Scarlet Plume, Second Edition

by Frederick Manfred

  Gravely, with the courtesy of a mannered prince, he took down the scaffold post by post. He caught the skeleton wrapped in its leather shroud before it fell to the ground. He placed the shreds of what was left of Angela’s green dress inside the bundle. He held Angela’s remains deferentially in his arms.

  Judith stepped closer. Her manner was crisp. Her wide blue eyes took in every detail. “Is it all there?”

  “Even to the ghost.”

  Judith steeled herself not to start. Ghost?

  “But now that we have wept, her manes will be free to go to the white man’s heaven.”

  Manes? Yes. In a white man’s brain the word also had another meaning. She remembered seeing Angela’s silver mane smoking in Bullhead’s hair, burned, after a lightning bolt had struck near him.

  The two geldings continued to graze by themselves, reins trailing in the grass, occasionally stomping a hoof at a fly.

  Scarlet Plume led the way to Theodosia’s cabin. His decorum was that of a solemn medicine man leading a procession of ghosts. It was almost dusk. With his hands Scarlet Plume scooped aside the ashes of the cabin. He dug a pit. Gently he placed the tangle of bones and skull in the hole. He stepped aside for Judith to say the last words, to cry the last tears.

  Belly taut, Judith gestured for him to fill the grave.

  Scarlet Plume hesitated a second. His eyes swung from left to right. He spotted the flowerless, stunted hollyhock. He seemed to nod in his black eyes. He stepped over and pulled the hollyhock up by the roots. Carefully he placed it in the fold of the leather shroud. He began to refill the hole.

  Beyond him, through an opening in the trees, Judith saw six wild swans swimming irregularly on the blue surface of the lake. The old father swan up front was trumpeting hoarsely. Suddenly his wings slapped hard on the surface of the water, and he rose, water trailing from his long legs like clear syrup, and was off. After a moment the other five white swans broke free of the surface too. They lifted steadily, up, up, then veered off in a wide turn to the south. With their legs trailing after them, they resembled frogs suddenly flying. Faintly there came down to Judith the call of the father swan: whooo-whooo-whooo. It reminded her of an Indian lover’s flageolet.

  Scarlet Plume finished. He covered the grave with the ashes. He patted the ashes down with a spray of oak leaves to hide all trace that a grave had been made on the spot.

  Judith turned, walked a few steps toward the grazing horses, pitched forward. She lost consciousness before she hit the ground.

  A twirling sound awoke her. There was also the lovely liquid sound of lapping waves.

  She opened her eyes. Above her, not a foot away, hung her gray wolfskin. It took her a moment to understand that she was lying on the prairie with the wolfskin serving as a shelter, that the lake Skywater lay below and behind her.

  But the twirling? She turned her head.

  Scarlet Plume sat on his heels almost beside her. He was making a fire with a primitive fire drill. The female piece he had made out of soft, very dry willow, the male piece out of hard oak. He held the female piece down with his toes while he rotated the male stick between the flat palms of his hands, back and forth, the point set in a small notched hole. He rotated the drill rapidly at the same time that he pressed it down. The sharp friction made the twirling, squeaking sound she had heard.

  Wood powder presently began to appear around the edges of the small hole. The wood powder turned brown, then began to smoke, then turned a deep black, then began to smoke in earnest. More wood powder piled up around the rotating point. Of a sudden a tiny spark glowed off to one side of the hole, in the notch. Slowly the spark spread through the powder around the hole. As soon as the spark was glowing well, Scarlet Plume let go of the drill and dropped a pinch of tinder on the spark. The tinder caught. He dropped on some coarser shavings. They caught too. He next dropped on a handful of dry grass. A billow of acrid smoke drifted around his bronze face. He leaned down and blew on it gently. A flame jumped up. Quickly he transferred the little flame to some tinder beside a stick tepee already prepared. In a few seconds the oak sticks were blazing merrily.

  Judith had never seen fire making done before. It was a thing to see, an exquisite skill that men were about to discard in favor of the match. Once again, for a fleeting moment, Judith had a vivid glimpse down a long, long road leading all the way back to savage deeps of time. Thought of it helped her hold down the deep fog of grief that lay in her.

  Scarlet Plume saw that she was awake. “Hoppo! The morning star is up. Already it hangs in the scarlet sky as bright as the blue egg of the redbreast.”

