Sacajawea (129 page)

Only Jerk Meat said, “Lost Woman! Why did you go out by yourself?”

“I watched the children at play and marveled at the boys’ horsemanship,” she said.

“You called out in a strange tongue?”

“Ai—once I learned some white man’s words. It was nothing.”

“They made you sad?”

“Well, they make me mad,” Pronghorn said. “More white men are coming into our country this year and taking out more buffalo meat.”

“Our scouts saw a long string of them today,” said Big Badger. “And they had guns that glinted in the sunlight.”

Pronghorn’s mind ran ahead to the next season. “In summer, maybe we’ll find two or three trains coming through. They already are thinking too well of themselves. We’ll teach them who is the stronger. We will dance under their scalps.”

“No, we ought to get some presents from the whites.”

“You think they’ll give us presents because they fear us?”

“And so—well, I know that the Quohadas take what they want. You got some fine things from the Mexicans. I think we’ll never be friends with the whites. If you act friendly, they ask you to move your camp to a certain place, and they want to hunt on your land.”

Sacajawea began telling stories on the long, lazy summer evenings. She told of the Beaver Head and the clear running water in the streams of the north and how the mountains shone with glistening brightness when the sun was upon them. On these occasions Jerk Meat moved close to the smoldering fire and closer still to Sacajawea and seemed entranced by her stories.

“Well, she makes them up,” he said one evening to Hides Well before he moved out to his own sleeping tepee. “No woman could have come from that country to this, alone.”

“My son,” said Hides Well, “she has given us no reason to doubt.”

Spring laughed and made a face as her brother moved to his tepee.

Time seemed to move fast, and before long the prairie was again covered with snow, an unbroken sheet of white. The herd of horses was allowed to roam in order to browse and find grass. The men came in with rabbits, and one time with a lean elk that was hard to divide among fifty-two lodges. Some were so hungry they ate things they would not think of as food at any other time, such as boiled rawhide, toads dug out of holes in the mud banks, turtles from the frozen backwater of the river.

When they were in the Season When Babies Cry from Hunger Pains the Quohadas were nearly desperate for any kind of food. One man waded through the snow to the largest trash heap and snared a dozen rats. The rats were made into a thin soup and anyone in the tribe was welcome to eat it as long as it lasted.

Kicking Horse, the Quohadas’ Medicine Man, pulledan old buffalo hide from under his bed and painted a picture of a buffalo on the flesh side. He twirled that hide around four times, then threw it out the door of his medicine tepee. He went to see the direction the painted buffalo’s head pointed. The hide had landed in a heap and the painted head looked up at the sun.
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A rumor spread that Kicking Horse was having a spell of difficulty with his magic that he used to find grazing buffalo. The difficulty was caused by someone walking behind him while he was eating. Everyone knew that caused a medicine man to lose his power.

When the snow was nearly gone, the son of Twisted Horn found the buffalo grazing on short, green grass in a valley lined with pecan trees. He came racing on horseback into camp, screaming and hollering that he had seen buffalo. The Quohadas eagerly went out on their first spring hunt.

Sacajawea and Spring stood in front of the trees, whose leafless branches were covered with yellowish clumps of evergreen mistletoe. They walked to a place where they could hide.

“I can taste a good hump roast already,” said Spring.

“Just the sound of it makes my mouth water. I’ll wager Jerk Meat gets the first kill,” said Sacajawea. Her self-assurance was outward. Inside she felt fearful and confused. She was secure in Jerk Meat’s presence; without him she felt alone and moody. It was something she could not explain. She did not intend for any one person in the Quohada band to become too important to her.

The hunters had discarded all clothing except their breechclouts for the dangerous but exciting work of the hunt. They rode their ponies against the wind in a semicircle and stayed out of sight of the buffalo. The men on ponies slowly spread out until the herd was surrounded everywhere but on the windward side. Pronghorn sounded the signal. Immediately, the whole circle was closed. The men ran their ponies around and around the buffalo, yelling and driving them into a tight bunch. The bulls, protecting the cows and calves massed in the center, milled around the outside, making targets of themselves for the hunters.

