Sacajawea (124 page)

The Comanche brought her more pemmican and the honey bag. She found it hard to keep her eyes open. Finally he took away the food and pulled the meat pack up to the mare’s back. Sacajawea lay on the ground a moment, until a voice above her said, “The sky is heavy with snow clouds. Come before the snow. The Quohadas are waiting.”
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Her tunic was dry. Behind the big mesquite she took the blanket and coat off and slipped on the clean tunic. The fresh smell pleased her. She saw the parfleche in which he kept pemmican next to the pinto and pointed to it.

“I would have the strength to go, if I ate a little more.”

“Ha! Just like a woman to only think of her belly when it is time to move on. A little at a time is best, Lost Woman. I, Jerk Meat, will give you more when it is time.”

“How do you know what is best for me?” Sacajawea was somewhat irritated and reached out for the parfleche.

“So!” he laughed and slapped the side of his leg. “Your manners are worse than a spoiled child’s. Or is this the usual way for my cousins who live as hunted animals in the Rock Mountains?”

She jerked her hand away, and her face turned crimson. She knew he was right. She had been too long by herself, not remembering manners. She combed her hair smooth with her fingers, wishing for her buffalo-tongue brush from the leather bag she’d left tied to the mare. She parted it down the middle as best she could and braided each side, wrapping small Cottonwood sticks around the ends.

Now Jerk Meat looked at her and smiled his approval. Then he picked up the tattered blanket and threw it into the highest limb of a cottonwood, far beyond her reach. He looked at it and held his nose.

Then with no warning, not listening to her protests, he pushed her down by a flat stone. She did not have strength to resist. He laid her braids upon the stone and cleared his throat.

“I will keep them clean,” she pleaded once more.

“It is a buck’s privilege to wear long hair. I would be much degraded to bring in a squaw with hair longer than mine.” He hacked each braid off below her ears with his knife. He picked up the braids and stuffed them inside his leather jerkin. “You won’t need another bath until summer.”

Holding the cut ends of hair, she sniffed and said angrily, “No buck will push me around. I’ll take as many baths as I wish between now and spring.”

“Horsetail,” he said, provoked with this talkative squaw he had picked up and spent so much time bringing back to life.

The clouds grew grayer, and snow began to fall in large flakes. Sacajawea walked behind Jerk Meat. She led the mare with the meat and antelope hide tied to its back. Now she did not shiver quite so much and wanted to talk. She was like a well overflowing. It had been so long since she had spoken to another human that she could not be stopped.

She told the Comanche of the beautiful sunsets on the prairies, of the meadowlark’s song from a nodding sunflower. She told him of the first rattlesnake she had eaten and of the lightning and heavy rain and the terrible heat, then cold. He nodded. He did not ask questions about more of her past. He let it sleep. He called her Wadzewipe, Lost Woman.

The ground was covered with white snow, but she did not feel cold. She was exhilarated by companionship. Jerk Meat told her that when the grass was green and the winds hot, great animal herds came to these Staked Plains. Brown bands of buffalo moved into the wind, herds of wild mustang with manes that flowed against the rose of a late summer sky, and the graceful antelope bounded, playful in a soft sea of grass. “We are called the Antelope tribe. The Quohadas! We hunt, raid ranches in Texas, and cross the Rio Grande to trade with Mexicans. Ten pounds of coffee can be traded for a good horse, or a keg of whiskey for a few mules. The

Quohadas are rich—their horse herds number in the thousands.”

As Jerk Meat talked, Sacajawea watched the trail made by the small leather tassels attached to the heels of his moccasins in the skiff of snow. Then she studied his hair, which contained buffalo fur. The proper placement of the fur made his own hair appear longer, as though it reached below his shoulders. It was daubed with pine pitch and vermilion paint. Then she noticed the tip of each ear of her mare had been slit—the same as the ears on his pinto.

She asked him sharply about it.

“Have you seen the white man?” he asked her.

“Ai,” she said.

“They do such things to make it known which horse belongs to which man. This is my mark.”

“But that is my mare.”

“You brought it to me for bringing back your health. So—we are even.” He laughed.

“Can women ride horses in your village?”

“Ai,
some do.”

“Then I will work and earn my mare back,” she said soberly.

He looked back at her quizzically, asking how it was she knew much about the white man when she came from the Land of the Shining Mountains.

