Scarlet Plume, Second Edition (16 page)

“Scarlet Plume and the headmen will attend him. Once each month he is overcome with grief. It is fated.”

Judith saw deep love for her son in Smoky Day’s black eyes. The little winking fire gave Smoky Day the look of an ancient mother of Israel. “Mother, your son will forget her after a time.”

Smoky Day looked to one side. “It is not a good thing for a mother-in-law to talk in this manner with the new wife of her blood son. Yet we do not know your people. You are alone. You are without a mother. Therefore I will serve as your own blood mother and befriend you.” Smoky Day’s gnarled black hands rubbed over each other with a husking sound. “My son weeps because Bluestem, the mother of his baby, threw her life away. You saw the old woman Snow On Her hanging from a single cottonwood. Well, there is yet another single cottonwood along this stream, a dead one. It was from this dead tree that Bluestem also hanged herself. Whitebone knows now that his wife was unhappy with him for many winters. Yet she never told him. He did not know. The thoughts of a chief are often more with his people than with his family. This makes his grief doubly heavy. Also, he misses her.”

The wailing continued. The sound of men’s voices offering the old man comfort came to them.

Smoky Day listened carefully. “He does not heed the good words of his headmen this time. I will go. Also, we do not have a medicine man. On our last remove through Hole In The Mountain, the good Sky Walker died mysteriously. I will go. Watch the lodge.” Smoky Day hobbled out into the night.

Judith saw Tinkling look at her from under her robe. Tinkling’s black eyes and the fur over her made her look like a mink. Two Two also looked at her, wonderingly. The papoose slept, head hanging, in his gently swinging cradleboard. The baby’s even breathing gave the cradleboard its motion.

Judith decided to have a look for herself anyway. She slipped into her dress and got up. “Watch the lodge,” she said to Tinkling, and ducked out through the leather flap door.

The moon was directly overhead. A soft radiance, almost like a gold fog, seemed to be drifting through the encampment along the ground. Thin wisps of smoke rose from the guest lodge in the center of the camp.

Beyond the camp circle and downstream a short distance stood a group of braves. In their midst was Whitebone. Whitebone was naked and he was kneeling on the ground. The limbs of a dead cottonwood spread spectrally over them.

Judith drew near, hesitantly. She heard Scarlet Plume’s even, murmured words. Smoky Day stood off to one side, head down, listening. Even Bullhead gave the old chief counsel in surprisingly soothing tones.

Whitebone had dug a hole in the ground with his bare hands. Looking closely, Judith saw that Whitebone was handling some human bones in a fond manner. His old face was twisted with deep grief. Bitter tears fell copiously. It took Judith a moment to grasp what she was looking at. The skull he wept over and the rib case he clutched to his bosom—they could only be his dead wife’s. Bluestem.

Judith stole back into their lodge. She slipped off her dress and, naked, lay under their fur robe again. The soft fur against her skin was warming, comforting. She stroked her chin against it.

Presently Smoky Day came leading Whitebone home. Whitebone’s face was once again composed, grave and impassive. There was no sign whatsoever that grief had only a few minutes before ripped it open. He lay himself down beside Judith, naked, skin to skin. Quietly he drew a fair share of their robe over his thin belly and thin legs and gaunt chest. He did not even sigh.

He lay breathing, slow. She lay breathing, slow. They warmed each other’s sides.

Sleep came back to Smoky Day and soon she was snoring again. Tinkling and Two Two also slept. Scarlet Plume did not come to his fur bed.

In her mind’s eye, and benumbed as if caught in a spell, Judith saw herself lying beside the old chief: gold hair next to his fur-wrapped black braids, blue eyes next to his brown turtle eyes, white, still young body next to his aged brown body, gold-tufted pudendum next to his grayish-tinged milkwort puddle.

She noted the sweetish Indian smell of him. The smell of him was like the inside of an empty perfume bottle.

“Sweetish?” she thought. “O Lord, how far have I fallen!”

He stirred beside her.

At that she held her breath.

After a moment he turned toward her. Then his hand lay upon her naked belly.

The trail to love for Whitebone was short and straight. He rose over her, with a hard bump of his knee divided her legs, charged, and, erect, was upon her.

Judith lifted up on an elbow to push him off.

Too late. With a lustful grump of a sound he made partial entrance.

