Using a log with the top sliced off as a cutting board, Takes Down chopped the strips of meat into small pieces, her wrist and hand flashing in a blur. She passed the pieces on to Naduah, who pounded them with a heavy wooden club. At that point, the meat was too, powder, and could be saved to put into boiling water for broth. But they couldn’t spare much for that this year.
The pounded dried meat would be mixed with the partially dried persimmons and melted fat. Then they would stuff it into large intestines, cleaned out and saved from the hunt. Takes Down would pour melted tallow over the top of the pemmican to make it airtight before she tied off the intestines. The pemmican would keep for years. What wouldn’t fit into the intestines was stored in rawhide boxes, two or three feet long and about twenty inches wide. A good size for hanging on either side of a pack saddle.
“Samarayune, pound the meat thoroughly,” said Takes Down as she chopped.
“I am,” sighed Naduah. “Will we be camping with Old Owl’s band soon?”
“Not for a while. His people haven’t had a good hunt either. The men will try again before we camp together. So many people in one place makes hunting difficult. We’ll see them later. And you’ll see your brother. If he isn’t off with a raiding party.”
Naduah opened her mouth to protest that he was only seven years old. Then realized that her mother was teasing her gently as usual.
“Who will tell us stories this winter, Mother?” The thought bothered her. A winter without enough pemmican or Name Giver’s stories was too dreadful to contemplate.
“There are many storytellers. Old Owl is a wonderful storyteller. And so is Medicine Woman.”
“But none of them is as good as the blind one. And who will play Guess Who with us? Remember when the arrow maker put that white robe over his head and pretended to be a ghost? And we screamed and squealed and hid all over the lodge? My heart was thumping like Old Man’s drum.”
“Pay attention to your work, child.” Talk of one who was dead made Takes Down anxious. And she couldn’t help looking over her shoulder. Perhaps not all the blind one’s bones had been buried. Perhaps one lay, gnawed and bare, outside a wolf’s den. Perhaps the old man’s soul still walked, sighing and moaning on the cold wind, looking for paradise, as in one of his stories. Who knew what terrible things the new sickness could do. Takes Down shivered as she took up a wooden club to help her daughter pound the dried meat.
CHAPTER 26
In the cold hour before dawn, when the early December sky was the color of ashes streaked and smudged with soot, a buffalo blundered into the side of a lodge on the outskirts of Pahayuca’s camp. The force of the collision and the animal’s moans and bellows roused the family and the neighbors. As the bull staggered through the outer circle of tents, everyone turned out, clutching their sleeping robes around them. Fires flared to life, and several people brought torches with them. Naduah stood, her hand resting on Smoke’s quivering back as the pronghorn cowered next to her, her huge eyes even wider with alarm.
The buffalo’s hair had been singed off and his skin was shriveled like the warty bark of a hackberry tree. His knees were scraped raw, probably from falling, over and over again, as he raced blindly across the plain. His eyes were swollen shut, and his face was blistered and burned. He panted, steam blowing from his nostrils and his sides heaving.
The seared linings of his nose must have affected his sense of smell, which normally would have steered him well away from humans. But now the noise of camp, the shouts and the clamor, caused him to veer off toward the river, which lay close by at the base of a sheer, fifty-foot cliff. Before the men could catch him, he reached the edge, then he could be heard, still crying, as he fell, until he bounced on the rocks below. A few ran toward the narrow path used to fetch water, to try to recover the body, but Pahayuca’s deep voice boomed after them.
“Come back.” He pointed to the east where the sun would soon appear. It seemed to be rising early. There was a reddish glow that spread across the horizon. Naduah watched, fascinated, as it grew before her eyes. She had heard of grass fires, but she had never seen one. Medicine Woman stood next to her, her hand resting on her granddaughter’s shoulder.
“We never should have camped here.” She seemed to be talking to herself. “We’re trapped.”
Naduah looked up at her, startled. She tugged at her grandmother’s thin hand, trying to pull her to action.
“If we hurry we can escape it. It’s still a long way off.”
