Scarlet Plume, Second Edition (28 page)

Judith liked the privacy. No longer would she have to fend off urgent savage studs. But she saw too that she was now more trapped, more prisoner, than ever. There was no escaping the Yanktons.

There was one small piece of justice done. Whitebone took the poor humpnecked Tinkling to wife so that the papoose Born By The Way should have a mother. Tinkling was wildly happy over the turn of events. Once her own housework was done, Tinkling hurried over to work in Judith’s tepee. She fawned over Judith, held her more in awe even than Whitebone. At least once each day she held up both hands and bowed her head in the Indian gesture of thankfulness.

The Yankton children, naked, rose-brown, hovered around Judith’s lodge. They were as persistent as bumblebees around a white rose. They tried to peer at her from under the skirts of her tepee. They poked their black hands in at the door. When the guards chased them away, they stood to one side whispering together and made up lively stories about her. When she strolled down to her sacred bathing place they scampered behind her like a pack of curious puppies.

“Give them a long tongue,” Judith thought, “and they’d lick my hand.”

Once one of the bolder boys came up to her and said, “I see the white woman looks sad. I want to shake hands with her.”

Judith let him shake her hand.

Yet it could not go on. She was no goddess.

Her new role was false. She was only too human and soon would once again do something offensive to the savage mind. And the next time something was bound to happen. A certain turning, and there it would be. Death.

“Yes. There’s no doubt of it now. I’m going to die out here.”

One evening after dark, as she lay alone in her white fur bed, Judith heard many footsteps passing by her tepee. The footsteps were those of men. They all led to the big council lodge nearby.

The night was windless. The least sound came to her magnified. She could hear the braves shift their feet in the sand inside the council lodge. The small stick fire in the center of the lodge burned with a sound as though a continuous breath were being expelled from an open mouth. Light coughs sounded almost as if inside her tepee. A sacred council pipe was being smoked and passed from hand to hand.

At last Whitebone spoke in the quiet. “My son, come straight for the pipe. We wait.”

Scarlet Plume spoke. “My father, at last the time has come for me to speak of the new vision that was given me.”

“Come straight for the pipe. The single hole in the stem does not lie.”

“My father, a white ghost came to me in the night. It woke me in my sleep and it spoke to me.”

“What did the white ghost say? We wait.”

“The white ghost said to form a new society. The white ghost warned that many of the Yanktons would not like the new society, that perhaps no one would join it, that perhaps I would be the only member in it. The white ghost warned that even my father would be unhappy with it.”

“Come straight for the pipe. What did the white ghost say would be the name of this new society?”

“The white ghost said it should be called Return The White Prisoners Society.”

Silence.

A single pair of moccasins squinched in the sand.

When Whitebone spoke next, his voice was a snarl of just barely controlled fury. “Come straight for the pipe!”

“The white ghost said that the Woman With The Sunned Hair must be returned to the white people.” Scarlet Plume’s voice resounded strong inside the leather lodge. “If Sunned Hair is not soon returned, all the Yanktons will be destroyed. That is all I have to say.”

“But Sunned Hair is wakan. She is white and sacred. She is now a Yankton goddess.”

“The white ghost has spoken. I wish to form this society.”

Whitebone snorted with ridicule. “This society of yours, it is a crazy fool society.”

There was another silence. Even from where Judith lay she could feel blackness gathering on the warrior faces.

“Come straight for the pipe.” There was a sound of flaming hate in Whitebone’s voice. “Speak truly. What did the white ghost say?”

Scarlet Plume continued to talk strong. He believed in a certain thing and it was in complete control of him. “The white ghost says that if we do not return the white woman to her people, the Thunderbirds will strike us. Even the new Contrary, my brother Traveling Hail, will not be able to help us.”

“My son, we have spoken of a certain thing before. It is that you turned over in your mother’s belly before you were born. It was a great thing. It was a sign. It was told us that you were favored by the gods and would do a great thing for the Yanktons someday. Is this now the great thing you would do?”

“My father, I am helpless. I know only what the white ghost has told me.”

“A white ghost? Why was it not a red ghost? Are not the Yanktons red? White. White. You know that one does not climb a hill for water nor listen to a white man for straight talking.”

“My father, the white ghost says that if we do not soon return the white woman, some other bullhead warrior will rise in crazy anger and kill her.”

“My son, does not the law of the Dakota say: Justice for our red people and death to all the whites? Let my son say if that is not true.”

