Wild Splendor (21 page)

“You know that you are asking the impossible of me,” Kit said, sighing heavily. “I have no final say in these matters. I take my orders from the Great White Chief in Washington, who dictates all things to the white people, even Kit Carson.”

“You are wrong,” Sage grumbled. “The Great White Chief values your word, as well as your life. If you speak for the Navaho favorably, he will listen.”

“Only if he wishes to,” Kit said solemnly. “When it comes to Indians, scarcely does he ever favor them over the comforts of the white settlers.”

When Pure Blossom began chanting and talking out of her head, Sage felt guilty for having argued in her presence. He glared at Kit, then walked away from him, Leonida at his side.

“I never thought that it might be prairie fever,” Leonida said, gazing at Pure Blossom, whose face was beet-red. “Until today she scarcely had a fever. Now? It came on her so quickly.”

Sage took Pure Blossom to her blankets, laid her on one and wrapped her in another one.

He turned to Leonida and took her hands in his. “Our medicine man must sing over my sister,” he said thickly. “But first a house of bent saplings and leaves must be built quickly for her, to keep her out of the weather.”

He put a hand on Leonida's cheek, reveling as always in the softness of her flesh. “At the same time I will see that you have a house of your own,” he said. “We may be here for some time. I cannot leave this place while Pure Blossom is this ill.”

Leonida swallowed hard, for Kit Carson's words that Pure Blossom would not be recovering had burned into her heart. This would be her final resting place.

She glanced down at Runner, who once again kept vigil at Pure Blossom's side. It gave her a queasy feeling to think that he might come down with the same dreaded disease, yet she felt confident that he wouldn't. He had been around Pure Blossom both night and day for as long as she had been ill, and neither he nor anyone else of the village showed signs of contracting the disease.

Leonida watched Sage ordering his men to build the houses, then watched him as he took Kit Carson aside and began discussing again about the fate of his people.

She peered into the deepening shadows of night, hoping that no one had followed Sage and Kit to this camp of Navaho.

Chapter 26

Like outcast spirits, who wait,
And see, through Heaven's gate,
Angels within it.

—T
HACKERAY

 

 

Pure Blossom's wigwam had been put together quickly. A fire now burned in the fire pit in the center of the dwelling, and smoke spiraled upward and spread outward like dancing, swaying ghosts.

Pure Blossom lay unconscious on thick pallets beside the fire. Leonida and Sage sat on opposite sides of her, awaiting the arrival of the medicine man, the “singer.”

Sage had already paid him many horses to conduct the ceremony. He had spent a great deal of time learning what to do, so he had to be paid well.

Outside, everyone stood around a nearby fire, warding off the chill of the night with blankets snuggled around their shoulders. Sage had dispensed with worrying that a fire might attract enemies, and a great fire leapt toward the sky.

The Navaho's enemies were many, but their worst enemy at present might be the prairie fever. Fires were needed not only for warmth, but for cooking nourishing food. Sage's people needed both the fires and the warm food to keep them healthy during the long nights of plummeting temperatures. And Sage would go no farther than this valley now that his sister had worsened.

Leonida placed another cool, damp cloth on Pure Blossom's brow in an effort to get her temperature down. She was glad that Runner was fast asleep in the wigwam built for her and Sage. Now that it was suspected that Pure Blossom had prairie fever, everyone who had come in contact with her had a chance of coming down with the awful disease. It seemed to strike those whose resistance was low, and Leonida hoped that no one else in the village, except perhaps those who were old and ailing already, would contract it. It seemed now that all along, when Pure Blossom's health had been clearly failing, she had been coming down with prairie fever. Her worsening health had not been caused by her disabilities. After some time, she became so weak that it was much easier for the fever to claim her in its fiery intensity.

Suddenly the air was filled with the pulsing beats of a drum. Leonida turned quickly around, and her gaze fell on an elderly man who wore a long, flowing robe without any beads or design. His hair, drawn back from his face, hung in one long, gray braid down his straight back. Although his face was furrowed with wrinkles, he was a handsome Navaho, his dark eyes gentle and kind as he gazed back at Leonida. She did not know his name, but everyone referred to him only as the singer.

As he came farther into the wigwam, Leonida took the damp cloth from Pure Blossom's brow and went to the other side of the structure. The singer stood over Pure Blossom, looking sadly down at her. Slowly he moved to his knees beside the pallet of furs, his bone-thin hands drawing the blankets down away from her, exposing her thin, fever-racked, naked body to his wizened eyes.

Scarcely breathing, Leonida watched the medicine man put himself in what seemed to be a trance as his hands trembled over Pure Blossom's body.

