Scarlet Plume, Second Edition

by Frederick Manfred

  Carefully she examined the gullies, the riverbanks, the willows, the deep grasses to all sides for sign of skulking animal or enemy. Nothing moved. No wolves or coyotes, no Yanktons or renegade Sioux. She was alone.

  She decided to risk going across open country in daylight. It shouldn’t take her too long to go a half-dozen miles. And then she’d be safe.

  Parfleche tucked under her arm, she hurried up the rest of the hogback. Near the sandy top the grass became prickly. Twice she had to step around prickly-pear cactus.

  She hurried.

  Gophers whistled at her. They sat at a safe distance, erect beside their holes. The gophers reminded her of asparagus grown fat and tall overnight, of a lazy husband stirring sleepily on a Sunday morning.

  She was winded when she reached the top of the hogback. She stopped to catch her breath. She listened, head bent sideways. The sound of braiding water to the southeast now came to her very clearly. Again she examined the prairies to all sides. Still nothing.

  She began to run, bowed slightly at the hips, covering the ground with loping, swinging strides.

  “Dear God, please let Rollo, the mail carrier, be there when I arrive. Amen.”

  The sun coming out of the cloud bank on the eastern horizon was an eye being gouged out of a skull. Presently it bathed her in a light tinctured with blood.

  Judith had to set herself to keep from plunging down a steep bluff. Her hand came up and lightly she held her throat.

  Below her, green grass sloped down to a huge bed of exposed red rock, and there, down through the middle of it all, tumbled a full-size river. Water rumpled across zigzag cataracts, then dropped off a stiff fault in the red rock, then in a series of whirlpools chased itself down a tortuous channel. The wild, twisting waters reminded her of a pack of dogs milling about and snapping at their own and each other’s tails. Farther on, the river flattened out and flowed serenely across broad shallows of pink sand.

  It was a noble waterfall. Even in her extremity, Judith noted the wonderful primitive colors: grass as fresh as lettuce, rocks as red as just-butchered buffalo flesh, water the color of newly brewed green tea. And the year’s first frost had turned the leaves of the ash to gold and the grapevines to wine. It was stunning to find such a lovely spot on the lonely prairies. Miles and miles of monotonously rolling flat land, and then suddenly this, a little green paradise beside a waterfall.

  A faint mist hovered over the maeling waters at the foot of the falls. The little dancing mist took curious shapes in the light wind. Watching it, she understood why the Yanktons believed a guardian spirit, the Spirit of the Buffalo Woman, lived behind the braiding waters.

  She looked upstream. And there they were. A dozen log cabins and sod dugouts surrounding a little cluster of stores, all built on a bench overlooking the cataracts and the falls. Sioux Falls. At last.

  She angled down the face of the green bluff toward the village. She hurried, full of expectation, face radiant, heart beating with joy. She was home at last. Soon someone would spot her coming and then they would all come out on their doorsteps to greet her with happy, excited voices, glad for her that she had been saved. There would be white faces and the sweet sound of white tongues.

  “Easily might I have been lost, but I was not, for Thou wast beside me. Amen.”

  She hurried toward the first cabin. Sumac burned scarlet all around the base of it. A gnarled scrub oak flung an oblong shadow on the grass in the yard. The garden beside the house was dug up and littered with dried-up potato stems. She passed through the neat white picket gate, went up a pink gravel path to the log stoop.

  She was about to knock when, looking at the doorknob, she saw a heavy bronze lock hanging in the door hasp. The lock was snapped shut. There was no one home.

  “Probably out visiting. I’ll try the neighbors next door.”

  She hastened to the next brown cabin. This time she didn’t have to go through the white gate to find the front door locked. She could see the closed lock from the street.

  She took a few hesitant steps farther down the rutted pink street, and stopped. She stared down the line of dwellings, not wanting to believe, not being able to believe, what she then saw. All the cabins and dugouts, even the stores, were locked tight. Most of the windows were boarded up. The city fathers, everybody, had flown the nest. Deserted. That explained why there were no children or dogs out playing.