“No, little one. We can’t get around it. And we’re backed up against that steep drop-off to the river. There’s no ford here, even if we could get five hundred animals packed and down that narrow trail. When the wind picks up at dawn, the fire will move much faster.” Medicine Woman never hid things from her granddaughter. And she never minimized a bad situation.
“Why can’t we just leave everything? We aren’t going to stand here and be burned alive, are we?”
“Quiet, child. Pahayuca and the men are discussing it.” The knot of men that had formed broke up, and Pahayuca and Buffalo Piss were shouting orders. But still Medicine Woman and Takes Down stood quietly. Sunrise had gone on a hunting trip, as many of the men had, trying to find game for their families.
“At least the hunters are safe. They crossed the river farther down.”
“How much time do you think we have?” Takes Down looked at her motherin-law. Black Bird and Star Name had joined them, and their eyes asked the same question.
“Two or three hours at the most. Probably less.”
Naduah fought down her panic. Why didn’t they move? Why didn’t they do something? This was only a temporary camp, a place to spend the night. It wouldn’t take long to pack up. The horses were tethered nearby among some cottonwoods where they were grazing on the thick buffalo grass. The grass was dry and withered, but it had cured where it stood and it was still nourishing. It was also perfect fuel for a prairie fire.
Naduah wanted to scream at her mother and grandmother, to make them move, do something. She wanted to run blindly like the buffalo and throw herself off the cliff, into the cold, safe water fifty feet below. And onto the rocks, she reminded herself. At least she could run down the trail and get into the water and save herself. And leave all her family’s belongings and the children and the sick and her pony.
Every muscle in her body tensed as she forced herself to wait until her grandmother had finished weighing all the aspects of the situation. When Medicine Woman finished, she came to the right decision, as she always did. She disappeared into the lodge and came out with the big buffalo rib they used as a shovel, and two sharp root-digging sticks. She handed the sticks to Takes Down and Naduah while Black Bird and Star Name ran to get digging tools of their own. Naduah took time to tie Smoke and Dog inside the lodge before running after the women.
Medicine Woman had broken into a trot, and women and girls joined her as she headed for the edge of camp. She shouted instructions as she ran. She sent women in a wide arc around the camp and set them to turning the ground over, clearing a swath in the grass. The boys had already headed for the pasture to bring in the best ponies. As they drove them into the center of the camp, those left behind, smelling the fire now, cried pitifully and pulled at their tethers.
“Upstream!” Naduah called to him as he went by with their family’s horses. “Tie Wind and Rabbit Ears inside the lodge.”
“They won’t fit.”
“Cut the door. Please, Upstream.”
“All right.” He had to yell to be heard over the din of horses and dogs, the men shouting orders and the women calling to their younger children.
A line of men and older boys formed at the top of the cliff, lowering buckets and kettles and buffalo pauches to men waiting at the river below. They filled the containers as they were lowered, tied them to the lines to be hauled back up. Then the water was passed from hand to hand and thrown onto the outer lodges, wetting them as much as possible.
Everyone strong en
ough to walk joined Medicine Woman’s crew, forming a huge semicircle around the camp, stopping at the river bluff on each side. Desperately they pulled grass and threw it onto the prairie beyond. They dug at the tough roots with anything they could use as a shovel, some kneeling and stabbing at it with their knives. A few of the older men carefully lit fires to burn off the area being cleared, widening it and taking care of grass that had been missed.
Some of those with lodges at the perimeter of camp began pulling them down and dragging them into the open space near Pahayuca’s tent. But there were too many lodges to dismantle them all, and the People would need many of them for shelter from the heat. As the sun rose Naduah could see her breath in the cold air, but sweat rolled into her eyes.
Her fingers were cut and sore and her fingernails broken off at the quick. Dirt had been forced under them until they bled and sent pain into her hands. Still she doggedly grabbed, pulled, and pitched, straining to dislodge the stubborn roots of the buffalo grass, roots that formed a solid, woven mass. She glanced over her shoulder now and then to check the progress of the fire. The flames were clearly visible, licking the sky and seeming to stain it with their own color as they marched closer.
