by Anita Mills
They pulled her down from the mule, then carried her into the tipi and laid her on a pile of hairy buffalo hides. When Nahdehwah shooed them out, one of the women reached out to jab at Amanda. The others laughed, then Nahdehwah spoke sharply, sobering them. It wasn’t until they left that she turned her full attention again to Amanda.
The hot, airless room was dim, its only light coming from the smoke flap above. The odor of rancid fat was overpowering, and several feet away flies swarmed around drying strips of meat. Amanda turned on her side and drew up her knees, trying to hide her fear.
As if it weren’t stifling enough already, Nahdehwah immediately busied herself replenishing the fire in a center pit. She nursed it carefully, adding bits of dried moss, dead leaves, and once it flared, she tossed in several buffalo chips. Rocking her squat, round body back on her heels, she loosened a drawstring bag and took out a handful of leaves, which she sprinkled over the fire. The pungent odor of burning creosote vied with that of the fat. If Amanda could have sweated, she’d have been soaking wet. As it was, she felt hot enough to die.
Rising with an effort, the old woman moved to stand over her. Putting a hand over her chest, she gave her name slowly, distinctly, “Na-deh-wah.” Then she pointed to Amanda. “You Man-duh?”
Amanda nodded.
“Man-duh,” the old woman repeated with satisfaction. She grinned widely, displaying toothless gums under thin, dark purple lips. Taking a stick, she drew the crude picture of a bird in the dirt floor, as though that ought to mean something. Then she reached back to her braids and pulled out one of the decorative feathers and carefully drew it from Amanda’s forehead, down her nose, to her mouth. Amanda lay still as stone, afraid to move.
“It go now.” Nahdehwah opened her hand, revealing several rounded seeds or nuts. “You eat,” she said, poking them into Amanda’s mouth. When her patient didn’t comply, she ordered again, “You eat.”
“I can’t.”
The old woman’s bright, birdlike eyes bore into hers. “You eat,” she repeated a third time. “No eat—bad.” To demonstrate, she put one in her own mouth, then chewed. Nodding, she spit it out. Apparently, she thought Amanda was afraid they were poison. “Eat,” she insisted doggedly.
There was no way out of it. As Amanda began to chew them, she realized they were the same thing McAlester had given her. Relieved, she managed to get all of them down.
“Good,” Nahdehwah said, bobbing her head approvingly. She picked up a large-bladed Bowie knife and brandished it high.
As weak and sick as she was, Amanda rolled away and came up crouched, ready to fight. Forgetting McAlester’s advice, she screamed for help. The old woman shrugged, then returned to the fire. Squatting down, she used the knife to cut six green sticks and put them over the firehole in a pattern of wagon spokes. Like everything else, they began to smoke. Opening a bag, she carefully selected a number of large, smooth stones from it and placed them inside the spokes.
The tent flap opened, and Clay McAlester stepped inside. He looked from Nahdehwah to Amanda. “What’s the matter?”
“She’s got a knife,” Amanda croaked.
“It’s part of her medicine. She won’t cut you with it.” Leaning over, he pressed her back against the pile of buffalo robes. “I told you—there’s a lot of ceremony to what she does.” Sitting down next to her, he combed Amanda’s tangled hair with his fingers, soothing her as though she were an agitated child. “You’ve been through hell,” he murmured.
“Yes,” she said simply.
Without looking up, Nahdehwah said, “Pullke.”
Clay looked around him, saw the paunch, then leaned to get it. “You’re in luck—she’s got some Mexican pulke for you. It’s just a drink made from cactus.” As he spoke, he tipped the neck to her mouth.
The liquid ran down her chin, but after the bitter brine of the Pecos, it actually tasted good. Nahdehwah snapped a word at him, and he lowered the bag, making it easier for Amanda to drink. She got down quite a bit of it.
“What did she say?” Amanda asked.
“That I was clumsy.”
“Oh.”
The old woman spoke again, gesturing with her hands, then went back to turning the stones in the fire.
“What did she say then?”
“She said you have to drink enough to sweat—that your tongue is black, which is a bad sign.”
