Scarlet Plume, Second Edition

by Frederick Manfred

  A drop of dew landed exactly in the corner of her left eye. That did it. She looked up.

  It was day. The sky was blue. The sun was straight overhead. Crystals of light came glancing down through the leaves of the brush under which she lay snug and warm.

  She remembered. Last night she had escaped the Yanktons. She had run and walked, and walked and run, straight south by the stars, toward where she thought the village of Sioux Falls lay. At last, chest burning, with dawn just beginning to show in the east, she had crept into a patch of what she thought were wolfberries.

  She yawned, and stretched. Her throat worked, and swallowed. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. Time to eat.

  She fumbled for the parfleche, and in so doing found herself covered with a thick blanket of loose grass.

  Loose grass? She lifted her head. Yes. She was lying under a pile of haylike grass. She stared. She couldn’t recall having scratched up long grass the night before. But there it was. She must have done it while half asleep.

  She thought again of Whitebone and his Yanktons. By now they would have discovered she had flown the nest. She could almost see them making casts all around the Dell Rapids encampment to find her trail.

  She lay very still, listening, so still that not even the loose grass rustled. No, there wasn’t a sound. No stealthy footsteps. No neighing ponies. No creaking leathers. The only thing audible was the odd croaking beat of her heart.

  Poor Scarlet Plume. He was sure to get the devil from Whitebone for having called a council meeting. It made her smile to think that while the council discussed Scarlet Plume’s vision of restoring the white woman to her people, the white woman had escaped. Yet Scarlet Plume was powerful. Whitebone would not dare to punish him. Scarlet Plume was probably at that very moment already searching for her, along with the rest of the braves. She feared Scarlet Plume’s hunter eyes more than she did the eyes of the others. Very little ever escaped him.

  She found the parfleche at last and dug out a skin of pemmican. She broke off a small piece of the pemmican, put the rest back. God only knew how long it would be before she got to Sioux Falls. She nibbled on the mixture of pounded meat and ground-up chokecherries. The pemmican was perfect. Not sweet. Not sour. Exactly like treated meat should taste, with a slight nutty flavor. She chewed it all thoroughly to make a little go a long way. A piece of broken pit got caught between her two front teeth. With her fingernail she pried it out.

  She longed for a drink of cold water. Her eyes happened to light on berries hanging in the silvery leaves of the bushes above her. The fruit was a brilliant crimson, not grayish-blue. Also, the berries resembled tiny rabbit noses. Ah, they weren’t wolfberries after all. They were buffalo berries, and good to eat. She reached up from where she lay and picked a few. She bit delicately into one. Mmm, sweet and very juicy. A touch of light frost had made them very flavorsome. Their bouquet was perfect. She reached up for more. Wonderful. She reached up for still more. Finally she picked all the crimson berries within reach before both her thirst and a suddenly aroused craving for them was satisfied.

  She lay back. She snuggled under the blanket of loose grass. Deliciously she slid her shoulders back and forth on the soft turf. She felt sweetly tired. She decided not to stir out of her grass nest. She would rest, and nap, and rest some more, and then when it got dark she would get up and once more run and walk, and walk and run, straight south. As long as the Yanktons had not found her she had a chance. She was free.

  She napped.

  Judith dreamed. A stark-naked savage had just scalped her soldier husband, Vince. Bloody knife and bloody scalp in hand, the naked savage turned and came toward her. A warm smile lay coiled on his full lips. His black eyes were half closed. He spoke to her in resonant Sioux. A knob-ended club swung from his belt. The club stuck up like a third hand might be holding it by the handle. He began to dance. His horns hooked up on the left, then hooked up on the right. He let go a tremendous bellow. Slowly his head changed into a buffalo bull’s head. He came toward her. He butted away rival bulls. He took hold of his short knob-ended club and threw it at her. It hit her between the legs. At that very moment a warm hand on her brow awakened her.

  She opened her eyes. It was dark out.

  She lay very still for a few moments, trying to collect her wits.

  Her heart beat hard and fast. The dream had been so real she could still feel where the small club had struck her, hot, stinging. The silhouette of the naked bronze savage hung before her in the dark like a glowing sunspot. The touch of the hand on her brow was the most real of all.

