A Westward Love

by V. J. Banis

  Gradually the tribe began to drift back from the beach toward their camp. Claire caught sight of a woman she knew. Recently widowed, the woman had singed the hair from her head as custom dictated and covered both the stubble and her face with the same pitch used to waterproof the boats. At first that practice, like many she had encountered since joining the tribe, had shocked and horrified Claire. In time she had grown used to much of the ritual.

  Though their life was primitive, the tribe were not barbaric people. She had known far more cruelty at the hands of white men than she had witnessed since she had been here. There was some occasional friction with a neighboring tribe, the Chumash, but this rarely involved more than some shouting and fist shaking from opposing knolls, with one or two young firebrands tossing rocks back and forth. Probably the most savage event she had witnessed had been the initiation of the young men into full manhood. Much of this ceremony had been closed to her, as it was to all the women, but the entire tribe had watched while the young men were tied down upon the ground and their bodies rubbed with sweet honey. Great hordes of ants, attracted by the honey, quickly swarmed over their bodies while the tribe’s shamans, or wise men, knelt beside the squirming youths and spoke to them in low voices.

  “That’s horrible!” she had cried, turning her face away to Lone Feather’s embarrassment. She had insulted the tribe, he protested later. The rituals, he had explained, were more than a mere test of a youth’s manhood. They were a means of impressing upon him the lessons of the tribe’s history and culture. A young man’s mind might wander from a dry lecture, but he was unlikely to forget the lore imparted to him during the time of his trial.

  In other respects, though, they were a gentle and kindly people. Though the search for food occupied much of their time, they ate well on fresh fish from the ocean and small game, nuts, and berries foraged from the land.

  The tribe had accepted her presence among them with a surprising lack of resentment. She found that she was less an object of curiosity here than she had been with the Pawnee. For one thing, these people were fair skinned, many of them lighter of complexion than she had been at the conclusion of her desert crossing. For another, many of the women bleached their hair with urine, giving it a reddish-yellow cast not so much darker than her own.

  Her name was She-Who-Dares, and the Indians, particularly the youths, had made something of a minor legend of her crossing of the great desert beyond the mountains, a story she had to relate countless times over.

  She knew that not more than a day or two’s travel to the southeast lay the Spanish settlement of Our Lady of the Angels. Morton had been intending to journey there when he had sold her to Lone Feather.

  Closer still, just across the low mountains that fringed the ocean, was one of the Spanish missions, hated and feared by the Indians.

  She was not, however graciously accepted, one of these people. She was an Englishwoman who had journeyed from an American colony in search of her husband. She reminded herself often that she must eventually make the journey to the pueblo, or at least to the mission. There she could not only be among her own people, but she could make inquiries regarding Peter. If he had managed to survive the journey from the States, there would surely be word of him in one or the other of these places. Settlements were hardly commonplace here, and the arrival of any stranger from the east would be well noted.

  She supposed she could even make arrangements for her own return east by sailing ship, though exactly what she had to return for she couldn’t say.

  Yet the days had passed into weeks, the weeks into months, and still she made no move to contact either of the white outposts. For one thing, the rigors of the journey she had made had taken their toll upon her mentally as well as physically. The peaceful existence she shared with Lone Feather and his tribe had proven therapeutic. There were dangers here in the wilderness, but she lived sheltered from these by the strong and gentle man who was her adoring lover. Now there were other, more compelling reasons why she could not leave.

  * * * * * * *

  She entered the tipi she shared with Lone Feather. The interior was dark and still. Lone Feather was still with the tribes’ elders in the temescal, the large communal building that dominated the camp. It was here the men met to make important decisions and sometimes, Claire suspected, simply to get away from their women. It served also as a sweat-house. Great fires were built until the building’s interior was oppressively hot. When the braves were perspiring profusely, they would dash from within and plunge into the cold waters of the ocean. The practice was said to be health giving, though it sounded to Claire quite unattractive.

  At the moment there was no smoke emerging from the top of the temescal. This was a meeting to decide some question that had come up, something requiring agreement among the tribe’s leaders. Lone Feather was the son of the tribe’s headman, or chief, and himself next in line for that position. That and his natural authority made him a man to whom the others frequently turned for guidance.

  As a lover Lone Feather had proven both ardent and considerate. Though Claire did not love him, she was fond of him. There was much about him to admire, and though she would have preferred to dispense with their sexual relations, she understood well enough that it was for this he had purchased her and brought her with him to the California coast. Truth to tell, she had fared far worse at the hands of Morton, or even her own husband.

  There was a movement outside. Lone Feather came into the tipi, grinning broadly as if he had just scored some triumph.

  “Tomorrow you and I will go into the mountains,” he announced.

  “Why?” she asked. Since their arrival at this camp none of the tribe had ventured more than a short distance beyond its perimeters.

  “Our tribe is old, far older than the Chumash,” he said. “They came here from a great distance, long, long ago. In the mountains is a shrine, placed there by our ancestors. It is the most sacred spot of all to our people, and it is known to no other. The elders have agreed that I may take you there.”

