Cut Hand

by Mark Wildyr

  A breed and two whites, including the one lying unconscious at the Mead, were among the living when we checked the fallen men. A general clamor went up from the Yanube, demanding their own justice since a senior member of the council died in the assault.

  “Cut,” I said beneath my breath. “This could get ugly. You have to do something.”

  “What would you have me do?” His face was flushed with emotion.

  “Take them to Fort Yanube. Turn them over to the army.”

  “To what end?”

  “To protect your people from recriminations. There must be seven or more dead men and these three live ones. Half of them look to be white.”

  “So we are unable to protect ourselves from attack?” Bear Paw asked.

  “We have done just that. Now we must see there is no afterclap. That no one can falsely claim we unjustly killed.”

  My words raised a storm of consternation among Cut’s tribesmen, but I continued to argue for turning them over to the army. In the manner of these people, there was much loud decrying of my position, but eventually I prevailed when Cut recognized the value of showing the commandant we were peaceable even when provoked.

  The next morning, Lone Eagle, Bear Paw, and I undertook the fifty-mile trip to Fort Yanube. Cut Hand remained at the village in case the remnants of the gang attacked again. With each of the three prisoners tightly bound and trussed securely to my buckboard, we traveled straight through without stopping.

  Major Jamieson accepted the prisoners and heard our story. Afterward, he pressed me for details.

  “Did you recognize any of the men who escaped?”

  “No. Although I can tell you some were bloods, some native, and some white. Just like the seven who were killed.”

  “Describe them.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Generally roughhewn, scruffy men. The whites had raised beards. None of them smelled like lilac water.”

  “How were they dressed?”

  Belatedly I came to understand he was seeking a particular face among the raiders, and eventually he confessed the leader of this particular gang, which was becoming an increasing problem in the area, was an army deserter—one of his own sergeants.

  Jamieson expressed the belief the attack on Cut’s people was to tie them down while three of their number hit the Mead. Apparently word seeped around town that I held hefty accounts in the local bank, some of which had been deposited in gold.

  Infuriated that my business was the subject of rumors, I stormed out of the fort and marched into the town, my companions at my back.

  Banker Crozier squealed like a stuck porker when I demanded the funds from my accounts. Upon learning the reason, he acknowledged he had discharged a clerk who was said to be among the outlaws. This explanation, appearing reasonable, caused me to reconsider, but not before he conceded another one-quarter of a percentage point in interest on my accounts.

  Bear Paw had never been in an American town before and expressed a curiosity about everything he saw. Since I was unwilling to waste a trip, those craven killers had ridden atop what trade goods we had. Before my business was finished with Caleb Brown, my two companions wandered off. Fearing the worst, I followed a trail of vaporous women scandalized by two half-naked men wandering the streets. Damned if I didn’t discern a gleam or two in some of those vacuous eyes. I caught up with the two men trying to buy a parasol from a matron who couldn’t decide whether to be outraged or amazed by savages speaking better English than most of her neighbors. Her umbrella caught the eye of my two friends because it was collapsible.

  I soothed ruffled feathers and escorted the two of them to the livery, where we recovered our horses and wagon. They disdained helping load the buckboard at Brown’s store, as this was clearly woman’s work. I left Caleb to puzzle over why my two servants didn’t lift a finger, relieved they had not heard his comment, else they’d still be explaining they were no one’s servants but warriors of the Yanube.

  Within a month, I was summoned back to the fort to testify at the trial of the three desperadoes. None of the Indians were required to appear, but my testimony was sufficient for a sentence of hanging.

  Upon my return to the Mead, Otter would not look at me when I greeted him. Abandoning the buckboard, I rode Long to the village. When I sat down with Cut Hand, he displayed an uncustomary unease.

  “All right, what is it?” I demanded after reporting the results of the trial.

  “That girl I told you about? Lone Eagle has taken to courting her.”

  “What!” I brayed.

