After six hours the fever broke and the patient’s gentle, lined face glistened with sweat. Old Man gathered up his paraphernalia, beckoned to his drummer and trooped out of the lodge, waving his arms triumphantly to those outside, like a circus act making a grand exit. Sunrise went with him to arrange payment and get a prescription. Some aspects of medicine were the same everywhere.
Takes Down busied herself with the evening meal, and a blessed peace settled over the lodge. Cynthia crept over to Medicine Woman’s pallet, knelt, and looked down at the still face. When the old woman opened her eyes, there were golden flecks in them, like tiny chips of iron pyrite, fool’s gold. The child wiped the perspiration from the soft skin, stretched like parchment over high cheekbones. She brushed wet wisps of hair from her grandmother’s high forehead. Medicine Woman smiled and reached out a thin hand that still trembled. Cynthia took it and stroked the back of it, feeling the pulse pounding far too fast in the slender wrist.
“Hi, Kaku, nei mataoyol How are you, Granddaughter, my little one?” They were the first words Medicine Woman had spoken since that morning when she’d been laid, shaking like treetops in the wind, on the bed.
“Nei chat, Kaku, I am well, Grandmother.” Cynthia, now Naduah, fell into the rhythm of the People’s words. And, as the days passed, into the rhythm of their lives.
CHAPTER 12
It was an afternoon the color of a tarnished gun barrel, and unusually chill for early July. Naduah sat under her rabbit robe with Star Name. Together they watched the small fire. The flames flickered hypnotically, a work of art that changed and danced in patterns of delicate beauty. The few stray raindrops that fell through the smoke hole hissed and turned to steam as they landed.
Outside, the tent was besieged. Rain drummed the sides in random surges, until it sounded like a thousand fists and the air inside seemed to reverberate. Lumps of hail as big as robin’s eggs beat an erratic tattoo on the taut hide while thunder boomed like cannons and grumbled off through the distant hills. Wind whipped the rain into a frenzy as it fell, driving walls of it diagonally into the ground with such force that it rose again in a misty spray. The mat of thick grass on the valley floor kept the ground from absorbing it all. It ran in rivers around the lodges until they seemed to float in a broad, shallow sea.
The narrow trench dug around the tent had long since overflowed. Beds and belongings were pulled away from the sides to escape the wet, probing fingers that poked under the dew cloth. This leather curtain hung draped all the way around the walls, tied to the lodge poles about six feet up. It overlapped onto the floor, channeling to the outside the water that ran into the smoke hole. In the center of the floor the children were dry. They sat on carpets of buffalo hides with the hair left on, cushioned by the thick, woolly nap.
As the billowing gray clouds had gathered, herded by a rising wind, Naduah had gone outside with Owl to close in the smoke hole. A howling, gale-force gust snapped the ends of her breechclout around her as the first huge, icy drops splashed on her bare head and shoulders. Naduah struggled with one of the two eighteen-foot poles attached to the winglike flaps at the top of the lodge. She and Owl closed them, like an old man pulling his coat’s lapels around his chin to keep out the wind. The pole flexed and pitched, bucking in her small hands, until she wedged it in place. She shook it to make sure it was solidly planted. Owl had finished first, but knew better than to offer help. For someone who had wasted nine years of her life with white people, Naduah was closing fast on the rest of the field. Owl admired her for it.
They pulled back the heavy hide door and stepped over the low threshold into the warm lodge. The weights in the bottom of the door hide kept it closed even in the wind. It was dim and dry inside. Owl’s mother, She Laughs, passed Naduah a strip of roasted squash, ballast brought back with the corn and tobacco, the real cargo of the last trading trip to the Tuhkanay, the Wichita, three hundred miles to the northeast. The hot squash was sweet and tender. Naduah scraped the last bits of it off the skin with her teeth, threw the rind into the fire, and wiped her hands on her breechclout. Then she gave Name Giver her full attention. Name Giver took up the story of how the Nermenuh, the People, separated from their brothers, the Shoshone, long ago. As he spoke he worked on a war arrow for Wanderer.
