The Chisholms (18 page)

This was no dainty little deer they were carving up here, though. It was instead a beast could feed a regiment, and they became speculative butchers on the spot, chopping the animal up the middle with the ax and then quartering it, and seeking out what they thought were the choicest cuts, Minerva hovering and advising, telling them to save this or that organ till to all intents and purposes they were keeping for food all the Indians themselves might have kept, save the eyeballs and the other balls Bobbo’d cut off first. Minerva even had them keep for marrow the leg bones Bobbo had meticulously exposed when he’d still thought he was dealing with a doe or a buck, and she asked him now to rescue whatever blood he could from spilling onto the ground; said it would make a good rich gravy later on.

There were buffalo chips everywhere, scattered among the bright yellow sunflowers. They made their fire, and fed it with the dried and weathered dung, and then put up steaks to fry, three inches thick. Hadley lifted his cup and said, “God bless this land of ours, God bless it.”

On a hill some three hundred feet above where they sat around the fire and raised their cups and echoed Hadley’s toast, partially hidden by a conical peak sculpted by wind and rain, an Indian watched them.

The scout was called Otaktay.

He was one of the braves in a Dakota war party of four. The organizer and leader of the party was an eighteen-year-old named Teetonkah. He was the oldest of the four; the youngest was only sixteen. Teetonkah had still been a small boy many years before when during the Moon of the Duck Eggs, a Pawnee war party attacked his village and captured half a dozen Dakota women, who, it was rumored, later caused the smallpox epidemic in the Pawnee nation, killing countless numbers of their children. Teetonkah had been on many war parties since that time; raids were constant, the war between the tribes was incessant.

When he decided to organize
this
war party, he did so because he wished to gain more honor for himself by capturing Pawnee horses. And Pawnee women. He liked Pawnee women. His first experience had been with a Pawnee woman captured by his uncle. Teetonkah had taken her fiercely and proudly. She had whimpered beneath his assault. There were now four Pawnee women in the village, and he found all of them more comely than any of the women in his own tribe. He wished to own a Pawnee woman of his own. Perhaps two. Horses as well. A dozen horses perhaps, and three or four Pawnee women.

He sat at the fire now and listened in astonishment to Otaktay’s report. Otaktay had removed the white scouting cloths from his head and shoulders, and was sitting on his haunches to the right of Teetonkah, who was his cousin. In the first quarter of the Moon of Moulting Feathers, Teetonkah had invited him and two others to his tipi. He told them first that he knew them all to be courageous and venturesome and that he trusted each of them well. He then went on to explain that at the time of the Wood-Cracking Moon last year, a band of Pawnee raiders had stolen from his older sister Talutah a pony she had dearly loved, and she had been crying over the theft since that winter past, and this made Teetonkah’s heart very bad. He wished now to ride out against the Pawnee and find their horses where they were and take them away as they had taken Talutah’s.

He said this was an auspicious time for such a raid since it was at this very moon a year before that the tribe had attacked the Pawnee in vast numbers and taken many scalps and many horses. Teetonkah asked his cousin and his friends to join him now in this quest that would heal his sister’s broken heart. He wished as well to capture some Pawnee women, whose skills were surely being wasted planting seeds when there were strong Dakota braves eager to plant within them seeds of quite another sort. All the young men laughed. They had all sampled the treasures of Teetonkah’s uncle’s captured Pawnee maid.

The young men talked long into the night about the route they would take to the Pawnee village, though the route was familiar to all of them. Teetonkah, as organizer and leader, scratched a map into the earthen floor and promised to leave his uncle a drawing on buckskin of their exact route, indicating which rivers and hills they expected to cross or climb, so that they could be found at any time by others in the tribe. In acceptance of Teetonkah’s plan, they smoked the pipe he proffered, and left the village on horseback early the next morning. There was no grand farewell as they rode out south. There would be time for celebration if and when they returned victorious. With horses. With women.

