Scarlet Plume, Second Edition (15 page)

Two Two sat on the right as one entered and near the door. A place was left for Scarlet Plume when he should return from his camp duties.

Whitebone took a pinch of sweet grass and sprinkled it over the little pyramid fire. Instantly a smell of wild, smoky incense filled the tepee. It obliterated the smell of sweated leathers for a moment. The little fire cast a soft circle of pinking light. Shadows were black and abrupt along the circling wall. Brown faces and brown hands hung upon the air as if painted onto the shadows.

Whitebone got out his stone gossip pipe. He filled it with prairie tobacco and lighted up with a twig fagot from the fire. He offered a puff to the six great powers, then took a deep puff for himself. He sighed from the depths of his being, and lay back on his slanted lazyback. The woven willows creaked comfortably under his shoulders.

Born By The Way still whimpered a little. Judith rocked the baby in its buckskin cradle. The rocking made the porcupine quill-work glint in the soft light: blue, yellow, red.

Smoky Day rustled in a deep parfleche and brought forth pieces of dried beef. She passed each member of the family a strip and signified they should eat. “It is too late for soup. There will be time in the morning for boiled meat. It is hoped this will quiet the growlings of your belly until you sleep.”

Judith took a sniff of her strip of beef. It looked dirty, unappetizing, resembling the leather sole of a shoe. But the smell was good. It had an aroma not unlike dried halibut. She bit into it. It was tough. A couple of chews and to her surprise a wonderful flavor spread over her tongue. Her mouth flooded with moisture. It was good to be eating again. She chewed heartily with the others. After the terrible events of the day, and the long, tiring march carrying the papoose, Judith couldn’t help but admit the nomad lodge felt cozy.

Around them outside, the other Yanktons settled in for the night too. The sounds were comfortable. It reminded Judith of a flock of chickens settling down for the night on its roost. She hoped Theodosia was being treated kindly by Bullhead. And poor Mavis by Traveling Hail.

The papoose continued to whimper. It stirred in discomfort inside its bound cradle.

Whitebone stroked his two fur-wrapped braids, first one and then the other. The braids reached almost to his navel. His wondering turtle eyes took on a few more wrinkles. He crossed his legs and rubbed them against each other. He scowled down at his toes.

At last Whitebone looked across to the women’s side and said to Judith, “The child is not happy. Can you not give it something to eat?”

Smoky Day’s old eyes flicked blackly from Whitebone to Judith and back again. She laid aside her strip of leathery meat, and getting to her knees, reached across for the papoose.

Judith, feeling stupid, handed the baby over.

Smoky Day unlaced the buckskin covering of the cradle and took out the baby. She removed a few handfuls of soiled cattail fluff, and tipping up the baby’s cherry-red bottom, carefully cleaned it, much as a white mother might clean her baby with the corner of a soiled diaper.

Watching, Judith couldn’t help but be drawn a little by the chubby little brown creature. Without thinking, she reached across and tickled it under the foot.

Smoky Day quickly drew the child around and away from Judith. “Do not tickle the feet of the child,” Smoky Day scolded, “or its legs will not grow down. It is the same with patting a child on the head. There it will not grow either, up.”

“This I did not know. Forgive me.”

Smoky Day dug out a stalk of cattail from a storage parfleche. Two quick twists and the brown cattail exploded into a handful of light, wispy fluff. A few of the seed fluffs lifted up, like mosquitoes, took a lazy turn about the circular tepee, abruptly were sucked down into the little pink fire.

Smoky Day packed the fresh fluff around the little papoose’s bottom and then placed the papoose in its cradle again. Smoky Day next dipped a hand into the wide sleeve of her deerskin tunic and lifted out one of her paps. She handled her wrinkled old pap like it might be a stretch of bread dough. With a motherly smile, strangely young for so old a face, she gave suck to the baby. Presently a drop of milk appeared in the corner of the baby’s pink-brown mouth. The baby’s black, shiny eyes slowly closed over, contented.

