People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past) (12 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past)
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“How’s that?”
“Bloated with hot and stinky gas.”
“It appears that he may have blown some of it our way.” Flying Hawk pursed his lips as he considered the implications. He hadn’t been paying as close attention as he should have been during these last moons. Instead his time had been taken up with the always-treacherous politics of the Albaamaha–Sky Hand alliance. It was a quagmire of factionalism, gamesmanship, and strategy that could easily consume a man.
Flying Hawk added, “You went with the delegation we sent to White Arrow Town when he was made high minko. You personally presented young Biloxi with our gifts. Did you think at the time he would be a threat, no matter how filled he was with himself?”
Smoke Shield frowned. “I thought Biloxi was a fool. It’s partly Sweet Smoke’s fault. She fawns too much over the boy. Kept him home instead of sending him out. She couldn’t bear the thought that something might happen to him. He’s never been out of the Horned Serpent Valley.”
“So he judges the world by what he’s been told.” Dangerous. Most dangerous. “Did you spend time with him? Get a feel for how he thinks?”
“Sadly, no.” Smoke Shield smiled sourly.
“Ah, yes, I remember the stories. You were more interested in the sister, this Morning Dew.”
Smoke Shield gave an absent shrug, fixing his eyes on a smoldering pile of corn where a granary had collapsed.
Flying Hawk considered his nephew. “Liked her, did you?”
“She wanted nothing to do with me.” Smoke Shield couldn’t hide the narrowing of his eyes, or the sting of rejection that thinned his lips.
Ah, the stories were true. He was infatuated with the girl. Rumors were that Smoke Shield had been even more moody since his return from White Arrow Town. It was whispered that he’d come home preoccupied, some said obsessed.
“She only had eyes for Amber Stone.” The scar that marred Smoke Shield’s cheek seemed to writhe.
Smoke Shield had always been a plotter, enough so that it often occupied Flying Hawk’s attention to the detriment of other pursuits. But, perhaps this time, if properly directed … “I have always worried about your passions, Nephew. Rage and anger can be of great value in life … provided they are channeled and balanced. If I give you this woman, this Morning Dew, can you find that balance?”
A faint smile curled Smoke Shield’s lips, his calculating souls twisting like serpents behind his gleaming eyes. “We have been attacked, Uncle. Blood has been shed. Our kinsman, Stuffed Weasel, is being tortured to death even as we speak. We are obliged to strike back, to return the balance. The dead must be appeased. It is how Breath Maker created the world. If we leave this out of balance our souls will sicken. Power will drift away from us, focus itself on other peoples.”
“Dare not to lecture me on the different ways Power is balanced in the world.” He extended the heavy stone mace, resting the turkey-tail shaped head on Smoke Shield’s shoulder. “How many warriors will you need to take White Arrow Town? How much time will it take to plan? When you strike, I want it to be swift, sure, and complete, not some botched raid where surprise is lost, our warriors are killed, and after a futile demonstration outside their walls, you just come home and declare victory.”
Smoke Shield’s gaze had fixed on one of the sprawled corpses; late-season flies were feeding greedily on the man’s bare skull. “I can take them within the moon, Uncle. Provided that the Council will allow me to do this thing my way.” A pause. “And if they will trust me with our people’s war medicine.”
Flying Hawk sucked pensively at his lower lip, his sidelong glance fixed on his nephew.
If he fails, if he loses the medicine, it will be a symbol to the Albaamaha, to the Chahta, the Yuchi, the Pensacola, and every other enemy we have that we are weak. The entire world will consider us broken, and pounce on us as if we were wounded rabbits.
Smoke Shield reached up and touched the scar on the side of his head. “You talk of passion, Uncle? When it came upon me, at least I was smart enough not to murder my brother.”
You tread on dangerous ground, Nephew.
“Very well. If the Council allows, you will have your raid.” His voice went hoarse. “And the medicine to accompany it.”
