Scarlet Plume, Second Edition

by Frederick Manfred

  “Aiii,” Smoky Day cackled, “and now I see our chief playing with his son. Aiii, and was it not a good thing that the old woman of your lodge did not listen to you when it was requested that the little one be interred with its dead mother on the scaffold? His little cries would have followed us through the night across the prairie, until long after he was out of sight. His spirit would have followed us forever. This your old mother knew. You are a good chief for your people, ai, but not when you are possessed by the madness of grief.”

  Whitebone’s old head came up. “But my wife that was, she was not happy in the spirit land without her child.”

  “Aiii.”

  Whitebone turned solemnly to Judith. “I have thought on this very much. Listen. You are now my wife. I am happy in thee.” Whitebone placed a soft hand on Judith’s sleeve. “This is what I desire of thee. Listen. When Wakantanka shall have summoned me away, I want my nephew Scarlet Plume to kill you so that you may become my attendant in the spirit land. I am happy in thee. In the night that is now past, had not the thought of my new wife lying waiting for me in my tepee come to me, ai, I might well have thrown my life away. Such was my grief.”

  Judith sat stunned.

  Then a change came over Whitebone’s face. He set his wooden plate aside. He reached inside his leather shirt. Slowly he drew out the letter he had taken from her the night before. “Tell of this again.”

  Judith blanched.

  “Tell it.”

  “It is a message from my husband.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He fights the bad whites far to the south.”

  “What does the message say?” He next drew the letter out of its envelope and spread it out for her to read. He kept fast hold of it.

  Through tears Judith read him the first paragraph. It dealt mostly with the fact that Vince was profoundly lonesome for her and Angela.

  Whitebone with his finger pointed to the start of the paragraph again. “Tell of this yet again.”

  Judith did.

  Whitebone watched her eyes narrowly at the same time that he kept an eye on the handwriting word for word.

  After a moment Judith caught on. Whitebone was slyly trying to trap her into making a mistake by getting her to repeat over and over the reading of certain marks. A sour smile touched her lips. “Does not the great chief wish for me to read all of the message? There is nothing in it about the white man’s war against the red man.”

  Whitebone jerked back the letter. He stared at her a moment, then at the letter. Slowly an equally acrid smile touched his lips. Then he leaned down and slid the letter and its envelope into the fire.

  Everyone watched it burn. The letter rapidly curled up into fragile black wisps, and vanished.

  The sun rose behind them. Light turned yellow, then flashing clear, then warm.

  Whitebone next turned to Scarlet Plume. “My son, a thing is troubling thee. Tell us what it is while we sit around the cooking pot. Or is it a thing that must be told of in the council lodge?”

  Scarlet Plume set his plate aside. A large red ant ran across the knee of his buckskin legging. After a moment he gently picked it up and set it in the grass behind the pink rock he sat on.

  When Scarlet Plume did not immediately answer, Whitebone turned to Two Two. “Little son, you know where your father’s gossip pipe is kept. Get it. You know also where your cousin’s pipe is kept. Get it. Attend.”

  Two Two got the pipes.

  “Little son,” Whitebone said next, “call your young friends and run to water the horses. Then let them out to graze in a new place. Attend.”

  Again Two Two ran to obey.

  Whitebone lit up with a tiny brand plucked from the cooking fire. Scarlet Plume also lit up. The two men smoked together. It was a silent smoke, leisurely done, full of good taste and content.

  The two men finished their smoke at exactly the same time and together clapped out their pipes.

  Again Whitebone spoke to Scarlet Plume. “My son, a thing is troubling thee. My ears, even my red heart, are open. They all listen.”

  Scarlet Plume turned and fixed glittering black eyes on Whitebone. His loose black hair moved where it touched his shoulders. “My father, with the cooking pot between us, I can perhaps speak of it. It concerns one named Bullhead. You know him. I have spoken of him before. It is bad in his lodge. He will hurt the Good Book Woman.”

  “Has she not made him a good wife?”

  “There were heavy words in Bullhead’s tepee in the night.”

  “What?” Whitebone ground his old teeth together. “Does the son of my sister spend his nights with his ears to the doors of his friends?”