Judith was astounded. So old a woman giving suck? Judith shot a high blue look at Whitebone, then back at Smoky Day. Had something heinously private transpired between mother and son that her breasts should run again? Thoughts as wild as wolf tails whisked around in Judith’s mind. Well, suppose it was conceivable that mother had slept with son, should she at her age still have been able to produce milk? Let alone bear a child? No. It was unheard of. Impossible. Unless a savage mother was capable of miracles where a white woman was not. There was of course Sarah in the Bible, Abraham’s wife. She had had a baby in her old age. “Who would have said unto Abraham that Sarah would give a child to suck, bearing him a son in his old age? And the child grew, and was weaned.”

Judith finally couldn’t resist asking it. “Surely Born By The Way is not your child?”

Smoky Day’s withered old lips flashed a smile. “He is my grandchild, as it was told you. The child’s own mother died a winter ago when the band was on the way. I have nursed it ever since.”

“Is it a common thing for Dakota grandmothers to have milk for their grandchildren?”

“The baby cried. To pacify it I placed my old pap in its little mouth. Also, I gave it warm meat soup, drop by drop with a little wooden ladle. I continued to play-nurse it until, behold, one day milk flowed from me. The little orphan smiled with joy when the ma-ma appeared. Yet the other pap remained dry.”

Judith fought down a gulping motion in her throat.

Smoky Day said, “Come, play-nurse the baby. Surely milk will return to your bosom since you are still young.”

Judith shook her head.

Whitebone continued to rub his crossed feet against each other. He coughed roughly, twice.

Smoky Day said, “The father of this child wishes that someone would dress his feet.”

Tinkling sprang up out of the shadows. She took up a skin of water and set it beside Whitebone’s feet.

Whitebone coughed again. This time there was an angry grump in it.

Smoky Day looked meaningfully at Judith. “Come, it is for you to do. You are to be his new wife. A chief who is a good provider always expects to have his feet washed and soothed by his wife’s hands after a long journey.”

Judith started. Wife? No. My God, no! Judith suddenly found herself panting for breath.

“Come, it is for you to do.”

Judith bowed her head. Bitterly she reminded herself that she was a prisoner and had no choice. For the time being she had somehow better try to get along with her captors.

Judith removed Whitebone’s moccasins. She chafed his ankles and the sides of his feet. She saw that his feet were surprisingly young-looking. Strangely too the smell of his feet was not offensive. She washed his feet with water, well up his bony leg, and then dried them with a handful of grass plucked from the ground under his buffalo robe.

When she finished, Whitebone wiggled his toes, removed all of his garments, and, naked, lay down on his fur robe. He lay with his feet to the fire, head away. His pudendum lay in a puddle between his thighs. It reminded her of the liver of a freshly butchered sheep. Two Two behind Whitebone already lay snoring on his fur. He too lay naked. His pudendum resembled three freshly popped mushrooms.

Judith couldn’t resist several furtive looks at both males. Lord. Lord. What she hadn’t all seen in the space of one day.

Sitting on her own fur again, Judith was further startled when Smoky Day beckoned for her to take over the baby and once more urged her to give it suck. “It is still hungry. See, its little mouth still nibbles at the night much as a small fish does. Let him suckle your breast and soon milk will also return to you. It is what a dutiful wife must do for the orphan child of her new husband.” And before Judith could protest, Smoky Day placed the child in Judith’s lap.

Judith stared down at the brown face. Its two black robin eyes stared up at her.

Presently the pink-brown mouth pursed up for more milk. And automatically Judith found herself unbuttoning the top of her gray dress and cupping out her left breast, white and gentle, and giving it to the papoose. The child’s little lips quickly found her light-brown nipple.

The pink-brown lips were warm. They were tender and perfect. The papoose pulled at her teat like a cute little pig. Its brown touch spread into her. Judith twisted her head to one side. “Angela,” she whispered. She had no milk.

At last the baby fell asleep and Smoky Day took him from her. Smoky Day slung him in his cradle from one of the slanting lodgepoles.

Smoky Day next motioned for Judith to lie beside Whitebone.

Judith blazed up at that. “What? Not again? God, no! I thought you Yankton Dakotas were different.”