The light was dim, but it made no difference to Owl’s grandfather. Cataracts had slowly eclipsed his sight, shrouding his eyes more each year until they were glazed with a thick, milky film, like clouds over the moon. He said they gave him the feeling of already being in the spirit world, surrounded by shadowy forms and disembodied voices. His calm, thoughtful face sometimes did seem to be off somewhere communing with souls unseen.
He was the children’s favorite choice for Guess Who because they didn’t have to bother blindfolding him. They would sit in a row with their legs stretched out in front of them while Name Giver felt along the line. He would choose a child, pick her up, and sling her over his broad back with her head hanging down. Then he would pace in a circle while the others asked his captive questions.
“Do you have a saddle?” “Do you have a pony?” “Do you have a doll?” When Name Giver guessed who his victim was by the sound of her voice the others rushed him, crying they were going to eat him. They tickled him unmercifully until they were all rolling on the ground with laughter. Naduah had introduced the variation of Blind Man’s Bluff, but it wasn’t as popular. Probably because no one was tickled.
Now Name Giver was creating long, slender death that sang as it searched out its victims. With Owl’s help he still made the best arrows in the band, working by the feel of them in his huge, powerful hands. Sometimes Naduah helped Owl pull the cord that twirled the bowlike lathe used to true the shafts. But only Owl was allowed to buff off the rough spots on them with an ancient piece of pumice, treasured in the family for years, and almost worn away.
Bundles of green dogwood shoots, in various stages of seasoning, lay piled around the lodge or hung from the tops of the lodge poles. As it passed by them the smoke seasoned them and killed any insects in them.
Name Giver was finishing a shaft by greasing the few almost imperceptible crooked places. Then he drew it through two grooved sandstone slabs fitted together to form a cylindrical mold. When the shaft was as round as he could make it and tapered just right, he lined it up with the tips of his fingers and pulled it through a round hole cut in a disk of bone. A sharp spur projecting from the edge of the hole gouged a groove along the arrow.
Name Giver made four such grooves in each shaft. Two were straight and the other two he curved by rotating his wrist as he pulled the shaft through. Owl would later paint the grooves, the straight ones black and the spiral ones red. The grooves kept the arrow from warping and represented the path it would follow with the speed of lightning. They also formed channels for the blood to run out in, weakening the prey faster.
Then the shaft was rubbed until it gleamed, and still it was far from finished. It had to have the feathers added and the point made. The arrowheads were painstakingly cut from the iron barrel hoops and other metal stolen from the white men. They were sharpened with files traded from the Comancheros, and then hardened by heating them in the fire and dropping them in cold water. They took longer to make than the old flint arrowheads, but they were stronger and sharper. And if one was lucky, one could buy packets of ready-made ones from the traders. A dozen points that cost the trader six cents brought him a buffalo hide from the Indians.
For Wanderer’s arrow Name Giver would paint three red lines around the base of the shaft. They were his crest, the identifying mark that separated his arrows from others. Each man had a different one. The war arrows had their points set at right angles to the bowstring so they would penetrate between human ribs. Hunting arrows were set parallel to the bow so they would pass between buffalo ribs. Name Giver was making war arrows with the points loosely attached and barbed. When the point entered the body it pulled off the shaft and rotated crosswise in the wound, making it difficult
to extract without tearing the flesh.
A warrior usually carried a hundred such arrows with him, and could shoot them from a running horse fast enough to keep one in the air all the time. A good hunting arrow, loosed by an expert bowman, could drive completely through a buffalo’s body from a distance of ten to fifteen yards.
Name Giver’s arrows were known for the care he took, and for the slender grooves painted red and black. His arrows always struck with the feathered end tilted upward, which meant they were perfectly balanced. Name Giver would have a purpose until his strength failed and his hands trembled, gnarled by arthritis like an ancient mesquite tree. Until Owl married and left and there was no one to gather dogwood or turn the lathe.