  Scarlet Plume ignored the sarcasm. He threw a look at Bullhead’s lodge five doors down. “Neither Bullhead nor the Good Book Woman has appeared for the morning bath. The door is still lashed tight from within.” Scarlet Plume glanced up at Bullhead’s smoke hole. “Nor has a fire been lighted within. There is bad trouble there.”

  Whitebone forced a jovial smile to his lips. “My son, it is now two winters since you last bedded with a wife. Perhaps you have forgotten the morning pleasure a man may have with his wife before he arises, even before the household awakens.” Whitebone gave Judith a turtle’s bland wink. “My son, it is time you found a new wife, even as I have done. You have forgotten what it means to be a married Yankton man.”

  “The Good Book Woman was not made for childbearing. Children came to her, yes. Yet the Good Book Woman is wakan. She is one of those chosen by the white man’s Wakantanka to read and to teach out of the Good Book. She will never be content to be the wife of a brute named Bullhead. He is a bad man. I have said.”

  “He is also a brave man in battle. The Yankton nation dwindles. We need the brave man.”

  Scarlet Plume held his eyes steadily on Whitebone. “My father, listen. What Bullhead does with his wives is not done in the Yankton manner. He has the bad heart of the renegade. He belongs truly with Mad Bear’s band. I spit on his tobacco. I will not smoke it. The blood of the innocent is in it. He kills without measure. He should be banished. Do the Yanktons have need of murderers to increase their kind?”

  “My son, we have touched on a matter that has been much in my thoughts. It is this. You are much alone. Yet it seems you do not wish to marry again. This is not a good thing. You shun the women much as some medicine men do. Sky Walker, who took the south road, was one of those. My son, it has been much in my thoughts that if you do not like women, then you should become our new medicine man. You know much of such matters. I do not. We do not even have a keeper of the time. Thus consult your heart, seek a vision, and see what Wakantanka has to say. It was told us that you turned over in your mother’s belly before you were born. That was a great thing. It was a sign. We could see then that Wakantanka had set you apart for a special life. Consider this.”

  A tiny smile quirked at the corners of Scarlet Plume’s lips and a glint appeared in his obsidian eyes. “I have sought this vision you speak of.”

  “You have had this vision?”

  “I have.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It says nothing of being a medicine man.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I have had a vision of a different thing.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I will speak of it at the proper time.”

  “Does it speak of marriage?”

  Scarlet Plume shook his head.

  “Does it speak of women? White women?”

  Scarlet Plume crossed his long legs. Still another single red ant had found its way up his leg and again Scarlet Plume very gently picked it up and set it down in the grass behind the pink rock he sat on.

  An uneasy silence fell between the two men. Everyone in the household noted it. Black eyes, and Judith’s blue eyes, flicked at each other and then looked away.

  Afraid of becoming involved in a possibly violent family quarrel, Judith turned her attention to Born By Th
e Way. The little papoose had got one little brown hand loose and was playing with one of her white fingers.

  A slow drumbeat boomed on the far side of the camp, steady, insistent, jarring.

  Presently Judith’s eye fell on a dusky young woman sitting just across from her in the gate or the horns of the camp. Her name was Squirts Milk and she seemed to be nursing two little ones, twins, at her ample bosom at the same time. This in itself was unusual enough, until Judith noticed that one of the nurslings was abnormally hairy. Judith couldn’t help but stare and stare, until of a sudden the hairy nursling gave a kick. The hairy one wasn’t a baby at all. It was a puppy. The puppy’s little eyes were closed in bliss as it suckled at Squirts Milk’s soft tan pap.

  Smoky Day smiled. “The puppy’s mother was eaten yesterday. There was so little meat that some of the camp dogs had to be eaten.”

  It had always given Judith pause to see that Indians considered dog meat a delicacy. “Surely now, when this puppy comes of age, he will not be eaten?”

  “It is fated. When the pa-pa is scarce there is no other way.”

  “Pa-pa?”

  “Pa-pa is the meat of the buffalo.”

