Scarlet Plume, Second Edition

by Frederick Manfred

  He washed his clout, wrung it out, and put it back on.

  He went downstream a dozen yards, took his knife and cut himself a slender tough branch of bur oak. He came back and sat down on his stone again. He began to adze the branch down. Despite the hot purification bath, his cheekbones were still an ashen gray.

  He was making a bow. Judith began to feel better about him. At least he was moving about. He would no doubt come around in his own good time.

  She knew enough not to go near him. The dark spirit of the woman was alien to the hunt. The hunt was one of man’s oldest skills and had to be revered accordingly.

  He cut the bow a certain length, measuring from his right hip across to his extended left fingertips. With his knife he beveled the bow with a sure touch. He cut grooves down the back of the bow. Carrying a coal from his sweathouse fire, he made a stick fire near his workbench and boiled antelope hoofs and tendons until he had a sticky glue. He spread the glue over the back of the bow in several thin layers and pasted on two sinews with the wide ends together in the middle. He spread on more glue and powdered it with white clay. He repeated the treatment several times. He wrapped a piece of buckskin the width of a hand around the middle of the bow. The bowstring he made from the antelope’s rear-leg tendons. Done, he set the bow aside to dry.

  Next, searching the floor of the pool, he found a stone the shape and size of a chicken’s heart. He built a flint-maker, a tool with a long wooden handle and tipped with a piece of deer antler. The handle fitted exactly under his right arm, from the tip of his middle finger to the point of his elbow. He set the butt of the handle against his chest to form a steady fulcrum, then, pressing the antler point against the edge of the heart-shaped stone held in his left hand, pressed firmly. Presently the stone fractured and a half-moon flake flew off. Flake after flake jumped off around the entire rim of the stone. He worked both sides.

  By evening he had a half-dozen arrowheads ready, all of them beautifully executed, all of them needle-sharp.

  He selected a half-dozen second-growth chokecherry shoots and cut them a certain length.

  It became dark out and he came inside to work by the light of the hearth. His face was still ashen. His eyes sputtered more than glittered. He still would not eat.

  Judith remembered having seen such a face before. Pa had looked like that after his two-day headaches.

  Scarlet Plume worked until he had six gleaming arrows, perfectly tipped and deftly feathered. All the arrows were properly grooved so that blood could flow from the wound they would make. He set the arrows a certain distance from the fire to let them dry gradually. There was a magical sense of rightness in all he did.

  Weapon-making done, he sat quietly a moment.

  He rubbed a hand along his jaw. The hand paused. It had found something. With a fingertip he explored his teeth. He winced when he touched a back molar, a wisdom tooth. He selected a splinter from a mound of twigs to one side of the fire. Gingerly he picked at the wisdom tooth. After some careful poking around, he pried out a tiny ball of decayed food.

  The removal of the little speck of food let air into the cavity of the tooth. He sat very still for a while. Then, of a sudden, he took the splinter and held it in the fire. The moment it blazed up, he quickly jammed its burning end into the cavity of the tooth. There was a sizzling sound. He held it in the cavity until the splinter turned cold. Not a ripple of pain showed on his face.

  Judith sat like a scared rabbit.

  He sat immobile some more. Gradually his wide, haunted eyes filled with lava-like torment again. The dark being from the underworld still possessed him.

  Judith decided to help him. She would ask him the most horrendous thing she could think of. She would shock him out of it.

  “Brave one,” she said, “we have now lived together as man and wife for some time. Yet you have not told me your secret name. Do you have secrets from your wife? I wish to know.”

  He quivered as if struck with a whip.

  “What is your secret name? I wish to know.”

  He shuddered.

  “Well, then, at least tell your wife the name of your helper. Who is he?”

  “He is wakan. I cannot speak of it.”

  “Speak to your wife. I would know what your trouble is.”

  He shuddered some more.

  “Husband, there is also another thing I would know. What is the secret name of Wakantanka?”

  The effect of the question on him was like a blow on a tense string. He vibrated violently all over. And only gradually did the vibrations die away.

