Comanche Dawn (63 page)

Now she screamed in hideous pain and saw the horrible eyes of Battle Scar look at her. She pulled her dress higher to show the curve of her hip, and limped piteously toward an abandoned lodge, as if to hide there. She shook her hair across her face, and through the dark tresses saw Battle Scar drop Sandhill, and run for her, drawing his knife. She gripped the forward shaft of the broken arrow in her hand, and crawled into the entryway of the lodge, dragging her bleeding leg behind her, like Mother Killdeer luring Coyote away from her chicks.

She fell into the lodge and saw the shadow of the evil one follow her. She turned, saw his loin skins fall away as he descended on her with a leer and an iron knife. She slashed suddenly at the bowels of her attacker, saw the pain of surprise in his face as he reached across his belly to hold his own entrails in. She scrambled out from under him with the quickness of a frightened ground squirrel, rolling away from his knife hand. She sprang to her feet and ran right over his back to get out of the lodge.

Mouse had collected Sandhill again, so Teal pulled the arrow shaft out of her wound and ran to help her sister-in-law. Her leg throbbed with pain and gushed blood. The enemy foot-warriors had been pushed all the way back to the edge of camp now, and had begun to run back upstream, away from the ferocity of the horsebacks. Teal saw Battle Scar crawl from the lodge, holding his guts in. He was too badly hurt to do anything but skulk away, hiding from the
Noomah
horsemen as he retreated. She wished for her bow and arrows, but could not find them now.

The sounds of the battle faded, leaving the death song of River Woman to pierce the dusty air. The
Noomah
horsemen broke off pursuit under Bear Heart's leadership and circled the camp, preparing for another attack. Blood stained the ground in pools and trails all through camp, and young warriors began to compare wounds, but it seemed only River Woman was dying. She stood facing the rising sun, her arms held high, her voice climbing in pitch.

The
Na-vohnuh
raiders stopped on the highest part of the riverbank and began shouting down at the camp. They threw dirt into the air and taunted the Comanches. The attackers had managed to drag all their dead warriors away with them, leaving the Comanches no one to scalp, and some of the young men wanted to ride after the raiders.

“No!” Bear Heart shouted. He rode in front of the younger men, his face bloody from a scalp wound, his expression like that of a snarling wolf. “We will stay to protect our women and children. Listen to the death song of River Woman. Let her pain into your own hearts and hold it there. Let her pain turn to anger in your hearts. Let it swirl like a whirlwind and hold it there. Release it only when we go to take our revenge on our enemies. When we take our revenge, Horseback and Shaggy Hump must ride with us, for one is the husband, and one is the son of River Woman. Then we will take our scalps. Then we will count our blows in battle. Then we will reclaim our horses. Now we will guard our camp and mourn our dead and let our anger grow like a thundercloud.”

The True Humans began to gather around River Woman, who stood singing, the arrow still protruding from her back. Blood ran down the back of her legs and pooled at her feet. No one touched her, for it was known that she possessed strange power. Her song chanted meaningless sounds. Then it came in real
Noomah
words, saying,

“Hear the sound the sun makes,

Hear the sound the sun makes.

The Great Deer sees a nation.

A nation in the mist

A nation in the mist.”

Teal stood touching Mouse, and Mouse had tears streaming from her eyes, though she made no sound. Both women held their children.

“Yesterday, my mother gave me her best awl,” Mouse said.

“She gave me a fine hide scraper,” Teal replied, “all wrapped with new golden rawhide.”

*   *   *

River Woman lingered the rest of the day, singing on her knees. Mouse and Teal knelt to either side of her. She died the moment the shadows of the mountains fell upon her. The camp mourned her death. Teal and Mouse cut their hair off and scratched themselves across the legs and breasts with the points of knives.

The next day, the body of River Woman was taken to an outcropping of rock near the river, where a crack in the rock made a good burial place. She was wrapped in a good robe and lowered into the crack. Her daughter and her daughter-in-law lowered rocks onto her to cover her. Teal sprinkled the crushed leaves of sweet sage over her.

