Scarlet Plume, Second Edition (17 page)

Judith had to wait until the men were nearly finished. It was impolite for a woman to eat with hungry men about.

Finally Smoky Day handed Judith a choice cut of meat too. Judith was ravenous. She tore at the meat like the men did. It was good. Smoky Day had put some native herbs in the boiling water. Judith hoped Smoky Day would save the water for soup later on. Mmm, the meat was good. At least there was that.

The baby suddenly let go inside the tepee, bawling with all his might.

Two Two’s white teeth gleamed like a beaver’s. “Ha, ha, Born By The Way already wishes to eat with the men.”

Everybody smiled.

Tinkling was about to bring the papoose out, when Smoky Day frowned. “It is for Sunned Hair, the new wife, to do. He is now her baby.”

Judith, somewhat to her own surprise, found herself getting the baby. And the moment Judith sat down beside Whitebone the papoose fell silent.

A smile cracked Whitebone’s old turtle face. “Perhaps the little one wishes more ma-ma.”

Judith blushed. She found herself shy about exposing her breasts in front of Scarlet Plume. She hated the old man and his leering turtle eyes.

Scarlet Plume sat forward, elbows on his knees, black eyes intent on the cooking fire. He was wearing buckskins and his single scarlet feather. He had washed off his face-painting in the morning bath. His otherwise compassionate face seemed unusually severe and distant, Judith thought. Judith decided it was probably because he was still worried the wagon-guns would overtake them. She felt more than a little drawn toward Scarlet Plume. She admired his powerful face, his brooding eyes, his large, warm lips. Why couldn’t it have been he instead of Whitebone who had taken her over? If such it had to be.

Judith noted a little buckskin bag tied high on the baby’s cradleboard. It was diamond-shaped and decorated with a beaded design representing a turtle.

Two Two saw where her eyes were looking. “My little brother had to be chased out by a turtle.”

Judith looked at Two Two with questioning blue eyes.

Smoky Day spoke up. “When Born By The Way was struggling to be born, it did not go well with the mother. Sky Walker, the medicine man, was called. What he did was wakan. He told a small turtle to chase the baby out.”

“Oh.”

Just then the papoose smiled up at Judith. The bright, wide grimace on the little one’s otherwise dark solemn face startled her.

Two Two was overjoyed. So was Smoky Day. Two Two cried, “See, already he regards Sunned Hair as his true mother. Even as I do.”

Whitebone reached down and touched the little one’s dab of a nose. “Does Sunned Hair please thee, brave one? Do you like her new garments?”

Judith wyed her head to one side. The stiff braids lying on her bosom moved like a pair of long sausages. She was jealous of the baby. She thought, “Why couldn’t Angela’s life have been spared, instead of this pagan’s?” A flash of hate suffused Judith. Her eardrums cracked with it. She thought of throwing the cradle and child into the cooking fire.

But of course she couldn’t very well take it out on the child. The child did not know. It had no fault in the matter. And it was sweet and adorable.

Judith shot a question at Whitebone. She wanted to hurt him. “There is a thing that has been sticking into my heart ever since the Dakotas arose and killed the whites at Skywater. A brave named Animal’s Voice butchered out the heart of my brother-in-law, the Good Book Man, and ate it as if it were pemmican.” Judith’s voice almost broke at the memory of it. “Animal’s Voice was not a cut-hair Indian but one of those who refused to shed the buffalo robe. He was one like you. My heart was stabbed to see this. Why was this done?”

Whitebone drew back, affronted. His old eyes flashed black fire.

Judith persisted. Male dominance infuriated her. “It is true. Claude Codman, the Good Book Man, was a good man. He was a most kind man. He meant nothing but good for the Dakotas. Yet his heart was eaten as if it were but the heart of an antelope.” She threw a look at the black kettle, where some antelope meat still cooked over the fire. “This is bad.”

Whitebone turned to Scarlet Plume. “What troubles this woman? Can you tell? Does she not see that when Animal’s Voice ate the heart of the white man it was an honor for the white man? When a red man eats the heart of another red man, it is an honor. But when a red man eats the heart of a white man, then it is a great honor.” Whitebone coughed in a disdainful, superior manner. “The Good Book Man was of an inferior people, the whites.”

“Inferior?” Judith exclaimed.