  She shook her head, and shuddered. Lord in heaven. It had been high time, all right, that she escaped Scarlet Plume and his Yanktons.

  She scrambled to her hands and knees. Cautiously she raised her head above the buffalo-berry bushes and looked around. In the deep dark she could make out nothing. There were no stars. The sky was overcast. She wondered how she would find her way without the North Star. It was easy enough to lose one’s way in broad daylight on an open plain.

  Her stomach grumbled. She sat down and dug out the skin of pemmican. She broke off a piece and nibbled small bits, careful not to lose any crumbs. The chewing awakened a really ravenous hunger in her. She nibbled and ate and nibbled. She weighed what was left of the pemmican in her hand, decided she might as well clean it up. After her long run of the night before, the village of Sioux Falls couldn’t be too far away. By dawn she should find it, where she was sure to find a friendly door, and food, shelter, sleep.

  Memory of a conversation between Scarlet Plume and Whitebone came to her. They had talked of the river making two big loops before joining the Great Smoky Water, the Missouri. That’s right. That was why the Yanktons called it the River Of The Double Bend. The Yanktons spoke of a mystery, wakan, in connection with the two loops of the river. It had something to do with a guardian spirit named the Buffalo Woman living behind some braiding waters. A falls? Of course. That was why the whites called the place Sioux Falls. She recalled then that the white name for the stream was the Big Sioux River.

  She decided to strike west until she came upon the Big Sioux, then follow it until she hit Sioux Falls.

  A dozen steps, and she realized both of her moccasins were worn through. Rummaging through her parfleche, she found the extra pair of moccasins. She slipped on the new pair and stuffed the old pair into the parfleche, thinking to repair them come daylight.

  She felt her way along in the dark. The land fell slowly underfoot. Twice she stepped into natural dips in the land, jarring herself hard enough to rattle her teeth.

  She noted that her white doeskin tunic glowed some in the dark. This was dangerous. Both wild beast and the enemy might spot her. Coming upon a dry coulee, she stopped to scratch loose some black earth. She took off her tunic and her leggings and rubbed them in the black earth until she could no longer make them out in the dark. She thought it a shame to dirty the lovely white garments, but it had to be done. Later perhaps she could clean them. She vaguely hoped to be able to save them until she could show them to her friends in St. Paul. The workmanship in them was the best she had ever seen.

  She went on. The land continued to slope away underfoot.

  She stumbled into a dropoff. There were deep rushes, and some wet sluck. She pushed through to the other side of the rushes. Soon a fringe of trees loomed over her, a darker patch of black in the night.

  She stopped to listen, head bent, loose and flowing hair hanging to one side. Somewhere ahead, water was running over gravelly shallows. Ah. The Big Sioux River.

  She moved through the trees. Once she bumped into a leaning trunk. Its bark was as smooth as a table top. She stepped on grass, then gravel. Stooping, hand on the ground, she toed ahead until she touched the edge of running water.

  She drank from cupped hands. She bathed her face and arms, then her neck under her flowing hair. She drank again.

  There were stealthy creeping sounds behind her. She listened. She liste
ned. When she heard nothing further, she guessed it was only an owl floating through the trees looking for field mice. “I fear I’ve become too notional, after all I’ve gone through.”

  She dug out a primitive currycomb, something Smoky Day had once made for her out of a prickly slab of dried buffalo tongue. She combed her hair, from the forehead back and then down to the ends hanging about her hips. Little crackling sparks spit in the dark on each stroke. She combed it this way, that way.

  “Thank God I am not mother again.” There would be no half-breed child after all.

  She considered putting up her hair in a big bun; finally decided to put it up Danish style in a tight crown of braids instead. She used twigs for hairpins.

  Neat at last, groomed, she began walking south.

  She followed the Big Sioux, sometimes on sandy stretches, sometimes on high banks, sometimes through thick underbrush.

  Several times she came upon sloughs too mucky to cross. She was afraid of trying to cross the river in the dark, so she skirted the sluck instead. It took time to circle the sloughs.