The game that had eluded them for months began trickling into camp. Then the trickle became a flood. The faster animals, the deer and the pronghorns, arrived first, many of them racing through camp and over the edge of the cliff in their terror. Naduah was glad she had asked Upstream to tie Wind inside the lodge, or she probably would have broken free to join the stampede. As it was, the lodge was quivering as the four animals pulled and reared.
Jackass rabbits bounded after the deer, bouncing crazily, as though wound with steel springs. Their long legs were a churning blur when they hit the ground. A huge red wolf, his tongue flinging saliva as he ran, almost knocked Naduah down. More wolves passed her, and coyotes and badgers. The skunks began waddling by, their thick, silky pelts rippling with their rolling gait. The animals poured through camp, then turned and raced along the bluff in both directions.
Naduah was concentrating so intently on the grass she was pulling that she jumped and screamed when a seven-foot diamondback rattlesnake skimmed across her foot. Other snakes began streaming in like living rivulets of water: short vicious copperheads, rippling sidewinders, more of the beautiful diamondbacks, slender, iridescent racers and whip snakes. They slithered into every possible crevice in the folded gear and bedding.
Flakes of soot and wisps of smoke were blowing around Naduah’s head when the lizards arrived. Brown and yellow and orange and blue and green. Scaled and horned, twilled and spotted and striped and checked. Rough and glossy, they skittered through the grass and over the stones until the ground seemed alive, moving and shifting. Long, plump, bright green collared lizards ran by, upright on their hind legs. Their mouths gaped and hissed in their big heads, and they clutched their short front legs to. their chests like tiny dinosaurs.
The insects and the spiders were the last to arrive. Wasps and bees and beetles swarmed, their hard little bodies stinging as they hit Naduah’s skin. There were hairy black tarantulas and huge bristling wolf spiders, each with eight eyes glowing as red as coals from hell. Many of them were as big as small birds. Daddy longlegs lurched by in lacy carpets, their legs a tangle of threadlike stilts. Worst of all were the scorpions, their evil, spiked tails curved and ready over their backs. Like a relentless army they advanced over the fallen, heaving bodies of animals unable to run any farther.
Black smoke rolled over them now, stinging Naduah’s nose and eyes and setting everyone to coughing. Naduah felt as though her mouth were full of cottonwood fluff, and she could feel the heat intensifying. She gasped for air, sucking in each breath and wondering if there would be a next one. Still they worked on as the roar and crackle grew deafening in their ears, and the flames loomed over them like a thirty-foot wave about to break.
Fifty yards away, a fallen rabbit screamed as the fire engulfed and shriveled it. The flames stretched as far as the eye could see. They seemed to be consuming the entire world, eating it from the edges inward, coming closer and closer to the helpless village. Naduah knew they could never survive it. The thin, cleared area looked pitiful, like a thread stretched between them and the inferno.
The line of people moved back, their heavy winter moccasins crunching on the hard bodies of the spiders and insects and lizards that crawled around them. The last of the birds had flown overhead a while before. Naduah watched them go, wishing she could fly above the smoke and flames. Still she and the others hacked and chopped desperately, shielding their faces with their free arms, trying to protect themselves from the whirling soot and smoke and cinders.
The outer lodges were emptied, the well supporting or carrying the sick, mothers swinging their babies in their cradle boards. The circle of diggers finally had to give up. They dropped their sticks and ran from the intense heat. As they ran they grabbed as much as they could carry from the outer tents, taking their own or their neighbors’ belongings with them. Medicine Woman was the last to give up, and she fell as she ran, her foot caught in an abandoned prairie-dog hole. When she pulled it out, it jutted at a strange angle from the ankle.
“Grandmother!” Naduah screamed and darted back to her, the fire towering over them both. Flames jostled at the edge of the cleared area, as though searching for the best place to jump it. Buffalo Piss appeared from the smoke, his young face smudged with soot. He and Naduah pulled Medicine Woman, already flaming like a living torch, away from the fire. Naduah fell across her grandmother with a buffalo robe, smothering the flames with her body. Other women crowded around, but they were too late. Medicine Woman was blind, her eyes seared by the heat, her face already raw and blistered.