“Is that why she’s got it so hot in here?”
“No. She is heating medicine stones.” Looking across the tipi, he addressed Nahdehwah, then rose to leave.
“Please … don’t go.” When he hesitated, Amanda pleaded her case. “She frightens me, McAlester—she could be saying she’s going to cut out my tongue, for all I can tell.” Afraid he wouldn’t listen, she grasped his hand and held it tightly. “If you were sick, I wouldn’t leave you.”
He pulled free, but he didn’t go. Instead, he conferred with the old woman for a moment, then came back. “All right—she’ll let me stay until she gets everything ready, but her medicine doesn’t work when she’s watched. Her power comes from the eagle, and the eagle won’t answer her if I’m here.”
She stared at him, then finally found her voice again. “Surely you don’t believe that.” When he didn’t say anything, she looked up at him. “You don’t, do you?”
“I’ve seen Indian medicine work. Oh, I’m not saying that everything she does is a cure, but it’s part of the whole process. If she didn’t make a ritual out of her medicine, no one would pay her. You just have to go along with what she does.”
“I’m a Catholic—I believe in angels, not eagles,” she muttered. Satisfied that he was staying, she lay back on the buffalo robes, closed her eyes, and told herself she felt too awful to die. The pulke rolled in her stomach, and the tipi spun around her.
“It’s going to come up,” she gritted out between clenched teeth.
“Just hang on—the longer you can keep it down, the better chance it’ll have of staying there. It won’t be long before the peyote helps.”
“No,” she whispered, swallowing.
He stroked her hair back from her temples. As dark as it was in the tipi, he couldn’t see the mud and dirt, but he could remember she had the prettiest auburn hair he’d ever seen. And he could recall how she looked that day in the stagecoach station. She’d been fired up then, and with that hair, those flashing dark eyes, and that indignant posture, she’d been something to behold. All he had to do was close his eyes to see her like that again. He found himself doing it often.
“You’re going to get well,” he said softly. “You’ll go to sleep, and when you wake up, you’ll feel a whole lot better.”
“You won’t leave?”
“No. Not for a while.”
His touch was gentle, soothing. But then she hardly knew what to expect of him anymore. Almost every opinion she’d formed from his brutal treatment of Juan Garcia had changed. It was as though there were two sides to him, one terribly cruel, the other surprisingly kind.
“Stomach settling down?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“If you can, you’d better drink a little more pulke.”
She was so tired, so very tired, but she knew she had to help herself get better. “All right.”
He lifted her against his knee and reached for the container. He let her drink her fill, then he retied it. Laying it aside, he slid his arm around her, holding her. She leaned back against him. As long as he was there, she could suppress her fear.
He sat for a time, silently watching Nahdehwah work her medicine with the green sticks and the stones, feeling very much as though he’d come home. He glanced down at the woman in his arms, and he could see the drug taking effect. Reluctantly, he eased her back onto the buffalo robes. Nahdehwah nodded, telling him it was time for him to go. He rose and stretched, then ran his hand over his face. He’d been up too long, and he was going to have to find a place to put his bedroll before he fell
asleep standing up.
Unaware he left, Amanda sank into a deep netherworld of vivid dreams. She was running from Ramon Sandoval, going from house to house in Boston, pounding on closed doors, while he was getting closer and closer. He raised a gun and took aim. As the shot was fired, she fell. But he hadn’t hit her. She looked back, and he was lying in the street, his eyes open. She stumbled away, screaming, and Clay McAlester caught her from behind, holding her. “Sandoval’s dead,” he said. “Now you can go home to Ybarra.”
She was shivering and sweating at the same time. And somewhere in the distance, the old woman chanted rhythmically, tunelessly, seemingly in time with the steady beat of drums. Amanda managed to open heavy lids, but the tipi was dark except for the fire. The eerie light of flickering flames caught the beading that outlined a painted sun on a buckskin dress. She was alone with the medicine woman.
