Nakoa's Woman (14 page)

Maria felt a coldness again, and a prickling of her skin. Atsitsi stirred the fire. “Now no more talk of dead. When dark, no talk of dead.”

They sat in silence, listening to the beating of the drum. The wailing of Kominakus’s widow could be heard at intervals, and Maria looked at the flickering shadows of herself and Atsitsi upon the tipi skins. How little of themselves their shadows were, what a dim reflection, an incomplete part of the whole. In another light could what she knew to be herself be just another distorted shadow?

“Nakoa has sent for me,” Maria said bitterly.

Atsitsi looked up in joy. “I know he never marry big Maria! Too much fool!”

“Thank you.”

“I know all time! He screw you when Nitanna not here to get mad!”

“I wouldn’t want to upset Nitanna!”

“You won’t. You be gone to Siksikai then. Ah, sweet Maria dance such nice dance for sweethearts of Mutsik! And when Siksikai all through nice Maria can tell old Indian whore why all Pikuni women stay away from him!”

When Atsitsi finally fell to snoring, Maria lay upon her couch watching the fire. The wind stirred, shaking the little bells of the tipis; to Maria they tolled for the ending of human life. She saw Kominakus lying upon the prairie, and then she saw Ana, her father, and Anson, and she wondered how much of them was left. Was there a soul that the wolves could not reach? Was there anything that was not in the end devoured? Was the soul a last vanity, the Bible a dream?

Oh, it was terrible to think this way! She wanted a real father separate and apart from herself to end her pain, and to make her good and then to reward her goodness! She wanted a father to punish her badness, so she would know what to do what to seek!

Great walls had to be built against grief and loss and despair, and she was not old enough, nor strong enough, nor wise enough to do it herself! The floods came, the great tidal waves swept over the highest mountain, and her feet were upon sands! But her father’s feet stood over all, for he was the creator! But her father would never taste new fruit of Oregon, and her mother had died and had left her father the warm breasts of Meg Summers. Whore! Harlot! The autumn leaves grow sodden, and with their own weight they fall and drift nowhere in the wind. Who is to light the evening lamp to shine upon them?

The wind was not quiet this night. It came down from the mountains, moving the little bells of the tipis. It crossed the Pikuni burial grounds and there it picked up the lament of the dead. It crossed the moving river and swept across the prairie grass, ruffling the manes of the nervous horse herds. It mingled its cry with that of the white wolf, both of them calling mournfully for the past.

The wind sucked against the closed lodge skins. Don’t you know me now? Mine was the hand that touched your face tenderly, and cared for your wounds; my lips were those that returned the eagerness of your kiss. It was I who carried the seed of our new life. Could you want the river between us? How could you fear me when I have been gone for such a little while? Let me stay here, among the sights and sounds I knew so well. How could the medicine drum beat in prayer for my life and now beat in fear of the same life? Do not drive me away. I supplicate and if my hands are dust, is my soul only an idea that cannot last beyond tomorrow?

Maria began to sob, turning on her bed and clutching at her ears. She couldn’t bear the mournful cry of the wind. “God, help me!” she prayed.

Maria slept at last, and while she slept, she dreamed. She heard her mother singing a Spanish lullaby, but she was seeking Nakoa. She stood alone in deep mist, and she trembled at the unknown that lay hidden in the fog. She called to Nakoa in fear; she called to him in deeper need, but only her own voice came back to her. She pushed the fog away with her hands, seeking Nakoa in the center of the mist, but there she saw only a shrouded reflection of herself. She gazed forlornly at herself. Was this the purpose of her life—this veiled reflection? It was Nakoa she wanted, Nakoa she had to have. She wanted his strength, the freshly killed meat he would bring, the warmth and the shelter he would create. As she gazed at herself she changed into a little girl, a fat sticky little girl sucking upon sweets. Maria turned to go and the little girl followed her. “Go away!” Maria shouted at her. Furiously, she knocked the sugared candy from her hands. The little girl sat down in the mists and cried. “I want my mother!” she wailed.

“You little fool, your mother is dead!” Maria said.

“Then why have you taken my candy?” the little girl wept. She sobbed and sobbed, way down in the mists, and Maria grew weary of her sobbing. With terrible effort, she walked away from the little girl. Now she saw herself upon the open prairie, and all around her grew luxurious bunch grass. It was full moonlight and the earth smelled warm and sensuous. Her vision widened and she could see all of the prairie, way over and beyond it, and it was as if she stood on a little island. Before her she cast a long shadow, and when it suddenly began to move, she was forced to follow it. “Stop!” she called after it, but it glided on through the luminous grass. She tried to stop, but she was a part of her shadow and where it went she was forced to follow. She heard the tolling of church bells around them—her shadow was leading her to a funeral! “Stop! Stop!” she pleaded desperately, for she could not bear to see another person die. She hid her face in her hands and began to weep.

“Maria,” a voice said tenderly. “Do not weep. It is our marriage!”

