Where the Broken Heart Still Beats (5 page)

Last night she saw that it was the time of the full moon. That was the time the war chiefs chose for their raids. Peta Nocona would call the other men together and tell them his thoughts. If they agreed, the preparations began. Often, she remembered, the shields of the men were hung on racks outside the entrance to their tipi to soak up the power of the sun.

The night before the men left to make war, they would hold a war dance with singing and storytelling when the dancers rested. Everything was ready: a little food for emergencies, bows and arrows—not the kind of arrows used for hunting, which could be used over and over again; but a special kind that was left in the dead enemy—lances, tomahawks. Sometimes Naduah went along; sometimes, if the enemy target was far away, the other women went, too, to set up a temporary camp.

The scouts would already have gone ahead. The next morning the warriors would leave, riding steadily, quietly, stopping once at midday to rest and take care of their horses. At night they camped around a small fire, passing the sacred pipe. The chief traveled with his warbonnet safe in a buckskin case, ready to put on when the battle began.

When they approached a settlement—like this one, Naduah thought—a small group would dash in furiously in broad daylight, whooping and screaming, taking their victims by surprise. They seized what they wanted—usually horses—killed the men, and scalped them, snatched any children they could find, and raced away.

They would ride into the village in their war paint. That night they would celebrate with a victory dance, with a huge bonfire, the men and women dressed in their finest clothes. The warriors waved the scalps they had taken, the skin stitched to a hoop of willow twig. When it was a successful raid with lots of plunder, the dancing sometimes lasted for days.

When the raid was unsuccessful, it was a different matter. Warriors lost their lives and there was no loot to show for the effort. Naduah remembered the wailing and frenzied mourning of the women that sometimes went on for a long time.

Was there anyone mourning for her, Naduah wondered.

The moon had been nearly full when the white men captured her in the camp by the river. More full moons had come and gone. That was many days, although she did not know how to count them. She knew that as more days passed, as more moons waxed and waned, it would be harder for her to find her way back to the People again.

She felt these white people tried to do their best for her. It Would have been easier to hate them if they had been cruel. She thought of Loo-see's eager, kind face as she tried to teach her useful things.

Naduah watched Loo-see walking across the yard from the corral with her grandfather, White Hair, who carried a bulky bundle under one arm. Naduah gazed past them into the distance, hoping, as always, to see horsemen, her People, riding toward them.

But then White Hair was climbing up on the gallery, smiling at her. "I have something for you, Sinty-ann," he said and laid the bundle at her feet.

She stared at it for a moment before she recognized it and seized it with a cry. Her buffalo robe! Sarah and Topsannah and James stopped playing and ran to look, and Ma-ma stepped out of the cabin, arms folded tightly across her chest.

"Oh, Mr. Parker!" Ma-ma cried, her voice like a crow. "Whatever did you bring that dirty thing here for!"

"It's all right, Anna," he said gruffly. "It's been scrubbed half to death by those women down at Fort Cooper. They wouldn't have sent it up here if it wasn't clean enough for you."

Carefully Naduah unfolded the heavy robe. It was all she had left of her life with the People. Ma-ma, mistrustful, kept her distance, but Loo-see was curious, like the children, wanting to see. The thick winter hair, almost as long as her arm from wrist to elbow, was worn on the inside of the hide. Proudly Naduah turned it over to show them the designs that had been painted on the back, proving that she was the wife of a great warrior and chief.

But the designs were gone. They had not completely disappeared but were so faded they were barely visible. This could not be! She had overseen the painting herself, watched as Walking At Night's sister had first painted the narrow line of vermilion down the middle to conceal the stitching where the two parts of the hide were joined. Then, following Naduah's wishes, she had pressed the colored powders into the skin with a piece of bone. To preserve the designs, Naduah herself had applied several thin coats of gluey sizing made from flesh scraped from the hide and boiled. Now all the scrubbing done by those women at the soldiers' camp had destroyed the designs that symbolized her husband's war honors, that counted the many coups he had struck in battle to show what a mighty chief he was. All gone!

