Scarlet Plume, Second Edition

by Frederick Manfred

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Sunned Hair is lonesome. She misses her white husband very much. I am sad for her.”

  She swarmed his face with moist kisses.

  “Perhaps when I meet the husband of Sunned Hair he will agree to become my kodah.”

  “Yes.”

  “A good Yankton knows a wife may be shared with a kodah without impropriety. But it is not the way of the whites.”

  Fiercely she drew him down so that he sank to his knees. She took his hand and passed it between her thighs to let him know that the juices of love were ready. She cried huskily in his ear.

  A relenting gentleness softened his heavy voice. “My helper is talking to me. He tells me it will be a good thing to do. Thus, if the white woman wishes it, it shall be done.” With fine delicacy, as if guardedly indulging a loved and willful child, he settled over her.

  He moved too slowly for her. She took hold of his coppery knob and helped him. She saw that he had a wonderful cucumber of love for her. She gasped at the engorged red color of it. She helped him enter her. His proud flesh was already warm when it parted her. She could feel herself widening and deepening, and then surrounding him. She cried aloud. She drummed her pelvic bone up against him.

  He loved her rhythmically, with a gentle motion.

  Stars rose. Stars fell.

  His insistent breathing was sweet in her ear.

  A strange new feeling awakened in her womb. Her womb was like an animal inside her belly. She had never in her life felt such sweet burning. It was an urgent suckling, a ravening hunger, yet it was also selfless. It became clutching joy. Her thighs became bathed with sheathing dew. Her face crimsoned over with surprise and shame and wonder. What was it the minister back home said? That lust was a vile expression of one’s animal nature? Well, there the minister for once was wrong. Lust was wonderful. It was a radiant passage. Winged. Suddenly.

  He loved her rhythmically, with a gentle suction.

  She rose, rose. Lightning-like sensations shot through her belly. Fireflies darted through her brain. She began to tremble all over. She rose, rose. “God in heaven.”

  He loved her rhythmically, with a gentle urgency.

  She loved his arrogant flesh. She wished it were even more arrogant. She longed for a king. Let there come a king holding a golden bowl flowing over with cream. She drummed harder against him, swifter. Her eyes rolled bloodstone dark under tight lids. Her lips widened. Her teeth set. Extravagant raptures swelled in her. She was a great plum about to burst.

  Abruptly Scarlet Plume changed in her arms. A dark being had also awakened in him. His breathing became a husky catching purr. The gentle lover in him changed into a demanding puma. The dark being made him thrust and thrust into her with abandon. Utterly necessary. It had to be. His purring deepened into a moan of vibrating guttural pleasure. Every part of him seemed to be in motion at once.

  He was hers. He was hers. She responded to his imperious hips. “King!” Her velvet leaves slipped marvelous full around him.

  A yell, gurgling, rose in his throat. Unfettered. Savage.

  Suddenly knotlike spasms worked slowly and irrevocably in her womb. Her womb suddenly became her brain. The spasms ran their own course. A cry also erupted in her, free, from far within her.

  “He-han!” he cried.

  “O Lord!” she cried.

  He wept tears upon her.

  The beat of the overriding pulse throbbed in the depths of her quick. There was no stopping it. Never before had this happened to her. All of Vince’s wiles and tricks and strange demands in bed had never come close to awakening a blinding revelation like this in her. It was the first time. The first time. At last.

  He lowered upon her.

  A long sigh let her down, gently, into a lethargy as soft as cattail down. She sank away into oblivion.

  She slept.

  And slept.

  When she awoke, slowly, sunlight struck across her face in a wide band of sharp saffron.

  She didn’t know why but she felt new.

  She remembered the claybank and the bower of wild grape vines and the golden grove. Lost Timber.

  She found herself lying on an aromatic mat of woven switches. Under it rustled tree leaves. She was covered by the gray wolfskin. She remembered being pursued for many days by the haunt wolf. Scarlet Plume.

  Scarlet Plume had been busy while she slept. He had built two walls of interwoven willows into the claybank. New bark shingles made the roof of the bower rain-tight. The east wall he left open, facing the stream.