  Lone Eagle was waiting on the porch when I got back to the Mead. “Wife,” he said sharply, seeking to establish his authority, “I need some of our horses. I would take another wife.”

  I said nothing, merely seized his arm and flung him off the porch into the dirt. He scrambled to his feet and started for me but apparently decided better of it. I was seven years older but had him by some ten pounds. He halted, legs apart, arms planted on hips, looking so handsome in his outrage I could have taken him right there in the open.

  “What’s the matter with a second wife!” he demanded.

  “If you take a wife, she will be your only wife.”

  “Be reasonable,” he pled. “Those are my horses anyway. When I married you, they became mine.”

  “That might be your way, but it’s not mine. Keep your hands off my horses. You want to get married, do it with your own property.”

  “See! You aren’t a proper wife! You don’t act like a real wife. You just let me come to bed with you because you like my pipe! You don’t love me!”

  “You’ve a funny way of showing your love,” I came back at him. “You want to bring a woman into my house and flank her right in front of me.”

  “What’s the matter—”

  I stomped into the house, leaving him sputtering in the meadow. Moments later I heard his pony thunder toward the village. Otter slipped in from the barn or someplace.

  “Am I so bad to him?” I demanded.

  The lad looked as if he wanted to flee again but manfully answered. “No. You’re good to him.”

  “Why does he want another wife?”

  “Some prefer doing it to girls. That’s what they’re made for.”

  I came down off my mad and laughed. “Yes, that’s what they’re made for. But if that’s what he wanted, why didn’t he get one in the first place?”

  “Probably because he was too anxious to get you,” Otter answered and eased out the door.

  Lone Eagle came home after I went to bed that night and made a mess trying to take a shower. From all the stumbling around, I gathered he was drunk. When he fell on me, still wet from his bath, he proved his condition, but he also demonstrated it did not inhibit his ability. I submitted, not because of his insistence, but because I wanted him very badly at that moment. I sensed his love slipping away. The flanking was rough but tremendously satisfying.

  He loaded some provisions early on the morrow, informing me he would be gone for a few days but refusing to tell me where. Rather than follow him, as was my inclination, I sat on the porch to reason things out. He needed horses. So he was either going on a raid by himself or back to the feral horse herd we hunted two years earlier.

  My heart fell into my stomach when I realized he was determined on taking this girl for a wife. He accepted the denial of my wealth and was remedying his problem the best way he knew how.

  He was away so long I determined to search for him. Any kind of evil could have befallen him—Indian, American, or natural. Before I worked up to it, Cut came by the Mead. Seeing my agitation, he let me know he had sent a scout over the Little Islands who found my mate patiently stalking the black stallion and his harem of mares. Lone Eagle was all right.

  Although he was too polite to ask, I knew Cut longed to know what I would do if my husband brought home another wife. Would I suffer for Lone Eagle what I had not for him?

  “I don’t know, Cut,” I answered his una
sked question. “It will not work if he brings a woman into the house. Will it work if he lives here and in the village as well? My heart tells me to try. My mind tells me it is hopeless.”

  “I was sad beyond all reason when you left me,” he said unexpectedly. “I loved you more than anyone on Turtle Island. I would never have permitted anything to come between us except what did. I always hoped it would be far enough in the future for you to become accustomed to sharing a home.

  “But as unhappy as I was for myself, I despaired for you. How could you find happiness? At least someone shared my lodge, and I had my duties. When you went to the white man’s town, I wept. There, I have told you something no one else in the world knows. I cried like some child who has dirtied himself. But in the bottom of my heart, I knew you would be back. I only wondered when and if you would be alone. I half hoped you would bring someone back with you.

  “When you and Butterfly married, I was overjoyed. I saw you loved her in your own way, and if the passion was not great, at least it was sufficient. But fate took her away, and I feared for you again. I was pleased when Lone Eagle took you. He is arrogant and impetuous, but he is a good man. The sad thing is that he is content. Oh, he fights with you, but what man does not fight with his mate? And I suspect he comes back to apologize the only way he knows.”

