Sacajawea (5 page)

She looked around for something to cut off her long black hair, but her mind began to function, telling her it was dark and she’d better not move too far from the fire. She sat with her back against a tree, facing out into the dark forest. She thought she heard coyotes call in the distance. She pushed the dry sticks further into the fire. Sparks flew up around her. Soon there was the point of fire and vague outlines moving beyond, swimming in its flicker, and close about her the wall of dark-ness. Grass Child pushed back against the tree and put her head on her arms. She heard the cracking of the fire, heard the wind high in the trees, heard an owl hoot. The earth swung with her.

Grass Child awakened shivering with cold in the first flush of the morning. She sat up slowly. The fire was a gray ash. The breeze brought a tuft of wolf fur across it. She tasted her mouth and made a face and brought her finger to her eyes to rub the film away. She looked around. The buffalo robe was still on the ground in a large, round ball. A rotten stench enveloped her. She began breathing through her mouth so as to block off the smell. Her head ached, and her eyelids felt like crusty sand. A slow restoration of nerve and duty came. And she knew she had an obligation to honor her grandmother’s memory by following the Shoshoni custom of cutting off the first joint of a finger. This ancient custom of her people accompanied the mourning of a loved one seen in death.

She could not find a sharp stone, so she rubbed a stick on a flat rock until it was fairly sharp across the end. She kicked the ashes at the edge of the fire, found the firestones, rubbed them together over a handful of dry leaves, and added dry brush when they caught fire. The blood seemed to drain away from her head, and she felt faint. She sucked in great gulps of air, bent with her head low, and laid her left hand on the flat rock, palm down. Cold sweat ran down her back. She pushed with all her strength on the knifelike stick against the first joint of the little finger of her left hand. The rock was smooth, cold, and hard. The flesh tore open, and blood oozed out. The rock was warm and wet. Tlie pain was great. The earth tilted and fell back and tilted again, and she bent closer over her hand on the rock. She pounded the stick into the joint, trying to snap it off. The rock became red; the stick and her tunic became red with her blood. The cartilage was elastic and stubborn. With a final thrust, the end of her little finger lay on the rock, alone. It was no longer a part of her. It was gone forever. Her grandmother was gone from her forever. Grass Child’s eyes stared at the flow of blood from the stump. Her brain seared with the pain.

She forced herself to move slowly to the small fire and to bend over it.

She became aware of the heat on her hand, and still Grass Child could not nerve herself for the final ritual. She turned her face toward the sky. She heard a sound from there, a sound that she knew. The glossy black carrion crows were flying around and around, watching her every move. She moved further over the fire, and with her right hand she pushed her little finger against a glowing stick to stanch the flow of blood. The fire became a small pinpoint of orange, and the darkness fell around her. The cawing of the crows ceased.

When Grass Child awoke, the fire was cold. She got up too quickly, put her hands to her head, and closed her eyes to steady herself. She went to the water hole and lay down and drank, feeling the cool touch of the water at the pit of her stomach. She got up slowly, keeping her uneasy balance with Mother Earth, and suddenly her stomach tightened like a squeezed water bladder. Holding to a sapling, she hung over it and vomited. Her eyes watered, and she rubbed the tears out. Then she saw a glint of blue in the dry grass. She pulled the familiar smooth stone from the tangled growth. The attached thong swung beneath her throbbing hand. At the edge of the dead fire lay her small leather bag. She wiped at the huckleberry stain inside the bag with the bottom fringe on her tunic. She dropped the sky-blue stone into the bag, picked off the yellow spears of grass entangled with the thin thong, and when it was clean, she stuffed it into the little bag. She tied the drawstring of the bag to the drawstring at the neck of her tunic. She pushed the bag inside the tunic for safekeeping. She could feel the pouch press against her skin. Tears flowed over her face. She took a deep breath and looked to the tops of the mountains that hid the morning sun. It seemed to Grass Child that the tops of the mountains pressed back the fingers of the sun. She shivered. While her face was damp she rubbed cold ashes on her cheeks to indicate that she was in mourning. She looked at her left hand. The small stump was not swollen but the end was black and beginning to scab over with a thick yellow ooze. She picked at a smallblister on a balsam pine, and when the pitch ran out, she gently put the stump in it. She stripped off some alder leaves and pressed them around the wound. It throbbed. For a moment she sat with her eyes shut. Then, gradually, her mind began to clear, and she realized there was still work unfinished.