  She bumped into another tree with smooth bark. Her hand happened to touch a tuft of hair. She pulled up some of it, sniffed it. The familiar odor of a dusty buffalo hide came to her. Ah, the trees had been rubbed smooth by buffaloes shedding hair. Pa’s cattle back home were always rubbing themselves on tree trunks too.

  She ran when she could, walked when she had to.

  She went back over the days since the massacre at Skywater. There was the night when Whitebone gruntingly took her to wife. Dear Lord in heaven. There was the day when Bullhead murdered Theodosia. Pray God Theodosia might now be safe in the arms of her Lord. There was the evening when Scarlet Plume, sitting alone in swamp willows, caused a wooden effigy of a buffalo to dance on a mound of sand. Such devil’s doings. There was the night when Scarlet Plume danced up the buffalo. Sight of him naked had been even wilder than her craziest dreams. After that the days blurred off into each other.

  Counting from the last day spent in the separation hut, her best guess was that it was around the twentieth of September. Also there had been only one light frost so far. First frosts were known to come to that part of the country around the twentieth. By hard walking, and some luck in catching Rollo, the mail carrier, she could be in New Ulm in about two weeks. And then in St. Paul by the end of another week.

  She made up her mind to keep track of time. Just to make sure she wouldn’t forget, she jerked off one of the doeskin fringes of her sleeve and carefully tucked it into her parfleche. It would stand for the twentieth of September. Tomorrow she would jerk off another one for the twenty-first. Not to know the time of the year made one feel more lost than ever.

  She stopped for another drink at the edge of a rippling shallows. She bathed her forehead. She dried her hands with swatches of grass.

  She came to a place where the river took a big turn west. This disturbed her. She looked up. It was still cloudy overhead, no stars. If she struck out across the prairies to catch the river where it came looping back, she might miss it. Then she would really be in trouble.

  She decided to play it safe, follow the bank of the river no matter where it led. The village of Sioux Falls had to be along it somewhere.

  She pushed on. She ran; she walked; she ran.

  A side-ache began to stick her under the heart. It cut her breath. She came upon a round boulder and sat down to catch her wind.

  What to do. What to do. If there were only a man along to help her. A pair of strong shoulders and keen eyes she could rely on. Show her the way. Even comfort her. Because maybe the river went west for miles in a really big looping bend.

  The side-ache gradually throbbed away. Her breath came evenly again. She got to her feet and hurried on.

  The bend did turn out to be a big one. Slowly too the footing became squishy. There was little or no sand, mostly caked mud, with the surface stiffish like thin frosting on a spongecake. Her moccasins began to slap on her feet.

  Her cheeks itched. Then her neck. Then the backs of her hands. Once it seemed something bit her. She slapped at the itches. On one of her slaps her fingertips brushed against something wispy. Spider webs?

  Mosquitoes. Dear Lord. There were millions of them. The air was suddenly stuffy with them. She felt tickles in the back of her throat. She coughed. Puffing with her mouth open, she had been breathing them in by the dozens.

  Then she saw it. Something was following her. A gray shape.

  Coyote? She hoped it was a coyote. A coyote was not as ferocious as a wolf. A coyote was also known to run silently after its prey.

  Her heart began to pound. She held her hand to her throat. She had to work to get her breath. It was a wolf, she was sure.

  She turned to face it. If it was going to jump her, she would at least meet it head on.

  The gray shape, or whatever it was, stopped too.

  Or was it a mote in her eye? Because when she turned her head a little to hear the better, the shape seemed to move too.

  She listened, all ears, trying to catch the sound of its breathing. Were it a farm dog following her, tongue lolling, it would be breathing with happy, audible puffs.

  She waited. She breathed shallow breaths. Her own heart shook her. Soon trembles shook her thighs. She had to let her mouth hang open to keep her teeth from chattering. She almost wished she were back in the safety of her wakan white tepee.

  Darkness became heavy. The gray shape stood out even more clearly.

  It became very hot out, close. Sweat trickled down her face. Mosquitoes trailed across her cheeks with a thousand tickling legs.