  She sensed his presence. Without turning her head, letting her eyes widen a little, she could make him out to the left of the opening. He was sitting on his heels and cleaning his teeth with a blade of grass. A small stick fire burned at his feet. Smoke from it rose in soft gray tendrils, gradually trailing off and disappearing against the matted roof. Above him, to one side, hung a strip of cured meat.

  A crimson blush suffused her as she recalled their moment of love and the new sweet burning in her belly. She could feel the sudden blush heating her body like a warm silk nightgown falling to her feet. Yes. She had at last awakened to love and light. She let her eyes close as she relived again that moment of blinding revelation.

  She stirred, languorously.

  He instantly turned. A warm, grave smile curved his fleshy lips. “You have slept well.”

  “Mmm.”

  “You have slept two suns to bed.”

  “Two whole days? In a row?”

  “You also ate well. The she-wolf does not live that eats as well as Sunned Hair.”

  She sat up on her elbows. Hair from the wolfskin tickled her chin. “I’ve been eating for two whole days?”

  He threw a look at the strip of hanging meat. “Already you have devoured most of one doe. Much soup and boiled meat. Even the rib ends were well-chewed.”

  She ran a hand over her stomach and found that her buttony navel was half lost in flesh again. So. Scarlet Plume had fed her then like she might have been a gravely ill one. Two whole days. Well. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember a thing of it.

  “Sunned Hair came a great distance on foot with little food. She was not used to this. She was very tired. She needed the sleep and the food.”

  She found herself desiring him again. She smiled at him in a winning way.

  Scarlet Plume understood the look on her face. He turned slowly and gazed down at the little wriggling flames of the stick fire. He picked his teeth some more with the blade of grass. Reverie wavered in his black-glass eyes.

  “He-han,” she said with a sweet smile. “To that place that far.”

  He dropped the blade of grass in the fire. He glanced up at the strip of venison. “There is need for more meat. I will go hunt the game while you take the morning bath.”

  “But—”

  “I have made a watering place for you in the little stream. I shall remain within easy call of it.”

  She saw there was no use talking to him, at least not for the moment.

  With a slow hand Scarlet Plume picked up a little stick and stirred up the embers of the fire some and then placed the stick in the fire. Glints of an inward fire jumped in his dark eyes.

  It came to her, as she studied him, that something was missing. Of course. He had washed off the face-marking on his left cheekbone, the yellow dot inside the blue circle.

  She said, “I wish to ask my scarlet friend a question.”

  “I wait to hear.”

  “Why can we not shake hands?”

  He gave her a tormented look. Abruptly he stood up, grabbed up a spear, newly made, and as quick as the flip of a beaver tail was gone.

  Her eyes opened in surprise. “Why,” she said with a gasp, “he’s shy.”

  She lay by herself awhile. She watched the little palpitating flames in the fire. Petulance twitched at the edges of her pink lips.

  “It’s probably just as well,” she said at last. “And it is time I took a bath. Beca
use I stink.”

  She threw aside the wolfskin. As she was about to get to her feet, she noticed that her toes and shins gleamed as though greased. Wonderingly she touched them, then smelled her fingertips. Her nostrils opened. Scarlet Plume had more than just watched over her and fed her; he had also doctored her as any true medicine man was required to do. He had treated her bleeding skin with some kind of native salve, herbs in a film of venison grease.

  She stepped outside. The sun shone glinting just above the steep bluff across the stream. Tilted glades of grass gleamed light-green between the trees. There was a chill in the air as if there might have been frost during the night. Leaves were shivering off some of the ash trees, sifting down the slopes like lavish throws of gold coins. A single wild plum stood like a decanter of dark wine in a far ravine. The buckskin leaves of the scrub oaks hung motionless.

  She tripped down a green, mossy path. Silver-tinted black moss grew on the underside of a thick-armed grape vine immediately beside the path. She found Scarlet Plume’s watering place, a dam of rocks and twigs thrown across the stream much like a beaver might build it. She could make out individual pebbles on the gravelly bottom of the stream, red and gold and black and green.

