Sacajawea (136 page)

Wild Plum
kiyi-e
d with glee when he saw Jerk Meat’s arrow plow into a young buck’s lungs. Big Badger smiled with anticipation of the taste of a roasted antelope ham.

The Comanche hunters were well spread out with their kill. Each man butchered swiftly, often glancing at his horse’s ears to see if they waved alternately. If so, it was a sign that coyotes or wolves were near. The men brought the meat into the temporary camp, and it was time for the women to work, slicing the meat into thin strips to hang on racks for sun-drying. The hides were laid out on the ground and fastened down, flesh side up, to be scraped for tanning later.

When her work was done, Sacajawea walked to a cluster of pecan trees and pulled her baby from her back. She undid his bindings, cuddling him and talking to him. “You will be a successful hunter, like your father,” she said to him. Summer Snow woke and felt hunger pangs. With his open mouth, he nudged around for food. Sacajawea sat with her back against a small pecan tree, closed her eyes as she nursed her baby. This is my happiness, she thought.

Back in the village there was an Antelope Dance with the smell of the juicy meat roasting above several small fires. The dance broke up in midafternoon, and Sacajawea took Jerk Meat’s packhorses to the grassy pasture and freed them. She walked back along the stream, then saw women ahead, waiting for her. There were three of them. Gray Bone was in the lead.

Sacajawea felt her hands shaking and her insides knotting. She knew their motive. They would try to taunt her into an impulsive act so that they could beat her. She looked about for the sight of a friend. They had chosen the time well; there was no one about, except some children playing in the sand by the stream. She was instantly thankful her baby was inside the tepee. She feared what lay ahead.

Then she remembered some advice Big Badger had once given her! “Do not turn around from trouble.” She walked boldly down the path toward them. When she tried to pass, Gray Bone stepped in front.

“You are not Comanche,” Gray Bone said. “You are a stranger who has come among us to live in a land that is not yours. You have visited our hunting ground and were lucky. That old blind antelope must have run into your man’s arrow. The Great Spirit intended for the Comanches to eat these antelope, not intruders. Leave the Quohadas at once and take your louse-infested son. Leave our village or I will take your life.”

She Cat stepped forward, her face hard. “You think because a Comanche family adopts you and then lets you marry their son you have the right to look and act like a Comanche?”

Weasel Woman pointed derisively at Sacajawea’s simple tunic and at the single flower design in the yoke. “You do not wear the dress or embroidery of a Comanche. You are a foreigner. What’s the matter? Aren’t our sewing customs good enough for you?”

Gray Bone’s suspicious eyes squinted, and her fingers curled into tight balls. “You are not like us in other ways. We do not like those who are different.”

Sacajawea thought. She needed some time to plan a way to leave these women. She needed time to think over a plan as a thing experienced. She moved backward, wanting to gain a moment or two. She knew a plan made and visualized was reality, not to be destroyed, but easily put into action. She looked about to measure distances quickly.

Gray Bone whipped out a butcher knife. “I see your ears are whole, yet you are living in evil with a brother. Now, leave this land forever as furtively as you came in. And so—before you go, I am notching your ears so that the next time we meet I will know who you are.”

Sacajawea stood very still, focusing her wits. Gray Bone’s knife did not frighten her. She knew a couple of ways to take it from her. It was best to let this wicked, mean woman talk. When she had talked out most of her hate, perhaps she would cool off.

“Look how straight and proud she stands,” Gray Bone sneered. “What has she to be proud of? She is married to her own kin, yet she does not have a drop of Comanche blood in her.”

Sacajawea could feel her face flush. Why was this woman continually taunting her? Why was she considered an outsider? Wasn’t she a Shoshoni, cousin to the Comanche? Hadn’t she kept Wolf’s wrist from healing in a deformed manner? Wasn’t Wolf Gray Bone’s son? Was it that she yet wanted Jerk Meat for her marriageable daughter? Or was it that things strange and unknown were always hated with a malice that melted toward fear?

Triumph gleamed in Gray Bone’s watery eyes. She thought she had found the way to goad this one called Lost Woman.

“Listen, Woman Who Sleeps with Her Brother, I forbid you to consider yourself married, or to live with this band, or raise your child as a Comanche. If you do any of these things, I will spill out all your black blood and let it drain on the ground.”