  “And after all I’ve gone through.”

  She sat down on a red rock just off the street. Her pulse beat strangely, so trippingly swift she thought she was going to have heart failure.

  Gradually she began to understand what had happened. Of course. Rollo, the mail carrier, would have brought the news to Sioux Falls that the Sioux were on the warpath. And, from the looks of things, with not a single house or store or barn burned down, the whites had all escaped alive. Thank God for their sake at least.

  She wondered if one of the storekeepers might not have left a back door open. Methodically she made the rounds. She climbed over a pile of lumber, skirted a mound of stacked empty boxes, stepped across splashes of broken glass, pushed through a patch of head-high ragweed. Everything was locked tight.

  She peered through the windows of one of the stores. The shelves and counters were bare. Everything that could be moved had been taken along. That explained why there were no wagons or runabouts around.

  Dejected, she trudged back to the first cabin. She stood looking at it.

  Need for sleep finally made up her mind. She would get in anyway. There was no point lying on the cold ground as long as there were empty beds around.

  She picked up a stone the size of a clam and chinked it against the bronze lock a few times, hoping the spring would let go. But the lock was rusty, and stubborn.

  She went around to the window on the south side, then to the window on the east side, to see if she could pry them up. Peering through the dusty glass she saw they were nailed to the sill. She flipped the stone in her hand a few times, weighing the idea of knocking out a windowpane with it. Glass was precious out on the frontier, a real luxury.

  She stepped around to the front door again. She studied the door hinges. They were iron, also rusty, and very heavy. The pins in the hinges had heads at either end and couldn’t be punched out.

  She found herself a heavier stone and chunked it, hard, on the bronze lock. Teeth set, she hit the lock a good dozen times, each time harder than the last. Finally she gave it one last big whack, on its flat side.

  That did it. The lock clicked, let go, sprang open.

  She gasped in relief, and rushed inside as if it were her own home she had at last managed to enter. She closed the door behind her, barring it.

  The morning sun streamed through the east window, casting a square shaft of saffron light across a large single room. The light fell on an oak cupboard, revealing shelves full of glistening glasses. On the pantry shelves gleamed blue dishes and a handful of silverware. A black, well-polished cookstove stood near the chimney. A fallen mound of yellowish ashes lay between the andirons in the fireplace. A multicolored hook rug covered most of the puncheon floor.

  In a far corner stood a four-poster with a creamy gray wolfskin for a bedspread. She went over and sat on the bed. She almost sank to her waist in a feather tick. She reached under the quilt and found actual sheets, clean and white. There was also a pillow with a white case. She nuzzled her face down in the clean white linens. The smell of lye soap was in them. She stroked the creamy wolfskin.

  “Poor woman, whoever she was. After having brought these lovely things all the way out here somehow, prized precious possessions, then she had to run and leave them.”

  Searching through a wooden bin she found a few measures of flour. In a tin box she discovered a few leaves of black tea. And in a stone crock she found a slab of smoked bacon. Food. White food at last.

  She found a tin bucket and got some water. She gathered up an armful of wood and soon had a fire going in the black stove. She
put on a kettle of water for tea. She fried herself a mess of bacon, then a round dozen flapjacks. She ate, at first ravenously, then more sedately, chewing all thoroughly to make it go the further. The smoked bacon strips made up for the lack of molasses.

  Fatigue moved in her like a fog, engulfing her mind until sight blurred. She undressed, hanging her gray doeskin tunic and her leggings over a three-legged stool. Naked, she rose on her toes, stretching to her full height, arms out. She held her breasts in the palms of her hands and fondled them. They seemed less full than usual, she thought. She’d been starving them the last while. Well, when she got back to St. Paul she would take care of that. She’d eat nothing but ham dinners for a while. She cast a glance at the sunken mound of her belly, then at the golden brush over her privates. Sighing, allowing herself one last luxurious stretch, she crept into bed. The sheets felt delicious to her skin. The sheets were like sweet ices on a warm tongue. She curled over on her right side. She could feel the creamy wolfskin bedspread slowly embracing her. The sound of the steadily pouring waterfall outdoors made her drowsy.