Whitebone had been watching affairs all along and he now lifted his old head from his pillow. “Come,” he said. “You have washed my feet and you have given suck to my child. Thus you have married me. I am now your husband. Come under the blanket with me.” Whitebone coughed lightly. “If you do not wish to cohabit the first night, I will not press thee. I am not as the white husband, who would force himself upon thee. It is only that my legs become chilled in the night. Also, my thin belly is sometimes cold. A woman with her soft, warm flesh helps to keep away the chill of the prairie night. Later, when you have become used to our ways, we can cohabit if the need arises. Come.”

Judith didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. “The gall of these people.” She swallowed. She swallowed again, “And yet, in their own way, I suppose they really mean well. Because there just is no question in their minds that theirs is the right way. And, as a captive, as a slave, I’d better make up my mind to obey him, or die.” When in Rome do as the Romans do.

Judith crept over on all fours and lay beside Whitebone.

Whitebone still wasn’t quite satisfied. “Woman,” he said, “with the Yanktons the wife also removes her clothes. Learn this. Unless the time of the manner of woman is upon thee?”

Judith burned a fiery red. “No.”

“Come then. There is no warmth unless we sleep skin to skin.”

Judith thought, “After what Mad Bear did to me, I don’t suppose I can worry much any more about a fate worse than death.” She lay very still. “I hate them enough to kill them for what they did to my poor Angela. Even if they aren’t the same Dakota.” She lay very still. “Oh, God, I’m so tired. So dead beat. Why should I care what happens to me any more? They can kill me for all I care now.”

Judith removed her clothes in the shadowy half-light of the falling pink fire. She placed her shoes, her stockings, her dress, her underclothes with Vince’s letter to one side. She wore no bloomers. Naked, she sat shivering.

Whitebone had heard something. He sat up. He looked at where her underclothes lay. His black eyes glittered suspiciously. “Do you carry dead leaves in your clothes? Is this the white custom?”

“No.”

“What is it then? There was a sound as of cottonwood leaves cracking.”

“It is a message from my white husband.”

Whitebone held out his hand for it.

Judith knew there was no use to protest. She handed Vince’s letter over.

Whitebone studied it uncomprehendingly a moment; then put it away.

The skin over Judith’s bare back shivered of itself. “That’s my letter.”

“Come,” Whitebone said gently. “Another time.”

At last she let herself settle against Whitebone’s side.

Whitebone immediately relaxed and fell asleep. He was warm.

Judith lay awake for a long time. A drum beat somewhere in camp. She could hardly believe she was who she was.

The incense from the burned sweet grass died away. The Indian smell of Two Two came to her. It reminded her a little of the way a puppy might smell after a run in the rain.

She recalled a funny thing her mother had once said: “It’s shocking to think that after a woman dies her person will be exposed to the eyes of an undertaker.”

A draft of cool air breathed down through the smoke hole. Automatically, in his sleep, Whitebone drew up a robe and covered his old body. Judith drew on the robe a little too to cover herself.

She watched a star slowly slowly move across the smoke hole. She fell asleep.

Her left side felt cold. She awoke. She saw stars through the smoke hole. Moonlight struck directly down in a pillar of gold. The fire in the hearth appeared to be out. Someone snored on the women’s side.

She lay dazed, trying to understand where she was.

The nipple of her left breast hurt. It was where the papoose had pulled at it like a cute little pig. Her thighs and seat also hurt. She recalled the events of the day before.

A sob gathered in her belly. She drew at the fur robe to cover her nakedness. As she did so she discovered Whitebone no longer lay at her side.

She was thankful he had kept his word not to force her to cohabit with him.

A piercing death cry cut the night. It came from some distance. It was the cry of an old man.

Judith lay very still. She knew right away who it was. Whitebone. What could he be howling about so in the middle of the night? His dead wife?

The snoring on the women’s side stopped. All except the papoose seemed to have awakened.

The howling continued.

Presently the camp around them began to stir. A few people poked their heads out of their tepees and began to wonder aloud what had gone wrong with their old chief.

With a groan, Smoky Day got to her feet. She stirred up the embers, dropped on a few dead leaves, built a little pyramid of twigs over them, blew carefully, and finally had a licking flame.

Judith reached for her dress.

Smoky Day looked at her gravely. “Sleep, my child. This does not concern thee.”

Whitebone continued to wail piercingly outside. He seemed to be pounding the earth with something.

“Is it because of his former wife?” Judith asked.