  “Then why?” I asked through a collapsed throat.

  “He has it in his head he wants to marry this girl and father a child. His real need is to prevail over you. In his mind, the man of the family’s word is law, that whatever he decides is the way it should be. He has not learned what many of us know—the wife gets her own way, she just never says no. You say no to him, Billy. It drives him crazy.”

  “Then the mistake is mine.”

  “The mistake is two different cultures. In his, you do not say no to him. In yours, you are free to agree or disagree. He will stay out there until he gets his horses. Then he will come back and marry the girl. He is bound on it. You have lost him unless you will share him.”

  “I cannot, Cut Hand,” I said sadly. “No more than I could share the one I loved above all others.”

  I wept some of those unmanly tears Cut mentioned after he left until I heard Otter’s step on the porch.

  EVENTS UNFOLDED as Cut Hand foresaw. Some days later, Lone Eagle returned, thinner but immensely proud that he led ten ponies. With what he already owned, he possessed more than enough horses for his prospective bride.

  After he cleaned up, he took me to bed with such gentleness and sensitivity I almost lost my reason. But when he informed me afterward he was going to offer the ponies to the girl’s father on the morrow, I told him goodbye. He sulked and spent the rest of the night disturbing Otter’s sleep by angrily tossing and turning on a bed in the other room.

  The eve before the day of his marriage to a pretty little girl named Swallow, I put Lone Eagle’s possessions on the porch and went to inform the council I divorced him. When I got home, Lone Eagle had removed his things from the house and taken a small parfleche he knew I favored. In its place, he left a beautiful, beaded hairbine he wore on special occasions and a letter. While the missive was not as finely crafted as the one Cut left pinned to the door of the Mead, it still spoke the mind of a young man who I had learned to love as well.

  Billy. There is sorrow in my heart as I write like you taught me to do. For two winters we have been together. My friends said I could not remain faithful, but I did so. I want you to know this.

  It is my fault that you are throwing me aside. It is not yours. In my heart, I know this thing I want to do is not what you want, but it is what I am determined. So I will never have the right to spend my seed in you again. I will miss that very much. Like I will miss your company. When I see you again, do not turn your face away. I would not blame you, but I hope you do not. I want to be your friend. I took your parfleche to remember our love by and left you my headband. Cast it in the fire if you wish, but my heart will burn if you do. Love, Lone Eagle.

  I taught these people too well. They expressed themselves better than I could with all my years at Moorehouse College.

  Otter stuck close by after Lone Eagle’s departure, and that helped make the days endurable, but the nights were dark islands of sleepless agony. I was not yet finished wallowing in self-pity before the events of the world caught up with me again. Cut summoned me to council one afternoon, and upon arriving I found Stone Knife seated on the blanket.

  The Sergeant’s Gang had struck his camp the day before. Enraged, the Sioux fought off the raiders and pursued them, slaying a large number of renegades at the cost of three warriors. Stone Knife now held two prisoners and a score of corpses lay strewn about his territory, many of them white men. One of the captives was a ruffian who wore the blue coat with faint marks where there had once been three stripes. Stone Knife’s young men wanted to kill the prisoners and throw their carcasses to the dogs, but their misco sought Teacher’s counsel on the matter.

  After I related what happened at the trial of the three men we turned over to the army, Stone Knife agreed to bring the two captives to the Mead so I could accompany him and two of his warriors to the fort with the prisoners. To my surprise, Lone Eagle insisted on going with us.

  My former husband showed up before Stone Knife and his people arrived, walking into the house as if he never left it. He helped himself to a pone spread with maple mel and asked after my health. Grateful for his nonchalant approach, I could have hugged him. The grace and beauty of his masculinity excited me despite myself. Fortunately, the dogs announced Stone Knife’s arrival at that point. Alas, there was no guardian to our front door since South was gone, but the other animals kept us well warned.

