She most certainly would not place a knife to her calves and scar herself!
She was certain no one would question this choice of hers. To everyone but Spotted Eagle, she was still a stranger who would not be expected to follow the set rules of her elders.
"I will do what I can," Jolena said, her voice drawn. "But you must know that I will need to be shown."
"I will be at your side at all times, directing you," Moon Flower said, taking Jolena by the elbow and ushering her away from Spotted Eagle's dwelling. "It is sad that you did not know Two Ridges as a sister knows a brother. It is sad that he did not know you as a brother knows a sister. His heart was warm and big. He would have drawn you into loving him, as he did everyone who knew him."
"I'm sure he would have," Jolena said, noting now the utter silence of the village. No children were running around playing. No elderly men were sitting outside, sharing smokes and gossip. No women were carrying wood from the river.
It was as though time had stood still in the Blackfoot village, perhaps waiting to resume once the burial rituals were over.
When Jolena and Moon Flower came to Two Ridges' tepee, Jolena hesitated, then walked inside with the beautiful, slight Blackfoot woman. The fire in the firepit had been allowed to die down to cold, gray ashes. Jolena shivered and hugged herself, feeling as though she had entered a tomb. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she focused them on a body that was lying on a couch of bear pelts.
Again she shivered, stunned to find that Two Ridges was lying there without clothes or any blankets to cover his nudity. When her gaze stopped at his face and saw how white and chalky it was, a feeling of light-headedness swept through Jolena. She grabbed at Moon Flower to steady herself.
"You have not seen many dead people before?" Moon Flower said, gazing at Jolena with sorrowful eyes. "You are finding it hard to look at your brother as he lies there with only his death mask?''
"No, I haven't experienced many deaths," Jolena whispered, fearing disturbing the dead if she spoke aloud. "But I have experienced one very painful loss. My mother."
She paused and glanced quickly at Moon Flower, feeling a need to explain which mother she was referring to, but she saw that was not necessary. Moon Flower's eyes, and it seemed her thoughts, were now solely on Two Ridges.
Jolena followed Moon Flower to Two Ridges' bed. She watched as Moon Flower went to one side of the tepee and gathered several robes up into her arms, then carried them back to Jolena.
"You must wrap your brother snugly in these," Moon Flower said, laying the robes across Jolena's outstretched arms. Moon Flower looked around her, then back into Jolena's eyes again. "While you wrap your brother, I will carry his belongings from his dwelling."
Jolena swallowed hard, then proceeded to wrap Two Ridges with first one fur robe, then another, until at least eight were fitted snugly around him.
Moon Flower came to Jolena. "Everything that Two Ridges possessed is now carried to his gravesite," she murmured. "Now, my friend, let us dismantle his tepee so that you can then use the lodge covering for his final wrap."
Jolena's eyes widened. "That is required?" she whispered harshly. "That you and I tear down the tepee while Two Ridges still lies within the circle of its base?"
"That is how it is done," Moon Flower said, nodding.
Sighing heavily, Jolena followed along after Moon Flower and began loosening the buckskin straps that held the tepee securely to the lodge poles. A short time later, everything was dismantled and Two Ridges' body lay beneath the lodge poles that still stood in their original shape, before the skins were wrapped around them.
Jolena felt a coldness rush over her flesh as she gazed slowly around her at the bare lodge poles, thinking they looked like the skeleton of a dead lodge.
The sudden drone of a drum began somewhere in the distance. Mournful songs and chants filled the air as people filed one by one from their dwellings and came to stand in a wide circle around Two Ridges' demolished tepee.
Jolena gasped when her Blackfoot father came into view, walking solemnly from the purple shadows of the forest on the one side of the village. In his mourning, he had painted himself black and had cut off his long, thick braids, and had discarded his leggings, revealing that he, also, had scarified his legs.
Jolena's attention was drawn back to Moon Flower, as Moon Flower grunted and groaned with the weight of the skins that had been tak- en from the lodge poles of the tepee.
Jolena went to her rescue, and between them they were finally able to get Two Ridges' body wrapped, then laced with rawhide ropes.
Spotted Eagle and several warriors came into view. Solemnly, they went to Two Ridges' body. Some stood at his head, others at his feet. Spotted Eagle nodded, giving a silent order to the warriors to help him carry Two Ridges to his burial site.