The young men didn’t want to learn such things now. All they thought about were the clumsy, ugly ella cona, the fire rods of the white men. They couldn’t shoot as far or as accurately or as fast as arrows. One shot and the game for miles around scattered. They were always jamming and exploding and turning on their masters. Skinny And Ugly was missing the ends of two fingers thanks to his ancient musket. The guns didn’t fire at all if their powder got wet. And no matter how many the warriors stole, they could never keep up with the white men.
Besides, they couldn’t steal enough powder and shot to practice with, so they weren’t nearly as accurate with their precious guns as they were with reliable bows and arrows. Just getting their powder across streams was a major preoccupation. With arrows all a man had to do was shoot them over to the other side and retrieve them when he crossed. Someday the young men would see the folly of lusting after weapons that were of no use to them. Name Giver knew there would always be a need for his craft, when the white men were destroyed and their bad influence washed away like rain washes dust from the lodges.
Naduah sat as contented as a kitten in front of the fire, listening to the fury outside and basking in the cozy warmth inside. Somewhere in her month and a half of work and play and rambles with Star Name she had shed her other name. She thought of herself as Naduah now. She Keeps Warm With Us. She was Star Name’s friend and sister. Medicine Woman’s granddaughter, and Takes Down The Lodge’s daughter. She concentrated on Name Giver’s long, meandering tale.
“Rainbows are the breath of the Great Lizard,” he said, painting a rainbow across the air of the tent with a sweep of his arm. “The Great Lizard soothes the angry Thunderbird.” And his face twisted into a hideous mask as he loomed over the children, a terrible Thunderbird with outstretched wings, spanning the world to the horizon.
“The Thunderbird’s shadow is the vast cloud overhead, and lightning flashes from his eyes. The thunder is the sound of his huge wings flapping, and the rain spills from the lake on his back.” Name Giver lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper when he spoke of it, glancing up toward the top of the tent from time to time.
Naduah held her breath, straining forward to hear and understand, her wide blue eyes wide with fear. She looked up when Name Giver did, expecting to see the Thunderbird’s baleful, red-veined eye peering through the smoke hole at her. Chills chased each other up and down her spine. No wonder the People rarely went out in the rain, unless it was absolutely necessary.
“Blocks The Sun sent me to straighten up here. She says men make such a mess everywhere they go. We thought you were both out visiting.” Something Good stood just inside the door, looking like a frightened deer about to take flight. The dripping hide she had draped over her head lay in a puddle of water behind her. Her two-piece dress of thin suede was wet and clung to her body even more than usual. The dress was plain except for the heavy fringe at the hem and shoulders, but Something Good had no need of ornaments. Her thick black hair was plaited into braids wrapped with thongs. The rain had blown so hard that they had gotten wet under the hide umbrella.
“Wanderer is with Buffalo Piss and Big Bow,” said Eagle. “He probably won’t be back tonight. I didn’t want to spend the day telling foolish stories when there are things in my heart I can’t speak of at all.” Eagle stirred the fire with a stick, sparks and flames leaping higher as the air reached them.
“I’ll leave you to your thoughts then. You seem to prefer their company these days.” Another burst of thunder detonated nearby. Something Good flinched, but turned to pick up her rain covering.
“Don’t go back out there. Blocks The Sun shouldn’t have sent you here in this storm.” He knew why she had been sent. Wives usually got along very well, but one as young and as beautiful as Something Good would suffer from another’s envy and jealousy. Maybe Blocks The Sun herself didn’t realize that she was treating the girl unfairly, but there was no other reason to make her go outside in this.
As to how Pahayuca must treat her, Eagle couldn’t think of it without jealousy and anger putting a hard hand around his heart and squeezing it. Huge, fat, simple Pahayuca and slender Something Good. She was a chiefs daughter and the wife of a chief and her life was theirs to command. How often did she feel the tug of the cord that passed from her husband’s bed, out under his lodge wall, and into that of her own? What did she feel as she folded a blanket around her naked body and walked, barefoot, hair loose and flowing, to him? A flush of anger and shame warmed Eagle’s face, and he bent to hide it. She stooped down, collected the hide, and shook drops from it.