  MAJOR JAMIESON was delighted with the capture of his former sergeant. Stone Knife told his story with great dignity and modesty, and Lone Eagle proudly translated it into English.

  The major entered the attack on Stone Knife’s camp into the record so no guilt attached to the Sioux. He paid over a reward for the renegade and sent a wagon full of supplies back with us. I noticed Lone Eagle and Lieutenant Morrow exchanging hostile glances a couple of times.

  As we were leaving town, Lone Eagle pulled up beside Long. “Aren’t you going to him?” he asked bitterly.

  I halted, forcing him to come back to me. “Why would you deny me the pleasure of his company? You have your wife. Why shouldn’t I have someone?”

  He studied the empty horizon for a full minute. “Go back if you wish. He will accept your pipe, but that is all you will get from him. You require more.”

  “And where do I find that?” I demanded, recognizing the truth of it.

  “Back where you belong,” he answered cryptically and turned away.

  Chapter 20

  WHEN THE buffalo came later than usual that next year, Cut suffered a long gash in his hip during the hunt. As Badger was elsewhere treating injuries, the task of repairing his manly thigh, a bittersweet chore, fell to me. Tonight he would flank his wife with more caution than abandon.

  As talk turned to the coming winter move, Otter announced he was not going with the band this year. Secretly, I was relieved. I had considered wintering at Yawktown, but it was not something I desired.

  We accompanied the caravan a few leagues south so Otter could check on the Conestoga’s green new drover. Lone Eagle rode beside me for a distance, chatting about his hope of becoming a father, giving me another clue to our failure. Swallow, his new wife, had missed her menses, which he took as a sure sign of his prowess.

  Cut Hand also sought my company, although he had much to do during the march. The Yanube prospered, so few actually walked on these journeys any longer. I was proud of the way he managed the affairs of his people and took this opportunity to tell him so.

  “Would that I handled my own equally well,” he responded sourly. “I crave love at my fireside. Oh, she loves me in her own way,” he added quickly, as though ashamed of his outburst. “But it is not the best way. Once I had a
wife who loved unselfishly.”

  “Cut Hand, your wife keeps a good lodge and sees to your son, who is a healthy and happy three-year-old. She is denied more children, but I wager she takes care of your needs. Many men do not have so much.”

  “As usual, you are right. Tell me something, friend. When will you begin teaching Dog Fox?”

  “As soon as Morning Mist consents to it.”

  “She will consent,” he said grimly. “I want all of your knowledge poured into his head. I think he will have great need of it.”

  “Then let Otter and me have him next summer for a time each day. If there are others who would have their children learn, send them as well. Maybe I’ll become a real teacher.”

  “You are a real teacher,” he said, kicking his horse forward in aid of a woman having trouble with her load.

  Otter and I did not reach the Mead until dark. After supping and bathing, he seemed in a spleen over the prospect of a long separation from his people. Seeking diversion, we took out the chess set, and his mood eased. Sensing he was loath to go to his own bed, I suggested he move his blankets before the fireplace in my room, an offer he readily accepted.

  Before the northers wailed snowflake tears, we saw to our winter needs. Food was plentiful, wood and chips were stored, our brook ran cold and clear, the animals were put away safely, and I would not be alone again this year. For the first time since Lone Eagle left, my spirits rose.

  A prolonged snowstorm took care of that. We studied and read and worked at chores, yet the urge to get outside the four walls bore down upon us. Our rackets got us a distance from the house, but the white snowscape and leaden skies made the out-of-doors a prison as well. Otter worked on mending furniture on the west side of the house or took to the barn for an hour at a time. I walked in one day as he stood in the west fronting room smoothing down a pelt and realized with a shock that his garments outlined an erection. Normally, I would have teased him, but for some reason I withdrew quietly.