  She felt miserable, even ashamed, asking such questions. Yet she felt she had to help him with her white-man kind of medicine. “What is his name? I wish to know. When I reach the home of my white friends I want to tell them about the god of the Yanktons, that he is a very great god.”

  He spoke. His voice was so cracked, so hollow, it was more the voice of a ghost than that of a man. “Woman, one touches Wakantanka himself when one mentions his true name. If I mention his true name he will surely strike me dead. That is why he is also spoken of as He Who Has A Secret Name.”

  “I have heard it said by my sister, the Good Book Woman, that Wakantanka is sometimes known by the name of The Great Master Of All Breath.”

  Terrible awe showed in his eyes. He jerked away from her as if truly expecting her to be struck dead. She had hit on the correct name.

  “And now that I know his secret name, can you not tell me your secret name?”

  “No!” he cried hoarsely, eyes wild and rolling. “No! No!”

  She herself began to shake all over. Yet the devil in her pushed her on. “Tell me, what is your secret name?”

  “No!”

  “Speak to your wife. I would know what your trouble is.”

  A massive breath made his chest shudder. He swallowed and swallowed.

  “Speak to your wife. I would know what your trouble is.”

  At last, after swallowing and swallowing, he managed to find tongue. “You are the white goddess. When you command I must speak. Therefore I do. The day before this day I saw a burning in the swamp. It was a ghost and it was dancing on top of the grass. It was on the other side of the bier of Mad Bear’s departed warrior. I saw that it was the dead man’s spirit. He followed me and told me he was unhappy. He said I had done a great wrong to the Dakota people. He told me it was not permitted a Yankton to make connection with a white goddess. He said that it was a terrible wrong. It was for this that Whitebone lost his old mother, Smoky Day. The swamp ghost said it was against the vision that was given me. He told me to take you to the white cities quickly.”

  Another shudder shook Scarlet Plume. “When one sees a swamp ghost it is always a sign that death lies waiting near for someone. I saw him very plainly. He had two great glowing eyes.”

  Judith fell silent. What could she tell this man?

  Scarlet Plume again made a move to fight off the black miseries.

  He made himself a drum by staking out a piece of rawhide over the hole in the earth on the other side of the hearth where he boiled the meat. He made himself a drumstick with a piece of ash and a wrapping of leather.

  Then he began to beat the earth drum slowly, tok-t-tok-t-tok.

  Presently he warmed to the task and began to sing. The singing was a barbaric rhuing deep in his throat. The sound of it was as if a lizard were trying to sing a psalm. The words were more than sad, they were guttural. The melody always fell away at the end. The melody had come down a long, long road, out of the savage deeps of time.

  The drumming came to her through the earth under the hearth and entered her belly. It entered the seat of all things.

  He drummed and sang on into the night, without interruption, beating with first one hand then the other, holding his free hand, palm open, alongside his mouth for resonance.

  She lay down on her hide bed. She covered her ears with a parfleche to mute the sound of the drumming. It exhausted her to listen to it.

>   It was well past midnight before he stopped.

  The pause that followed was full of ringing echoes.

  He said, “The Yanktons will soon be dead. All of them. Our homeland will soon be plowed and burned away. All of it. We and our land, we are too naked. The great wagon-guns of the white man’s war and the hard plows of the white man’s peace have put holes in us.” His face was so ashen it resembled bleached placenta. “My dreams have deserted me, even those that come only in the night. I have no dreams. When I look forward I look into blackness. When I look backward I look into blackness. I am dead ahead and I am dead behind. I have no more to say.”

  There was a further slight quiver in his eyelids. Then he lay down and composed himself for sleep.

  An hour later there was an awesome scream outside their shelter. Both Judith and Scarlet Plume sat up out of sleep like seeds suddenly popped out of milkweed pods.

  “What was that?” Judith whispered. Her scalp puckered up on her skull.

  Scarlet Plume reached over and placed a hand on her mouth. The hand was warm with a brother’s touch.

  A single red ember, no larger than the eye of a squirrel, showed in the hearth. There was just enough light inside the lodge for Judith to make out the silhouette of Scarlet Plume’s face. His blacks were gone.

  The voice in the night erupted horribly outside the door again. It was as if a hundred crucified Christs were letting go at once.