  She sat up, and in so doing she bumped her head against one of the supports holding up the wolfskin. The wolfskin fell around her. It scared her and for a second she fought it as though it were alive.

  Smiling a little, Scarlet Plume helped her.

  She rubbed her eyes. “Have I slept long?”

  “From sun to sun.”

  She got to her feet and stretched. She smoothed out her wrinkled tunic with the flat of her hand.

  She saw that he had gathered a few white boiling stones and had dug a boiling hole beside the fire. The thought of more boiled meat momentarily gagged her. But then she saw a neat pile of pinkish-brown potatoes on the other side of the fire. Her eyes opened. “Where were these found?”

  “In the Good Book Woman’s garden.” He pointed to where he had gone rooting through a grass-choked patch of ground.

  Her eyes lighted up a high blue. It had been months since she had had a good boiled potato. “Mmmm.”

  “They will be ready when you return from the morning bath.”

  Later, just before they left, after she had mounted her gray gelding, Scarlet Plume did something that endeared him more than ever to her. He touched a tree, a wolfberry bush, a sunflower, a cricket sitting on a nodding spear of grass. He also reached out a hand as though to touch the morning sun. The easy dignity of the true fatalist lay over his wide face.

  They jogged northeast, loose hair flowing, gold and black. There was no wind except that created by their own going. Mosquitoes rose in clouds as they passed by placid water in low green sloughs. Thousands upon thousands of ducks and geese flew by overhead, going south. All morning long the skies were filled with their vague, haunting cries. Sometimes they dipped through dry coulees. When an occasional odd hump in the land came along, Scarlet Plume ascended it for a long searching look around.

  The sun had climbed to near noon, when Scarlet Plume abruptly stopped and got down off his horse. He squatted in front of a large white boulder, staring intently at something on it.

  Judith urged her horse up close to have a look too. “What is it?”

  “Sign.”

  “Where?”

  His brown finger traced out faint red markings on the white surface of the stone. Rain seemed to have washed much of it away.

  “What does it say?”

  He pointed to two irregular circles, several twiglike human figures, a rough sketch of a cannon, a wide diagonal stripe. “Here are two lakes. One of them is known as Talking Water, the other Wood Lake. Here are white soldiers fighting with red warriors. Here is the River Of The Milky Water.” He next pointed to a series of dots. “This tells that almost a moon ago”—he pointed straight north—“there was a battle in that direction. Red warriors were defeated by a great camp of white soldiers. There are many red prisoners. Many white captives have also been returned by the red men.” He stood up. He nodded to himself. “It is to this place that we must go.”

  Judith didn’t understand the hieroglyphic markings and she didn’t understand the reasoning. She sat drooping on her horse. “Whatever you say. I suppose there’s no turning you back now.”

  “A runner from Whitebone’s band has been here. He left this message for whoever might pass. This was six sleeps ago.” Scarlet Plume turned around, looking to all sides. “Perhaps he has done this for us as it was done for you when you were traveling alone.”

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nbsp; Judith nodded. Whitebone had sent out yet another guard to make sure she arrived safely. She was touched by the thought. The old chief had meant nothing but good for her after all.

  Scarlet Plume saw something else. He leaped up on the white rock, beside her horse. He stared north, head thrust out like a hound that had got hint of game up ahead.

  Judith stared north too.

  “There are two of them,” Scarlet Plume said.

  “What? Where?”

  “Do you see the cattail? Look the length of a good bow to the left of it.”

  She stared. She thought it strange that he should have noticed something before the horses did.

  “One is carrying the other because the other is hurt,” Scarlet Plume said. “It cannot be the enemy.”

  “Can it be Mad Bear carrying Bone Gnawer?”

  Scarlet Plume’s black eyes narrowed until they resembled a pair of obsidian arrowheads. His concentration became so deep he exuded a strong male smell. “They are children,” he said at last.

  “What?”

  “The one being carried is a baby and the one carrying him is a boy. The boy is very tired. He walks as does a white boy, with the toes out.”

  Her skin began to prickle all over. She didn’t dare to guess who the children might be. She stared and stared. She knew she had good eyes compared to most people, but she still couldn’t make out anything in the tossing ocean of grass. She envied Scarlet Plume his powerful eyes.