Outside, the drum pulsed into the night, many women singing along with it.

Inside the wigwam of the sick, the singer continued to run his hands over Pure Blossom's body, himself now breaking into song, the song of the mountains, a holy song to the Navaho.

He paused, drew the blanket back over Pure Blossom, up to her chin, then sang again. His hands seemed to be moving in sign language, while he sang the words aloud.

The deep resonance and feelings of the medicine man as he sang his prayer songs touched Leonida deeply. She fought back the urge to cry, fearful that it might break the spell of the singer. He seemed magical, as though capable of bringing Pure Blossom out of her coma, yet Leonida had seen others who had drifted off into the same sort of unconscious state. Sadly, none of them had ever survived. Not even the most skilled physicians had been able to discover the mysteries of comas.

As for the Navaho, the singer conducted the ritual of his healing ceremony to compensate for some power which was attempting to destroy their harmony. They believed that they must live in harmony with nature and that when their people became ill it was not because of a germ, but because they had fallen out of that harmony.

Leonida silently scoffed at this belief, knowing that Pure Blossom was not the cause of her own debilitating ailment. In truth, nature had wronged
her
as far back as when she had been carried within her mother's womb and her frail body had begun to take its shape.

But Leonida continued to stand stiffly beside Sage, accepting this Navaho healing ritual as something she must get used to, since she was now an integral part of Navaho life. She watched with much interest as the singer spread a white buckskin on the floor of the wigwam and, slowly and evenly, covered the buckskin with pure white sand.

Then the medicine man began singing again as he sifted colored earth and yellow pollen through his fingers onto the sand to make a bright, sacred picture. His fingers were skillful, and Leonida, who loved art and poetry, saw a great deal of beauty in the formations of the figures and designs on the sand. She knew that because of the sacredness of the depiction, it must be completed, used, and destroyed within a twelve-hour period.

The singer continued to construct the elaborate sand paintings designed to cure the patient, now saying prayers to Changing Woman, the most important Navaho god. She was the one who did good things and tried to help people. Her husband, the Sun, wasn't always so helpful, and the singer made prayers asking the Sun to do good instead of evil.

The ceremony to win the help of the gods lasted far into the night, the steady rhythm of the medicine songs pulsing and groups of singers outside on opposite sides of the fire vying with one another in endurance. Like the central pile of burning logs, the songs flared unextinguished until the stars faded.

At dawn, the singer ceased his songs and prayers. He gazed down at his painting, then destroyed it.

Leonida was leaning against Sage, completely drained of energy as the singer left Pure Blossom's wigwam. Dutiful wife that she was, Leonida had endured the long night of standing with Sage during the curing ceremony.

She gazed sleepily down at Pure Blossom, anguished to see that Sage's sister was no better than before. She still lay unmoving, in a sound sleep.

Leonida looked at the entrance flap of the wigwam, and realized that the singers had finally ceased. Everything was quiet in this temporary village. Even the pulse of the drums had faded away.

Sage knelt down beside his sister and put his hand on her brow. With a sudden smile he looked up at Leonida. “Her face is cool to my hand!” he said, his voice breaking with joy. “The singer has brought her back, on the road to recovery.”

Leonida wanted to share his enthusiasm, yet she feared the worst—that even though the fever had broken, it had already done too much damage to Pure Blossom's frail body for her to become healthy and vital again.

She knelt beside Sage and placed a gentle hand on his cheek. “Darling, that's wonderful,” she murmured, forcing a smile. “That's so wonderful.”

Sage gazed down at Pure Blossom again, then leaned over her and drew her up into his powerful arms. “Pure Blossom,” he whispered into her ear. “It is I, your brother. Did you hear the songs and prayers? They were for you. They were to cure you. Come back to me, little sister. The world would be a lonely place without you.”

Leonida heard his pleas. She wiped tears from her eyes, watching Sage put his sister back down on the pallet of furs and gently draw the blankets over her again.

Sage turned to Leonida. He placed a hand at the nape of her neck and drew her lips to his. He brushed a kiss across her lips, then helped her up from the floor. “It is time for us to rest,” he said. He led her to the door. “Others will take our places beside my sister while we rest and fill our bodies with nourishment.”

“Right now going to sleep is all that sounds good to me,” Leonida said, clinging to Sage's side as they walked out into the brightening light of morning. “If I ate, I don't think I would even taste it, I am so tired.”

“We will sleep, then eat,” Sage murmured, guiding her toward their small wigwam.

Runner, who had given in to sleep long ago, raced out of the wigwam, wiping his eyes. “How's Pure Blossom?” he asked.

