Sacajawea (143 page)

“Mother!” cried Ticannaf. “What do you do?”

“I am washing my conscience,” she told her son. She washed the bodies with warm water and wrapped them in clean white doeskins. She then wrapped them in heavy buffalo hide and bound them up together. The load was much too heavy for her now. She went to the lodge of Hides Well.

“Mother, I must have help. I must have help in making the burial hut for the bodies of the Mexican children so they will be safe from wolves and coyotes.”

“You, Lost Woman, have prepared their bodies for burial?”

“Ai,
my mother. It is I who killed them.”

“I have thought of that. I have also thought it was bound to happen because I think something evil possessed Gray Bone. Maybe you started her last night, but if you had not been so angry with the white hunters, and had kept your tongue silent, something else would have unleashed the dark spirit in Gray Bone. It is tangled with the heavy grief she carries for the death of her son.”

On November 12, 1833 a dazzling shower of meteors blazed across the night sky. All America saw them. In Independence frightened Missourians were convinced that heaven was protesting against recent mobbings and whippings of the Mormons. In Santa Fe horrified Mexicans were sure that the state had brought a flaming curse on itself by denying certain privileges to the Church. While the skies dripped fire, while William Bent and the other traders watched from Bent’s Fort’s unfinished walls, the visiting Cheyennes decked themselves in full battle regalia of feather and paint, lance and shield. They could not fight this fearful tumbling down of the stars, but at least they would die like men. Women cried and children shrieked. The dogs howled back at the chorusing wolves. Chanting their death dirges above the din, the warriors rode in single file around the tepees, under the shadow of the mud bastions.

The next morning the sun shone again. The young men laughed at their alarm and stories of the night the stars fell passed into folk tale.

DAVID LAVENDER
,
Bent’s Fort.
New York: Doubleday and Co., 1954, pp. 143–44.

T
he warriors returned from Mexico in a state of gaiety. No Quohada had lost his life, and they had traded hides for awls, axes, knives, kettles, a few old guns, and silver bracelets and earrings for the women. There was to be a celebration.

Sacajawea hurried out to meet Jerk Meat. She found him in front of the tepee of Kicking Horse. The men were talking, their faces dark and grave. They saw her and came forward.

“Is it true that you provoked Gray Bone into this murderous thing?”

“I do not think she—” began Jerk Meat.

“Let her tell her story,” said Kicking Horse.

Sacajawea told first how she had come in angry, and without thinking had told all the people about the wasted buffalo.

“You acted like some chief woman?” asked Jerk Meat.
¹

Her head hung low. She was much ashamed. Kicking Horse had his pipe out and was making little sucking noises, as though impatient to get on with the rest of it.

“We saw white men load hides on carts drawn by mules and go toward the white villages. Many hides and no meat,” added Jerk Meat.

“Let her speak,” said Kicking Horse, pointing to Sacajawea with his pipe.

She told the whole thing as best she could remember, even telling how she had dragged the bodies to her tepee and prepared them for a proper Comanche burial. She told how Hides Well had helped. She pointed in the direction of the newly made burial hut.

“Woman,” said Jerk Meat, without seeming to move a muscle, “do not speak with a forked tongue. Hides Well had no part in this hideous thing.”

“Ai,
the load was heavy for me. I asked her to help. We talked. We talked about the spirit that sometimes possesses Gray Bone.”

Kicking Horse was very quiet. He stopped sucking his pipe. “It is difficult to face truth about someone youonce thought you loved,” he said, then walked away with his head hanging low.

Later in the day, shrill cries and the sound of blows came from the direction of Gray Bone’s lodge. She bolted out screaming with pain. Behind her moving nimbly, ran Kicking Horse. He held a cedar club in his right hand. Overtaking Gray Bone, he struck her from behind and knocked her flat on the rough ground.

“Do not go sniffling and hiding your face like a child when I am talking to you. When I tell you to pack, do it. Take your things and get out. From this day on, I will say I do not know you. I have never seen you.
Vamos!”

Gray Bone sobbed harder, trying to rise, red welts showing on her arms and neck.