She pulled at the loose, thick leather thongs that held the lean-to together. Then she pulled at the corner cottonwood poles. Dragging them from the sagging shelter, she pushed one up across a tree branch barely within her reach. She had a vague picture in mind of a wooden platform on which to place the body of her grandmother, out of reach of the wolves. A decent burial place for one so beloved. She climbed the tree, heedless of scratches, and pulled the pole over to a branch of a neighboring tree of about the same height. Without resting, she did the same with another pole. She used the long thong to tie the robe around her grandmother’s body into a secure bundle. It was awkward work for the girl; she could not count on her left hand. When, finally, she was done, she threw the free end of the thong up into the branches. It took several tries, but finally it rested above the poles. She scrambled up the tree again and pulled the thong down further over the branch. Carefully, slowly, she pulled the bundle off the ground.

“Oh, Great Spirit, do not let the thong snap,” she prayed. Twice it dropped, and she was sure she would have to give up. Her arms ached, and her head throbbed. Then, with a final exhausting heave, the bundle rested on top of the poles. She sat a moment, watching the morning mists rise, holding up her left hand to ease the pain. Above the mountains to the east, the sun appeared, but there was little warmth this time of the year in the morning sun. She was sweating, however, and her hands were wet as she wrapped the long thong around the poles and tree branches, and once again around the bundle, and tied it securely. She felt the stirring of triumph within her aching body. The wolves would not get Old Grandmother now. Old Grandmother was safe.

Grass Child slid down the tree and started down the hill toward the northwest without once looking back.

She followed the same route she had taken with her family nearly half a moon before.

Grass Child did not stop. Childhood seemed to be gone, but a feeling of gratefulness came to her.

“Thank you, Great Spirit, for looking after me during the night. You were there, and I did not know. Look after Old Grandmother on her journey to the Land of Everfeasting.”

Timidly she picked a dried rose hip and placed it in her mouth. It was dry and mealy. She picked more. She made a face with the unpleasant taste. Her mother would be wondering about her, she thought. Maybe grieving, thinking that she had been carried off by enemies or some animal—a wolf. Her father would not think too much about her—a girl-child was not as valuable as a boy. Yet deep inside she knew her father had some feeling for her—that was why he answered her questions and chided her when they went on walks together, saying, “Keep your mouth closed, your eyes and ears open, and your head up. Walk into life bravely like an Agaidüka Shoshoni.”

A weakness came on her again, taking her strength. There was no use trying to be a small child anymore. She had no one to share her wonderment for Mother Earth, no one to make clover chains for, no one to take the time to listen to her stories, or to tell her stories. She loved her mother, but mothers were always busy with cooking, tanning hides, mending moccasins, and talking with the other women. Grass Child straightened, her head pounding to her step, her eyes following the horse and travois tracks on the trail. Her bare arms prickled with the chill of the wind; she quickened her pace.

Ahead, near the trail, she saw a patch of ripe buffaloberries. The bitterness of the berries gagged her. Fresh meat would taste better. She replaced the alder leaves on her finger with buffaloberry. Her little finger had turned black and blue, but it was not swollen, a good sign it would heal quickly. She picked up a pine-cone and pulled it apart to find the nuts at the base of each hard petal. She left a trail behind her of broken cones. For a fleeting moment she wished she had taken her grandmother’s firestones so she could make a smallwarm fire, and later at the edge of an aspen grove, she lay down wishing she had kept one antelope skin as a robe. Sleep closed in upon her.