At the camp, women began preparing to move. The ghost of River Woman would surely haunt this place if they stayed. No one would speak her name again, for to do so would summon her specter down from the Shadow Land and remind those who loved her of the way she died. Those who wished to speak of her would call her Horseback's mother, or Shaggy Hump's first wife.

Teal was still mourning and packing her parfleches at dusk the day after the battle, when she realized that her time of bleeding had not come. This could mean only one thing, for her time came at twenty-eight days, as sure as the rising of the moon or the circling of the stars. She was going to have another child. She hoped she would give Horseback another son.

If only the
Na-vohnuh
had not come. She could have surprised Horseback with her news when he returned, and he would have rejoiced with her. Now she would have to tell him that his mother had died, and though she had protected Sandhill, she had failed to protect her mother-in-law. Mother Killdeer had wakened her with a warning, and Teal had not listened. She felt foolish and ashamed. Perhaps River Woman was laughing now on her way to the Shadow Land, but Teal was weeping on earth.

56

In winters to come,
through the days that followed the time of his walk on earth, the elders who had witnessed it would tell the younger generations about Horseback's return to his camp on the River of Arrowheads. The Great One was wounded with an arrow in his chest, they would say, and his mother had been killed by
Na-vohnuh
raiders while he was away. For two moons, the old woman had been teaching her daughter all she knew about healing with plants and prayers. She had seen her death in a vision, but had told no one about it.

The Great One had allowed no one to remove the arrow from his chest, knowing that his mother would treat the wound better than any other. But when he returned to his camp, he heard the wails of mourners and learned that his mother had been killed.

And the wailing became louder with the Great One's return, for he brought news of two more deaths, and the dead ones were not gray-haired women, but strong young men. One of the slain warriors was a man from a distant band called the Grasshopper Eaters. The other had been a Foolish One at the time of his death. This one left a wife, who had been taken from the Metal Men six winters before. When she heard of her husband's death, this woman began to slash her legs and breasts with a knife, for she had loved her husband. She mourned so long and piteously that the women who heard her wept, and the men looked at the ground in pity.

These were the dark days of the New Nation. The Great One grew weak from his grief and his wound. He slipped away to float under the pass to the Shadow Land. His sister could not treat his wound in the ways she had learned from her mother, for such familiarity between a brother and a sister was a bad thing. The Great One's father had to carve the war point out of his chest while warriors held his arms and legs. The Great One hovered under the pass, wasting away, as those who loved him prayed for him—for the nation.

The people of the Great One's camp wanted to move away from the bad place where three deaths had been mourned. His wife and his father put him on a pole-drag and moved him to a new camp, upstream. The new camp was on a small creek that flowed from the south into the River of Arrowheads. This new camp was nearer to the
Yutas,
who were allies of the True Humans in those days.

But the Great One had a dark rival in this camp. The rival had a wife whom he loved to beat. He had captured this woman from the Northern Raiders, and made her good, yet he still beat her like a slave wife. The wife of the Great One tried to hide this poor woman, but the dark rival would find her and beat her. This rival had returned from the Osage fight without wounds, and with battle blows to his credit. He claimed great power because of this, yet some said he had caused the downfall of the Great One by killing a deer, which was the Great One's spirit-guide.

While the Great One lay wasting away, the dark rival began to harangue the True Humans. He boasted of his
puha
and said the people should follow him into the
Na-vohnuh
lands to recover stolen ponies and take enemy scalps. Many of the True Humans agreed with the dark rival, for his power seemed strong. While the Great One wasted away, twenty lodges moved southward with the dark rival who liked to beat his wife. It was a bad day, with much weeping among women who had to part with friends, and some arguing among warriors who had chosen to follow different leaders.

Yes, it was a bad day, but the thing that happened was good. The Great One and his dark rival could not have continued to live in the same camp. One weakened the other's power.

When the dark rival moved out of the Great One's camp, with twenty lodges, a new beginning was made. Now there were two bands of Comanches in the country of the Sacred South. More would come. Through this division, the nation would grow strong. The spirits move in ways mysterious to those who walk on earth.