“She is better,” Sage said, patting his head.

Leonida bent down and put her hands on Runner's tiny waist. “Sage and I must get some rest,” she softly explained. “Go to Sally. She will give you some breakfast. Stay with her while Sage and I sleep.”

Runner gazed up into Leonida's eyes somberly, then he flung his arms around her neck and gave her a fierce hug. “I love you,” he whispered, then broke away and took off in a mad dash toward Sally, who was just accepting food from some of the Navaho women who had cooked it over the open fire all night.

Leonida and Sage went inside the small temporary dwelling. Runner had not known how to keep a fire going, and Leonida was glad. She did not want any light in the wigwam to disturb her rest. She did not want any heat next to her skin except that which radiated from her husband's flesh. Even though she was so tired, she knew that if Sage asked, she would willingly join him in lovemaking.

But Sage didn't say anything about making love, nor did he approach her sexually. In the shadows of the small dwelling he stretched out on his stomach, and the wigwam was soon filled with his easy, measured breathing.

Seeing that he had not removed his moccasins, Leonida took it upon herself to do that so he could be more comfortable. Once they were set aside, she caressed his feet lovingly for a moment, and then she removed her clothes and stretched out beside him on the thick pallet of blankets.

Snuggling close, she felt the lethargy of sleep quickly claim her. Soon she was wandering through a wonderland in a dream—a land of flowers dotted the landscape, their fragrance filling the air like some rich French perfume. Birds were in abundance, soaring through the air, singing. Small animals scampered here and there, the squirrels the feistiest as their tails whipped nervously up and down, supporting them as they jumped from tree to tree like monkeys.

In this dream there was no sadness. Leonida experienced only pure happiness, to a degree that she had never known before. Sage rode into view on a snow-white stallion, stopping only long enough to whisk her up onto the horse with him. Sitting on his lap, facing him, Leonida clung to him and tossed her head back. Her hair billowed in the wind behind her.

Sage's mouth went to the hollow of her throat and he kissed her. He held the reins with one hand and with the other opened her blouse to him. His mouth covered her breast, sucking the nipple to tautness. As his horse galloped onward, seemingly of its own volition, Sage and Leonida began making love. Then Leonida was wrenched awake by someone speaking Sage's name outside the wigwam.

Her husband awakened with a start.

“Someone is calling for you outside the wigwam,” Leonida said, scurrying into her skirt and blouse. “Oh, Sage, what if they have come about Pure Blossom?”

Sage gave her an uncertain look, then hurried to the door and went outside. The afternoon was waning into evening. He found a middle-aged Navaho maiden there, looking up at him with troubled eyes.

“What is it?” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Why have you awakened your chief?”

The maiden's eyes wavered as she stared up at him, clasping and unclasping her hands nervously. “It is your sister,” she finally said, her voice breaking. “She is making death rattles in her throat.”

Sage broke into a mad run and rushed breathlessly into Pure Blossom's makeshift wigwam.

Leonida followed, just as breathless. She watched Sage kneel over his sister and peer down at her, his hands at her face.

Leonida gasped when she heard the strange, gurgling sounds coming from Pure Blossom's lungs as she struggled for every breath. She had heard those sounds before—

—just before her mother had died.

She swallowed the urge to cry out when she saw Pure Blossom's eyes open wide, fixed in a stare, one eye looking in one direction, the other looking in another.

Sage's heart seemed to stop as he looked down at his sister, his whole body filled with a great choking sensation as he listened to the sounds coming from the depths of her lungs.

And her eyes.

They were open, yet surely not seeing.

If she could see, she would look at him.

And she didn't.

Her eyes were strangely unblinking and fixed.

In a momentary trance, not moving or touching, only feeling a devastation more deadly than ever before in his life, Sage had done nothing but stare at his sister. Without even yet thinking, he picked her up into his arms and laid his cheek against hers, finding it cold to the touch.

Then suddenly he realized that she was no longer breathing.

She had just died in his arms.

“A-i-i-i-,”
he cried, holding her near and dear to his heart as he rocked her slowly back and forth.

Leonida went to him, but did not extend a hand toward him, knowing that at this moment he knew nothing but sorrow and that she could not lift it from him—not until he accepted what had just happened.

Sage rocked Pure Blossom for a while longer, then gently placed her back onto the pallet of furs. With trembling fingers he closed her eyes and covered her with a blanket.

Leonida knelt beside him and took one of his hands in hers as he began a soft chant. Outside, where no one yet knew of Pure Blossom's death, there were the normal sounds of a day's end. Someone had set up a loom. She could hear the thump thump thump of the weaver pounding down the thread in the loom.