Mole On The Nose settled the matter by sliding between them and gently pushing the warrior backward while speaking in a soothing tone. Red Rock lowered his knife and glowered at Nate, then gestured in disgust, wheeled, and stormed into the village.
White Calf seemed well pleased. He nodded once, clapped Nate on the back, and motioned. “Let us go. I will prepare your breakfast, Sky Walker,” he signed.
Nate pointed at Mole On The Nose. “I want to talk to him,” he signed.
“Why?” White Calf replied suspiciously.
“It is proper for visitors to pay their respects to the chief,” Nate signed, which was the truth. Usually a newcomer was treated to a fine meal at a formal supper and introduced to lesser chiefs, medicine men, and others of influence.
“There is no need to trouble yourself,” White Calf signed. “I will talk to him for you. Think of me as your spokesman for all your dealings with my people.”
The oily smile the medicine man used to accent his remark galled Nate. “I do not need a spokesman,” he signed testily. “I am perfectly capable of speaking for myself.” So saying, he stepped up to the chief and made the sign for ‘friend’.
Mole On The Nose had witnessed the exchange in silent contemplation. Now he glanced at the medicine man and said something that caused White Calf to turn scarlet and clench his fists. Then Mole On The Nose appraised Nate a few moments. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Sky Walker,” he signed.
“And I, yours,” Nate replied. “I was hoping to smoke a pipe with you last night but did not have the opportunity.”
“That can be remedied this night. I invite you to my lodge for supper. And I will also invite the leading men of my people, that they might see for themselves whether White Calf speaks the truth about you.”
Now Nate was the suspicious one. “What has he been saying about me?”
“That you are our friend, that you are here to help us, that the Sioux will pay for their savagery with much blood and many scalps.”
Nate didn’t understand the significance of the reference to the Sioux but he filed it at the back of his mind for future consideration and cut to the quick. “Then White Calf has spoken with a straight tongue. I am a friend of the Pawnees, as I proved just now by saving one of your women from the bear.”
The chief gazed at the slain beast. “I have heard of men killing bears with only a knife or tomahawk, but until I saw it with my own eyes I did not really believe anyone could do so.” He swung toward Nate. “There is a rumor you have done the same thing to grizzlies.”
“I have,” Nate verified. “It is not something I would like to make a habit of. They are very hard to kill.” He thought the chief would laugh at his jest, or at the very least crack a grin. Yet Mole On The Nose only appeared more somber.
“I must keep reminding myself you are not like us, not like normal men at all.”
“There you are wrong,” Nate begged to differ. “Deep down we are not all that different.”
“Do you have a heart like we do?”
“Of course,” Nate signed, surprised by the silly question.
“A brain?”
“Yes.”
“Do you bleed when wounded, thirst when long without water, go hungry when without food?”
“All those things I do,” Nate signed.
The chief digested this. “Even so, you come from somewhere else, a land we can never visit in this life. You are as different from us as night is from day. And while it pains me to say so, I must agree with Red Rock. You had no business coming here. You should have stayed among your own kind.”
Nate would not have taken the chief for a bigot. In his travels he’d met many Indians who despised him simply on the basis of the color of his skin. Even among the Shoshones there were some who resented his adoption into the tribe and disliked his union with Winona. “I am sorry to hear you say so,” he signed. “I hoped I could count on you as a friend.”
Mole On The Nose did not sign anything for a while. “I will try to be your friend, Sky Walker,” he mentioned finally, “but I am first and foremost devoted to the welfare of my people. If your coming will cause them hardship I can never look on you as other than you are.”
“I have no intention of causing the Pawnees any grief.”
“Good. Until tonight.” Mole On The Nose started to leave, then indicated the medicine man. “You may bring this one with you. He knows how to find my lodge.”
No sooner did the chief get out of earshot than White Calf was at Nate’s side. “Why did you do that, Sky Walker? Why have yourself invited to the lodge of your enemy?”
“He does not trust me. That is all.”
“You are wrong,” White Calf insisted. “He dislikes you as much as Red Rock but he is more dangerous because he is the most influential. Tonight he will fill your belly and pretend to be your friend when all the while he will be looking for a way to turn the people against you.”
Nate couldn’t conceive of the elderly chief committing such an act and signed as much.
“Only because you do not know him as well as I do,” White Calf said. “He rules our people with an iron fist, and anyone who disagrees with him is made to suffer. For many years he and I have been at each other’s throats because he resents anyone having as much power as he does. Many times he has tried to bring me down but so far I have held my own. My medicine is more powerful than his.”
Could it be? Nate mused. He had difficulty imagining Mole On The Nose as a tyrant but he had known it to happen. Some chiefs became so full of themselves they lorded it over their people like medieval feudal lords.
“You must keep a rein on your tongue and your eyes sharp tonight,” White Calf warned. “Do not say anything he can use against you. Trust no one other than those I say you can trust.”
Nate made no response. In his book trust had to be earned. He would be on his guard against treachery, sure enough, but that included treachery from the medicine man.