She seemed dead, but as Naduah lay sobbing across her, she felt the old woman’s heart beating. It reminded her of her first day in camp when Medicine Woman had put the child’s hand on her chest and she had felt the delicate fluttering.
Buffalo Piss pulled her gently off as Pahayuca came running. He picked his sister up as though she weighed nothing, and Naduah and Takes Down followed him to see that she was safely laid in his lodge near the cliff face. He knew that Sunrise was away and that Takes Down and Black Bird would have all they could do to save themselves, much less look after Medicine Woman.
Small fires began flaring all around them as sparks landed on the lodges. They burned neat round holes whose edges burst into flames, like delicate petals opening. The roaring was that of an immense waterfall. Everyone who could grabbed a blanket or robe, shaking the snakes and lizards and spiders out of them. Naduah beat at fires until her arms felt like wooden clubs. Yet still the flowers bloomed, burning entire lodges and consuming more of the precious food supply. The heat was suffocating, and she gasped for breath. Several children lay unmoving, their mothers sobbing as they beat at the blaze.
Horses screamed, bucking and rearing in blind panic. Many of them pulled loose and veered off through the smoke and into the flames, or over the cliffs edge, trampling children in their flight. Past the cleared circle, in the grove of cottonwoods, the abandoned ponies shrieked as they were roasted alive. It seemed as though the fire was eating the air as well as the lodges and the food and the horses. The heat burned Naduah’s nose and throat and cracked her parched lips. She couldn’t cry anymore because her tear ducts had dried, and the linings of her eyes seemed to scrape against her eyeballs.
The world turned to blinding orange heat. Naduah staggered and fell, with blackness coming down on her like a heavy blanket. She waved her hand feebly, as though to push it away, then gave up. Before she passed out, she managed to pull a robe over her. That was all the preparation for death she could make.
Naduah awoke to a hissing of snakes, thousands of them. As she threw off the robe and sat up, she realized that two snakes had been sharing it with her, their bodies cool along hers. They slithered off in search of other shelter, their tongues flickering. Snow was falling, the flakes turn
ing to tiny hissing points of steam as they hit the flames. She held her tongue out to catch the flakes, tantalizing with the hint of water.
Fire still burned in a circle around the devastated camp, but it was less ferocious. It had reached the bluff on either side of the cleared area and was dying from lack of fuel, sputtering angrily. As the snow fell more heavily, it beat the flames down.
From around Naduah came the moans and sobs of the survivors as they searched through the wreckage for whatever they could salvage. Their faces were blackened with soot. Pahayuca and the men of the council sat in the middle of camp. They huddled under their robes as they decided where to go from there. As far as the steel-gray horizon all Naduah could see was a smoking, blackened wasteland, broken only by a few ragged spikes of tree trunks and the charred lumps of dead animals, most of them too burned to eat. Snow was beginning to blow in thin sheets, piling up around the corpses and laying a cover over them.
Takes Down passed, swinging a dead rabbit by the ears and carrying a kettle of water in the other hand. She squatted next to Naduah and brushed the hair from her eyes. It was what she always did, showing her affection in her shy way.
“Are you hurt, Daughter?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Drink.” Takes Down dropped the rabbit and scooped water from the kettle. Naduah drank from her hands. Then she reached in and splashed a little on her face.
“Medicine Woman is asking for you, Naduah. She says to bring her medicine bag when you come. I’ll be gathering as many animals as I can to eat later.”
“I’ll go now, Mother.”
Takes Down walked to their lodge, laid the rabbit down outside, and began carrying water to those who were hurt. Women were killing whatever animals they could find still hiding in camp, but there was little wood left to build cooking fires. As the ground cooled under the snow, some of them went beyond the village, searching among the larger animals for those with edible meat on them. The blackened carcasses of their own ponies and mules had the most. As the snow dampened the ground, the smell of wet charcoal pervaded everything.
Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 30