  “It is the puma,” Scarlet Plume whispered. “The terrible cat.”

  “A true puma? Not Mad Bear and his band?”

  “It is the true puma.”

  Judith quick slipped out of her bed and crawled in with Scarlet Plume. She hugged him. Her belly humped up.

  The scream of the great cat ripped the night air again. This time it was so close they could hear spit crackling in its throat. In her mind’s eye Judith saw an enormous wild beast, lips wide and snarling, teeth as sharp as icicles, throat a rhuing red—all of it an unreasoning ravening hunger.

  “Ahh.” Scarlet Plume let go a slow breath. “It can now be seen that what I saw two days ago was not the true swamp ghost.”

  “Swamp ghost?”

  He took her head in both of his hands and slowly turned it about. “See? There it is.”

  Two circling balls of fire glowed in the doorway.

  She shrank in his arms.

  “I saw instead the eyes of this puma and not the eyes of the swamp ghost.”

  She hugged him about the waist.

  He spoke to the two eyes, clear and resonant. “Big cat, you stand on the threshold of a Yankton lodge. Welcome. Enter. Eat with us. There is much meat in the parfleche. Big cat, you see the hearth of a true Yankton. Step forward. Sleep with us. The ground is dry on this side of the fire.”

  The paired glowing eyes wavered, then flicked out. There was a sound of paw pads leaving the ground with a heavy push, followed by a thump. Then the glowing eyes came on again, a dozen feet back from the doorway. The puma had leaped in retreat on hearing Scarlet Plume’s strong voice.

  “Come, great one. We wait.”

  The puma roared. The sound of its deep wrawling was like a scraping in the bottom of a great barrel.

  Scarlet Plume took Judith gently by the arms and lifted her back into her own bed. He threw the wolfskin over her and tucked her in. Then, naked, he padded over on hands and knees and stirred up the embers. He dropped a ball of antelope fat into the red ashes, and instantly a flame shot up, tall, like a small bolt of red lightning leaping out of the earth. The whole interior of the lodge lit up, so bright that for a moment there were no shadows. Scarlet Plume threw a handful of dry twigs onto the flame, then placed a dozen sticks on it, neatly, in the manner of a squaw setting up tepee poles. The single flame gradually spread into a corona of steady flames.

  Again Scarlet Plume called out, firmly. “Come, i-nmu-tan-ka. It is warm here. We wait.”

  More growling. The puma sounded as if he was sitting in the path to the pool, blocking it. His paired eyes burned bluish disks at them.

  “Come, my brother, be not afraid. In this lodge there are only Yankton friends.”

  The paired eyes burned orange, then violet.

  Still buck naked, Scarlet Plume settled down before the hearth. He dug out his red gossip pipe and lit up. He had himself a leisurely smoke.

  Goose pimples prickled out all over Judith’s skin.

  They waited.

  An hour later dawn broke over the high bluff. It came swiftly, very clear and very cool. Gold leaves drifted down the grassy slopes of the ravine.

  Yellow leaves also fell on the big cat where it lay crouched directly in the path to the pool. The puma faced the door, its big forepaws placed together in front of its chest, its rear legs doubled under its belly and ready to spring. The fur over the body of the cat was the color of fall hay, a honey brown. Its long cylindrical tail curled and snapped and curled. A powdery white glowed over its throat and inside its round ears, and a patch of black quivered on either side of its muzzle. Its white whiskers were long. The puma was in the prime of its life.

  Scarlet Plume spoke up from where he sat naked before his fire. His phallus had awakened a little. “Yeh-he-toe. I see that the great cat does not wish us to take the customary morning bath. Perhaps the terrible cat thinks he will break his fast by eating a bad smeller. Well, some big cats are known to fancy strong meat early in the morning.”

  Judith couldn’t help but worship Scarlet Plume. He was once again the serene, handsome brave.

  Scarlet Plume put aside his pipe and got to his feet. He cried, “Hoppo! Up!” and stretched to his full naked height. Then he stepped into his clout and thrust his knife in his belt.

  Judith sat up. “My husband?”

  “Shhh.” Scarlet Plume smiled down at her. “It is fated.” He went over and stood in the doorway.