*   *   *

Horseback heard a sweet voice singing and opened his eyes. Beside him, he saw Teal's outline against the light that streamed in through the smoke hole. Even this light hurt his eyes. He squinted and noticed something twisting above his head, suspended from a lodge pole on a thin cord. When his eyes focused, he could see that the thing was a tail feather from a flicker. This was a good curative charm. He smelled stew.

“I am hungry,” he said.

Teal stopped abruptly in the middle of her song. She looked down at him, smiled, and left the lodge.

Horseback saw his father move into view above him. “You should eat, my son. You look like someone's frail sister lying there.”

Trotter looked down at him, grinning. “I hope the elder sisters of our enemies do not come to torture you, my friend, for you cannot defend yourself. Not even against girls.”

“He cannot even keep himself clean,” Bear Heart said, his head blocking the light from the smoke hole. “When he soils himself, his wife must clean him like a baby.”

“Perhaps she should make him a great big cradle board,” Trotter added, and the men laughed.

“Get out of my husband's lodge,” Teal said, her voice stern. “He is going to eat, and he doesn't want to listen to you.”

Horseback ate, then slept. When he woke, he made himself sit up. He sat there a long time, then told Teal to help him stand. He felt dizzy, but his wife helped him step out of the lodge. Looking around, he found himself in strange surroundings, though he recognized some of the tallest mountain peaks and knew where he was.

“Have you found any dogwood trees growing around this camp?” he asked Teal.

“Yes,” Teal said, “in a place down the creek.”

“Take me there.”

Horseback found a good, straight dogwood branch and told his wife to cut it for him. For three days—while he ate and rested and regained his strength—he scraped and smoothed the dogwood stem into an arrow shaft Teal followed him everywhere, making sure he had stew or pemmican to eat, for he was always hungry. She carried a water vessel with her to slake his thirst. She carried a heavy buffalo robe for him to rest on when he got tired, and a lighter calf robe to cover him when he felt chilled.

When he slept, Horseback would leave his arrow shaft suspended on forked sticks near the fire to cure it properly. When he woke, he would check the shaft for straightness. Finding a curved spot, he would rub grease onto the spot, heat it, then bend it straight.

“Bring me a good piece of the sacred white flint so that I may make a point,” he told Teal as he worked on the dogwood shaft. “And boil some rawhide and buffalo hooves for glue so I can stick the point to the shaft before I bind it with strips of sinew. Do these things for me, and do not let your shadow fall on the things as you work on them.”

“Yes, my husband,” was all Teal said. She did not question. She boiled the bits of rawhide and buffalo hooves in an iron vessel until she had made more than enough glue. This she collected on a straight green stick and let cool.

After the third day, Horseback walked out to look at the few ponies his camp had left since the
Na-vohnuh
raid and the split with Whip's followers. He looked carefully at each pony. At last he frowned, walked back to camp, and began to flake a fine, sharp point of the white flint Teal had brought for him.

The fourth day, his father came to him as he painted black rings around the dogwood arrow shaft. “My son, the people in this camp are wondering about you. They call you elder sister. Some of them want to go away and join Whip.”

“Whip!” he answered, a snarl in his voice. “Whip wants to ruin me!”

Shaggy Hump sat silent for a long time, and watched his son paint the black rings around the arrow shaft with the tip of a kingfisher feather. Finally he spoke: “My son, Whip did a bad thing. He should not have killed that deer in the country of the Osage. He knows that you pay homage to the deer as your spirit-protector. But Whip has never had a vision like yours. He does not understand. It is not all Whip's fault that your power left you. It is your fault as well, my son.”

Horseback looked up from his work. “I have honored the deer!”

Shaggy Hump chuckled. “You watch for deer trails, so that you do not tread on them. You refrain from eating the meat of the deer, or the food a deer would also eat. These things are good, my son, but there is more to medicine than the things you do in the sight of other men. The real power in your medicine lies in what the spirits see in your heart.”