The women knew that the meat could spoil quicklyif the animals were run too long and were overheated when they were killed. They each hoped the men could move in fast and get plenty of meat for the curing racks. The heavy work of skinning and butchering was done by the men.
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The killing done, the hunters pushed the bulls over so the bellies were on the ground and the legs stuck out in four directions. They left the cows where they had fallen so that the women could get to the full udders. With each animal they made a low cut on the neck and pulled the hide back. The front quarters were cut at the joint and pulled out. The hide was separated along the spine. Each man was adept at keeping the sinews uncut during this operation. Jerk Meat strung all the sinews he stripped out on the short prairie grass. He knew the women would want most for sewing, but he wanted some for wrapping around spear points that he fitted against a straight shaft. Sinew smeared with blood for glue held the stone points tighter than anything he knew.

Most of the hunters were now pulling the hide farther back, cutting the hind quarters at the joint and pulling them out. The flank and breast were rolled into one large hunk. Ribs were separated from the breast bone and the entrails removed. The young children who had been allowed to come with the women gobbled the raw entrails, pulling the greasy guts through their clenched teeth in order to strip out the contents.

For a moment Sacajawea saw her own Agaidüka Shoshoni of years ago, for they behaved similarily after a successful hunt. She brought herself back to the present, and watched Jerk Meat cut between the ribs of a large bull, pull up and out—groaning with the hard work—then break some nice rib steaks from the spine.

Most of the women were now down the hill and crowding around their menfolk. Some, like Spring, went down on their haunches to carve out the hot livers and immediately savor the rich liver seasoned with exploded gall bladder salts. Hides Well had her blood pot next to a cow with its udder slashed, catching the milk mixed with blood—a nutritious drink to be fed to children and nursing mothers.

Sacajawea found a calf suffocated under the weightof the large cow Hides Well was working on, and she and Spring pulled it out. They stabbed their butcher knives in the calf’s belly and pulled back to make a slit. Inside was curdled milk. Pronghorn and Jerk Meat left their butchering a few moments and dipped their hands into the slit. With great relish they scooped this delicacy into their mouths. With their appetite somewhat dulled they went back to their butchering.

The women took whole stomachs of buffalo up the hillside to the cooking fires. The entire sac was slowly cooked over hot coals. By now women, children, and men alike were blood-smeared from faces to feet.

Finally the men were nearly finished. They took the horns and hoofs because those would be useful later on, but the heart was left intact with the skeleton so that the buffalo spirit might live on and continue to replenish the plains. All the meat was packed in the hides, loaded on horses, and brought up the hill to the women for further processing.

Triumphantly, Hides Well chatted with some of the women. She waved her arms to show all the empty skeletons cradling hearts, with rump and head left for vultures, coyotes, and wolves. The Quohadas now had plenty of food for many days. And with the help of the sun the blood on the meat would glaze and the flies would leave it alone.
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Back at camp, they scraped the skins and let them soak while preparing the meat. After three days they would peg the skins to the ground and stretch them in the sun. The brains of the buffalo were saved. These were worked in very hot water until they were malleable, and the sun-dried skins would be put into a solution of the brains and worked until soft. Then they would again be stretched out on stakes on the ground to dry and be pulled and stretched. Sacajawea kept her eyes lowered while she worked, but always she watched the form of Jerk Meat; the blood in her veins warmed. However, she did not think that he noticed her any more than any other member of his family, maybe less. She remembered how, when she had lain near starvation, Jerk Meat had nursed her and built a soft couch near his campfire and broken her fever. And he was agood hunter, always sharing his catch with friends and needy members of the tribe.

For days Sacajawea kept to herself, turning everything over in her mind. Perhaps Jerk Meat had a way of contacting the whites. Maybe the Mexicans in the south that he talked of would know about the things that went on in the village of Saint Louis. She felt her loneliness was for her son, Baptiste. During this time she thought of her firstborn and believed her attraction to Jerk Meat was a reflection of this terrible yearning.