Sacajawea’s pulse began to race. A loud kind of music began to pound in her head, and her heart beat out a heavy rhythm. She crouched down. This dirty old woman deserves more than just being deprived of her butcher knife, she thought. She deserves to have her heart cut out. A song throbbed in her head — if she had been able to speak of it, she would have called it the Song of Action. Her teeth bared, and fury flared in her eyes. Sacajawea moved fast as lightning.

Whap!

Gray Bone reeled from the stinging slap. Recoiling, she charged and struck out at Sacajawea with her butcher knife. With swiftness, Sacajawea withdrew her body, turning it to the left as the knife went past her breasts. She caught Gray Bone’s wrist with both hands, pulled her in the direction she was going, unbalanced her, and in a flash twisted the butcher knife out of her hand. It fell, and was kicked aside as the women dodged one another.

Gray Bone’s eyes were entranced, and she felt the wary, the unknown waiting for her. It was shadowy and dreadful; it threatened her and challenged her. Her eyes were wide; she charged, then struck out at Sacajawea, who raised her hand to stop her. Then, instinctively, Sacajawea’s right hand went for her own bone knife, polished thin on one side, held by her waistband. Gray Bone’s mouth opened in terror. Sacajawea thrust the thin-honed blade of bone upward. She could feel the knife bite in, feel the weight upon it. Gray Bone crumpled, struggled to rise, her face distorted in stunned disbelief, her hands wrapped about the deep gash in her neck. She felt the unknown all about, hidden in the wash of the stream, in the willows, and behind the boulders, hovering in the air.

Sacajawea bent to pick up Gray Bone’s butcher knife, and her eyes flicked to a rustle beside her. It was the other two, moving forward almost soundlessly. She froze a moment, and then her lips drew back from her teeth like cat’s lips. She whirled on the two women, a knife in each hand. Motionless, they stared for a terrified moment at Gray Bone’s butcher knife, then at Sacajawea’s tipped bone knife, then last at Gray Bone kneeling in the buffalo grass. Surprise spread over their faces. Turning, they ran into the brush.

Sacajawea was surprised at how easy it had been. Big Badger’s advice had been sound. Sacajawea’s timidity had probably saved Gray Bone’s life. In her rage she had missed the artery, inflicting only a cut through the skin layers. The blood came through the cut bright red on Gray Bone’s fingers and formed tiny scarlet puddles in the dirt at her feet.

Sacajawea was relieved and then exhilarated, as if a very sore boil had been opened and the poison drained out.

Then a feeling of guilt came over her. Gray Bone had received what she deserved. Still, a small voice deep inside Sacajawea kept saying, “It is wrong to kill another human.” She had tried to kill a human being, failing only because she had not the boldness to push harder on her bone knife. She did not ever want to be cruel or violent as she knew that some were—Comanches, Shoshonis, and whites. Every step of the way back to her tepee she thought about what she had become in such a short time.

Outside the tepee she stopped and looked down at her hands. The rage had left her, and a sick disgust took its place. She leaned over and vomited. She went inside, buried her head in her hands, and cried with great, heaving sobs. Only the crying of her small son could rouse her from the feeling of depression and guilt. She freshened him with clean cattail down, then held him close and nursed him. What was this thing that had made her half-insane? she thought. In her woman’s soul she knew that there was a savage in everyone. And yet it was the control of this savage that made the difference between humans and beasts. Reason, good sense, love—these made humans.

The tepee flap lifted. Jerk Meat, ducking because of his height, rushed inside. His dark face was stamped with concern. An angry hum of voices came from outside.

“Gray Bone’s relatives and friends have come for you,” he said. “They are angry because they say you cut her up and left her alone to die. It is a bad thing when members of one band fight. There is always trouble over it.” He was daubing on his black war paint. The noise outside grew louder, and dogs began to bark.

“So—she cut my nose once!” Sacajawea yelled to her man. “It must be a bad thing when a Comanche woman cuts another without good reason.”

“Ai,”
he said quietly, “I saw you with a dangling red nose. Quite a sight. But it healed with hardly a show of a healing line. Good medicine runs in our lodge.”

Sacajawea heard voices very near. Someone said, “Let’s go inside and bring her out.”

Jerk Meat picked up his long lance. Facing the door, he began singing his war song.