Smoke Shield smiled in satisfaction.
Flying Hawk added, “You know what failure will mean to the people?”
Smoke Shield stepped over to the closest corpse and dropped to his knees. He ran his callused fingers over the blood-clotted skull. “We will all end up like this. Food for maggots and beetles.” He looked up. “I am no war chief like the long-dead Makes War, to be captured
and lose the war medicine. No, Uncle, as you shall see, I am very different.”
From somewhere in the past, Flying Hawk could hear his murdered brother’s eerie laughter.
T
rader faced a dilemma. He considered it as he sat on the bow of his beached canoe and watched sunset shine its last light on Red Wing Town. Wealth was a blessing, the thing of Dreams and ambition. At the same time, it was a terrible curse.
Red Wing Town was a large urban center that served some five thousand souls both within the town walls and from the outlying villages and farmsteads. It stood on a rise just back from the eastern bank of the Father Water. Surrounded by villages and cornfields, its high clay-coated palisade protected several platform mounds topped with grand buildings. There the High Oneota chiefs held sway, seeing to the comings and goings of the seasons, governing their subjects, attending to their wars, Trade, and ceremonials. Generations past, they had traveled north from Cahokia—refugees fleeing the Great Sun after losing a particularly bitter civil war. Rather than face eventual capture, humiliation, and death, they had paddled upriver, outrun the Great Sun’s pursuit, and established themselves in the rich bottomlands.
As exiles, they had lived quietly at first, battling the local A’khota peoples and hacking a chiefdom out of what was essentially wilderness. They had built their great city above flood stage at the confluence of the Wild Rice River with the Father Water. Two mounds supported large palaces in which the rulers lived. Charnel houses, temples, and multiroomed society houses
choked the space between the plaza and the high walls that surrounded the city.
Trader thoughtfully studied those distant walls as the last rays of sunset bathed them in a mellow golden light that contrasted with the purpling of the eastern sky. His canoe was pulled up on the packed landing below the city. Around him, tens of other canoes rested on the stained sand. Most belonged to the Red Wing People, and had been inverted atop sections of driftwood so that rain wouldn’t pool inside the hulls. Other boats, like his, belonged to Traders and visiting A’khota who had come to Trade, deliver tribute, seek redress for injustices, or barter goods among the locals.
Trader used a long stick to prod at the small fire he’d kindled. He fed it from a stack of driftwood he’d picked up from the riverbank during his travels earlier that day. Being familiar with Red Wing Town, he’d known that wood was scarce for a distance in any direction from the big city.
But what did he do about his dilemma? Here he was comfortably seated, smoking a bowl of red willow bark mixed with tobacco, his warm feather cloak about his shoulders and a cheery fire at his feet. He shared the company of Fox Down, a Trader from the Ockmulgee, way off to the southeast. They had just finished a dinner of fire-roasted fish and corn cakes. That was fine, but just up the bank was Red Wing Town. He was a Trader, hang it all, and that town up there was just bulging with goods to inspect.
“You wish to go up there? Go,” Fox Down said amiably. “I’ll keep an eye on your packs.” He was a thickset man with bulging shoulders from years of paddling up and down the great rivers. Tattoos covered his wide face; the designs included starbursts, geometric lines, and two shapes that looked like faded wings on his cheeks. A buffalo robe hung over his shoulders and he smoked a tubular stone pipe, its sides stained from years of use. On his chest hung a gleaming pendant; a highly
stylized rattlesnake had been carved on the polished whelk shell.
Trader smiled. “I’m in a hurry. I just thought I’d spend the night here. That’s all.”
“You want to go up there. I can see it in your eyes,” Fox Down said gently. “You’re a Trader. Of course you want to go.” He gestured with his pipe. “What have you got in that canoe, anyway? You’ve spent the summer up north? From the look of your packs, I’d say you’ve got bales of fine furs, maybe some spruce needles, copper if you’re lucky, tool stone, and some other odds and ends.”