Several warriors had gathered close at hand, men Nate remembered as being in White Calf’s band when they found him. White Calf gave them instructions and they went over to the black bear and began removing the hide, their knives flashing in the sunlight. “I will have a fine robe made for you,” the medicine man signed.
The last thing Nate needed was a robe and he was going to say as much when an idea occurred to him. “That would be nice of you,” he said. The bear had been in its prime, its coat lustrous and thick. Given its huge size, the robe was bound to be extraordinary, and quite valuable.
“Would you care to eat now?” White Calf asked.
“Lead the way.”
Village life was returning to normal. Smoke from cooking fires wafted from every lodge. Children were outside playing. Some of the warriors were going through simple rituals to greet the new day.
Nate shrugged off the many stares thrown his way, foremost among them the ill-disguised disdain of Red Rock and a small group of warriors standing with him. Fellow members of the Bear Society, Nate figured. He smiled at them but he might as well have been smiling at figures carved from stone for all the effect it had.
On nearing the medicine man’s lodge, Nate slowed. He wasn’t about to eat anything in there, not while the rank odor lingered. Since White Calf had been waiting on him hand and foot, he decided to test how far he could push by signing, “I will take my breakfast out here in the sun. The same with all my meals from now on.”
“As you wish.”
Nate sat cross-legged as the medicine man turned to the entrance. He saw a pile of fresh bones near the lodge and recalled the snapping and growling the dogs had made when devouring the animal remains. He also recalled something else he had been meaning to ask about and clapped to get White Calf’s attention.
“Yes, Sky Walker?”
“I saw a human skull in your lodge last night. What was it doing there?”
“I keep them all.”
The implication brought Nate right back to his f
eet. “There is more than one?”
White Calf grinned and beckoned. Smirking like someone about to reveal the greatest treasure of all time, he walked to a nearby lodge much smaller than all the rest and paused outside the entrance. “There are some who criticize me for my collection. But I feel I honor those who have gone on to the spirit realm by preserving reminders of their sacrifice.” Crouching, he motioned at the dark hole of an opening. “You may go in first.”
Nate did not care to turn his back to the man for even a moment, but he did so now, his curiosity compelling him to squat and enter. As he straightened he saw a shaft of sunlight streaming in the smoke hole at the top, but nothing else. His eyes required half a minute to adjust to the murk, and when they did, he stepped back a pace and gasped, wishing they hadn’t.
There were skulls everywhere. They had been arranged in a circle around the base and hung suspended from the ceiling by leather cords. Four had been placed on high stakes imbedded in the earth. At the very center of the lodge three skulls formed a short row, their empty sockets fixed on the doorway as if mocking those who entered with the answer to the eternal riddle.
“It is impressive, is it not?” White Calf signed, having slipped in beside Nate.
Nate fought back his revulsion and responded. “Where did they all come from?”
“Again you test me,” White Calf grinned. “Perhaps one of them is the reason you came.”
“Tell me!” Nate signed, and there must have been a reflection of his feelings in either his gesture or his demeanor because White Calf blinked a few times and began signing rapidly.
“Surely those who are on high know all about the offerings made to them? So you must know of our ceremonies, and of those who give their lives that our crops will grow and our people will live long and prosper. For many generations we Pawnees have been offering choice sacrifices to Tirawa, the God of gods, so that he will bless us with good fortune.”
The man was talking about human sacrifice! Nate realized, and barely suppressed a shudder. There had been rumors about the Pawnees, but he’d always chalked the tall tales up to overactive imaginations. He scrutinized the pale assortment of horrid skulls, trying to assess if they were old or new. Most were the same modest size, leading him to sign, “Your people sacrifice children?”
White Calf laughed hysterically. “What do you take us for?” he rejoined. “We Pawnees are not savages! No, we do not offer children. We offer only the choicest of morsels to Tirawa.” He smacked his lips as if at the prospect of a hearty meal. ‘‘Young women.”
“My God!” Nate said aloud in English.
“Why do you appear upset?” White Calf inquired. “Our sacrifices must meet with approval or Tirawa would have sent us omens to let us know we should stop.” Stepping to a skull impaled on a stake, he rubbed the smooth pate as a man might stroke the head of a lover. “At the last one I delivered the song,” he signed proudly. “Would you care to hear?”
Nate was too confounded to answer, but that didn’t stop the medicine man, who went on as if he had.
“It was the Morning Star ceremony, the most special of all. What a grand sight it must be from the clouds! At daybreak the woman is brought, naked, to the posts set up for the occasion. Wood is piled under her and lit. Then a warrior chosen for the occasion shoots her once, under the arms, with a sacred arrow. It is crucial for this warrior to have perfect aim, otherwise the whole ceremony is spoiled.”
White Calf held the skull up to the sunlight, his eyes adoring it, and set it down reverently slowly. “Then we must work quickly, before the fire consumes her. All the males of age run over and put an arrow into her so that when they are done you can hardly find bare skin from her knees to her neck. Males not of age have someone shoot for them. Afterward the arrows are pulled out, except the first one.”
A vivid, gruesome image of the victim, slumped over, blood pouring from scores of holes, made Nate want to retch. He looked at the medicine man, aghast, but White Calf was lost in the bliss of his recollection.