  “I’m very flattered, but what will I find there?” she asked.

  He came to stand before her, reaching for the gold nugget he had given her, which she wore on its leather thong about her neck.

  “This,” he said, cradling the nugget in the palm of his hand.

  * * * * * * *

  “There,” Lone Feather said, pointing. “The white man’s fortune.”

  It was the first day of their journey, and Claire, remembering the gentle herds of cattle that dotted the English countryside, was unprepared for the sight that lay before her on the wide valley floor. It was a sea of cattle, each as fierce and untamed looking as any wild beast. There must have been thousands of them, seemingly unattended.

  “Do they belong to no one?” she asked.

  “From here,” Lone Feather said, pointing in the direction of a peak perhaps several days’ journey to the north, “to there, beyond where the eye sees,” pointing southward, “was once the land of many tribes. Now it and all within it belong to one man.”

  “Is this a rancho?” Claire asked.

  “It is a small one. There are greater ones.”

  It was almost more than one could comprehend. The land he had pointed out to her was as large as many an English county. What sort of land was this, where individual men lived greater than kings? Once she had scoffed at the tales of California wealth, but here, seeing for herself what a man might own, she was ready to believe any tale, however lavish. Here anything was possible, and a man was bounded only by his own imagination and his own weaknesses.

  It was a journey of learning for her. They traveled generally eastward, toward a range of mountains that grew gradually larger as they neared. It was not until the third day that Lone Feather told her they were nearing one of the Spanish missions.

  “Here we must go with caution, for there is more to fear here than from the lion or the snake,” Lone Feather warned her.

  For the better part of a
day they had been traveling in relative silence. They dismounted and walked their horses, climbing a gently sloped hill that soon gave them a view of a cluster of adobe structures below.

  “The mission,” he said in a whisper tinged with awe and fear.

  It looked peaceful and innocent. Smoke curled from a number of chimneys despite the warmth of the day. She saw that the buildings were enclosed within a high wall, and that the area between the buildings had been converted into a garden, with blooming plants and even a fountain. As they watched the bells over the chapel began to toll, great sonorous peals that rolled lazily over the valley floor. A trio of brown-robed friars passed from one of the structures to the chapel, following well-worn paths through the courtyard.

  “Why do your people fear the missions so?” she asked.

  Lone Feather’s expression grew grim. “They come to the villages,” he said, “with soldiers and guns. They take our people, and the Chumash, and the Gabrieleño, and the Juaneño for converts to their god.”

  “But he is a good God,” she said. “Your people can serve him with honor.”

  The look he gave her was one of withering scorn. “It is not their God our people serve. It is the brown-robed men and their greedy appetites,” he said. “Look again, there, and there, and there.”

  She followed his pointing finger. Beyond the far wall of the mission were the fields where the food was grown. She squinted, peering into the distance at the acres of corn and other crops she couldn’t identify. There were scores of workers in the fields, weeding, digging, planting, doing the hard work of feeding those who lived within the walls.

  All about the mission, inside and out, could be seen the activity of daily toil. There must have been two hundred people at work, providing for the needs and comforts of the little mission colony.

  “Why they’re all Indians,” she said, realizing at last the significance of what she saw.

  “Our people are the children of light. We know ourselves from the earth we trod, from the waters in which we bathe, from the air and the high mountains with their silver crowns. All of nature reminds us of who we are.

  “But then the mission men come. With their guns they bring the Indian to these places. They have our land, they have the Indian’s corn, but they must have the people as well. The Indian is forced to kneel and pray to a strange new God. Our Gods are taken from us. No longer do we bathe, for water is precious and saved for the white man, who bathes seldom. No longer are our maidens pure, for the white man taints them. No longer is there time to rest, or to play, which is the soul’s rest, for always there is the white man’s work to be done. When we have the white man’s diseases, we die. When some, longing for the life of their ancestors, longing for the free air and the song of the bird and the coyote and the waters, leave this accursed place, they follow with their guns, gathering herds of men as they gather their herds of cattle.”

  “You speak with the bitterness of knowledge,” she said, moved by his angry words.

  “It is how I speak their tongues.” He nodded. “It is how I know their ways. Many times they have come, stealing our best young men and women. The one who was to be my bride is now the bride of many men there. This is how we came to find you in the desert. We were searching for a new place where we could move our people, somewhere beyond the reach of the missions. But our people could not live there. Wherever we went, it was the same. Either the land was hostile, or there were already tribes claiming the land as their own or there were more of the missions. There is no place left for our people. Soon there will be none left. Only those, the mission servants.”

  She stared again at the cluster of buildings, at the outlying fields and herds. She realized for the first time how similar it was to what she had found in Virginia. There was the same grand manor house where the lords lived, and the same army of slave laborers maintaining it all by the sweat of their brows.

  She had found it repugnant then, but had accepted it as the way of the country. After all, at the time she herself had been something of a slave. Any woman was, who married.