“Traders who are white will come to my people,” she said, avoiding his question.

He was truly surprised. “White traders in the mountains?”

“Ai, and so my people will not be without guns and ammunition for long. They will hunt more game and have full bellies.”

“Ugh, guns make people hate one another,” he said, thinking she made up that about white traders to impress him, and he spit at a pine. “Now, do you need the iron kettle of the white woman to cook in, or can you make a basket from willow?” he teased.

“I can make a good cooking basket,” she answered, and to prove it, she tethered the mare and stepped into a willow grove and with her butcher knife cut some small branches. She worked quickly, making a deep basket. Jerk Meat hunted for the backside of a hillocksheltered from the wind. When he found a place, he curled himself up inside some dry leaves and went to sleep. Sacajawea built the fire with his rubbing sticks and heated two stones red-hot. She put snow and strips of antelope flank into the basket, then the red-hot stones. When the snow melted and the water boiled, she added more snow quickly so that the water covered the meat. After a while she tasted the meat. Delicious. She tasted some more. Wonderful. The snow almost put out her cooking fire. She gathered more sticks and heated the stones again and cut more flank meat. Then Jerk Meat was standing beside the fire, his toe pointing to his rubbing sticks.

She was embarrassed that she had not asked permission to use his sticks and that he would find she had eaten the meat before he had had any. She hurriedly put the fresh strips into the basket and put in handfuls of snow. With two green sticks as tongs, she dropped the hot stones in one by one.

“A fine cooking basket,” he said, one side of his mouth turned up. “And so—I also see you have yourself gained much strength from that old father antelope.”

She was too ashamed to reply. She owed much to this man, and she was rude and unthinking. Tears of humiliation came to her eyes; she blinked them back and sat very quietly.

He ate with his back to her. Then he turned and said, “If we move quickly, we will be in the village by evening. Come. A warm tepee is better than sleeping in a bed of snow.”

She longed to ride the mare as he rode his pinto. Her legs began to ache, and her feet were numb. Her body became weary. She sneezed and coughed. Her throat ached. She knew she dare not say a word. Soon she could make out a small stream with big trees along it. Among the trees nestled the village, made up of some fifty or sixty lodges. Most of the hides that covered the tepees were decorated, but Sacajawea could not see this in the evening light. She saw only the warm, friendly yellow showing through the conical tepees. The snow stung like porcupine needles on her bare arms and legs now. Her hair was wet, and the top caked with snow.

The lodge of Jerk Meat was near the center of camp.

It was made up of a larger tepee, where Jerk Meat’s mother and father lived; a small tepee, where Sacajawea was given sleeping room with two others, a young woman and an old man; and the smaller tepee, where Jerk Meat slept.

The young woman was Spring, sister of Jerk Meat. Spring had recently lost her man on a raid across the Rio Grande. Sacajawea also learned that the old man was the grandfather, Big Badger. Jerk Meat’s mother was called Hides Well, and his father, Pronghorn, was a chief.

That first evening, she held back her sneezes. She lay down and her mind was clear, as a warm, clean buffalo robe was pulled over her by Spring. Sleep came almost instantly. She did not hear the drumming and singing as the village celebrated the coming of more hunters with good catches. It was a celebration for the food that would keep them through the cold winter. The early snow foretold a long, cold winter.

In the morning, Hides Well came to the tepee and motioned for Big Badger and Spring to leave. She motioned for five or six squaws to come inside. They crowded around the buffalo-hide couch staring at the sick Sacajawea.

“Wadzewipe,” they repeated among themselves. “Lost Woman.”
“Avajemear,”
said one short, fat squaw with a single thin silver loop dangling through one pierced ear. “She went a long way.”

All afternoon, women trooped in to gaze at the woman who had come from a long way, alone. They poked their fingers and elbows in each other’s ribs as they jabbered about the newcomer as if she had no ears to hear. Big Badger, outside against a cottonwood tree, watched from slitted eyes and grunted each time he shifted his weight for a more comfortable position. Finally, he pulled himself up to his full height and then bent double to enter the tepee, scattering the women to the outside with a wave of his big boney brown hands.

“Enough. The woman must rest to gain strength.”

For a week, Sacajawea lay most of the time on her robe inside this tepee. She fought off high fever and a sore throat. Once, in delirium, she spoke of the blackman who danced with her baby, and then of the white man who beat her upon the back.