  “Come,” he cried, “we must hurry before they die. We must help them.” He bounded onto his horse and quirted it, sharp. “Hoppo! Hurry, Old Paint.”

  The bay snorted in surprise, responded with an irregularly clodding clumsy gallop.

  Judith’s gray gelding perked up. He neighed complaint at being left behind so suddenly, then gathered himself into a heavy gallop too.

  They had gone about a mile when Judith saw them. Only the upper parts of them could be seen above the waving gray-green grass, and to her it looked more like a boy carrying a ragged bundle than a baby. The little boy was trudging along uncertainly, bent over, the bundle of rags hooked about his neck. A flash of sunlight struck the bundle a certain way. Then she saw that the bundle was a baby as Scarlet Plume had said. Its hands were pulled up around the boy’s neck.

  Ted and Johnnie. Theodosia’s children. Her nephews. The Woods line through the women had not been wiped out after all. Ted and Johnnie had somehow survived the clubbing by the crazy squaw.

  When she caught up with them, she hauled in her horse, hard, and slid to the ground. Her loose gold hair cascaded around her face so that for a moment she was blinded. Scarlet Plume already stood in the grass to one side, a sad, withdrawn look on his face.

  Ted stopped and turned around. He stared at Judith open-mouthed. His towhead was black with crusted blood. All that was left of his clothes was the belt to his pantaloons. His naked body was tanned to a deep Indian brown. His little peter was so swollen, so pitifully sunburned and scabbed over, it protruded out of its foreskin. His legs from the knees down were terribly cut by ripgut grass and pocked over with sores. He was so dirty and his lips so swollen, she knew him more by his form than by his features.

  What a wonderful boy Ted was to have carried his little baby brother all that way. Wonderful boy.

  Little Johnnie hung draped unconscious on Ted’s back. His little arms and legs were fleshless, his belly so distended it shone.

  Judith lifted baby Johnnie from Ted’s back and cradled his fragile body in her arms. She tried to say his name, Johnnie, but found her voice gone. Her breath came in flutters of compassion. Tears gathered behind her eyes. She couldn’t cry them. The tears swelled until they felt like balloons about to burst. At last a moan broke from her and the sound of it in her throat was like the raw billing of a mother lizard.

  With the burden of Johnnie removed, Ted straightened up. He tried to focus his eyes on Judith. The pupils of his blue eyes were unnaturally large and blood-flecked.

  “Mama, is that you?”

  Judith opened her mouth to say something white, but found her tongue strangely stuck. She couldn’t talk white. Instead her tongue and lips shaped themselves to speak Sioux. Sioux had become her heart language.

  “Mama?”

  Judith at last found a few American words and broke through. She had to work at it. “Don’t you remember your Aunt Judith? I’m your auntie.”

  “Mama?”

  “Don’t you remember your Aunt Judith?”

  “Mama, give me some bread. Please, Mama.”

  “Ted.”

  “Johnnie couldn’t walk much, Mama. I had to carry him all the way mostly.”

  “You are a very brave brother.”

  “Is Johnnie dead yet, Mama?”

  “Johnnie’s fine, Ted. Just fine.” Her tongue continued to work strangely stiff. “You’re a good boy to take care of him so. A true brother.”

  “Give me some bread, Mama. With some bumblebee honey on.”

  “Ted.”

  “Is the fort close by, Mama?”

  “Yes, dear boy. We are almost there.”

  “I’m so hungry, Mama.”

  Scarlet Plume stood beside her. He spoke Sioux. “I see willows ahead. They grow beside The River Where A Piece Of Wood Is Painted Red. It is a pleasant river. The waters in it are lazy.”

  Ted jumped at the sound of the heavy Indian voice. He began to shake all over. He tried to focus his eyes on Scarlet Plume. “It’s the Indians again, Mama! Is he going to kill us?”

  Johnnie stirred too.

  Judith hugged Johnnie close and warm. “It’s all right, boys. Don’t be afraid. This is Scarlet Plume, a friendly. So you don’t need to worry. He’s bringing us back to the white cities. He wants to help us.”

  “I’m afraid, Mama.”

  “Shh, now. It’s all right.” She looked up at Scarlet Plume. “Just how far is it to the willows?”

  “A few running steps for the horses.”