  She glanced around to make sure she was alone, then shed her tattered tunic. Golden naked, she stepped into the pool. The water had an edge to it as if it had been run through a filter of ice. She shivered. She moved into the water until it touched the backs of her knees. She cupped water over her elbows. “Ieee, it’s cold.” She waded in until water lapped up under her seat. Then, taking a daring breath, she dropped in. She came up spluttering, flailing her arms. She cried out in pleased shock. She splashed herself some more, took another plunge.

  She scrubbed herself with sand. She let her hair down and undid the braids. She lashed her hair back and forth in the water, a flowing gold in a green liquid. She scrubbed her hair, again and again, remembering the lice. She wrung her hair out and spread it over her shoulders to dry.

  She next scrubbed her doeskin tunic, inside and out, especially the seams. She put spreader sticks in it to keep it from shrinking too much, then laid it out on the grass in the sun.

  Naked she skipped to their bower and draped herself in the wolfskin. She found a sunny place on a fallen tree outside the doorway and settled down to warm herself.

  She waited for him to come. “My scarlet lover was sad.”

  The sun shone on her. There was a wide golden silence. Water twinkled. More ash leaves drifted to earth. Her drying hair fluffed out on her shoulders with little springing leaps.

  She waited.

  A whimpering sound came to her from downstream. A fawn was hurt. The whimpering was pitiful. It seemed to come from behind some gooseberry bushes.

  “Poor thing,” she whispered. “Now I suppose some puma will get it.” Out of the shadow on the far side of the stream came a doe. Head up, wary, it advanced a few steps; stopped; listened; advanced some more.

  The whimpering became more pronounced. It now definitely came from behind the gooseberry bushes.

  The doe slowly advanced to within a few feet of the gooseberries. It listened, ears alert; and stared, soft, dark eyes gleaming.

  Then Judith saw Scarlet Plume. What she’d thought a shadow was really brown skin. He was squatted on his heels, new spear in hand and set to throw. He sat very still, unmoving. The whimpering sound came from him. He made the sound by sucking on a leaf folded between his lips.

  Before she could cry out in warning, his arm flowed and the spear sprang. The spear caught the deer in the breast, transfixing it. Scarlet Plume followed his spear, leaping, as silent as a puma. Stooping, knife glinting, he cut the doe’s throat.

  Judith caught a hand to her throat. “That wasn’t fair!” she gasped.

  Scarlet Plume watched the fallen doe a moment, then turned and flashed Judith a victory smile. He had been aware of her all along.

  Judith sat numb.

  He kneeled beside the fallen doe and cupped up a handful of its blood and drank it.

  Judith stiffened. Her scarlet lover drank blood? For a fleeting second, enormous, she realized what she had let herself in for. She and this man-savage were ice ages apart.

  When the deer had bled sufficiently, he came bearing it toward her. The smile on his lips had changed to a look of quiet purpose.

  He laid the doe on the ground. He cut slits down the backs of the rear legs and pried out the Achilles tendons. He passed a stout ash stick under the tendons and strung the body up on a tree limb. Starting at the head he skinned the doe skillfully. The pink carcass emerged as if with the motions of birthing. Scarlet Plume spread the skin out on the grass, raw side up. He next butchered the carcass, deftly, not wasting a motion. Everything usable was placed in neat rows on the skin. When he broke out the shinbone from the shank, Judith for the first time realized where the Yanktons got their lovely armor-like bone vests. Each shinbone was hollow and, like a bead, could be strung on a cord.

  A drop of blood lay dried on the edge of Scarlet Plume’s nether lip. Judith shivered. She feared him. She huddled under her wolfskin.

  He was hanging up the jerky to dry, when she at last found tongue. “I see that a Yankton warrior considers it manly to deceive a poor mother uneasy for the safety of her young.”

  A patient, gentle look appeared in his black eyes. “While you were taking the morning bath, I prayed to the morning star for a good hunt. This I said: ‘We have need. Sunned Hair needs the food and the doeskin. Forgive us for taking this doe. Yet she is needed. She is not a mother at this time. We promise not to kill more than is needed.’”