“Stop that howling and move. You are no longer fit to be a Quohada Comanche. I will endure no more from you.” Kicking Horse swung the club again with all his strength. Gray Bone tried to stifle a pain-crazed cry. Scrambling up, she got to her feet and stumbled back into the tepee, moaning. Kicking Horse dropped the club and seated himself under a tree. He began to smoke with sucking noises. In the tepee behind him, Kicking Horse knew, Gray Bone was composing a prayer, her face set rigid and her muscles hard, to force the Great Spirit to give Kicking Horse compassion. She would tear the compassion out of the Great Spirit’s hands, for she needed it desperately this time, and because the need was great and the desire was great, her little secret prayer was louder than she would have wished.

Kicking Horse’s eyes were dark, but in decency he pulled himself up straight and stood in front of the tepee until Gray Bone had packed her things and moved away, alone, from the village.

The news traveled fast. Kicking Horse was without one of his women. All manner of people grew interested in Kicking Horse—people with no thought about his powers as Medicine Man. The news stirred up something curious in these people. Every father with a full-grown daughter not yet married wanted her to parade inconspicuously in front of Kicking Horse’s tepee. Every mother with an eligible daughter urged her to groom and clean herself and keep a pleasing smile on her face.

Later, Jerk Meat came to Sacajawea with a dark look. “You must prepare to move.”

She drew in her breath, and her mouth made a small O. Jerk Meat explained that Pronghorn was furious about the wasted buffalo meat. He was still ranting, and because he thought the camp was in danger of being discovered with white men coming so close, he had called the council and decided that the entire camp must pack up and move out.

“My man,” said Sacajawea, wanting to know why Jerk Meat had this black mood over his soul that he did not rub out, “do you feel you must banish me from your lodge as Kicking Horse has done with his woman?”

Jerk Meat shuddered; he ground his teeth together.

She touched him. At her touch he shivered. She thought she could understand his mood a little. She knew she had been outspoken, but it was not the first time a squaw had warned of impending danger. She had not been too far out of line to tell about the destruction of the buffalo and the nearness of the white men. And how could she have known Gray Bone would act like that? But that was it. If anyone should have known that Gray Bone would use such an occasion to draw the attention to herself, it was she, Sacajawea. “Speak to your woman. I would know what your trouble is. We are as one.”

He shuddered some more. He spoke. His voice cracked. “Oh, my woman, Gray Bone, who once lived in the same lodge with our friend Kicking Horse, has said she will banish you from the Quohada band whenever her opportunity arrives. She declares you are the chief troublemaker for the band.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No, but I believe that things happen because people cause them to.”

“That woman can do nothing to me. Do not believe what she says to you.”

“I had a dream. In the dream you were forced to leave the Quohadas. Again you wandered in the plains with no one to care for you.”

“That was a dream, my man. I will stay with you. I will not go away.”

A massive breath made his chest shudder. He swallowed again and again. “Oh, Lost Woman, my Pajarita, I could not live without you. It would be like losing my right arm and leg to have you gone. It is a feeling so deep that I think it very rare and valuable. I think not many men feel so about their women. I could not do as Kicking Horse. I do not want another woman. You never complain about working alone. Many men’s women would.”

Sacajawea fell silent. What could she say to comfort her man? “I am yours and you are mine. I love you as I have never loved any person. I shall never love a man after you. You are all.”

Suddenly a voice from behind the tepee shouted to them. “Look! Come see!”

It was Ticannaf, and there were six small brown trout in his willow net.

Jerk Meat said, “My son, did Big Badger teach you this art of catching fish?”

“No, it was my mother,” said Ticannaf, smiling. “She puts the water worms, peeled from their stony homes, inside the net and tells me to lay it in the foamy water.” The boy’s hair had the shine of a burnished crow.

“Mother of Ticannaf, come here,” ordered Jerk Meat. “In my leather pouch I have something for you that I found in Mexico. It is a light-maker.”