O Lord, then it was to be again. She fell back, giving up. After what Mad Bear had done to her, and what Mad Bear’s braves had done to poor Angela, what was the use? She was a prisoner of a strange people in a cruel land. She let Whitebone split her legs even farther.

A dozen thrusts, a lingering groan of pleasure, and Whitebone was done. He lay dozing in pleasure upon her a few moments and then, receding, rolled off and stretched out beside her. Soon he was sound asleep.

She thought, “I must surely be out of my mind to let him do this to me.”

She threw a quick look around in the dusky tepee to make sure Scarlet Plume still hadn’t come to bed.

2

Judith awoke to a red dawn. It bled through the gray leather of the tepee, suffusing everything with a rosy hue. A small aromatic smudge fire burned at her feet. There wasn’t a fly or a mosquito around.

Judith turned her head. Whitebone, Two Two, Smoky Day, Tinkling, even the papoose were gone. It was time to get up.

Judith lay all tired out. Nausea worked in her belly. Slush ice seemed to have formed in her skull during the night.

Smoky Day came in with the papoose. “I have given him ma-ma. Do you wish to play-nurse him again?”

Judith could only stare at her.

“Play-nurse him?” Smoky Day urged.

“Where is everyone?”

Smoky Day was startled by the question. “The chief and his son Two Two bathe in the stream in the men’s place, as is the custom each morning. Tinkling bathes with the maidens in the women’s place.”

Judith slowly sat up. She hugged her white breasts close. “Each morning?”

“In winter as well as summer.”

“You bathe in a stream in the winter?”

“It is even so, my daughter. The Dakotas have axes.”

“You chop a hole in the ice and bathe?”

“Yes, my daughter.”

“The babies too?”

Smoky Day smiled down at her. She was as wrinkled as neglected leather, yet her smile as always was that of a young woman. “The Yankton baby is always given a dip at birth. This is to see if he is a true Yankton.”

“Even in the dead of winter?”

“Even so.”

“Do not the babies freeze? Catch their death of cold?”

Smoky Day smiled. “I am here. Whitebone is here. Two Two and Born By The Way are here.”

Judith was astounded. That accounted then for the cleanish smell of the Indian lodge despite all the grease and smoke and worn leather about.

“Do you wish to play-nurse with Born By The Way in bed?”

Judith felt dirty. Filthy. “Can someone show me where to bathe?”

“Find Tinkling and she will show thee. It is near the dead cottonwood.” Smoky Day handed Judith a twist of wild tobacco.

“What is this for?”

“You must throw the tobacco in the stream as a gift to the water god. It is the custom.”

“I must?”

“You must.”

Judith reached for her clothes, only to discover they were gone, even her high leather shoes.

Smoky Day smiled at Judith’s surprised look. Smoky Day set the papoose against a lodgepole, and brought forth a pair of moccasins, a pair of deerskin leggings, and a long deerskin tunic. She placed them in Judith’s hands.

Judith stroked them. They were all beautifully decorated, sharp angular designs done in beads: blue, yellow, green. The leather was well worked, and soft, and as white as a bunny’s tail.

“Are these for me?”

Smoky Day looked shyly away. “If they please my daughter.”

“Where are my other clothes?”

“They have been put away. You are now the wife of a great chief and must dress accordingly. Also, some of the warriors grumble that we have whites in our camp. They wish to kill all the whites. They say we will be punished by the terrible wagon-guns when the white soldiers find that we have white women in our midst. Therefore you must dress as a Yankton woman. Go, bathe, and then we will clothe thee in the proper manner.”

Judith threw a light wolfskin over her shoulders and drew it close around her middle. She stepped outside. The upper half of the ball of the sun lay on the eastern horizon. For a moment it looked exactly like a flaming prairie fire. A heavy dew, almost like a light rain, had fallen in the night and the grass in the slow turn of the creek sparkled with a million jewels. The air was as sweet as cider. She took a deep breath.

Judith heard the merry sound of female laughter beyond a fringe of red willows near the dead cottonwood tree. She could just make out Tinkling and other maidens playing in the stream.

Judith threw a hasty glance at where Whitebone had been digging in the earth during the night and then resolutely looked the other way. She shuddered, abruptly, when she thought of how Whitebone had first hugged the bones of his dead wife, Bluestem, and then had cohabited with her, Judith.