“I would rather go outside than stay here with someone who hates me.”
“I don’t hate you.” But he sounded surly and kept his eyes down, not wanting to look into hers. He knew if he did his soul would fall into their depths and never be his own again. And his promise to his brother, Wanderer, would be the ashes that sift through one’s fingers and blow away in the wind.
Some things happen only once in a man’s life. Only once does he feel the thrill of killing a buffalo for the first time, of seeing the arrow slant at just the right angle to pass into the tiny spot behind the short rib, then forward and down into the heart, bringing a ton of flesh crashing to the ground. Only once does he sink his knife into another for the first time and see his enemy go limp and powerless, eyes glazed over in the orgasm of death.
There is only one first time to enter a woman’s moist, soft passage. He couldn’t remember his first woman’s name, but he could remember the volcano of pleasure that trembled and erupted, leaving him spent and astonished and delighted with the prospect of doing it for years to come.
He knew there would only be one Something Good in his life, and that he couldn’t have her. He folded his arms across his knees and clenched his fists to keep from reaching toward her. And so they remained, silent, while the cold rain drummed outside. Something Good shivered from the damp.
“Come here and dry off,” Eagle finally said. “No one will expect you back until this is over. I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time.” He felt like he was treading a narrow mountain path, with sheer drop-offs on either side and a strong wind blowing. One toyed with one’s life, but not with a promise to a brother. He should leave, but his legs refused to obey him.
Staring into the fire, he felt, rather than heard, Something Good silently cross the lodge and sit near him. The smell of her, of smoke and wet leather and a trace of wild sage, made him drunk. Still he watched the flames, his muscles tense and a slow, hot ache building in his groin. For an instant he was angry with her for doing this to him. Then he thought of her gentle face, with no trace of arrogance or guile, and the anger melted.
“I don’t hate you. You know that.”
“Yes. I know it.” She too stared into the fire.
“I promised Wanderer that I wouldn’t betray Pahayuca. That’s why I’ve been avoiding you. Seeing you and not being able to have you is like a painful wound that won’t heal.” He placed another stick on the fire, careful to put only one end in. To lay a stick across a fire was bad luck. “I should leave here and go back to the Staked Plains and the Quohadi.”
“No!” She gave a small start and masked it by reaching up to untie her braids. She ran her fingers through them to untangle them a
nd shook out her hair. The plaiting and the dampness made it stand out, a thick, wispy nimbus of ebony and gold firelight around her small, beautiful face. “Please don’t go.”
When Eagle looked at her at last, all he saw were her huge, dark eyes, gleaming with tears. He reached over and laid his hand along her cheek, his thumb wiping the drop away from the comer of her eye.
“If you leave, I’ll still love you,” she said. “And if I can’t have you, I’ll still love you. And if you marry another, I’ll always be yours. Even when the fire has been smothered and ashes raked over it, it lives underneath, smoldering there until it’s uncovered and someone blows on it.”
He slid his hand slowly down her face and rested it in the curve of her neck and shoulder. He paused, then caressed further, stroking her chest and ribs. When he reached her waist, he put his hand under the edge of her cape and moved back up her warm, satiny body. As he cupped his fingers around her small breast, brushing the taut nipple lightly with his thumb, he could feel the pounding of her heart and the shudder that passed over her. His last sober thought before he laid her gently back on the robe was a rueful one. A man had no more formidable enemy than a woman. Against her there was no defense and no victory and no honor.
CHAPTER 13
Rachel Plummer had reached the end of her tether. She no longer cared what they did to her. She figured if she was lucky they’d kill her and put her out of her misery. She grabbed a thick piece of kindling from the pile she had just hauled in on her back, and swung with all her strength. It caught Awoominot, A Little Less, completely off guard, landing on her chunky shoulder and dropping her like a sack of sand. The quirt with which she had been beating Rachel flew from her hand and spun a few times in the air before it landed. She lay there gaping in the litter around the frayed, patched lodge.
Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 15