Trader nodded, a prickling of worry gnawing at his spine. He tried to look unconcerned as he puffed at his pipe. “As a guesser, you’re pretty good. Have you thought about spending your life as a Trader? I’d say you have a natural aptitude for this sort of thing.”
Fox Down threw his head back and laughed. “For thirty-five winters I have been a Trader. I rotted well should have some idea how this works.” The smile faded. “The gods alone know what I’d do if I couldn’t do this. I can think of no fate more terrible than being stuck in one town, one valley, one river for the rest of my life.”
“You’re headed back now?” Trader was happy to change the subject. He pointedly avoided looking up at the town gates, though his souls ached to know what was happening up there. He could imagine the locals bartering colorful fabrics, finely wrought stone hoes, perhaps some great bargain like an Osage wood bow or a remarkably decorated buffalo hide. The desire to see was like an itch stuck between his souls.
“I’ll keep an eye on your stuff,” Fox Down reminded lightly. “I hate to see a man torturing himself so.”
“I thought we were talking about whether you were headed back to the Ockmulgee lands.”
Fox Down puffed at his pipe and grunted. Inspecting the bowl, he knocked the dottle out, fished in his belt pouch, and tamped a pinch of shredded narrow-leaf tobacco into the bowl.
“Here.” Trader left his stick in the flames long enough to catch it afire, then handed it across. Fox Down took a couple of draws and puffed out a blue wreath before handing the stick back.
“Thanks, Trader.” He pulled at his pipe again and leaned his head back to blow a smoke ring toward the column of mosquitoes that had begun to form in the cool air. “Yes, I’ll be headed back. I’ve been upriver for two winters now. Most of my load consists of furs. Winter hides Traded down from above the Freshwater Seas. The packs are pressed, tied tightly. If I can get them home without them getting wet and molding, it’ll be worth a fortune.”
“How will you go? Downriver to the Mother Water?”
“And then down the Tenasee to the Yuchi towns. Depending, of course, on whether I might Trade a bale of furs for a warm woman and a bed until the cold passes. Then I’ve only got two portages and a float downstream to the Ockmulgee country.” He smiled as he saw it unfold in his souls’ eye.
After a pause, Fox Down asked, “You?”
Trader poked at the fire with one hand and puffed at his pipe with the other, exhaled, and said, “I don’t know. Maybe the Natchez Towns … maybe the Tunica. The Caddo nations would be ripe for northern goods. Especially some of the medicine plants.”
And that was just the problem. He was sitting on a lifetime’s wealth of copper—enough to ransom a chiefdom. So much wealth that people wouldn’t think twice about murdering him for it. That fool Snow Otter couldn’t have been blunter, offering food, his daughter, and every other excess in an effort to lull Trader off his guard. The shocked look Snow Otter’s wife had given the man had been a dead giveaway.
So just where am I going to take this copper? Who am I going to Trade it to, and for what?
“Split Sky,” Fox Down said softly, his knowing eyes on Trader.
“Split Sky?” The statement caught Trader by surprise.
“That’s your accent, isn’t it? How long since you’ve been back?”
Trader arched an eyebrow. How long had it been? “A lot of winters.”
“You still have family there? Or did you slip your shaft into the high minko’s daughter and have to leave in a hurry?”
Trader chuckled dryly. “Oh, I left in a hurry all right. Family? Yes.” He pointed with his pipe stem. “And I swear on my blood and bile, I never laid a finger on the high minko’s daughter. That was all a filthy lie meant to discredit me. Though I’ve heard she still searches for me, much to her husband’s and clan’s displeasure.”
“Gods help us. If you’re ever around my daughters, I’m sending them off to some old woman shaman in the forest.”
Trader stared speculatively at his pipe. “I’m hurt. Cut to the bone.”
“You’re a lying, deceiving, overinflated raccoon, Trader.” His grin faded. “Does it bother you, never being able to return?”