It was too much. She could not hide her tears. Her only comfort was that she had her robe again. It would keep her warm when she escaped.

"Buffalo," said Loo-see.

"Buffa," Topsannah repeated clearly. "Buffa, buffa!"

Naduah looked at her child, now learning the white people's language instead of her own, and her mind slipped away, far from this gloomy cabin, back to the harsh freedom of the Plains.

When she was young, endless herds of the humped, woolly beasts had covered the plains for as far as you could see. But after the white men began to hunt them for their skins, leaving the carcasses to rot, there were not as many as there had once been. The lives of the People depended on the buffalo; they hunted him in order to live. Sometimes there were not enough, and everyone was hungry.

She thought of the hunts.

The People watched the horned toads to see which way they hopped, they scanned the skies for ravens that circled above a herd waiting to gobble up the insects that thrived in the animals' hairy coats. Scouts followed these signs, and when they brought back word that a herd had been sighted, preparations began in the camp—bows were strung, arrows were tipped and feathered, racks were built for drying the meat.

When everything was ready, they held a dance. Drummers drummed, singers sang, men and women formed long lines facing each other and danced. They drummed and sang and danced half the night and then slept for a few hours until it was time for the hunters to leave.

The men rode out of the camp before dawn, wearing only their breechcloths, following the directions of the scouts. Often it was Peta Nocona who led the hunt. Naduah sometimes went, too, riding her pony, bow and arrow ready to pick off a stray buffalo cow. Such excitement!

Moving against the wind—the buffalo had a keen sense of smell—and taking care to stay out of sight and hearing, the hunters surrounded the herd, forming a noose. When the signal was given, they rode in, tightening the noose. Threatened, sensing danger, the bulls began to circle, around and around, tighter and tighter, faster and faster, pushing the cows and calves toward the center.

When the right moment came, each hunter chose an animal and rode up close, aiming at the vulnerable spot between ribs and hip, so the arrow would reach the vital organs. Arrows flew fast and with tremendous force, and the enormous animals dropped to the ground while the horses swiftly sidestepped to avoid the horns of those that still ran.

Naduah and the other women rushed to be the first to touch a freshly killed buffalo and to find the ones that belonged to their men; each always knew her husband's arrows. Peta Nocona plunged his knife into his buffalo and pulled out the warm liver, spread it with the juice from the gallbladder, and shared it with his family. When that feast was over, the men skinned and butchered the animals, wrapping huge chunks of meat in hides to carry back to camp. Nearly every part of the animal was used. Only the heart was left behind in the cage of clean-picked ribs, to ensure that there would be more buffalo.

Then the women's work began: They sliced the meat into long, thin strips to dry on racks in the sun to make jerky. Then they pounded this jerky and mixed it with dried fruits and nuts and fat and sealed the pemmican in rawhide bags. They spent many more hours scraping the buffalo hides, working the skins until they were soft and supple, ready to use.

There were two seasons for hunting—when the warm weather came, the buffalo shed their long hair and the hides were at their best for making tipi covers and summer blankets, then again when the weather turned cold and the hair had grown long and thick. Every hunt meant hours and hours of exhausting labor for everyone until the work was done. Then the men would go out once more and hunt again, and there would be more meat, more hides, more work to make everything the People needed.

Topsannah's shriek pulled her back to the present. Naduah realized with a start that James had taken the robe and draped it fur-side out around his knobby little body. He was crawling around on the hard-packed earth after Topsannah, his fingers curled into horns. Topsannah danced merrily around him, her dark eyes shining. "Buffa! Buffa!" she cried.

"No!" Naduah leaped to her feet, snatching away the robe, and sent the boy sprawling. He made an ugly sound, and Topsannah burst into disappointed tears.

Naduah instantly regretted her action. The boy made her think of Pecos, her younger son, not as strong as Quanah but playful and quick. She reached out to comfort him, but he jerked away from her.

"You ain't white," he said angrily. "They might say so, but you ain't. You ain't nothing but a dirty old Indian." And he stomped off.