One morning long after the buffalo hunt, Sacajawea walked along the river alone and came upon a thicket of orangewood—
bois d’arc,
it was called by Chief Red Hair. This wood made the finest of bows. Her heart began to jump as though it had a life all its own. She wanted to run to tell Jerk Meat about this find of such good bow wood. She wanted to tell him how the Shoshonis and white men each made their bows so that he could make use of the best ideas she could bring him. Then she stopped, trying to will her beating heart to be still. It had suddenly dawned on her that she was not scheming of a way to get Jerk Meat to help her find her son, but she was scheming. She was ready to pick up any idea that would give her an excuse to be near Jerk Meat. She opened her mouth and poured out a single whoop that rang in the still air. Then she ran back to the village. I am a woman of more than thirty summers, feeling like a girl of fifteen, she chided herself. But she did not make any attempt to wipe the smile from her face, the sparkle from her eyes, when she approached Big Badger.

“I am looking for Jerk Meat.”

“And so—how is it that a young woman seeks out a man?” Big Badger grunted, his dark eyes snapping.

“The
bois d’arc,
by the river—I wanted to tell him about it.”

“The what?”

“The orangewood for bows,” she said simply.

“And so—then why did you speak of it in a strange tongue?”

“I forgot myself and spoke the tongue of the white man.”

“Your tongue will cause you plenty trouble, young woman. And now, tell me what is it between you and my grandson?”

“Well, so—what could it be? He is my brother,” she said, turning scarlet.

“Good! I can tell you it is better if the young man seeks out the young woman. He is already at the orangewood thicket.”

She hurried back to the clearing, where a sandbar sloped down to the clear stream. For a fleeting moment she thought, Jerk Meat was at the orangewood thicket when I was there. He must have heard me holler and dash back to the village. I am acting like a silly girl half my age. She slowed her step and inhaled the sweet smell of the season, warm and pleasant. She scrambled through vines until she was near the grove of orangewood. Jerk Meat was cutting finger-sized shoots and bending them to test their strength. His eyes lighted when he saw her, and the corners of his mouth lifted.

“And now, you are coming to tell me how to make a bow?”

She said, “I immediately thought of you when I saw the orangewood earlier. I ran back to tell you so that you might have the first choice of these good straight branches.”

“Isn’t there anything else you want to tell me?” A quick flash of delight was in his black eyes, but his face remained impassive and he purposely narrowed his eyes.

She saw the look in his eyes and said,
“Ai,
there is something I have just discovered.” Now her eardrums pounded with blood because of her boldness.

“That is strange. I thought you had known all things forever,” he teased.

She thought it had been wrong for her to come back here. She was fearful now that he did not feel the same as she. Was she only acting like a child struck with puppy love? She bent and splashed water on her face for cooling. She stepped back in order to leave quickly and put an end to this foolishness. Her foot caught on a root. She stumbled and fell into the water. He did not move to help her but slapped his hand on the sides of his leggings and laughed a deep, hearty guffaw. When he could control his merriment and she was pouringwater from her moccasins, not feeling embarrassment, but actually feeling more at home than when she was in the tepee with Spring, he said, “Would five horses be enough, or do you think you are worth six?”

She gasped with astonishment and covered her face with her hand to hide it. “My brother?”

“Words,” he said and put his hand over his heart, making the sign of love. “I, too, have made a discovery, but I made it many moons back.”

She wanted to tell him that she was honored and that she felt great pleasure, but she felt tongue-tied. She lowered her eyes and watched him move his bow stocks out of the way with his moccasin toe.

“So—maybe you ought to take the wet tunic off and wring the water out.”

She looked up and saw that he had stepped back as if waiting for her to move next. A warm tingling grew at the point where the tops of her legs came together. She untied the yoke of her tunic, slid her arms out and let it drop at her feet. She felt the air on her skin. She shivered and the tingling ran through her entire body. She stepped out of the tunic and was pressed against him, his hands moving over her arms, over the white scars on her back, down across her rounded, firm bottom. With one hand he pulled her closer, with the other he worked loose his breechclout.