Nahdehwah was rocking back and forth, her hands outstretched, palms up. Above, the smoke flap slapped in the wind like beating wings. Abruptly, she stopped and opened a bag, taking out some berries, which she sprinkled over the flames. The hot tipi filled with cedar smoke. “Ekapokowaipi,” she said when Amanda began to cough. Rising, she dipped her hand into the ashes, then came around the pile of buffalo robes to touch Amanda’s forehead, drawing across it with her thumb, making a sign almost as a priest did on Ash Wednesday. The opposite fire cast an orange glow, illuminating the deep wrinkles creasing the medicine woman’s flat face.
“McAlester … I want McAlester,” Amanda whispered through lips nearly too parched for speech. “Please.”
Instead of answering, the old woman went back to the firepit, where she removed the hot stones and dropped them into a kettle. They sizzled, and steam rose, adding water to the hot, stifling air. Carrying the pot, she returned to Amanda and sank her ample body down. Dipping the hot water with her hands, she dribbled it over Amanda’s face and neck, repeating the process three times. It felt good.
The feeling was short-lived. Nahdehwah dried her hands on her buckskin dress, working the buttons on the man’s shirt Amanda was wearing with gnarled fingers. Afraid to protest, and not knowing what to expect next, Amanda lay there, letting the old woman pull off the dirty shirt, the chemise, and the muddy drawers. Apparently satisfied by what she saw, the old medicine woman nodded, then picked up a square of cloth and began washing Amanda as though she were a baby. When she was finished, she opened the drawstring of a small, dirty leather bag and dipped her fingers into a thick black grease. She smeared the odiferous stuff on Amanda’s sunburned cheeks and lower arms. The rest of Amanda’s body she powdered with something that smelled like sage.
Nahdehwah rocked back on her heels and held up her hands toward the smoke hole above, chanting, “Aiee—aiee—yi—yi,” over and over again.
When she finally stopped, she offered Amanda more of the pulke, urging her to drink. Amanda drained the bag and would have liked more. The nausea that had been with her since McAlester found her in the desert was gone. And she was clear-headed, able to think.
The medicine woman covered her with a ragged blanket, then rose and carried the dirty clothes from the tipi. Alone now, Amanda stared at the smoke hole, seeing a lone star in the night sky. She’d slept for hours. Twisting her neck, she looked around the room curiously, but it was too dark to recognize anything beyond the glow of coals left from the fire. It was some time before the old woman came back. When she did, she sat again by the firepit. She crumbled leaves onto the coals, filling the tipi with smoke. As Amanda coughed, she heard a loud flapping above, and then there was nothing but the drums. Nahdehwah opened the doorflap and fanned it, drawing the smoke out, letting the night air in. When she turned back, she was grinning broadly, pointing up to the smoke hole.
“Eagle come,” the old woman declared. “Make better.”
“I hope so.”
“Many better.”
“Where’s Mr. McAlester?” Amanda asked suddenly. When Nahdehwah’s face went blank, she tried again. “Where’s Clay? Clay McAlester? The Tejano?
There was no recognition. Instead of answering, the old woman unrolled what looked to be a large piece of calico. When she shook it out, Amanda’s skin almost crawled. It was a dress—a white woman’s dress. Nahdehwah handed it to her, grinning again. The gray braids bobbed as she nodded.
“You take.”
Amanda nearly recoiled. “Oh, but I—”
“You take,”
“Yes, well—”
“You take.” The old woman’s hand smoothed the wrinkled calico almost lovingly. “You paraibo—you take.”
She wasn’t going to accept no for an answer, that much was certain. Amanda held the dress up, trying to see it in the semidarkness. As far as she could tell there were no holes or bloodstains on it. And right now, with nothing to cover her, she supposed her fear of Indians was making her silly.
“Thank you. Uh … I suppose McAlester’s asleep, isn’t he?” No reaction. She tried to remember what he’d called himself to the two Indians who’d led them there. Nahoka? Hahako? No, she’d been closer with the first one. “Nahoka—where is he?”
For a moment the old woman’s brow furrowed, then she seemed to understand. “Nahakoah. You Nahakoah paraibo,” she said, smiling again.
“Nahakoah,” Amanda repeated, trying to get it right. “Where is Nahakoah?” Seeing that Nahdehwah still didn’t get the question, she repeated it loudly and slowly. “Nahakoah—where—is—he?”