“The sacrifice is cut open by myself or another medicine man. We reach into her chest and can feel her warm blood gush over our hands. Swiftly we smear our face with it and step back so the women can strike her with sticks and spears to earn coup. When they are done, the song is sung, and our people pray to Tirawa to have compassion on us in the moons ahead and give us all we will need to multiply and grow strong.”
White Calf raised his voice in a singsong chant while signing these words: “Life ends that life may go on. One dies for many that many flourish. From life, blood. From blood, life.” Chest swelling with pride, he signed, “I created the poem myself. What do you think?”
“It is very fitting,” Nate answered.
“A great moment in my life,” White Calf said with evident regret that it had passed. “At the next Morning Star ceremony, Raven Beak will have the honor.” Giving the skull on the stake a farewell pat, he turned. ‘‘Are you ready to leave?”
“I have seen all I need to.”
Once out of the grotesque shrine, Nate asked, “How do you pick the woman to be offered to Tirawa? Do all those in the village draw lots?”
The medicine man chuckled. “Are we fools that we offer up our own women when we can capture a maiden from another tribe who is every bit as pleasing in Tirawa’s sight?” He ticked off previous victims on his fingers. “Osage, Mandan, Arikaras, Kansas, Otos, Sioux, Cheyenne, Blackfeet, we have offered them all to our god at one time or another. Personally, I prefer maidens from the last three tribes. They fight like wild women until the last, defying us tooth and nail. Once a Blackfoot girl bit off the thumb of the medicine man binding her.”
“How often do you sacrifice?” Nate had to know.
“The Morning Star ceremony is held once very twelve moons. There are lesser ceremonies at which we offer maidens if we have them on hand. Unfortunately, there usually is a shortage. Sometimes three, sometimes five times in twelve moons. It all depends.”
“Do the other tribes know?”
“Some suspect but have no proof. If they did, they would all rise up against us at once and rub us out.”
“I know of no other tribe that does this,” Nate commented in sign. “Why do the Pawnees?”
“We always have,” White Calf signed simply. “From the times of our ancestors we have made sacrifice to Tirawa and we have never been defeated in battle, never had our villages burned to the ground, never known famine or thirst.” Close to his own lodge, he halted. “There
is a tradition among us that once, back in the dawn times of all things, our people lived far, far to the south in a country that never grew cold, where there were snakes as long as ten men and a river as wide as the prairie, where there were no buffalo and the whole land was covered with trees. The tradition goes that we began to sacrifice in those times and have done so ever since.” He looked at Nate. “But, of course, you already know all this.”
The rumors Nate had heard had in no wise hinted at the full horror of the Pawnee practice, and Nate settled there and then on finding a way of bringing it to a halt. He didn’t know how he could achieve it, but come hell or high water he would.
White Wolf hunkered to go into his own lodge. “So. You must be famished by now. How much deer meat would you like?”
“I am no longer hungry,” Nate signed.
“Really? Well I am.” The medicine man glanced at the skull lodge. “I am the same way after a ceremony. And just talking about a sacrifice makes me starved enough to eat the offering!” Laughing at his quip, he slipped within.
With new eyes Nate King gazed out over the Pawnee village. He saw the children scampering about, saw women cleaning utensils and shaking out bedding, saw warriors in idle conversation or mending weapons or tending horses, and thought of them sinking arrow after arrow into the quivering form of a helpless young maiden. It was all he could do not to rail at them, to open his mouth wide and scream sense into their blood-soaked brains.
Nate
was no stranger to atrocities. He’d seen whites butchered by Indians, Indians butchered by whites. He’d seen the handiwork of the Blackfeet and their allies, seen a woman mutilated, seen a man mangled by buffalo. Yet those were acts committed in the fiery crucible of warfare or the normal consequences of living in the raw, brutal wilderness.
The Pawnee sacrifice of innocents was drastically different. It was the willful extinction of guiltless lives according to custom, a barbaric, outdated practice participated in by an entire people.
Nate couldn’t understand why someone didn’t speak out against it. Was there no one in the Pawnee nation with a conscience? No one who saw the great wrong they were doing for the vile abomination it really was? He gazed on the peaceful setting, at the scores of Pawnees busy with daily tasks, and instead of a tranquil village saw instead a pack of human wolves in idle repose, waiting for the next chance to bury their fangs in a new victim.
The rest of the day passed slowly. Nate spent most of the time pondering, as his mentor Shakespeare would put it, the ‘human condition.’ He strolled about the village under the watchful eyes of a pair of warriors no doubt sent by the medicine man to keep track of him. Twice he walked to the river to search fruitlessly for his pistol.
When the sun slipped into the western vault of the sky, Nate returned to the lodge. He no longer looked forward to the impending supper, and had no interest in getting to know Mole On The Nose better. He wanted nothing more than to be shy of the Pawnees. To that end, he plotted his next escape attempt.
White Calf stepped out dressed in his finest splendor. A red cap crowned his head. A wolf skin had been draped over his shoulders. His buckskins were new, his moccasins too, and both had been beaded lavishly. The first words from his hands were, “Are you hungry yet?”
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