  Smoky Day’s remarks were like strange stones sending ripple after ripple through Judith’s mind. Wasn’t it remarkable that to the Dakota “ma-ma” meant milk from the mother and “pa-pa” meant meat brought home by the father—almost the same as to the Anglo-Saxon?

  Judith looked at Bullhead’s tepee five doors down. Things were still quiet there. Judith longed to stroll over and ask her sister how she was doing. But she didn’t dare. There just was no telling how Bullhead would take it.

  But Mavis was up and about six doors down. Mavis seemed paler, though she did not limp as much. She had boiled some antelope meat for her handsome savage husband Traveling Hail. He seemed content enough as he chewed heartily away.

  The Yankton women passed to and fro, busy with the morning chores. Clouts and leggings, thoroughly scrubbed in the sandy stream, were hung out to dry. Old men sat talking, and smoking their gossip pipes. Braves were busy repairing bows. An arrow-maker sat just outside the horns of the camp, flaking out a new supply of arrowheads. Older boys sat at the feet of grandfathers, listening to tales of great exploits, their faces strained with yearning for the day when they might be hailed as brave warriors, the only path to distinction for the Dakota. A pair of young wives took turns biting on lead bullets with their strong teeth, the better to make enemy wounds big and ragged. A fat squaw brought food to a damsel sitting alone in darkness in a menstruating hut beyond the camp circle. On the other side of the dead cottonwood, Two Two and a dozen young lads stood guard on the grazing horses. Across the stream some maidens chatted merrily as they gathered fruit in a clump of plum trees. Apart from the grieving white women, Whitebone’s band was generally a happy and contented one.

  “Darling Angela.”

  With a fine groan of pleasure, a hand to each knee, Whitebone got to his feet and toed over to the front of his tepee. He picked up the lodgepole, to which the white jawbone of Unkteri was fastened. Everyone in camp watched to see in which direction they would remove that day. With proper ceremony, Whitebone pointed his emblem west, then placed it on a forked branch. All squaws instantly got busy, taking in the spears and guns standing by the lodge entrance, loosening the lodge stakes for swift striking, calling in the children, tying up the dogs and puppies.

  Judith watched Smoky Day and Tinkling bustling in and out. It irked her to see so many bowed-over women in camp. Her resentment came out on her like an emanation from her blood. “What a self-constituted lord of creation the Dakota woman has let her man become,” Judith muttered to herself. Aloud she said, “What a strange thing I see in the Yankton camp. The women do all the work while the men sit on their behinds doing nothing but eat and smoke and gossip.”

  Whitebone stiffened on his pink rock and his old head retracted like an angry snapping turtle’s. He was suddenly so mad, Judith could smell him from where she sat.

  Scarlet Plume was offended too. And it was he who spoke in defense of the Dakota customs, not Whitebone. “Listen carefully to what will now be said. This is what the Dakotas hold. Wakantanka means for each to do his own work. The men must hunt the meat, fight the enemy, steal the horses, and teach the boys.” Scarlet Plume gave Judith a direct look. “The women must cook the meat, make the clothes, build the tepees, have the babies and feed them. Who else can have the babies and feed them?” Scarlet Plume’s voice softened some. “All this is just. And it can be seen that it is just when it is noted that the horses and the weapons and the honor feathers belong to the men, and the tepees and the parfleches and the food belong to the women.” Scarlet Plume paused a moment. “Also, Whitebone is a great chief who must carry the burden of much thought for his people.”

  Whitebone finally found voice. “My other wife that was, she was a good woman. Yet it must be also said that she was one of those who could put out the lodge fire with the wind of her angry words.” Whitebone shook his head in memory. “Sometimes at the end of her moon she could be as crabby as a crazed she-wolf. I had much regard for her, yet her black madnesses often darkened my spirit.” Whitebone glared at Judith as his voice took on the crackling hardness of a man who meant to have his own way. “Let not my new wife be as one of those wolf women often seen in the white village. I have said.”

  “Aiii,” Smoky Day cackled.

  Judith flushed under the paint over her cheeks.

  Then something caught Scarlet Plume’s eye down the line of tepees.