A spate of Comanche words followed. Amanda shook her head. “No speak … uh … no speak Nerm … is that it … Nerm, I mean?” “Nermernuh?”
“I don’t know.”
Another volume of Comanche.
It was hopeless. Resigned, Amanda lay down again. But Nahdehwah wasn’t about to be denied. She grasped Amanda’s shoulder, pulling her up, then shoved the dress into her lap.
“You want me to put it on now?”
More alien words, but the gist of them indicated that was exactly what the old woman wanted.
“All right.”
Telling herself that they could have traded for the dress, or else they could have stolen it without killing anyone, Amanda thrust her arms into the sleeves and drew it over her head. It was too big, but it covered her.
“My drawers—where are they?”
A blank stare.
“The clothes you took—what did you do with them?”
Another blank stare.
“All right, then—where’s Nahakoah?” she asked again.
“Nahakoah.” The old woman’s head bobbed.
There was no sense in going through it all another time. Amanda buttoned the front of the calico dress. Apparently satisfied that she was going to wear it, Nahdehwah went back to her place by the firepit.
For a long time neither of them said anything more. Finally, the old woman stood up again. “Nahakoah,” she said, her thin, dark lips curving in that toothless smile.
Apparently, Amanda had gotten his name wrong, for all the old woman wanted to do was repeat the word, not go get him. Rather than continue a conversation going nowhere, she turned her back and curled up on the hide bed, determined to go back to sleep.
For a few minutes she allowed herself to wallow in a surfeit of self-pity. She was in a tent with an evil-looking, toothless old Comanche woman, who not only could not speak English, but who also looked as though she could kill without compunction. Never in all of her life had she felt quite so helpless, so alone. The only one in the whole camp capable of understanding her was Clay McAlester, and she couldn’t even communicate enough with the old woman to find out where he was or to send word that she wanted to see him.
But she was alive, she reminded herself. In spite of Ramon, in spite of too much sun and too little water, she was alive, and no matter what he said, she owed her life to McAlester. He could have left her where he found her, and there’d have been none the wiser, but instead he’d kept her alive through sweltering
heat and thirst and swift, swirling water. If she lived to be a hundred, she’d never forget the terror of walking for miles alone across the desert, or of coming awake underwater. No, she owed him everything—every bread) she’d ever take, everything she’d ever do or see, every tomorrow she had left on this earth.
She closed her eyes and remembered the strength of his arms, the solid hardness of his body, the gentleness of his hands washing her. What had the old Negro carter said of him? That there wasn’t anyone he’d rather have on his side in a fight—or something like that, anyway. Well, now she understood what he’d meant. Clay McAlester knew how to survive in this godforsaken land, and he wasn’t afraid of anything. She just wished he was here with her, that was all.
Nahakoah, or something very like it, the Indians called him. She had no idea what it meant, or if he’d told her, she’d been too sick to remember. He’d been sure enough of himself to lead her into a Comanche camp, where the same heathen, ruthless savages who gleefully tortured and murdered men, women, and children greeted him like a brother.
She was hot and sweaty. Rolling over, she looked to where coals still glowed in the firepit. On the other side of it the old woman snored, punctuating each rumble with a wheezy whistle.
Where was McAlester? she wondered. What was he doing? She lay there, looking upward at the small piece of night sky, listening, hearing the steady beat of drums, wondering how in the name of God Nahdehwah could sleep. What were they doing out there, anyway? Was McAlester with them?
Amanda sat up, and the snoring stopped midwhistle. The old medicine woman roused to peer across the darkness toward her, then rose and padded barefooted to touch Amanda’s forehead. Her leathery hand plunged beneath the neck of the dress, finding wet skin. She mumbled something, then puttered among a pile of assorted bags and pots. Coming back, she held out a gourd dipper and gestured for Amanda to drink.
It wasn’t pulke, and it had bits of something floating in it. If it hadn’t been for that, she’d have thought it was warm water. But she had no way of asking, and truth to tell, she probably wouldn’t want to know.