  Judith decided she would walk and carry Johnnie, while Ted could ride her horse. But Ted screamed when his swollen pudendum touched the horse’s hairy spine. Scarlet Plume had to help him down again.

  “Ted.”

  Scarlet Plume then took Ted in his arms and began carrying him toward the river. The horses followed them, neighing wonderingly, not wanting to be left behind.

  Scarlet Plume found a dry, sandy beach under red willows. He filled a skin with water and helped Judith wash the children. He dug out an Indian salve from his legging sash, the same herb he had once used to dress Judith’s wounds. He rubbed the limbs and bodies of the children gently, working in the salve. His firm ministrations soothed them.

  “Mama, give me some bread.”

  “Soon now, darling. But first we’ve got to doctor you a little.”

  “Am I dying, Mama?”

  “Course not.”

  “I can’t see very good though.”

  “Shh, now.”

  “I feel just like Jesus did when he was dying on the cross. Slowly he couldn’t see no more.”

  “Shh.”

  “Mama, will there be water to drink in heaven?”

  It didn’t take Judith long to decide they would never be able to wash the black clots of old blood out of the children’s hair. Scarlet Plume suggested that he hack all the hair off with his sharp knife. When it was done the children’s bald heads resembled the rough surface of washed walnuts.

  Scarlet Plume next built a fire and quickly made soup from jerky and wild greens.

  The drifting aroma of the soup at last reached Johnnie where he lay inert. He stirred. His lips moved. “I want mum-mum.”

  “Poor darling.”

  A smile as warm as an indulgent grandmother’s wreathed Scarlet Plume’s face. “He lives.”

  Judith echoed him. “Yes, he lives. Thank God.”

  It was dark by the time they had the children fed and washed. The children slept like bags of grain. They lay on a bed of willow twigs, the wolfskin cov
ering them. In the light of the little twinkling fire the children’s faces once again took on a pink color.

  Scarlet Plume spoke over his red gossip pipe. “We will rest here one day.” He looked up at the stars. “After that we must hurry or we will miss the white soldiers’ encampment. They must stay ahead of the snow.”

  “It will snow?”

  “The time for it has come.”

  They sat in silence awhile, a man and a woman and two children resting around a fire of an evening. Judith wished with all her soul that they truly might be a family together.

  Scarlet Plume clapped out his pipe. He stood up and stretched. Then he vanished into the willows. He would stand guard for the night.

  Judith gave the children a last look, then, utterly exhausted herself, curled up on the sand beside them.

  Her last waking thoughts were of Scarlet Plume. She loved his tender way with children, even enemy white children. She adored his husbandly manner in the lodge, his warm, grave silences as well as his warm, grave laughter. She admired his considerate mien when around old women, as he was around Smoky Day. His stance in life was that of a brave man as well as that of an exceedingly wise one. Smiling, snuggling under a deerhide, she indulged in passionate feminine fantasies.

  The next day a late fall blackbird sang in the red willows.

  Ted told of how he and his little baby brother managed to exist upon finding themselves alive after the massacre at Skywater. He too had dug up potatoes in Theodosia’s patch near the cabin, except that he and Johnnie ate theirs raw. They mostly drank from the lake. They found candy and tobacco on some of the dead bodies. Ted had quite a time keeping Johnnie from crawling back to his father Claude’s body. Johnnie kept crying, “Papa, Papa, don’t sleep so long.” At last Ted decided that everybody at Skywater was dead, that no one was coming for them, not even the mailman Rollo. So Ted started out with Johnnie, heading up the buggy trail toward Fort Ridgely. They walked days. Finally they lost the faint trail in the deep grass. Somehow Ted managed to keep them heading mostly north. They drank water from sloughs and dew from grass in the mornings. They ate grass and sorrel and wild onions and rose hips. Miraculously one day they found a friendly settler cow. She was fresh and apparently very anxious to be milked. They obliged her. They milked in a cupped hand and drank from it. “The milk was so good, Mama. It was better than when Johnnie let me share some of his titty.” Sometimes they got down on their hands and knees under the cow and suckled her tits. It was delicious. But then one night wolves spooked the cow and she disappeared. They trudged on. They thirsted. Their lips and tongues became cracked. Sometimes the mosquitoes sat so thick on their cheeks they could grab them by the handful and eat them.