“It is a true thing. The white man is a woman. He is the greatest fool under the sun. In a battle he stands up straight and lets himself be shot at. He is a liar and a swindler. He cannot tell the truth. He is born with a white heart. Thus his heart cannot be like the heart of the red man, which is red and sweet.” Whitebone bent a chief’s grim look upon her. “Therefore it was a great honor for the Good Book Man when Animal’s Voice ate his heart. Animal’s Voice found the heart of the Good Book Man red and sweet. The Good Book Man was a brave man and Animal’s Voice wished to acquire that bravery.” Whitebone snapped his head down, once. “Also, Animal’s Voice slew him as a sacrifice to appease the manes of his slain relatives. Animal’s Voice’s dead relations needed the blood to depart.”

Judith lowered her eyes before the old man’s eloquence.

Scarlet Plume’s face remained distant, expressionless.

Born By The Way began to babble happily in Judith’s lap. He too wanted to talk like a chief.

Smoky Day, Tinkling, and Two Two smiled.

Presently Whitebone couldn’t resist the baby’s happy babblings either. He relaxed, began to smile a little.

All the while, Whitebone’s words continued to work in Judith’s mind. They moved in her like a dawn coming in. After all she had gone through, it was only now coming home to her, truly, how far apart, how terribly far apart, the red man and the white man really were.

Whitebone again touched the baby’s tit of a nose. “Before he was born I had a dream that he would enter the world deformed. This made me feel very sad. When a child is born deformed it is considered a curse from Wakantanka. Such a child is always left behind to die.”

“Aiii,” Smoky Day cackled, “and now I see our chief playing with his son. Aiii, and was it not a good thing that the old woman of your lodge did not listen to you when it was requested that the little one be interred with its dead mother on the scaffold? His little cries would have followed us through the night across the prairie, until long after he was out of sight. His spirit would have followed us forever. This your old mother knew. You are a good chief for your people, ai, but not when you are possessed by the madness of grief.”

Whitebone’s old head came up. “But my wife that was, she was not happy in the spirit land without her child.”

“Aiii.”

Whitebone turned solemnly to Judith. “I have thought on this very much. Listen. You are now my wife. I am happy in thee.” Whitebone placed a soft hand on Judith’s sleeve. “This is what I desire of thee. Listen. When Wakantanka shall have summoned me away, I want my nephew Scarlet Plume to kill you so that you may become my attendant in the spirit land. I am happy in thee. In the night that is now past, had not the thought of my new wife lying waiting for me in my tepee come to me, ai, I might well have thrown my life away. Such was my grief.”

Judith sat stunned.

Then a change came over Whitebone’s face. He set his wooden plate aside. He reached inside his leather shirt. Slowly he drew out the letter he had taken from her the night before. “Tell of this again.”

Judith blanched.

“Tell it.”

“It is a message from my husband.”

“Where is he now?”

“He fights the bad whites far to the south.”

“What does the message say?” He next drew the letter out of its envelope and spread it out for her to read. He kept fast hold of it.

Through tears Judith read him the first paragraph. It dealt mostly with the fact that Vince was profoundly lonesome for her and Angela.

Whitebone with his finger pointed to the start of the paragraph again. “Tell of this yet again.”

Judith did.

Whitebone watched her eyes narrowly at the same time that he kept an eye on the handwriting word for word.

After a moment Judith caught on. Whitebone was slyly trying to trap her into making a mistake by getting her to repeat over and over the reading of certain marks. A sour smile touched her lips. “Does not the great chief wish for me to read all of the message? There is nothing in it about the white man’s war against the red man.”

Whitebone jerked back the letter. He stared at her a moment, then at the letter. Slowly an equally acrid smile touched his lips. Then he leaned down and slid the letter and its envelope into the fire.

Everyone watched it burn. The letter rapidly curled up into fragile black wisps, and vanished.

The sun rose behind them. Light turned yellow, then flashing clear, then warm.

Whitebone next turned to Scarlet Plume. “My son, a thing is troubling thee. Tell us what it is while we sit around the cooking pot. Or is it a thing that must be told of in the council lodge?”

Scarlet Plume set his plate aside. A large red ant ran across the knee of his buckskin legging. After a moment he gently picked it up and set it in the grass behind the pink rock he sat on.