“My father, why should this young innocent woman be killed by a bullhead? Has she not always been kind to us, smiled upon us? Has she not washed your feet as a good wife should? Did she not give her breast to suck to our child Born By The Way? Even when she had no milk to give? Do not all our children love her as a tender sister? Why must a crazed Yankton be permitted to kill her?”

“My son, she is now a sacred person. No one shall touch her. We all worship her, even the new bullhead, Plenty Lice.”

“My father, I smoke the pipe and cry to you—let her go free.”

“Who will help her return to her people?”

“The white ghost says that certain members of the Return The White Prisoners Society must accompany her until she has safely arrived in the Fort Of The Snelling.”

Whitebone snorted. “Who are these certain members?”

“Your son waits for others to join the society.”

“Ha. Are there any here present who wish to join this crazy fool society?”

Silence.

Judith was suddenly filled with a wild exultation. If Scarlet Plume had his way, she was going home! The mention of Fort Snelling thrilled her so profoundly she shuddered from head to foot. Going home. St. Paul. In her extremity, in the midst of desolation, one man, a savage, had suddenly arisen to plead for her freedom.

She had always admired Scarlet Plume, had even had a love dream about him. How right she had been about him. Once in the long, long ago he had thrown a dead white swan at her feet to warn her that she must fly to save her neck. And he still wished to save her. Yes. Yes. He was more than just a simple red man. He was a great man.

Whitebone spoke tauntingly. “We see then that there is only one crazy fool in your society.”

“I wait for others to join this new society.”

“My son, why is your mind set on this girl? Can she work moccasins better than others? Can she carry a heavier pack? Can she dress a buffalo skin better?”

“My father, you took her to wife. I did not. Why did you take her to wife? Why this one?”

There was a pause, a long one. When Whitebone finally spoke, it was in a startlingly soft voice. “When I looked upon the Woman With The Sunned Hair for the first time, I knew she was buried in my heart forever and my wife she had to be. It was done to appease the manes of my wife that was.”

Scarlet Plume spoke courteously. “This I ask again. Why this white woman? You have now declared her to be wakan. How can this be when she is buried in your heart and she has slept with you skin to skin? I wish to know. It is a strange thing.”

Whitebone jumped to his feet. His heels ground into the sand. “The whites, ha. The white man does not deserve this sacred woman, no. The white man does things for gold, for goddung, ha. He tries to sell the earth to his brother, yes. Who can tear our mother into small pieces and sell her?” Whitebone raged in a slow, clear, incisive voice. “The white man knows how to make things but he does not know how to share them. The white man is one of the lower creatures. He is an animal. Look at him carefully. His face is covered with hair. His chest is covered with hair. His legs are covered with hair. Only animals are that way. What can one think of a creature that has short hair on his head and long hair on his face?”

Scarlet Plume continued in a quiet, insistent voice. “This I ask. Must we believe then that Sunned Hair is a daughter of a hairy dog?”

Whitebone snarled, “Ha! We see now that Sunned Hair is also buried in the heart of my son. Does the only member of the crazy fool society wish to lie with her in the grass when he returns her to the Fort Of The Snelling?”

Scarlet Plume bounded to his feet. His heels hit the sand with a thump like that of an angry buck rabbit. “Wagh!”

Judith quivered. The two were sure to come to blows over her. She almost cried aloud in torment at the idea.

Then another thought shot through her. “Scarlet Plume loves me.”

A tired voice interposed. It was the new medicine man, Center Of The Body, once known as Bullhead. “Brothers, Dakotas, let the feast-makers serve the meat. Later we shall have a further smoke on the matter of the Woman With The Sunned Hair. I have said.”

While the council ate meat, Scarlet Plume stepped outside and walked down to the pink stream.

Judith got to her knees and peeked out of her tepee door. She saw Scarlet Plume in the vague starlight. His head was high, long black hair flowing to his shoulders. Presently he began to pace back and forth. The sound of his footsteps on the strand was firm and crisp in the night. He moved tall and muscularly powerful. The single scarlet feather upthrust at the back of his head quivered at his every step.

“Yes, those two are bound to kill each other,” she whispered. “And after that? A hell on earth. The whole band will fall to killing each other in a wild blood bath.” It was chilly. She drew her sleeping robe around her body. “I know this much. If I don’t get out of here right away, escape right now, I’m dead in any case.”

And there was something else. If Scarlet Plume were to touch her, she was dead in another way. She would never be able to resist him. She would have to go savage, eat raw liver.