Teetonkah was carrying several pairs of moccasins, and a wooden bowl attached to his belt with a leather thong; on the warpath each man ate and drank from his own dish. He carried, too, a leather pouch of vermilion paint and grease, with which to decorate himself and his horse before he rode into battle. A wolfskin was draped over his left shoulder, the animal’s nostrils threaded with the leather thong at the end of Teetonkah’s war whistle. A medicine bag was tied to his horse’s bridle. There were herbs in this leather pouch that could be ingested by horse and man alike to cure toothache or lameness, stomach trouble or pains of the heart. None of the four who rode out that morning had any intention of meeting with the white man or engaging him in battle. They were off to steal Pawnee horses and Pawnee women; this was the only war they expected to make.

“A wagon alone,” Otaktay said.

The others looked at him.

“Alone,” he repeated.

“It is a trick,” Teetonkah said.

“I saw nothing else wherever I looked. If there are others, they are hidden better than I can find them.”

“Yes but it is a trick,” Teetonkah said, and then immediately asked, “How many are there in the party?”

“Five that I could see.”

“And how divided?”

“Two men and three women.”

“Horses?”

“None. But two mules drawing the wagon.”

“We are far from home,” one of the others said. His name was Enapay, and he had been named for his courage. “Were we to attack the white man, we would have to abandon our plan against the Pawnee.”

“Why do you say that?” Teetonkah asked.

“We would have captives,” Enapay said. “We would take the women captive, would we not?”

“Yes,” Teetonkah said.

“Then we would have them with us when we rode against the Pawnee.”

“No,” Teetonkah said. “We would ride home with them first. Then later—”

“While others in the village—”

“—ride against the Pawnee.”

“While others in the village enjoy what we have risked our lives for,” Enapay said.

“There are those we trust,” Teetonkah said.

“I trust no one where it comes to a woman’s belly,” Enapay said. “White women secrete a musk that can be smelled even by horses. I have seen horses pawing at lodges where white women were kept bound within.”

Teetonkah laughed.

“It is true,” Enapay said.

“It will be safe to take them to the village. My uncle will guard them.”

“The way he guarded his own Pawnee woman,” Enapay said sourly. “If there is one in the village who has not had her, I will gift him with however many horses I capture from the Pawnee.” He scowled into the fire, and then said, “If ever we ride out again.”

“We will do this with the white man first. And when we have taken the three women home, we will ride out again.”

“That was not our plan,” Enapay said. “I do not like changing plans.”

“But the wagon is alone,” Teetonkah said simply.

“There are two men,” Enapay said.

“Who do not know we are here.”

Enapay considered this. It was true that four surprising a smaller number of men could be thought of as eight or even ten. But the white men had rifles, and in this war party there were none. He mentioned this now. “There are rifles,” he said. “Otaktay, are there not rifles?”

“Yes, there are rifles.”

“And we have none.”

“We will have rifles later this night,” Teetonkah said.

“The women, all three, have hair of a yellow color,” Otaktay said.

“The women are sometimes fierce,” Enapay said darkly.

“More the reason to take them,” Teetonkah said, and grinned.

On the ground near the fire, the wolfskin he had earlier worn on his shoulder was spread with the head pointing toward what had been their destination: the Pawnee village. He lifted the skin now, and placed it on the ground again so that the wolf’s nose was pointed toward where Otaktay said he had seen the solitary wagon.

“Is there any here who has dreamed of a wolf?” he asked.

Howahkan, who had been silent till now, said, “I.” He was the youngest among them. His face looked troubled. Two of his brothers had been slain in encounters with the white man, and though he was eager to avenge their murders, he was also somewhat afraid. He accepted from Teetonkah the pipe he offered, and holding the bowl in his left hand, the stem in his right, said in the strange rasping voice for which he had been named, “Wakang’tangka, behold this pipe, behold it. I ask you to smoke it. We want to get horses. I ask you to help us. That is why I speak to you with this pipe.” He reversed the position of the pipe now, holding the bowl in his right hand and the stem in his left, pointing up toward his left shoulder. “Now, wolf,” he said, “behold this pipe. Smoke it and bring us horses.”

“There are no horses,” Otaktay said.

“I know that,” Howahkan replied.

“Then do not pray for horses when we know there are only mules.”

“Pray for help in capturing the women, too,” Teetonkah said.

“I would have you do the pipe,” Howahkan said, insulted, and started to hand the pipe back to Teetonkah.

“It is you who dreamt of the wolf,” Teetonkah said.