“What makes you think I can’t return? That’s not the only place I’ve driven women mad. Did I ever tell you about the time—”
“Something in your voice, Trader. But, if you ever need to get a message to anyone—say a brother, sister, your clan kin—I’d be happy to see to it. Sometimes it’s good to know that old friends and family are still healthy and think about you.”
“That’s a kind offer.” He stifled a yearning, ignoring the pain he’d borne for so many winters. “But actually, I can go back any time,” he lied.
Fox Down grunted neutrally and glanced at the town walls—as purple now as the night. “You sure you don’t want to just walk up there, see what’s available?”
“No. Not tonight. I think I’ll turn in, shove off with
first dawn, and make time headed south. Who knows how long the weather will hold. If I hurry, I can be fishing on the gulf shores by winter solstice.”
Saying good night, he relieved himself at the river’s edge and retired to his canoe. He was used to sleeping on his packs, and rolled himself in a buffalo robe, all the while listening to the hum of mosquitoes. A grease-based paste concocted of crushed larkspur, gumweed, and spruce needles kept the little beasts at bay.
If only the human bloodsuckers could be discouraged as easily. He fingered the war club that he now slept with. Taking a deep breath, he considered his strategy. No one with a huge amount of wealth—oh, a thick sheet of copper, let’s say—would land his canoe at a major town like Red Wing. And if he did, no furtive Trader in possession of such a prize would just hang around the canoe landing, smoking, chatting with fellow Traders, and acting nonchalant.
Would he?
Trader made a face. He was nose to nose with the eternal human problem. Searching for wealth was always difficult. While finding it was hard enough, keeping it was even more perilous.
He shifted uneasily, remembering the kind twinkle in Fox Down’s eyes. He’d known countless men like him during his years on the river, all taken with the Power of Trade, with the adventure of traveling the rivers. But for the copper, Trader wouldn’t have thought twice about leaving his canoe under Fox Down’s watchful eye while he walked up to inspect the goods available in Red Wing Town. Traders watched out for each other. It was part of the Power of Trade.
Or so he’d thought up until he’d seen that obsessive gleam fill Snow Otter’s eyes.
So many years. Have I learned nothing about the twists and turns of men’s souls?
With his free hand he reached up under the buffalo robe and patted the thick lump of stone-encrusted metal.
He’d wrapped it in layers of an old Caddo blanket and now used it for a pillow.
Images slipped through his souls: Treasures waited just inside the walls of Red Wing Town. Pretty young women were offering him gorgeously painted buffalo robes, ceramic jars full of Healing herbs, wooden statuary of Morning Star, Birdman, and Long-Nosed God. Strings of pearls were laid out on colorful blankets, and wonderful cloaks of soft beaver hide, muskrat, and wolverine literally begged him to Trade.
Yet there he lay, by himself, captive of a fortune in copper.
Gods, I’m the loneliest man alive.
 
 
T
he island Old White had chosen was little more than a lens of sand tossed up by the current. Along its length, willows had managed to catch a toehold. In their wake, cottonwoods had sprung up: young trees, little more than twice a man’s height. Thick grass had carpeted the narrow strip, and now sagged, waiting for the frost to brown and dry it. A few straggling leaves still fluttered yellow on the cottonwood branches.
Old White had landed on a sandy beach halfway down the island, and had been grateful for Two Petals’ help dragging the heavy canoe partway up the bank. Every muscle in her body ached, and she’d rubbed the rope burns as they had scavenged driftwood for the fire. Now, as night deepened and stars began to spot the sky, a cheerful blaze crackled.
Two Petals crouched by the fire, curious. What was Old White’s purpose with her? Images spun between her souls. Fragments of Dreams and visions crowded her thoughts. Sometimes the voices that spoke to her out of the air left phrases that stuck.
“You have a destiny. Dance with the brothers, and make the world right.”

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