She made up her mind to go. She had to go.

Quickly a plan formed in her mind. She would head south, toward a settlement called Sioux Falls. To go north, to backtrack to Skywater, would be exactly what the Yanktons would expect her to do. Rollo, the mail carrier, made the trip from Sioux Falls to New Ulm once a month. She would catch a ride with him to New Ulm. From there she could take a steamer to St. Paul. It was the long way home. But it had to be done. Someone had to get back to civilization to tell what had happened at Skywater.

She put on her leather clothes. She also picked out a parfleche and hurriedly packed some pemmican, an extra pair of moccasins, and some Indian toilet goods.

She waited until Scarlet Plume returned to the council lodge, then slipped stealthily outdoors. She skipped across the stream and treaded her way up through a crevice to the plateau above.

She carefully steered a course between the guards on the far hills. She ran, stooped.

She hoped they would find her gone just soon enough to keep from killing each other, but not soon enough to catch up with her.

PART THREE

Lost Timber

A warm hand touched her.

Judith didn’t want to wake up. She liked sleeping. She was in the middle of a lovely dream and wanted to keep on with it. Four loaves of bread freshly baked stood in a row on the kitchen table. Ma had just dropped a dab of butter on their hot, bulging brown crusts and the butter was running down the sides. Mmm, they looked good. And there on a sideboard stood a basket of the fattest cucumbers she had ever seen, waiting to be sliced and pickled.

“Ma, can I have some?”

“No.”

A warm hand touched her.

She resented the warm hand. She didn’t want to wake up. Lying flat on her back, she snuggled her shoulders deeper into the matting under her. It was so fine to be back with Ma and Pa.

A drop of dew landed exactly in the corner of her left eye. That did it. She looked up.

It was day. The sky was blue. The sun was straight overhead. Crystals of light came glancing down through the leaves of the brush under which she lay snug and warm.

She remembered. Last night she had escaped the Yanktons. She had run and walked, and walked and run, straight south by the stars, toward where she thought the village of Sioux Falls lay. At last, chest burning, with dawn just beginning to show in the east, she had crept into a patch of what she thought were wolfberries.

She yawned, and stretched. Her throat worked, and swallowed. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. Time to eat.

She fumbled for the parfleche, and in so doing found herself covered with a thick blanket of loose grass.

Loose grass? She lifted her head. Yes. She was lying under a pile of haylike grass. She stared. She couldn’t recall having scratched up long grass the night before. But there it was. She must have done it while half asleep.

She thought again of Whitebone and his Yanktons. By now they would have discovered she had flown the nest. She could almost see them making casts all around the Dell Rapids encampment to find her trail.

She lay very still, listening, so still that not even the loose grass rustled. No, there wasn’t a sound. No stealthy footsteps. No neighing ponies. No creaking leathers. The only thing audible was the odd croaking beat of her heart.

Poor Scarlet Plume. He was sure to get the devil from Whitebone for having called a council meeting. It made her smile to think that while the council discussed Scarlet Plume’s vision of restoring the white woman to her people, the white woman had escaped. Yet Scarlet Plume was powerful. Whitebone would not dare to punish him. Scarlet Plume was probably at that very moment already searching for her, along with the rest of the braves. She feared Scarlet Plume’s hunter eyes more than she did the eyes of the others. Very little ever escaped him.

She found the parfleche at last and dug out a skin of pemmican. She broke off a small piece of the pemmican, put the rest back. God only knew how long it would be before she got to Sioux Falls. She nibbled on the mixture of pounded meat and ground-up chokecherries. The pemmican was perfect. Not sweet. Not sour. Exactly like treated meat should taste, with a slight nutty flavor. She chewed it all thoroughly to make a little go a long way. A piece of broken pit got caught between her two front teeth. With her fingernail she pried it out.

She longed for a drink of cold water. Her eyes happened to light on berries hanging in the silvery leaves of the bushes above her. The fruit was a brilliant crimson, not grayish-blue. Also, the berries resembled tiny rabbit noses. Ah, they weren’t wolfberries after all. They were buffalo berries, and good to eat. She reached up from where she lay and picked a few. She bit delicately into one. Mmm, sweet and very juicy. A touch of light frost had made them very flavorsome. Their bouquet was perfect. She reached up for more. Wonderful. She reached up for still more. Finally she picked all the crimson berries within reach before both her thirst and a suddenly aroused craving for them was satisfied.