Jolena fell back from the others, feeling that her duty to her brother had been done. She wanted to comfort Moon Flower, who was walking beside her crying and wailing. But she felt too awkward even being there, much less trying to give anyone any comfort.
The procession walked into the forest and slowly through it until it came to a hill, upon which stood a lone tree. Upon its branches had been arranged a platform of lodge poles.
The bundle was placed on the platform, along with Two Ridges' favorite weapons, his medicine bundle, and his war clothing.
Jolena had solemnly watched how reverently everyone then passed beneath the platform, placing their gifts on the ground beneath it.
When Jolena heard a commotion behind her, she turned with a start and watched, puzzled, as a young brave came walking toward Brown Elk, a rope leading Two Ridges' magnificent horse behind him.
Brown Elk took possession of the horse and led it beneath the platform upon which lay his only son.
Jolena felt faint when, without hesitation, her Blackfoot father drew a sharp knife from a sheath at his side and plunged it into the horse, over and over again, until it was dead and lying in a pool of blood on the ground beneath him.
Scarcely breathing, her eyes wide, Jolena then watched Brown Elk replace the knife in its sheath, then hold his outstretched hands up to Two Ridges' bundled body.
" No- ko-i, my son, now you will have your favorite horse to ride on your journey to the Sand Hills," he cried. "And to use after arriving there!"
There was a pause, then everyone turned and walked slowly back toward their village. Spotted Eagle took Jolena by the elbow, ushering her away from the burial site. She looked over her shoulder, watching her father as he walked in another direction.
"He will mourn alone for a while, then come to you as a father again," Spotted Eagle said softly. "When he comes to you then, all thoughts of a son will be for
gotten. He has a daughter now to fill the empty spaces in his heart that the death of his son has left."
"I just want this day to be over," Jolena said, tears flooding her eyes. "Take me home, Spotted Eagle. I want you to hold me."
"I will hold you until your tears are washed from your eyesand hold you even longer, if you so desire," Spotted Eagle said, placing an arm around her waist and drawing her protectively to his side. "My woman, I will always be there to hold you. Always."
"How did I ever exist without you?" Jolena murmured, a sob catching in her throat. "Surely I wandered through each day only half aware of things around me!"
"I feel the same," Spotted Eagle said. "Until you, there was truly no purpose to my life."
"But now we have forever, don't we?" Jolena said, gazing raptly up at him.
"Forever," Spotted Eagle said, nodding. In his heart, he was thinking about what he had planned for tomorrowthat he would be searching for Kirk, knowing that to do so would be placing him and his many warriors in danger.
The Cree renegades were always out there, always waiting for a reason to kill their neighboring enemy, the Blackfoot!
Tomorrow they would perhaps have that chance, for Spotted Eagle knew that his search for Kirk could take him into Cree country.
He planned to send scouts out tonight, hopefully to find evidence of Kirk's whereaboutsor the Crees'without meeting danger head on.
"You are so suddenly quiet," Jolena said, glancing up at him. "Why are you, darling?"
"No reason," Spotted Eagle said, forcing himself to sound nonchalant. "No reason at all."
Something in the way he spoke and looked made Jolena not believe him all that easily.
But she did not want to cloud her thoughts with doubts and wonder again. For now she just wanted to go to Spotted Eagle's tepee and hide there from all the rest of humanity, at least for the rest of the afternoon and tonight.
She dreaded tomorrow, fearing that Kirk might be foundand that he would be dead.
But she wanted to face that when it happened.
Not now, when her heart was already so scarred from today's activities.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The sun had gone to his lodge behind the mountains, disappearing behind the sharppointed peaks. In the fading light, the far-stretching prairie was turning dark. In the valley, sparsely timbered with quaking aspens and cottonwoods, a lone voice could be heard in the Blackfoot village, from a hilltop a short distance away.
Jolena clasped a blanket around her shoulders as she sat quietly beside Spotted Eagle's fire in his tepee, haunted by too many things to eat her evening meal. As soup simmered over the fire in a black pot, she was only faintly aware of the tantalizing fragrance of buffalo meat cooking with large chunks of vegetables.