She turned the wax candle around in her hand and admired it. A smile made her lips upturned, and her eyes sparkled. “It is beautiful. I like its color of red. And I will tell you something. I will tell you how this stick was made.” She began telling the astonished man and boy how she had watched Judy Clark make candles from lye of ashes and tallow. In the evening she showed them how the light could be moved from dark corner to dark corner to make it light. Jerk Meat and Ticannaf were fascinated by the tiny yellow flame and did not want her to blow it out until daylight. Then it was melted down to a nub of soft wax. Jerk Meat thought his woman knew more than five other Comanche women put together.

In the morning, the women struck the tepees, and the band moved out to search for a fresh campsite. They met three members of the
Nokoni,
Wanderers, band who had been to San Carlos. They were loaded withcolored shawls and trinkets. They rode beside Pronghorn and Jerk Meat and discussed the nature of the whites and their coming into the Comanche lands. They were also disturbed about the skinned buffalo being left for the buzzards.

“Of course,” said a young man with great silver disks in his hair plaits, “the Great Spirit knows the whites’ disposition. He gave them books and taught them to read so they know what is right and wrong. We Comanches know that without a book.”

Sacajawea was about ready to say something, but Jerk Meat caught her look in time and made a face that meant, “Hold that tongue, woman.”

“There is talk of a big raid on one of the white forts past the Moving Mountains. You Quohadas could come and help,” said another Nokoni.

Jerk Meat rather liked the idea of traveling a great distance and raiding the white men’s fort. That would be something to discuss on long winter nights.

That evening, the three Nokonis were made welcome by Chief Pronghorn. Kicking Horse danced around the fire for them in his finest headdress. He had taken a new woman to share the lodge chores with his young woman, Flower. The new woman was
Pahahty,
Together, a widow with two small sons. Kicking Horse was like a grandfather with the boys; he wanted to show them to all the Quohadas in one evening. He could not stay away from their side; he wanted them to know about his medicine, and his raiding abilities, and his horsemanship. The little boys were only hungry and sleepy; they wanted to curl up in their mother’s lap. Together was a pleasant-looking young woman whom Sacajawea had seen around the camp. She wished them both much happiness.

Together served hot broth to the three Nokoni strangers at the request of Kicking Horse so that the good cooking ability of his new woman would be known by all the camp.

Round Belly came simpering outside the tepee and eyed the warrior with the large silver plates in his hair. She moved a little closer to him, until finally she was very near. He looked at her and forgot to drink his broth. She asked him a question. He nodded his approval. Round Belly ducked into the tepee and came out with a dried buffalo tongue and began to undo his long braids, taking out the silver plates. She brushed his hair all the while the men spoke of planning a raid against the white men.

“We do not want the white men to plan a raid against us,” said Pronghorn. “There are white men and more white men. There are only this many Quohadas,” he said, extending his arm around his camp.

The men talked more. “Will you come if we plan a raid?” one warrior asked once more.

“No, we will not go on large raids against the whites, only small ones to keep them back. Small ones are irritating and keep them from moving into our lands completely. We like the old way of keeping to ourselves unless provoked.”

“Then you will not stand up as our brothers?”

“We will help your old women and old men and children when you are all killed by whites,” answered Pronghorn.

One of the warriors pulled on the fellow having his is hair combed.

“The only way you can get her to stop is to take her as your woman,” said Kicking Horse, joking.

“I will take her, then,” said the Nokoni warrior, laying all the hammered silver disks at the feet of Kicking Horse; then he brought the horse he was leading over and tied him at the side of Kicking Horse’s lodge.

Round Belly smiled shyly and went inside the tepee. In minutes she came out dressed in her finest tunic, with whangs at the bottom, and her hair slicked with deer tallow until it shone. Flower said, “Your father will miss you.” Together said, “Obey your man, my daughter. Send us word when you can.” Round Belly smiled as she mounted the Nokoni’s horse behind her wooer.

Kicking Horse himself was dumbfounded. He was attracted to the silver disks, but he never in the world believed that his daughter would find someone who would take her, and he never believed he would have such fascinating medicine objects as the silver disks. His smile of approval came finally and was broad, showing his straight, horselike teeth.