  A tremor beginning in the calves of her legs moved up until it made her neck crack. Her breasts shook.

  “O Lord, if it be thy will, let this pass from me.”

  Almost as if in answer, a blast of lemon light exploded above her. She bowed under it. She sank involuntarily to her knees. A split second later, thunder came out of the ground. She steadied herself with a hand to the earth. The sudden stroke of lightning and thunder completely took her breath away. Chest caught, squeezed tight, she sucked and sucked for air.

  At last, willing it, working the muscles of her belly, she managed to make a pinched wheezing sound, then take a tiny breath. It took a while before she could resume her shallow, rapid breathing.

  Rain dropped from the skies like a bucket overturned on a hot-air register. It hit her like a blow with the flat of a hand. It pushed her down. The mosquitoes vanished.

  She cowered under the storm. She tucked the parfleche under her. She sat on her heels, crouched. Huge drops fell on her back like little fat pancakes.

  The rain was cold. Water poured in around her neck and down inside her tunic. She could feel her nipples harden. Goose pimples swept over her like wild measles. Water trickled into her ears. Every now and then she had to hold her head to one side, first this way, then that way, to let the water run out. She shivered. She waited. She worried that the gray shape might jump her. Blood boomed in her temples.

  “Enemies and much adversity ring me about.”

  Rain came down in varying sheets, drenching, with weight.

  “A woman sitting upon a scarlet beast.”

  Another dazzling blast exploded above her. The ground under her shook like a rickety table. She fell on her side, hugging doubled knees to her chest.

  “Though my sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”

  Abruptly there was a sound of great rushing high above her. Rain began to hit around her like water being spilled out of a whirling pail.

  “Baby Angela a year old and in my arms again. Please, yes.”

  The wind swooped down and began to move along the ground like a vast broom. It snapped the leather fringes on her sleeves. Rain hit her like the stickles of a scrubbing brush. It was cold, cold.

  “Just some little child’s body I could hug and hug and hug.”

  Warm tears mingled with cold rain on her cheeks.

  “Someth
ing to love up.”

  The rain stopped. Presently the wind let up too. Thunder and lightning moved slowly into the northeast.

  Wonderingly, she opened her eyes in the new silence. Stars were sparkling merrily above her.

  She sprang to her feet, ready to fight off the gray shape.

  The gray shape was gone.

  “Mercy me.”

  Then in the starlight she saw that her doeskin tunic could once again be seen in the dark. Rain had washed it clean, back to a light gray. She herself was now a gray shape in the dark night.

  Lightning far in the east gradually gave way to a buttermilk dawn. A meadowlark peeped single sleepy notes in a beard of willows downstream.

  Judith was exhausted. It was time to think of sleeping through the day again.

  She stood on a steep bank on the east side of the river. Ahead, another big bend meandered off to the west. A hogback directly south kept her from seeing where the river doubled back. The tops of the hills to either side were sandy, with short tufting grass.

  A breeze from the southeast came fresh and sweet over the hogback. The smell of water was in it.

  She heard it. A low, steady droning sound as of pouring, rising and falling, and rising again. She held her head to one side the better to hear. Yes. There it was, all right, a sound as of a little stream falling on a leather drum.

  Looking around, she wondered where the little waterfall could be. The river below her ran silently between steep banks, so it couldn’t be that. Nor was there any sign of a small stream trickling down the hogback.

  She listened intently. The sound was unmistakably that of falling water. It came on the wind. It was some distance away. Perhaps a couple of miles to the southeast.

  Waterfall. Of course. It was the falls on the Big Sioux River. Sioux Falls.

  A half-dozen miles at the most, and there lay safety. A warm fire in a cookstove, a kind white face, a white smile. Home. Civilization. Thank God.

  She climbed a mound halfway up the hogback for a better look around.

  The river had risen during the night from the heavy rain. Water was slowly flooding across a slough on the inner side of the fan-shaped bend. Looking ahead, she could make out where the river turned south again as it curved through a wide, deep valley. She could almost see where the river headed back northeast toward where she believed the falls were. By cutting across the country she could save miles and much time.