  Judith, relieved to have the attention shifted from her, looked too.

  A glinting thing had suddenly poked through the leather wall of Bullhead’s lodge, just under Bullhead’s emblem, the painted brown head of a buffalo bull. It was the point of a knife. The knife jiggled a moment, then, desecration of desecrations, it whipped up, slitting directly across the middle of the emblem. Two pale hands took hold of each side of the long rent, pulled them apart, and out stepped Theodosia.

  “Sis!” Judith cried.

  “Ah,” Theodosia said, “there you are. I worried all night what might be happening to you.” Theodosia spoke in a tight voice. Her sunbonnet was gone and her face was a sight. It was shock white, even the large freckles, and her eyes were like the eyes of a swamp specter seen from a distance. Tottering a little, Theodosia started toward Judith.

  Bullhead emerged roaring from his tepee door. He stood a moment beholding the gaping rent cut through his emblem, then, brandishing his war club, he came after Theodosia.

  “Theodosia, what happened?” In her excitement, Judith threw the little papoose to one side.

  The papoose landed in the cooking fire, almost upsetting the boiling kettle. The papoose’s little brown face closed down like a scared puppy’s, then opened in a tremendous bawl.

  Smoky Day and Scarlet Plume leaped to save it.

  But Theodosia, already moving in a half-staggering run, got there first. She plucked the papoose and cradle from the fire before the flames could take hold. She brushed off a few live coals and gray ash. “There,” she crooned, “there, there.”

  Trembles broke out all over Judith. She could feel whiteness blanching over her breasts inside her tunic. The devil had been in her to let her do such a terrible thing.

  Theodosia cradled the baby, and murmured to it, and slowly the baby quieted.

  Still bellowing, still waggling his war club, Bullhead stomped out his rage on the grass behind Theodosia. He didn’t quite dare to hit Theodosia as long as she held the chief’s son in her arms.

  Theodosia gave the little baby a kiss on its nose, and handed it back to Judith. As Theodosia did so, she had her first good look at Judith. She started. “Judith, why, what have they done to you?”

  “Me?” Judith cried. Judith’s heart leaped up. Even now, concern for others was still uppermost in Theodosia’s mind. Greater love could no woman have. “What about you, Theodosia?”

  “Sister, r
escue is on the way. Remember, under God all things are possible.”

  Judith couldn’t say further. She saw in a swift glance that Theodosia had been through hell. Theodosia’s clothes had been torn off her during the night. Somehow she had managed to patch them together with thorns for pins. There was a large blue lump on her forearm and a deep red mark across her throat.

  Bullhead raised his club for a swing at Theodosia.

  Scarlet Plume moved, stepping between Theodosia and Bullhead. Scarlet Plume’s eyes were dancing wild. He caught Bullhead’s club and stayed the blow. Holding the end of the club, he pushed Bullhead back.

  Theodosia hardly noticed the two men. Her gaze wandered off, abstracted. She began to babble a little. “The heathen rage. Yet when one of them shames himself with his rudeness to you, you must make it appear that you deserve it.” Theodosia had to set her feet apart to keep her balance. “I know that my noble Claude lives. He resides on that farther shore where he has joined the multitudes of them who have gone on before. While I remain behind in this vale of horror.” Theodosia staggered, almost falling to the ground. “Oh, how I long to be translated to that upper world so that I may join him.”

  “Sis!”

  “Life is made up of shadow and shine. Oh, I pray God that He in his infinite mercy may grant me removal of all memory of this time so that it may pass from me forever. I cannot bear it.” Theodosia leaned down to look Judith in the face. “Sister, can you tell me of a place of refuge where this poor soul may go to hide? The Bible speaks of such places in Israel, cities where tormented souls could go and be safe from those who would oppress them.”

  “Why . . .”

  “I wish for such a place of refuge.”

  Scarlet Plume’s voice crackled. “There is such a safe place for a guest among the Yanktons. Let the Good Book Woman go to the council lodge. There you will be received as one of the land.”

  “But she is a woman,” Bullhead roared. “Have the Yanktons become women that they welcome a woman in their council lodge?”