The old grandfather, Big Badger asked, “Who is this young woman? Where did she come from?”

Jerk Meat replied simply, “She is Wadzewipe, Lost Woman.”

Big Badger had a drooping face with a few scattered white hairs that he did not bother to pluck since he did not care about his appearance. His hair was white and thin, drawn into slender braids.

“There, and so—we must end her sickness,” Big Badger said one morning. “Call Kicking Horse.”

Kicking Horse had red and yellow feathers tied to his wrists and ankles. Large silver loops hung from his ears. He carried a buffalo’s scrotum made into a rattle in his left hand; in his right he carried a quirt. He hit the ground around the sleeping couch furiously with the quirt, driving the hot devils out of the tepee. He turned to Spring and spoke so softly that Big Badger could not understand him. Soon Spring was back with a paunch full of water. He ordered Spring to remove the robe and tunic from the sick woman. Laying the quirt to one side, the Medicine Man sang in a monotone, his eyes rolling toward the top of the tepee. He turned without losing a beat in his song, and asked that the paunch be emptied over the woman. Sacajawea drew in a fast breath as the cold water hit her hot belly. At first it felt cooling and refreshing, then she shivered uncontrollably. Spring and Kicking Horse moved her to a dry couch and quickly covered her with a heavy skin. She was near the smoke hole in the center of the tepee. Her shivering stopped. She felt weak and did not like the shaking of the rattle that Kicking Horse insisted must be done through the night.

Usually Big Badger seemed sad and hardly alive, of little account. But a smile drew all the sag out of his face as he watched Jerk Meat reverently roll himself on the ground in the four cardinal directions, invoking powers that governed the great mountains of the north. Jerk Meat made signs of power and safety in the air with a twig from a lightning-struck tree and placed the dried wing of a dead turkey over Sacajawea’s heart to give her life. He did this while Kicking Horse rattledand danced the fire dances he performed for curative purposes. At dawn, Kicking Horse went to his own lodge.

By morning, Spring was crouching near Sacajawea with a horn filled with a thick, hot soup.

Sacajawea took only a few mouthfuls before lying back and sleeping again.

“She wandered many months,” said Jerk Meat to Big Badger outside the tepee. “She must have been lost when her people moved to a winter camp. She must have stopped to look at the flowers or talk with birds. She is that kind of woman. I saw her talk with a buck antelope just before I shot him.”

“Aha,” said Big Badger, hopping about on his spindly legs, which seemed hardly able to carry his stooped body. “She babbles about a baby, a white man that is a scoundrel, and a white man that is black. I never heard of black white men. She is perhaps a Medicine Woman, with special knowledge?”

“She is Wadzewipe,” answered Jerk Meat.

“Aha,” answered Big Badger. “You are right. She is a woman, not a girl. Perhaps she has seen thirty summers. She already has much knowledge of life. You can see that plainly. Someone has made lash marks upon her back. She was sent to us, maybe. The Great Spirit has reasons unknown to us for what he does.” Big Badger went inside the tepee to look at Sacajawea and shake his head at her thin cheeks, but when he looked the cheeks were not burning with fever, and he smiled and called the others.

Spring brought water in a skin paunch, and they watched Sacajawea gulp it down. Big Badger showed Spring how to chew yucca roots, warm the residue by the fire, and apply it to the lacerations on Sacajawea’s feet, which were too slow in healing.

In a few days, Sacajawea’s strength began to return. A warm stirring of thankfulness ran through her. These were humans showing kindness to a stranger. She marveled at the warm feeling such action could bring.

For the first time, Sacajawea moved her eyes around the tepee. She saw that the floor was swept and the poles at the sides held cooking utensils and clothing, neatly hooked. She counted the skins around the tepee—ten—this was a small tepee. The skins were doubled at the botton so that at night when light from the fire showed through, the figures inside would not cast shadows for the outside world to see what was going on inside. The tepee was well made. She could see that the tanned buffalo hides were well sewn and stretched tight, flesh side out, over twenty, maybe twenty-two, straight, slender poles of cedar that had been peeled, seasoned, and shaved smooth to the same diameter. Each lodgepole was about twenty feet long, with pointed ends so that they would stay fixed in the ground. The Comanches used the four-pole foundation, as did the Shoshonis, which gave a grouping of two poles on each side, unlike the three-pole foundation—forming a kind of spiral, that was used by Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Arapahos.