  Judith, wolfskin tight around her body, scrambled out of bed to watch.

  The big cat stared at Scarlet Plume, switching and snapping its tail from side to side.

  Scarlet Plume spoke as if consulting aloud with a friend. “Pumas have never been known to attack a grown man. Well, perhaps this puma has been given a special vision.”

  The cat wrawled at him in a deep, low voice.

  “Perhaps i-nmu-tan-ka fancies the meat of a wakan white woman. Houw! It will be a thing to see.”

  The cat’s tail continued to snap back and forth.

  Scarlet Plume picked up his bow and arrows. “Hoka-hey! It is time to fight!” He stepped outside and settled into a crouching position. “I see that my arrows already cry for the blood.” He nocked an arrow on the bowstring, lifted the bow diagonally across the front of his body, and with a single fluid motion of flexible wrists drew the bow deep and released the arrow, the bow turning over in his hand after the shot.

  The arrow flicked the puma’s round right ear. The puma came off the ground in hairy outrage. Back humped, hair all bristled, the big cat advanced a few steps, then crouched down again.

  Scarlet Plume also advanced a few steps, and once more settled into a crouching position. He reached for a second arrow. “Begone, cat. Run, cat. This arrow will kill thee. The first arrow was only sent in warning that this Yankton has also had a vision. If you will not be his guest, then this Yankton is prepared to defend his lodge. Houw!”

  The cat charged. It snapped off the ground. It came at Scarlet Plume so dazzling quick that Scarlet Plume did not have time to nock the second arrow.

  Judith screamed.

  Scarlet Plume rose to meet the onslaught, powerful big toes heaving him up, bow and arrow dropping away.

  Hands outstretched, he caught the cat’s forepaws in midair, high over his head. He almost buckled under the shock of the big cat’s hit. His knife fell out of his belt. Yet Scarlet Plume held up. With all his force, rippling, he held the cat away to keep it from pulling his head forward and biting him in the back of the neck. He heaved himself hard around in a quick tight swinging circle, taking th
e puma with him. Before the cat could recover, he whirled it around yet again, and then, with a folding motion, threw it on its back. He came down on the cat’s stomach with all his driving weight. His belt broke and his clout fell off. With great effort he pinned the cat’s forepaws down on the ground wide apart.

  The big cat roared in outrage.

  Scarlet Plume screamed defiance.

  They wrawled at each other, wild, necks humped, ready to strike and bite. Tooth and claw, it became a battle of emmaddened backbones.

  Judith screeched.

  Scarlet Plume hunched himself as far back and as far down as he could on the cat’s belly. He pushed his buttocks hard against the cat’s clawing rear legs, forcing the rear legs back at the hip joints, keeping them from tearing up his back. At the same time Scarlet Plume also had to lean forward as far as he could to keep the cat’s front paws pinned to the ground. He pressed his chin hard into the puma’s ratching breastbone. Scarlet Plume’s eyes glittered like a serpent’s, black, implacable.

  The muscles of the two bodies battling were like two alien families of snakes intertwined and struggling mad.

  Scarlet Plume held hard.

  The big cat strained to break free, spitting and snapping and roaring.

  Once, in the middle of all the coiling and writhing, the puma managed to get in one good bite. Its mouth caught Scarlet Plume’s wrist like a vise. Scarlet Plume gave a tremendous jerk and managed to wrest it free. His wrist bled.

  They writhed and wrestled and writhed. The puma was strong. Scarlet Plume was strong.

  At last Scarlet Plume saw that the puma would win if he didn’t do something to end it immediately.

  He whispered to his helper. He listened to hear what his helper had to say.

  Then he moved. He let go the cat’s left forepaw and with his right hand caught the cat powerfully around the throat. He squeezed with all his might. His shoulder muscles came up in a hump. His thumb dug in, deep, deep, until, of a sudden, pungg, his thumbnail punched through the live hide under the fur.

  The puma worked him over with its free paw. It clawed his shoulders. It cut deep gashes in his taut cheek.

  Scarlet Plume shouted and shouted. “Hoka-hey! Hoka-hey!”