When Scarlet Plume did not immediately answer, Whitebone turned to Two Two. “Little son, you know where your father’s gossip pipe is kept. Get it. You know also where your cousin’s pipe is kept. Get it. Attend.”

Two Two got the pipes.

“Little son,” Whitebone said next, “call your young friends and run to water the horses. Then let them out to graze in a new place. Attend.”

Again Two Two ran to obey.

Whitebone lit up with a tiny brand plucked from the cooking fire. Scarlet Plume also lit up. The two men smoked together. It was a silent smoke, leisurely done, full of good taste and content.

The two men finished their smoke at exactly the same time and together clapped out their pipes.

Again Whitebone spoke to Scarlet Plume. “My son, a thing is troubling thee. My ears, even my red heart, are open. They all listen.”

Scarlet Plume turned and fixed glittering black eyes on Whitebone. His loose black hair moved where it touched his shoulders. “My father, with the cooking pot between us, I can perhaps speak of it. It concerns one named Bullhead. You know him. I have spoken of him before. It is bad in his lodge. He will hurt the Good Book Woman.”

“Has she not made him a good wife?”

“There were heavy words in Bullhead’s tepee in the night.”

“What?” Whitebone ground his old teeth together. “Does the son of my sister spend his nights with his ears to the doors of his friends?”

Scarlet Plume ignored the sarcasm. He threw a look at Bullhead’s lodge five doors down. “Neither Bullhead nor the Good Book Woman has appeared for the morning bath. The door is still lashed tight from within.” Scarlet Plume glanced up at Bullhead’s smoke hole. “Nor has a fire been lighted within. There is bad trouble there.”

Whitebone forced a jovial smile to his lips. “My son, it is now two winters since you last bedded with a wife. Perhaps you have forgotten the morning pleasure a man may have with his wife before he arises, even before the household awakens.” Whitebone gave Judith a turtle’s bland wink. “My son, it is time you found a new wife, even as I have done. You have forgotten what it means to be a married Yankton man.”

“The Good Book Woman was not made for childbearing. Children came to her, yes. Yet the Good Book Woman is wakan. She is one of those chosen by the white man’s Wakantanka to read and to teach out of the Good Book. She will never be content to be the wife of a brute named Bullhead. He is a bad man. I have said.”

“He is also a brave man in battle. The Yankton nation dwindles. We need the brave man.”

Scarlet Plume held his eyes steadily on Whitebone. “My father, listen. What Bullhead does with his wives is not done in the Yankton manner. He has the bad heart of the renegade. He belongs truly with Mad Bear’s band. I spit on his tobacco. I will not smoke it. The blood of the innocent is in it. He kills without measure. He should be banished. Do the Yanktons have need of murderers to increase their kind?”

“My son, we have touched on a matter that has been much in my thoughts. It is this. You are much alone. Yet it seems you do not wish to marry again. This is not a good thing. You shun the women much as some medicine men do. Sky Walker, who took the south road, was one of those. My son, it has been much in my thoughts that if you do not like women, then you should become our new medicine man. You know much of such matters. I do not. We do not even have a keeper of the time. Thus consult your heart, seek a vision, and see what Wakantanka has to say. It was told us that you turned over in your mother’s belly before you were born. That was a great thing. It was a sign. We could see then that Wakantanka had set you apart for a special life. Consider this.”

A tiny smile quirked at the corners of Scarlet Plume’s lips and a glint appeared in his obsidian eyes. “I have sought this vision you speak of.”

“You have had this vision?”

“I have.”

“What does it say?”

“It says nothing of being a medicine man.”

“What does it say?”

“I have had a vision of a different thing.”

“What does it say?”

“I will speak of it at the proper time.”

“Does it speak of marriage?”

Scarlet Plume shook his head.

“Does it speak of women? White women?”

Scarlet Plume crossed his long legs. Still another single red ant had found its way up his leg and again Scarlet Plume very gently picked it up and set it down in the grass behind the pink rock he sat on.

An uneasy silence fell between the two men. Everyone in the household noted it. Black eyes, and Judith’s blue eyes, flicked at each other and then looked away.

Afraid of becoming involved in a possibly violent family quarrel, Judith turned her attention to Born By The Way. The little papoose had got one little brown hand loose and was playing with one of her white fingers.