Shaken, Sacajawea stood by him, bow and arrows ready. She steadied herself. Sacajawea loved this man. She could not now imagine life without him. There was no question; she would follow him. She wished with all her heart that this were not happening. It seemed so senseless to die for knifing a witch like Gray Bone.

Then another voice was heard outside the tepee flap. A deep, strong voice. It was the voice of Kicking Horse. “I have stanched the flow of blood from my old woman’s neck. The wound is not deep. It will heal. Now, whoever fights will have to fight me also.”

There is nothing to do but to save ourselves, thought Sacajawea, throwing away the past.

Everything became quiet. Kicking Horse, standing stiffly outside Jerk Meat’s lodge, knew the capabilities of his woman and what her insane jealousy could do. He called her cohorts and said gruffly that any more ambushing would have to be punished, even if it meant his own woman being thrown out of her tepee.

“It was my woman who started this trouble.” As he spoke, She Cat nodded her head up and down. “Gray Bone was first to draw her butcher knife. Children playing nearby came to tell me. Members of the Quohadas band, what is a woman to do—a woman alone—when three large bodies cut her off from the path and threaten her? What is she to do when one draws her butcher knife and tells her she is going to notch her ears? Should she run? Should she climb a tree and hide?

“Our women are taught from the time they are small to use their butcher knife in case of any danger.” Kicking Horse kept on talking, slowly, calmly, and clearly, and so great a talker and Shaman was he that Gray Bone’s friends, She Cat and Weasel Woman, gradually forgot their quarrel and went home. The other people slowly tired of his haranguing and went back to their tepees. The excitement of a real fight was talked out.

Kicking Horse scratched at the tepee flap. Jerk Meat quickly admitted him. His black eyes were somber. On his back were arrows in a leather quiver, and he carried his bow.

“Our friend—” began Jerk Meat.

“Hush,” said Kicking Horse. “It may not be good to call me that. I wish to say that this is what makes a man—or woman. To be able to fight and not to be afraid.” He came to Sacajawea, put his hands on her trembling shoulders, and patted her affectionately. His face seemed wet with tears. “I envy your man. I will be his friend forever.” He bent beside her sleeping couch and picked up his woman’s butcher knife, but first he eyed the bone knife lying beside it. Then, as suddenly as he had entered, he left.

“Now you will tell me what happened out there today to make them so angry,” growled Jerk Meat, leaning his lance against a tepee pole and indicating that Sacajawea should wash off his paint. “The last time I saw you, you were full of roasted antelope and had started to take the horses to feed.”

She told him.

Jerk Meat sat on the dirt floor with a grunt. “Little Fox, you’ve done all right. You have fought twice with Gray Bone, and won once. Who can tell, perhaps at the next feast I’ll have you relate stories of your bravery.” A smile turned his mouth up. He moved so he could put his arms around his woman. Something swelled in her breast, something proud and grateful and heartwarming. A great humility swept over her, and an overpowering weariness.

Before summer was over the women cut thick buffalo hides into squares that the men could use to protect their heads and backs from the relentless sun that beat down on the hot, treeless plains as they hunted. For the first time in their lives the men complained that the buffalo herds seemed scarce and thin.

Sacajawea made a new shield for Jerk Meat during the summer with the shoulder hide of a tough old buffalo bull. The hide was heated over steaming hot water, rubbed on a large, rough rock to get most of the flesh off, then scraped to finish the fleshing. Her heating and steaming thickened the hide by contraction. Then she used a smooth stone to pound and rub the hide to take out all wrinkles and make it pliable. A circular piece was cut and stretched flesh side out over a circular wooden hoop two feet in diameter. Another piece was cut and stretched on the opposite side. These were sewed together by pulling rawhide string through holes punched around the edges of the hide. The space between the layers was about an inch thick and she packed it tight with goose feathers.
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The surface of the shield was stretched into a saucer shape that would readily deflect an arrow and in most cases deflect a rifle bullet unless it struck straight-on.

At the end of summer the band was ready to move northwest even though they had not had a good buffalo hunt. They were moving across the tableland called the Staked Plains. The rivers, lying far apart and cutting across the Staked Plains southeastward, were serpentine, low banked, silty, and bitter tasting—not fit for drinking.