Spotted Eagle had sent scouts ahead to look for Kirk. They had returned earlier in the afternoon with the news that he was being held captive in a Cree camp.
Jolena was joyous that her brother was alive, yet feared for his treatment at the hands of the Cree.
And now she was worried over Spotted Eagle, who was readying himself to go and rescue Kirk. He had left her early this day to take his medicine sweat and to prepare himself for a possible confrontation with the renegade Indians. He had even appointed a medicine pipe man to make medicine for him during his absence.
Spotted Eagle had chosen the warriors who would make up his war party. These warriors and himself had already gotten together and sung the wolf song. Their sweat lodge was then built and, unclothed, they entered it. With them came an elderly Blackfoot, Clouds Make Thunder, a medicine pipe man, who had always been a good, revered warrior.
The long- stemmed medicine pipe was filled. The warriors each asked Clouds Make Thunder to pray for them, that they might have good luck and accomplish what they desired.
Clouds Make Thunder prayed and sang and poured water on hot stones in the center of the sweat lodge, causing the warriors to sweat profusely.
Clouds Make Thunder then offered Spotted Eagle a new medicine bundle, to give him strength and courage for the time ahead and to bind him with the spirits who would carry his life in their mouths.
The bundle was formed from the head of a coyote, its jaws sewn together with sinew; from the jowls hung a few small locks of hair wrapped in red cloth. From the back of the head was suspended a round loop of willow, wrapped tightly in rawhide, to which was tied a fully stuffed war eagle.
After the ceremony was over, the warriors, all dripping with perspiration, ran to the river and plunged in, singing war songs.
Jolena gazed up at the smoke hole in the ceiling, shuddering when she discovered that the sunset's brilliant orange splash had faded from the sky, which meant that Spotted Eagle would soon leave the village. He had explained to her that he would be riding with his warriors from the village just after sunset, for it was a foolish warrior who traveled in the day when war parties might be out.
To busy her hands, Jolena leaned over and tossed some small twigs into the low flames of the fire. Then she straightened her back and stiffened. She glanced quickly toward the closed entrance flap of the tepee when she heard the thundering of many horses' hooves leaving the village, Spotted Eagle's voice the loudest of them all as he sang a song of war.
"Return to me with speed," Jolena whispered to herself, reaching a trembling hand toward the entrance flap. "I love you. Oh, how I love you."
Again she gazed into the flames of the fire, the horses' thunder having at least for a moment drowned out the mourning cries of her Blackfoot father as he sat on his high place, alone and distraught over the death of his one and only son. Through the long day, her father had sat on a nearby hill, mourning, his songs and wails filled with much sadness.
Jolena buried her face in her hands, her heart touched by the wailing. She still could not find it in her heart to mourn with him, but she did mourn for him!
Jolena moved her hands from her face and slowly lifted her eyes, her pulse racing. She leaned her ear toward the entrance flap, now scarcely breathing, realizing that suddenly she no longer heard her father's mourning cries. Everything outside was quiet except for an occasional bark from a dog, or cries from a child fighting off the urge to sleep.
A fire outside threw a square of flickering light on the outside of the tepee and then she saw the outline of someone standing over the fire, feeding wood into the flames.
"Is that my father?" Jolena whispered, pushing herself up from her couch of skins. "Is that him beside the communal fire?"
Keeping the blanket around her shoulders, clasping it together with a hand, Jolena went to the entrance flap and peered outside, disappointed that the person she had seen tending to the fire was not her father at all. Four Bears, a handsome, middle
-aged Blackfoot, turned Jolena's way and nodded a grim and silent hello, then sauntered off into the night toward his own tepee, where his wife and daughter waited for him.
Sighing, Jolena decided to wait outside for a while longer to see if her father's silence might mean that he was placing his sadness for a son behind him to join a daughter who was very much alive.
The night breeze carried a chill, but the blanket lent warmth to Jolena's shoulders. She looked heavenward and watched the play of stars in the velvety black sky. She could make out the big and little dipper and other constellations, especially that which the Blackfoot called The Seven Persons, the constellation of the Great Bear. Tonight it seemed overpoweringly bright, as if it were an omen.
Savage Illusions Page 27