Hesitantly Judith approached the bathing Yankton women. She parted the willows and stepped through. Various tunics and chastity ropes of soft deerskin lay piled at her feet. Tinkling and the other naked young women were chasing each other through shallow silver water. The creek bed was perfect for bathing, sandy, clear.

Judith marveled at the way Tinkling had suddenly become happy. Tinkling played and scampered about like a child. She had been released at last from an intolerable burden. Having been married to the brute Charlie Silvers must have been torture for her.

“Yes,” Judith thought, “and now it is my turn to become all humped over like that. Unless I can somehow escape.”

Judith wondered how Theodosia and Mavis had made out during the long night. She looked around. They were nowhere in sight.

Judith, shy, had trouble understanding how Tinkling and the Yankton maidens could run around stark naked, unabashed. She shivered inside her wolfskin.

Finally, feeling a little funny about it, she cast the twist of tobacco in the water and stepped in. The stream ran warm over her toes. It was as clear as good drinking water. Multicolored sand sparkled on the bottom. A pair of minnows hardly larger than two short threads of black yarn nosed up to her toenails. They tickled her.

She listened to the others play and splash. After the first moment they no longer looked at her. Presently, willing it, she dared to shed her wolfskin and settled in the water. She bathed herself harshly. She scrubbed her limbs with fine sand, scouring especially where Mad Bear and Whitebone had touched her. Then she rinsed the fine sand off. The water was fresh, soothing. After a while she lay back on the sandy bottom to enjoy it. She laved her bruised body with cupping hands of water.

The menfolk were waiting for her when she and Tinkling returned. Whitebone, Two Two, and even Scarlet Plume sat each on a pink rock around the cooking fire outside the lodge. They were obviously savoring with delight the rich smell of the boiling antelope meat in the family black kettle.

Judith entered the tepee, where Smoky Day awaited her. Smoky Day took up Judith’s hair and examined it closely. “Ah,” Smoky Day said, “you do not have the louse.”

“Of course I do not have lice.”

Smoky Day explained. “You have been with Mad Bear. He and his band are known to be very lousy.” Smoky Day smiled at her. “A good Indian does not have the louse. The Yanktons are a clean people. Also, we have a grease for the louse.”

Smoky Day deliberately rubbed a wad of soft tallow dyed with tannin into Judith’s gold hair. Judith’s hair changed color reluctantly. Smoky Day next braided Judith’s hair, the tallow making both braids as stiff as whip handles. Smoky Day painted the parting down the middle with red vermilion. Smoky Day rubbed brown ointment over Judith’s face and neck, and placed a red dab exactly under each eye. Last, Smoky Day helped Judith into her tunic, leggings, and moccasins.

Tinkling broke out in merry girlish laughter when Smoky Day had finished. “Except for the sunned hair, Whitebone’s new wife has truer Yankton skin than Whitebone himself.”

Smoky Day laughed too. “Whitebone will not know his bride.” Smoky Day dug out a trader mirror from a parfleche traveling bag. “See your image.”

Judith looked at herself in the mirror. After a bit she couldn’t resist a grudging smile at the figure she cut. And she had to admit she did look quite Indian, even with the stained braids. Smoky Day had done a good job. It was too bad she couldn’t go to a white man’s masquerade.

“Yes,” she murmured to herself, “and I’ll never see St. Paul again.”

Smoky Day caught the sad intonation of the words. “Do the clothes bind thee?”

The deerskins felt wonderfully comfortable against the skin. Judith had the curious feeling she now had two skins.

“Do they bind thee?”

“The clothes are good. I am glad to have them. I thank thee.”

“This old mother is pleased. Come. The meat is boiled. The men await us.” Smoky Day, hobbling, led the way outdoors.

The three men looked at Judith, amazed. Yet they said nothing. And after a moment, in fine delicate courtesy, they looked everywhere but at her. It was evident from the way Whitebone sat on his rock that he was pleased. Even the face of the silent Scarlet Plume smoothed over.

Smoky Day and Tinkling handed out wood chips for plates. With a long wooden fork Smoky Day fished up slabs of meat from the bubbling black kettle and handed them around to the men. After offering the first bite to the six great directions, all three males pitched in, eating with their fingers. Whitebone had a way of eating in which he first lifted the meat slowly to his mouth, then suddenly his mouth snapped at it and the meat vanished.