Morning came, wet and dismal. Grass Child’s left hand throbbed. She sat up, squirmed the cramps from her muscles, and pushed her tangled hair back. Her long black hair was unkempt, for she thought no more of caring for it than the horses her people rode cared about their manes. She liked it best when she ran in the wind and it fanned out behind. She looked at her scratched and bruised legs. She crumpled the yellowed grass with sage leaves and rubbed the juice on the cuts. Then she set out, hunched against the rain. She was wet to the skin, but soon became warm from moving. She walked quickly; already she had a well-developed pigeon-toed gait, making it easier to go uphill or downhill. She hoped to reach her camp by nightfall. After all, she could travel faster alone than with a tra vois and squalling babies trailing after it, who had to be fed four or five times a day.

She ate more berries. Chokecherries made her mouth pucker and did not satisfy her insides—besides, they brought to mind the story of the Shoshonis’ origin, and Old Grandmother. She found wild carrots and munched on them as she walked.

She began to wonder if Rain Girl and Willow Bud would notice she was no longer a papoose, or would they scold and tease her for running off? Would they remain at the temporary camp or move on? Even her father would not stay for one girl-child when it was time to move. To a man’s way of thinking, she was not worth much. She was aware that boys were worth more because they could defend the camp and hunt. But were not women useful? They kept the camp together and made warm tepees for the men and boys to come home to. They cooked and made clothing. They had the babies.
Ai,
she decided, she was worth something, if only a nebulous thing in the back of her mind. She thought maybe she could find the right time to talk to her father about it. Maybe she ought to talk with Willow Bud first to see how she felt.

It was still early when she caught sight of smokeand stopped to consider. It could not be her camp yet. If she circled it, she would lose time and might lose the trail. She pulled away from the thought of entering the ravine, of being caught by an unfriendly tribe. She ate a few huckleberries she had saved by making a pouch of her tunic, holding the skirt sides together in front with one hand. Her stomach made an uneasy turning; the ache in her hand seemed to be fading. She turned from the trail and struck an arc around the thin line of smoke below.

Beyond it, the tracks were harder to find because of the rain. No longer could she feel sure that it was the right trail, because the travois marks were washed out. The horse tracks might have come from other horses, not the People’s.

She traveled all day, walking even-timed, thinking about her mother and father, her sister and brothers, her friends, and always about her grandmother. Grass Child could no longer speak her name out loud. Old Grandmother was dead, and the dead were not spoken of. The living must go on, keeping life for themselves, leaving the dead behind with silence.

The day darkened. Grass Child kept walking. When she could no longer see the trail, she burrowed under the heavy, wet grass to where it was warm and dry. She piled more dry grass around her legs to keep the wind out. Soon her shivering stopped and sleep came.

Grass Child was awake before dawn. She flopped on her belly and poked a stick into the reddish-brown earth and thought how really hungry she was. There was no stream nearby for a drink to take the night taste from her mouth. She sat up and found more rose hips. Then she thanked the Great Spirit for leaving these bushes near her by throwing several berries into the grass, then some at the four corners of the earth and some at the sky.

She started on her way, made a turn on the path, and suddenly there was Willow Bud riding toward her.

“Willow Bud!”

True to her word, Willow Bud had found Grass Child. It was just as she had told Grass Child’s grieving mother.

Grass Child had gone back to comfort her dying grandmother.

“Did you find Old Grandmother?” asked Willow Bud, dismounting and letting the horse rest and feed on the grass.

“At, do not speak her name,” said Grass Child. With tears running down the faces of both girls, Grass Child told her friend the story of her grandmother’s camp, carefully avoiding the name Old Grandmother.

Willow Bud looked at Grass Child’s little finger and shook her head in approval. “You are true Agaidüka,” she said, looking away.

“How did you find me?” Grass Child asked.

“Before sunup I left the camp and came this way for you. Only your brother Never Walks knows I have gone. He tried to stop me, saying I was just throwing myself after someone already gone on the same journey as the old woman. So I threatened to tell your father that Never Walks spends time with Yellow Eagle’s daughter in the willow grove,” said Willow Bud with a wide grin on her broad face.

Grass Child giggled. “Never Walks is older than I thought!”

The horse stopped munching the long, wet grass and stood still for the girls to mount. Willow Bud had spread a deerskin over the back of the horse and fastened it on with leather tongs tied under his belly. Willow Bud guided the horse with leather cords tied in the fashion of reins.