  “A body rests all over when she lies down in a feather bed.”

  Even before she could straighten out her under leg, she was sound asleep.

  A squeaking sound woke her.

  She roused enough to realize where she was: in a featherbed in a deserted cabin in Sioux Falls. Squeaking? Hadn’t everybody left town? She looked around. There was nobody that she could see.

  She went back to dreaming again, picking up almost exactly where she had left off.

  A gray shape with a kindly wolf smile touched her on the brow. He had a warm paw. The touch woke her, though she really knew she was still asleep.

  Gray Shape said in Sioux, “The white woman feels sad. I want to shake hands with her. That’s all I have to say.”

  She smiled in joy.

  “The white woman must flee or her neck will be broken. Come, I will lead the white woman back to her people in safety.”

  She smiled ecstatically.

  Gray Wolf took her white hand in his penny-skin paw and led her to a river. He helped her across the stepping-stones to the other side. Scarlet waters flowed in silence at their feet. A waterfall poured with a roar just out of sight behind an arch of rocks. The arch of rocks was covered with wolfberries.

  Gray Plume, still leading her by the hand, took her to a house. He opened the oaken door. She entered ahead of him. Together they looked at the deep bed in the far corner, then they looked at each other. They stepped toward the bed hand in hand. They lay down beside each other. He fondled her breasts with one hand and with the other—

  She sat up out of sleep. This time she was sure the door had creaked.

  Heart tribbling in her throat, she threw a look at the door. It was barred. No one could have gotten in that way. She looked at the windows. They too were still nailed down tight.

  With a sigh she lay down again. Perhaps it was only the tin in the stovepipe cracking after the fire had gone out. She stretched her limbs inside the clean white sheets. She let her eyes rest on the brown raftered ceiling.

  The light in the cabin was different. She turned on her pillow and looked. A shadow slanted across the south window. It meant the sun was setting beyond the bluffs to the west. Evening shadows were rising out of the earth. A whole day of sunshine had gone by.

  “What a sleep that was.”

  She had slept so long and so deep she only now began to realize how tired she had really been. Yes, and had been since Skywater.

  That horror at Slaughter Slough had almost slipped from memory, so long ago it seemed now. And looking back at it, it actually did seem more nightmare than true fact. But the worst was she had taken to dreaming in Sioux, not American.

  She scrambled out of bed and moved from window to window, cautiously looking for sign.

  The street was still empty. The pink paths were still silent. No dogs barked. No wolves lurked in the wild hemp.

  She felt a call to nature. She picked up the creamy wolfskin from the bed and draped it over her shoulders. It did not quite come far enough around to cover her. But it would have to do. She unbarred the door and stepped out. The sinking sun hit her full on with its big red eye. She ducked her head, almost shyly.

  The trail to the privy went around behind the cabin. She entered and closed the door after her. The only light came from a quarter moon cut in the door. In the dimness she could just make out where the seats were, a big one and a little one. She couldn’t help but feel thankful for the luxury of a privy. It was the first time since Skywater she had decently gone to a toilet. The former owners had been considerate enough to nail up a swatch of wrapping paper on the wall within easy reach of the sitter. Even the thought that a spider might have woven a web across the big seat was a comfort of a kind.

  Stepping outside, she became aware of the river once more. The Big Sioux, sliding golden green across the red cataracts in a thousand little separate brooks and then over the falls in one huge splash, was a wonder.

  The sparkling water looked so inviting in the falling sunlight, she just had to have a quick dip. She skipped down a pink path. Close up, the roar of the waterfall hurt the ear. Humps of water-honed red rock fit the arch of her bare foot exactly. They reminded her of well-licked blocks of pink salt in Pa’s cattleyard. She watched the flooding green tea tumble over and around and down the haphazard cataracts. She watched the sliding flood drop over the fault in the rock and splash in the maeling pool below.