Howahkan nodded sullenly, put the unlighted pipe in his mouth, and said, “Wakang’tangka, I will now smoke this pipe in your honor. I ask that no harm come to us in battle. I ask that we may get many horses.”

“Again
the horses!” Otaktay said. “He knows there are only mules.”

“And many women,” Howahkan said, looking to Teetonkah for approval. He lit the pipe and puffed on it then, holding the bowl in both hands. “Behold this pipe,” he said, “and behold us. We have shed much blood. We have lost brothers and friends in battle. I ask you to protect us from shedding more blood, and to give us long lives.” He puffed on the pipe again, and then passed it to Teetonkah. Teetonkah smoked the pipe solemnly and silently, and then passed it to Otaktay, who puffed on it and handed it to Enapay, who still seemed doubtful. He accepted the pipe, but before he smoked it, he said again, “I do not like changing plans. The plan was for the Pawnee.” He put the stem between his teeth then, and drew on the pipe and let out a puff of smoke.

There was no medicine man among them, who would have sprinkled water on the wolfskin and sung a song and prayed to Wakang’tangka for rain to hide them when they attacked. But Howahkan had dreamt the night before of the warrior wolf, and they asked him now to sing a song for rain. He was not a medicine man; he knew no songs for rain. So he sang a song he thought applied to the attack they would make as soon as it was dark. They stood about him as he sang hoarsely in the gathering dusk; beside him, Enapay imitated the sound of an owl.

“Someone like this,” Howahkan sang.

“Is not likely to reach anywhere,

“You are saying.

“Horses

“I am coming after.”

Enapay reached into the leather pouch at his waist and daubed his fingers with vermilion paint He painted a crescent on his mouth so that it appeared a grinning red wound curling upward to his cheekbones. He painted his hands and his feet red. From a rawhide case he took a single feather and fastened it at the back of his head, standing upright, for he had earned it by killing an enemy without himself having been harmed. Below that single erect feather he fastened two others horizontally, to signify that he had counted coup on two fallen enemies in the same battle. The others were fastening feathers now and applying paint. Otaktay was putting on a decorated war shirt. Howahkan, expecting they would be attacking the Pawnee on the morrow, had searched all that day for earth a mole had worked up, and he mixed that now with blue paint and a powdered herb, and rubbed the war medicine on his body and on that of his horse. He offered some of the medicine to the others, and they all accepted, rubbing it on their chests and their limbs, Teetonkah mixing his with vermilion paint, which he daubed in a wide band across his forehead and across his horse’s chest.

Otaktay complained that they had done and were
still
doing everything wrong-starting with Howahkan praying for horses while doing the pipe, and again just now when he’d sung “Horses I am coming after,” though he had been told repeatedly there were only mules. And now each was painting his horse and face in colors and designs different one from the other when surely they had been on war parties where a medicine man was in attendance and the horses and faces had been painted uniformly. On such a party recently, a man named Wambleeskah had made medicine, and had painted Otaktay’s horse and those of the others with white clay lightning flashes from the mouth over the chest and down the front legs and on the hind legs as well. He had then painted a blue band across the forehead of each horse and had painted blue spots on their flanks. There had been six braves in the party, and he had painted each of their faces blue and had then painted white lines across their foreheads and trailing down their cheeks.

Otaktay insisted that those in
this
party at least mount their horses facing east and then walk them single file in a circle before riding out against the wagon. Teetonkah told him he was an old woman. Howahkan, his face blue and smelling of earth and medicine, laughed — but only because he was nervous.

It was close to seven-thirty now. The night air was cool. The afternoon haze had burned off before suppertime, and there were stars and a moon, lazy cloud traces occasionally crossing its face to cast drifting shadows on the ground. The fire blazed not thirty feet from where the wagon stood. The mules were picketed between the wagon and the fire. Everyone in the family was still awake, but a guard had been posted nonetheless — Bobbo on the side of the wagon exposed to the prairie. Marauding wolves ventured closer and closer to the fire, drawn by the scent of the slain buffalo, eager to get at the carcass. In the darkness, they howled their intention, circling restlessly. Annabel didn’t think they’d come clear into camp, but she wasn’t sure.