She lay back. She snuggled under the blanket of loose grass. Deliciously she slid her shoulders back and forth on the soft turf. She felt sweetly tired. She decided not to stir out of her grass nest. She would rest, and nap, and rest some more, and then when it got dark she would get up and once more run and walk, and walk and run, straight south. As long as the Yanktons had not found her she had a chance. She was free.

She napped.

Judith dreamed. A stark-naked savage had just scalped her soldier husband, Vince. Bloody knife and bloody scalp in hand, the naked savage turned and came toward her. A warm smile lay coiled on his full lips. His black eyes were half closed. He spoke to her in resonant Sioux. A knob-ended club swung from his belt. The club stuck up like a third hand might be holding it by the handle. He began to dance. His horns hooked up on the left, then hooked up on the right. He let go a tremendous bellow. Slowly his head changed into a buffalo bull’s head. He came toward her. He butted away rival bulls. He took hold of his short knob-ended club and threw it at her. It hit her between the legs. At that very moment a warm hand on her brow awakened her.

She opened her eyes. It was dark out.

She lay very still for a few moments, trying to collect her wits.

Her heart beat hard and fast. The dream had been so real she could still feel where the small club had struck her, hot, stinging. The silhouette of the naked bronze savage hung before her in the dark like a glowing sunspot. The touch of the hand on her brow was the most real of all.

She shook her head, and shuddered. Lord in heaven. It had been high time, all right, that she escaped Scarlet Plume and his Yanktons.

She scrambled to her hands and knees. Cautiously she raised her head above the buffalo-berry bushes and looked around. In the deep dark she could make out nothing. There were no stars. The sky was overcast. She wondered how she would find her way without the North Star. It was easy enough to lose one’s way in broad daylight on an open plain.

Her stomach grumbled. She sat down and dug out the skin of pemmican. She broke off a piece and nibbled small bits, careful not to lose any crumbs. The chewing awakened a really ravenous hunger in her. She nibbled and ate and nibbled. She weighed what was left of the pemmican in her hand, decided she might as well clean it up. After her long run of the night before, the village of Sioux Falls couldn’t be too far away. By dawn she should find it, where she was sure to find a friendly door, and food, shelter, sleep.

Memory of a conversation between Scarlet Plume and Whitebone came to her. They had talked of the river making two big loops before joining the Great Smoky Water, the Missouri. That’s right. That was why the Yanktons called it the River Of The Double Bend. The Yanktons spoke of a mystery, wakan, in connection with the two loops of the river. It had something to do with a guardian spirit named the Buffalo Woman living behind some braiding waters. A falls? Of course. That was why the whites called the place Sioux Falls. She recalled then that the white name for the stream was the Big Sioux River.

She decided to strike west until she came upon the Big Sioux, then follow it until she hit Sioux Falls.

A dozen steps, and she realized both of her moccasins were worn through. Rummaging through her parfleche, she found the extra pair of moccasins. She slipped on the new pair and stuffed the old pair into the parfleche, thinking to repair them come daylight.

She felt her way along in the dark. The land fell slowly underfoot. Twice she stepped into natural dips in the land, jarring herself hard enough to rattle her teeth.

She noted that her white doeskin tunic glowed some in the dark. This was dangerous. Both wild beast and the enemy might spot her. Coming upon a dry coulee, she stopped to scratch loose some black earth. She took off her tunic and her leggings and rubbed them in the black earth until she could no longer make them out in the dark. She thought it a shame to dirty the lovely white garments, but it had to be done. Later perhaps she could clean them. She vaguely hoped to be able to save them until she could show them to her friends in St. Paul. The workmanship in them was the best she had ever seen.

She went on. The land continued to slope away underfoot.

She stumbled into a dropoff. There were deep rushes, and some wet sluck. She pushed through to the other side of the rushes. Soon a fringe of trees loomed over her, a darker patch of black in the night.

She stopped to listen, head bent, loose and flowing hair hanging to one side. Somewhere ahead, water was running over gravelly shallows. Ah. The Big Sioux River.

She moved through the trees. Once she bumped into a leaning trunk. Its bark was as smooth as a table top. She stepped on grass, then gravel. Stooping, hand on the ground, she toed ahead until she touched the edge of running water.

She drank from cupped hands. She bathed her face and arms, then her neck under her flowing hair. She drank again.

There were stealthy creeping sounds behind her. She listened. She listened. When she heard nothing further, she guessed it was only an owl floating through the trees looking for field mice. “I fear I’ve become too notional, after all I’ve gone through.”

