Sioux Slave (3 page)

His eyes flickered open again and he smiled weakly at her,
“Pilamaya . . .” Thanks
. “W–water?” His lips formed the words, but he seemed almost too weak to speak.

Kimi scowled back. He must not get the idea that she meant him well. Later she would take revenge on this trussed up, helpless stallion and maybe that would make her feel a little better. Did he know what was coming? Was he going to be alive by then?

She looked at his wound again, decided it had stopped bleeding. She poured a little of the water into a horn spoon, dribbled it between his dry lips. He licked his mouth eagerly, looked up, obviously wanting more. She didn't give him any more. Instead she placed the water skin where he could see it; only a few inches from him. So near and yet so far. There was no torture like thirst, Kimi thought, and then wondered why she knew that.

He glanced at it, then at her, puzzlement furrowing his face. Then he seemed to realize what she was doing. An arrogance came back to his features and he spat a white man's word at her, “Bitch!”

She recognized that word. The warriors had learned it among the soldiers and traders. Still she started with surprise at his reckless arrogance. Helpless, wounded and staked out, and he dared challenge her like that. Kimi grabbed her knife and brought it up. She would kill him for his insult. Then she saw his expression in the growing darkness and realized he had been hoping to goad her into killing him quickly and mercifully. The white soldier must have guessed what was to be done with him.

Kimi shook her head. No, he wouldn't escape so easily. As she lowered the knife and stood up, she couldn't help but admire his bravery. Looking at his handsome face and big, brawny body, she almost regretted the waste of such a virile male. Somewhere he surely had a woman who waited for him to return to pleasure her with that big manhood.

It was shameful to even be thinking such thoughts, Kimi flushed as she turned away. She should be thinking about her own man, sorrowing for him–not imagining the scene of this white soldier coupling with some eager girl as she dug her nails in his shoulders, begging him to go still deeper.

She felt the blood burning her face at her thoughts. She would geld him as part of her vengeance. This stallion of a man would pleasure no more women. But all this must come later when there would be time enough to take vengeance on this defiant
wasicu.
Staked out like he was, he wasn't going anywhere.

Making wailing sounds of sorrow, Kimi went to help with the ceremony honoring a dead warrior to whom she had been a wife in name only.

 

 

Later in the darkness, Kimi stood looking up at the burial platform. The paint horse, Mato's favorite, the one he had ridden that day, had been killed beneath the platform. The brave warrior would have a mount to carry him across the wide, starlit sky as he rode forever with those dead who had gone before him. She wondered if the big bear of a man had finally been reunited with the wife and children he had lost? She hoped so. The thought made her feel a little better somehow.

“Waken Tanka nici un,”
Kimi whispered in Lakota.
Good bye and may the Great Spirit go with you
. The last time she had said that, she was sending her husband off to war. Now she was saying good-bye for eternity.

She sank to her knees beneath the burial scaffold, singing a mourning song to the dark sky. She had never felt so alone and bereft before. Yes, she had. Puzzled, Kimi searched her mind for the memory, but it eluded her somehow. It was a very small thing, no doubt; something from her childhood. But as far as she could remember, her past was one of happiness, of being pampered by two doting old people.

From the camp, the sound of drums echoed and the big fire in the center of the encampment glowed red against the black sky. Kimi wrapped her arms around herself and took a deep breath of the scent of the smoke drifting on the cool spring night. Somewhere far away, a solitary lobo howled. He sounded as lonely and miserable as Kimi felt. She buried her face in her hands suddenly and gave way to great, racking sobs and cleansing tears, unsure whether she wept for herself, or for Mato.

This would not do. She must be brave as any warrior's woman would be under these circumstances. It was a good thing to die in battle against enemies of the people, better than slowly starving as some of the conquered tribes were doing.

Touching her medicine object for reassurance and squaring her small shoulders resolutely, Kimi stood up and wiped the tears from her face. She was responsible for her old mother. In a few days she must think about the future. Perhaps there was a young warrior in another camp who had need of a wife.