  “Nevertheless you awakened a mother’s love in her and preyed on it.”

  He looked down at the deer head on the green grass where it lay with its dulled-over eyes. “She understands. The Yanktons were once animals before they were people. Her family and my family have been neighbors for many grandfathers. She and I are of one blood. Therefore the Yanktons are cousins to the deer and must apologize to her and thank her for the food and the doeskin. We do not ask her to carry burdens for us as the white man asks of his animals. We only need the blood of one at a time.”

  “Do not your dogs carry sticks many weary miles across the prairies?”

  “The dog is a pet friend of the woman. Sometimes when the puppy has no mother the woman gives him to suck. It is not for a man to say.”

  “Well, has not the red man made a slave of the spirit dog, the horse, when he rides on his back?”

  “It is a sad truth that horses were made to carry burdens. This we learned from the white man.” Finished with dismembering the carcass, Scarlet Plume began to scrape the inside of the doeskin.

  “Suppose this poor mother needed the blood of a Yankton? Your blood?”

  He lifted a shoulder eloquently. “If it were fated to be, it would be for us to understand. A good thing.”

  “Does the Yankton consider the deer more of a brother than he does the white man?”

  Scarlet Plume opened his eyes wide. “In the beginning the red man welcomed the white man into his tepee. He considered him his kodah. He cried tears over him when he first met him. This was a great thing. But soon it could be seen that the white man wanted to cut up his mother into black strips and mutilate her. Our wise men saw that even as the red man gives when he has plenty, the white man takes when he has plenty. Does not the white man know that whatever one steals from his brother in this world he will have to carry it in the next world? Can he carry the world?” Scarlet Plume shook his head gravely. “The white man’s thoughts are upside down.”

  Judith fell silent.

  Scarlet Plume looked up from his scraping. “If the red man tried to make the white man live like him, the white man would want to fight him. Well, that is why the red man fights. If the red man were to let the white man feel, ‘We are better than you,’ the white man would be very bitter. Well, that is why the red man is also very bitter.”

  Judith grudged him his a
ncient pride.

  A shadow, swift, like a quick basso profundo passage in a fugue, touched his face, darkened his eyes. He spoke quietly. “Yet the power of the whites will prevail. We will be annihilated. This is a terrible thing for a Yankton to think about. Not even Whitebone will survive. It is a fated thing. Just as this mother deer is feeding us, so too the Yankton will be killed up and fed to the white man.”

  Judith’s eyes began to glow from within.

  “We are all dead men. Yet we will fight as long as we can.”

  Judith found herself back on his side of the fence. It was shocking to think that the Yanktons she had known might be destroyed.

  “What part of the deer does Sunned Hair wish to eat?”

  “What?”

  “Does not the white woman know that like parts nourish like parts? There are no special like parts for me as I am a man and this deer was a mother at one time. What special part of the deer does Sunned Hair wish?”

  It was with an effort that Judith spoke. “I do not wish for any special part today.”

  When he finished working the doeskin, he said, “Even the grasses are related to us. They do not hesitate to feed on our fleshes after we die. Someday soon I too shall lie down and fold my arms for a last time and feed the grasses. We are all one. We have a common mother. But the white man considers himself apart from this mother. Can it be that the white man has become overproud because Wakantanka fleshed him”—Scarlet Plume glanced at her white skin—“in wakan white? It is something to think about. The white man has been made part God when he does not deserve it perhaps.”

  Her soul went out to him. She remembered the thrilling moment of his urgent thrusting. With her hands she slowly stroked her pear breasts upward. She thought, “All of my life I have tried to stamp out my passional nature, yet here I now sit, in this wilderness, perfectly willing to live in sin with this wild man.”

  Scarlet Plume staked out the doeskin to dry.

  Judith took a deep breath and went over to where he sat on his heels. Wetting a finger, she gently rubbed the drop of dried blood off his nether lip. She bent down to kiss him.