  She climbed to a shallow pool higher in the cataracts. The bottom of the pool was as smooth as the socket of a just-butchered buffalo’s hipbone. She threw her wolfskin aside and knelt in the river and cupped herself a drink. The water was warm. She sat down in the pool. The water rose over her hips to her navel. She splashed herself, cupping water with both hands over the slopes of her pear breasts. She took down her golden hair and unbraided it and rinsed it from side to side in the gently rivuleting water. She turned over on her belly and doused her face. She lolled in the water from side to side with only the back of her head and her buttocks showing.

  She sat up. She combed her hair with trailing fingers. She looked directly into the red eye of the setting sun and sang a song:

  Aura Lea, Aura Lea,

  Maid of golden hair;

  Sunshine came along with thee,

  And swallows in the air.

  She gathered a handful of reddish sand lying in a curl of the stream and scrubbed herself. She wrung the water out of her hair.

  When the sun set she snatched up her wolfskin and scampered naked up the path toward the brown cabin. She felt marvelously refreshed.

  It was dark inside the cabin. She gathered more wood and lighted a fire in the hearth.

  She decided not to put on her Indian garments again. Instead she searched through a closet to see if the woman of the house hadn’t left some clothes behind. To her delight she found a shimmering purple petticoat and a green dress. On the floor beneath them stood a pair of black button shoes. She held the petticoat and the dress up to the light, then held them against her body. A perfect fit. She slipped them on, then sat down on the three-legged stool and slipped on the high black shoes.

  She paraded up and down the cabin. The clothes weren’t new. But they were civilized. What a joy to be wearing decent white things again. With all her soul she wished she were back, right then, in St. Paul and wearing her own clothes. How moldy they must smell by now in the closet behind the fireplace. With a yearning hotness, she wished she were standing, right then, in the little corner of their bedroom where she always dressed.

  She searched some more in the closet. She found a comb, a little scissors, a round box of aromatic pink powder, and a mirror. She set the mirror up on a shelf and examined her face. Her complexion was perfect. Yet she couldn’t refrain from powdering her nose a little and around under her ears. The perfume in the powder made her think of a Paris she had often imagined but never seen. She combed her hair until it spa
t tiny sparks. She found a folder of hairpins and put up her hair in a pyramid of golden circles one above the other. She examined her hands. The palms were calloused, crisscrossed with small cuts, wrinkled. A rose thorn festered in the tip of her ring finger. But the worst were the fingernails. With the little scissors she trimmed the nails carefully, neatly, and with the point of the scissors cleaned out the blue funeral rings under the nails.

  Well-groomed at last, feeling quite dressed up again, she set about making supper.

  She found herself a gay blue apron and tied it on over the green dress. She made herself some unleavened bread with what was left of the flour. She found a jar of wild plums on the top shelf of the cabinet.

  She recalled the potato patch in the garden outside. “There’s bound to be a couple of spuds left in the ground. Digging with a fork you sometimes overlook a few.”

  It was as dark as Egypt out. Stooped over at the hips, she scratched through the crumbly humus. Halfway down the third row she found a root still tight in the ground. She probed along it and found four lovely fat tubers. One of them was almost as large as a piglet. Happily she gathered them up in her apron and hurried back into the cabin. She peeled the potatoes and dropped them in boiling water. She set the water for tea. In place of steak she cut herself several thick slabs of smoked bacon. She set the table for one, with her chair facing the fireplace. She hummed to herself. It was so good to be at home in a wooden house again.

  She ate in a leisurely manner, pretending she was among fashionable people. She spooned her plum dessert in style.

  As she sipped her tea, pinkie lifted, she spotted a newspaper in a magazine rack on the wall. Avid for news, she got it. It was an old copy of the St. Paul Press, a triweekly, dated September, 1861, at least a year old. As she read, it came to her that she had seen that issue before, beside her own fireplace in St. Paul. Rollo, the mail carrier, must have brought it down long ago on one of his trips to Sioux Falls. The newspaper was worn and much fingered, indicating it had been passed from hand to hand. There was an odor of old straw in its creases. She even read the editorials, which before she had ignored. Finally, finished reading, she put it back where she had found it.