She considered Wahinkeya, Gopher, Mato's other good friend. Stout Gopher already had a wife and a young son he doted on. He might want a second wife. He was a good enough hunter to feed two families. Somehow, being the second wife did not appeal to Kimi. Yet many great warriors who hunted well had several women. As much work as there was to do, it lessened the labor for the household. Often, the warrior married his first wife's younger sister. Kimi had no younger sister: no other kin but old Wagnuka. Her mother had often told her how the Great Spirit had given her a child after they had lost several little ones and had given up hope of ever having a family.

She smiled, remembering the often told story of how her mother had seen a bright
kimimila,
a butterfly fluttering above the prairie flowers and knew somehow that it was the sign the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka, would soon bless her tipi with a girl child.

And now it was Kimi's responsibility to look after her old mother. Kimi stood up slowly. Tomorrow was time enough to think about becoming some brave's wife.

She started back toward the camp in the darkness. She wondered with sudden curiosity if the soldier had a wife, whether she was pretty, and what she would think if at this moment, she knew her young, handsome man was a captive in a Sioux village.

What did it matter? He was to be killed tomorrow. Kimi trudged back to camp, absently humming her spirit song that had always comforted her when her mind was troubled. She didn't want to think about the soldier. She was weary and sad; she didn't even really hate him anymore. Men were born to be warriors. They fought each other continually. It was the way of things. Suddenly she hoped he had already lapsed into a merciful death. She didn't want him to suffer torture, even if he were the very man who had killed Mato.

The Teton Sioux seldom took captives or resorted to torture. Usually they killed them and mutilated the bodies. If the captives were very brave, they might free them or adopt them into the tribe, or even ransom them. Like the other tribes, they had learned soldiers might trade food and tobacco to ransom a white captive.

To die the way she wanted this captive to die would be slow, agonizing and shameful. She had heard of warriors cutting off a prisoner's manhood as a beginning. The lobo howled again, and somewhere in the distance another wolf answered. New grass and spring prairie flowers felt soft beneath her moccasins as she walked. From the pony herd, a colt nickered. All around her were signs of spring and new life.

All Kimi had was death. She paused, looking back over her shoulder at the burial platform silhouetted starkly against the moon. Faintly the sound of drums echoed from the camp, accompanied by the chanting around glowing camp fires. The slight breeze mingled the scent of smoke with the fragrance of the prairie flowers.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. Never had she felt so weary and depressed. Never had she felt so alone and vulnerable. Tonight was to have been her wedding night, and she should be asleep now in the arms of a man. But the soldier's woman was sleeping alone, too. The thought should make her feel better, Kimi thought, but somehow it didn't. She could only pity that unknown wasicu girl. Sometimes her own soft heart surprised her. It was not good that a woman of the Lakota give sympathy to the enemy who was so set on destroying the Sioux or driving them slowly from this land.

Her own medicine song came to her mind again as it always had when she felt sad. Wagnuka had told her the spirit animal,
kimimila,
the butterfly, must have given it to her as a special gift. Kimi hummed it to herself now as she avoided the circle of the fire, headed for her tipi. The medicine song had always comforted her before, now she willed it to drive the sadness from her heart.

The soldier lay staked down by her tipi, where he had been left for tomorrow's pleasure. He lay very still and Kimi broke off her song, wondering suddenly if he had died? But he stirred slightly at the sound of her approach, and his blue eyes flickered open. He seemed to be struggling with the effort of forcing words through his cracked lips. No longer was he arrogant and defiant. “Please ...” he managed, “please . . . water ...
pilamaya.”

His voice had a soft drawl. Somehow it surprised her that it seemed familiar to her. Of course it meant he came from a certain part of the white man's country. Hadn't she heard the Sioux speak of some of those with the soft, drawling voices among occasional traders and mountain men who passed through their land?

Kimi pursed her mouth, thinking. The warriors had said those with the drawling voices now dressed in gray and fought against their brothers in blue. Yet this one with the soft accent wore blue.

