehead and ears; and two tunics, the inner one furlined, the outer of oiled leather. We should carry our food, bread-sticks and pemmican, rolled in a blanket between our shoulders. Dorrok had advised us each to take a tomahawk, for cutting branches to make shelters, and a sling, which might be a means of getting warm, raw flesh which would help us to resist the cold.