She dug out a primitive currycomb, something Smoky Day had once made for her out of a prickly slab of dried buffalo tongue. She combed her hair, from the forehead back and then down to the ends hanging about her hips. Little crackling sparks spit in the dark on each stroke. She combed it this way, that way.

“Thank God I am not mother again.” There would be no half-breed child after all.

She considered putting up her hair in a big bun; finally decided to put it up Danish style in a tight crown of braids instead. She used twigs for hairpins.

Neat at last, groomed, she began walking south.

She followed the Big Sioux, sometimes on sandy stretches, sometimes on high banks, sometimes through thick underbrush.

Several times she came upon sloughs too mucky to cross. She was afraid of trying to cross the river in the dark, so she skirted the sluck instead. It took time to circle the sloughs.

She bumped into another tree with smooth bark. Her hand happened to touch a tuft of hair. She pulled up some of it, sniffed it. The familiar odor of a dusty buffalo hide came to her. Ah, the trees had been rubbed smooth by buffaloes shedding hair. Pa’s cattle back home were always rubbing themselves on tree trunks too.

She ran when she could, walked when she had to.

She went back over the days since the massacre at Skywater. There was the night when Whitebone gruntingly took her to wife. Dear Lord in heaven. There was the day when Bullhead murdered Theodosia. Pray God Theodosia might now be safe in the arms of her Lord. There was the evening when Scarlet Plume, sitting alone in swamp willows, caused a wooden effigy of a buffalo to dance on a mound of sand. Such devil’s doings. There was the night when Scarlet Plume danced up the buffalo. Sight of him naked had been even wilder than her craziest dreams. After that the days blurred off into each other.

Counting from the last day spent in the separation hut, her best guess was that it was around the twentieth of September. Also there had been only one light frost so far. First frosts were known to come to that part of the country around the twentieth. By hard walking, and some luck in catching Rollo, the mail carrier, she could be in New Ulm in about two weeks. And then in St. Paul by the end of another week.

She made up her mind to keep track of time. Just to make sure she wouldn’t forget, she jerked off one of the doeskin fringes of her sleeve and carefully tucked it into her parfleche. It would stand for the twentieth of September. Tomorrow she would jerk off another one for the twenty-first. Not to know the time of the year made one feel more lost than ever.

She stopped for another drink at the edge of a rippling shallows. She bathed her forehead. She dried her hands with swatches of grass.

She came to a place where the river took a big turn west. This disturbed her. She looked up. It was still cloudy overhead, no stars. If she struck out across the prairies to catch the river where it came looping back, she might miss it. Then she would really be in trouble.

She decided to play it safe, follow the bank of the river no matter where it led. The village of Sioux Falls had to be along it somewhere.

She pushed on. She ran; she walked; she ran.

A side-ache began to stick her under the heart. It cut her breath. She came upon a round boulder and sat down to catch her wind.

What to do. What to do. If there were only a man along to help her. A pair of strong shoulders and keen eyes she could rely on. Show her the way. Even comfort her. Because maybe the river went west for miles in a really big looping bend.

The side-ache gradually throbbed away. Her breath came evenly again. She got to her feet and hurried on.

The bend did turn out to be a big one. Slowly too the footing became squishy. There was little or no sand, mostly caked mud, with the surface stiffish like thin frosting on a spongecake. Her moccasins began to slap on her feet.

Her cheeks itched. Then her neck. Then the backs of her hands. Once it seemed something bit her. She slapped at the itches. On one of her slaps her fingertips brushed against something wispy. Spider webs?

Mosquitoes. Dear Lord. There were millions of them. The air was suddenly stuffy with them. She felt tickles in the back of her throat. She coughed. Puffing with her mouth open, she had been breathing them in by the dozens.

Then she saw it. Something was following her. A gray shape.

Coyote? She hoped it was a coyote. A coyote was not as ferocious as a wolf. A coyote was also known to run silently after its prey.

Her heart began to pound. She held her hand to her throat. She had to work to get her breath. It was a wolf, she was sure.

She turned to face it. If it was going to jump her, she would at least meet it head on.

The gray shape, or whatever it was, stopped too.

Or was it a mote in her eye? Because when she turned her head a little to hear the better, the shape seemed to move too.

She listened, all ears, trying to catch the sound of its breathing. Were it a farm dog following her, tongue lolling, it would be breathing with happy, audible puffs.