The soldier didn't look as if he could survive the night, Kimi thought, and her heart went out to his plight in spite of herself. She reminded herself he must not be allowed to die. Kimi knelt by him, reached for the water skin. She poured a little between his lips and she paused to watch him swallow greedily. She must be careful not to choke him with too much at a time.

He licked his lips, looked up at her with pleading in the sky-colored eyes. “Please ...”

She poured a little more between his lips, enjoying the fact that the big, powerful man was helpless and bound, having to beg her for whatever he needed. He was her captive, her slave to do with as she wanted at this moment. She could do with him whatever pleased her and no one would care.

She tried to remember whether she knew the white word for what she needed to ask. Somehow, her mother had seemed to know a lot of wasicu words and had taught Kimi a few. “Enough?” she asked finally as she remembered it.

“Enough.” he nodded weakly. He didn't appear defiant now. He was too weak. “What–what is to be done with me?” He spoke in a mixture of white words and pidgin Lakota.

Should she tell him?

He must have seen the hesitation in her face because he demanded suddenly, “Tell me.”

“You will not order me about,” Kimi snapped back in a mixture of Lakota and the few white words she struggled to remember. “You are a captive; a Sioux slave.”

“Slave? God in heaven! Not me! Not now; not ever.” His arrogant drawl and the distaste on the aristocratic face showed his dismay. “Slaves are black.”

The South.
He was from some place called the South. Kimi tried to remember how she would know that, then dismissed the thought. “Here you are the slave,
wasicu.
I must know this. Did you kill the warrior called Mato?”

His furrowed brow told her he didn't understand her words–at least not all of them.

“Kill,” she repeated the word in English, and made the sign talk for killing. “My man. Did you kill him?”

The realization of what she asked crossed his pale eyes and he shook his head. “No, I kill no one.”

“You lie,
wasicu
soldier!” She shouted it at him as she stood up. Of course he would say that, now that he was at her mercy. He would plead innocence. “Tomorrow you die!”

Kimi whirled and entered her tipi. It would serve him right that he die. She stood there a long moment, decided she couldn't bear to sleep alone in this lodge she had planned to share with Mato. She went the few feet to her mother's tipi. Her mother was already asleep at the far side of the big lodge. Now Wagnuka raised up on one elbow. “Daughter, what is wrong?”

“Nothing.” Kimi settled down on her own blanket. “It does seem a shame to kill the
wasicu
when he is big and strong and the two of us have no man to hunt for us or do heavy work. We should keep him as a slave.”

“It does seem a waste, but our people do not keep grown men captives. Yet, the soldier would suffer more if he were kept as a slave and worked with as little mercy as most show a horse,” Her mother grunted and dropped back off to sleep.

 

 

The camp grew quiet as time passed and people left the fire to go to sleep. Kimi lay in her blankets, thinking what should be happening on her wedding night with Mato. She thought again of Hinzi, Yellow Hair, spread-eagled and staked down on the ground outside, wounded and in pain, awaiting his death on the morrow.

He was a brave man, Kimi thought with grudging approval. When she had told the man of his coming death, he had not begged for mercy or showed terror or cowardice. No doubt he would die with the same courage. The Sioux respected a man who could die well.

Tonight she should be losing her virginity. Instead she slept alone while a big, brawny, half-naked stallion of a man lay staked out on the ground, awaiting her whim. When she finally slept, she dreamed that she went outside and stood looking down at him, pulled the buffalo robe away from his magnificent body. The soldier lay naked and helpless, staked down. He was hers to do with as she chose.

She studied his big manhood straining against the tight blue pants. Yellow Hair was built as big as a stallion.
I was supposed to be given a man's seed tonight, but because of you, he is dead.

She felt an unaccustomed stirring where her thighs joined. On this spring night, in many lodges, young wives were sighing in passion as their virile brown men spread their thighs wide and mounted them. But with her blood running hot at the thought, she would be unsatisfied and sleeping alone. No son would take root in her womb tonight.