Much excitement! Mama has told us a wonderful secret: she is expecting a baby late in the summer. And that is not all—Martha has announced that Papa has given his approval and she and Jedediah will be married in October.

For a wedding present, Grandfather has given them a piece of his land on which to build a log cabin and begin to farm. Grandfather believes there will be a war now that Texas has joined the South in seceding from the Union, a poor time in his judgment to begin a business in Fort Worth, as Jed had wanted. And so for the time being they have set aside their plans to move away. I am so happy that Martha will not be leaving us completely. And now there will be preparations for a wedding as well as a new baby. I have decided to make a quilt for Martha, although Mama says it is a bigger job than I realize.

I like my future brother-in-law well enough, although his attitude toward our poor Cynthia Ann, which he makes no effort to conceal, pains me. And Benjamin swallows whole everything Jed says! I have heard Jed say repeatedly that she has "gone Indian," which is no good at all. In his service with the Rangers he has been exposed to the savagery of the redskins, and he sees them as the very incarnation of evil. He believes that, given half a chance, Cynthia Ann would do us all great harm. I do not agree in the least, but it is useless to argue because Jed dismisses me as a child of twelve who knows nothing. I know more about our cousin than he ever will!

Grandfather turns a deaf ear to Jedediah's tirades. No matter what anyone says, Grandfather is endlessly patient with Cynthia Ann and urges us all to pray mightily and to hope for the best for her. He believes that she has been severely damaged by her years of captivity and that only by our loving kindness can she be restored to health of mind and spirit.

I must say, though, her body appears to be healthy enough! This morning I saw her pick up my father's ax and split a pile of logs for firewood. When Papa returned from planting corn, his logs were neatly split and stacked, and she was back in her place on the gallery, serenely sewing. Mama, who is the same age as Cynthia Ann and has worked hard all her life, is not nearly that strong.

Cynthia Ann seems determined to cling to as many of her old ways as we will allow. The buffalo robe, which Mrs. Evans scrubbed clean for her, is spoiled in Cynthia Ann's eyes. When she saw it, she burst into the most pitiable weeping and for a time was quite inconsolable. She sleeps on it now, and when she sews or does other work, she prefers to sit on it. How odd she looks squatting on that robe on our gallery! We have given up trying to persuade her otherwise, and it does seem harmless enough.

Somehow Cynthia Ann has become even more of a mystery to me than when she arrived here nearly two months ago. Why has she not become more like us? It's not that she doesn't know any better.

Naduah kneaded the mixture of flour, water, and starter (a bit of dough left from the last batch of bread they had made). Rhythmically folding and turning the warm lump of dough that stretched and shrank in her hands, she half listened to Loo-see's chatter. Something about Mar-ta. Something about Jed. It seemed that Loo-see's sister would become the wife of Hair Beneath His Nose, but not until many days would pass.

She remembered when she was a young girl, older than Loo-see but not as old as Mar-ta, and had been with the People for many seasons. She knew that her father, Speckled Eagle, thought it was time for her to have a husband. But he had been in no hurry to find one for her; he intended to be shrewd about it.

He had told her that she would fetch a fine bride-gift because she was tall and well-made and strong, and it was known in the camp that she was a good worker. Speckled Eagle believed that several men were interested in having her for a wife. She had no choice in the matter, of course; it was up to her father and the man who wanted her most to reach an agreement.

She knew about this, because she had watched her older sister, Crooked Leg, daughter of Walking At Night, and had observed how she and other young women in the camp had gotten husbands. Naduah hoped that hers would not be an old man. Crooked Leg wound up with an old man even though she didn't want him. She became the youngest of his four wives, and the other wives made her life miserable, giving her all the hardest work to do.

Crooked Leg was angry when her father married her to the old man. She cried that she didn't want to go with him, but the old fellow had brought around several fine horses and left them outside Speckled Eagle's tipi, as was the custom. When her father saw them he immediately took them and put them in with his own herd. That settled it. The old man came by later and took Crooked Leg to his own tipi.