  Since then she had tasted freedom on the great plains, in the high mountains, and even here in California with Lone Feather and his people. Their existence was poor but free, and not without dignity.

  “Let’s go,” she said, turning her back on the idyllic scene. She was glad now that she had not earlier sought out the missions. She was sickened by the knowledge that the very people who had sheltered and befriended her over the past few months might have been, might yet become, slaves like those toiling below, joyless, freedomless, hopeless.

  * * * * * * *

  They traveled for a day along a narrow canyon. No breeze reached to stir the sultry air, and deer stood fearless to watch them pass. Claire, remembering that they had come without water, began to wonder if Lone Feather had gotten lost. Then unexpectedly they came upon a small stream of clear, fresh-running water, and by it a little hut of mud and thatches.

  They spent the night and traveled on the next day, wending their way slowly upward into the mountains. Now there were trees and scrub oaks, without magnificence but gnarled and deformed, as if they had battled with great effort against the ravages of time and nature. The walls of the cliffs were of sandstone carved by the centuries. They saw the tracks of grizzly and lion and of the bighorn sheep. They came to a great fissure in the earth where layers of broken rock thrust sharply upward. Lone Feather told her it was a crack in the earth that ran from far to the north to the deserts of the south.

  * * * * * * *

  They came at last to the high forest, following a path that wound over the water-worn rocks of an old creek bed. They entered a vast horseshoe-shaped canyon that seemed a dead end. But there was a path hidden in the thick brush, though it forced them to leave their horses behind. On foot they entered what was little more than a gap in the rocks. She followed Lone Feather, awed by their surroundings. Suddenly they emerged into a clearing and before her was the opening of a cave.

  “Here,” Lone Feather said, “is the place sacred to our people. Come with me.”

  He led the way into the cave’s interior. At first she could see nothing, but as her eyes adjusted to the gloom she noticed a faint glimmering. She crossed to the far wall and found at her feet a pile of what appeared to be small rocks. When she knelt and lifted one in her hand she saw that they were gold nuggets. Near them stood a delicately shaped urn. It was filled to the brim with gold dust. This was the fortune that Peter had sought. Even knowing little about such things, Claire could guess that there was a fortune in this cave.

  Nor was gold all that the cave contained. Now that she could see more clearly she discovered pieces of delicate and lovely broken pottery of a style she had never seen before.

  “This is the history of our people,” Lone Feather said, indicating the gold and the broken pottery. “This, and what we carry in our memory. It is this that we pass on to our young men while the ants crawl their bodies, for they need to know, especially when the white man comes. There will be a day, our elders have long predicted it, when the white man will rule all of the country, and every Indian will be a slave like those at the mission.”

  “But I don’t understand. Surely with this gold you could buy the freedom of your people,” Claire said.

  “In our world gold was for beauty only. In the white man’s world, it does not mean freedom, but slavery. We put gold upon bowls and cups, we wore it about our necks.”

  “But I’ve seen no bowls or cups.”

  “Long ago, in the time of our ancestors’ ancestors, our people lived in a—a....” He struggled for the right word. “A pueblo, but not like those known to your people. And one time the earth began to shake. For a week it trembled, raining dust and ashes upon us, and when it was finished, our people and all they had built had vanished like grass before the fire. Some ran to the sea, where the great waves devoured them. Some perished in the great desert. Others hid in the mountains.”

  He paused, s
eeming to see beyond her into the distant past. “For us the day is almost done. We quarrel with the Chumash and hide from the white man. We were a people who once talked to the stars. The old gods weep, for they too die with us.”

  Claire came to him, laying a hand upon his chest. “But why do you tell me of these things?” she asked.

  “You are one of us, yet not one of us,” he said. “You have the willingness to learn and the wisdom of silence. Like us you are a child of the light. What I have told you, you will carry, not only here,” he tapped his forehead, “but here,” he thumped his chest. “Soon we must go from our camp, for it is no longer safe. We will journey to a new place, chosen by our elders. This shall be our last home, and when we have faded from the light, we will be no more. But in you the truth of our people will still burn.”

  She smiled fondly at him. She had waited, wanting to be sure, and wanting too the right moment. Now the time had come to tell him her secret.

  “Not only in me,” she said. “For I shall tell another.”

  Lone Feather frowned. “It is forbidden to share our knowledge with any who is not one of us. That is why I had to seek the permission of the elders to bring you here.”

  “The one I shall tell will be one of your people,” she said. “Your son will have a right to know.”

  It took him a moment to comprehend. She saw the great wave of joy as the knowledge grew in his eyes.

  “My son,” he murmured. He took her in his arms, kissing her gently at first and then with mounting urgency.

  They sank to the floor of the cave, and under the watchful eyes of the old gods they made love.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was not a son after all, but a daughter whom she gave into the hands of Lone Feather.

  “Are you sorry it’s not a son?” she asked, knowing how badly he had wanted a boy.

  He examined the squealing bundle gingerly, as if looking for flaws. “She has yellow hair,” he said, “that shines like the great star to the north. I shall call her Shining Star.”