It was Nakoa and he brushed back the hair from her forehead and kissed her there. Then his lips met hers and all of the mists suddenly parted and became her wedding veil; she looked down and saw that she was dressed in shimmering satin. “I am beautiful!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Yes,” he whispered, and the billowing veil gently enclosed them both. He removed the veil and then her dress and when his lips touched her naked flesh she was in rapture.

“There isn’t time,” she murmured.

“No,” he replied. “There is no time!”

In the absence of time, she lay with him and accepted him, and his caress was the caress of the whole world.

When they had made love, they drifted off into languid sleep, and from a great distance, Maria could hear that the church bells were still tolling. “They wait for us,” she said.

“There is no waiting now,” he replied, and then they were walking up a pathway together. It was a long path bordered with white flowers that went all of the way to the church. She was dressed in virginal white again, but he wore Indian buckskin and carried a scalping knife. When they entered the church door together Maria heard a fluttering of excited whispers. “Look at him! He is handsome!” Gently, Nakoa led her to the altar, and the sweet smell of the prairie followed them. The flowers that had bloomed along the path bloomed within the church. At the altar the minister appeared to marry them, and, surprised, Maria looked up into the eyes of her father.

“Do you take this woman for your lawfully wedded wife?” he asked Nakoa.

“I do,” Nakoa replied.

“He does not!” a voice said wrathfully. It was Meg, and she came to Nakoa, her lips red and moist. In front of them all she unbuttoned her bodice and exposed her full white breasts. Maria recoiled away from the sight, but Nakoa moved toward Meg. “Stop it! Stop it!” Maria screamed in agony. The people all became the white flowers, their petals scattering nervously in the wind.

“Maria!” her father said sternly. “Do you take this man for your lawfully wedded husband?”

“No! No! No!” she cried hysterically, and ran away from the church, stumbling to the ground and lying there sobbing. The church bells stopped their pealing. All of the little noises of living things in the prairie grass became stilled. The bright moonlit sky became clouded, and the wedding veil melted from her shoulders and became mist again. At the end of her dream she groped for the petals of the white flowers, and when she found them they had become dead and brown.

Chapter Thirteen

At daylight Maria wakened to the sound of the camp crier calling out that it was time for those going to the buffalo grounds to move. Snatches of her dream came back to her. The memory of her union with Nakoa was so real that her heart raced at the thought of meeting him. She bathed in the tipi, putting on a dress Anatsa had brought to her. It smelled of meadow rue berries and was beautifully decorated with red quills. The quills enhanced her vivid coloring, and as she carefully brushed her hair with a quill brush, she saw frank envy upon Atsitsi’s face. Maria felt a sadness for her, for this fat sweating creature who so craved a man and was called a whore, but would sleep alone until she died.

“Are you going to the buffalo grounds with me?” she asked her gently.

“What matter with sweet voice?” Atsitsi asked grumpily. “Of course I go! What you think I be waiting for, ever since white virgin come to dirty Indian camp? Big head shrink a little now that Nakoa not keep it!”

“Why don’t you get out of bed and put some clothes on?” Maria said, and went outside to wait. Few people in the village were up; the tipis still lay smoky gray in the dim light. The crier called again. “It is the word of your chief! Those who go to the grounds—move! move!”

Two men rode toward Maria leading four saddled horses. So four women were to leave, for the Pikuni did not saddle horses for men. Atsitsi came quickly out of the door, running her hands carelessly through her greasy hair. She looked up at one of the Indian braves. “I go with big white woman!” she shouted. “I need horse now!”

They moved out of the village, Maria’s horse behind Atsitsi’s.

The hunters had changed their camp, moving after the buffalo herd, and it was not until late afternoon that they rode within sight of their tipis. Great buffalo birds filled the sky, a sign that the herds were near, for the birds lived from the ticks upon the backs of the animals.

When they arrived Atsitsi greeted every woman she saw in a friendly fashion. “Ho!” she shouted. “Who Atsitsi stay with? Atsitsi not bring lodge, and white woman sleep with Nakoa now.”

Maria ached to fly at the old woman and choke the life out of her. “Stop it!” she insisted.

Atsitsi got down from her horse and squatted by one of the lodges. “I eat now, and I sleep here.”

The owner’s woman looked pained.

Maria dismounted and sat in the shadow of the deserted tipi. Soon Atsitsi returned, agitated and carrying fresh meat. “Nakoa give this,” she said. “He say we go to hunt tomorrow with rest of women!”

“He isn’t coming here?” Maria asked incredulously.

“No. And he not send for you either! Say we to use lodge.” She saw the disappointment upon Maria’s face and squinted up at her against the sun. “Now poor Maria no find out man enter woman with sweet bird song!”

“Be quiet—please be quiet!” Maria said.

“Now go bang head on dirt. Not my fault Nakoa not screw you right away!”

Just after daylight the hunters rode out of camp, and the women followed, Atsitsi and Maria among them. Great clouds of dust rose in the prairie where Maria knew the buffalo to be, and before any of them could see the animals, they heard the hoarse bellowing of the bulls, like muffled thunder.

When they rode within sight of the herd, it presented a magnificent view. The shaggy backs seemed to cover the swelling prairie. Buffalo birds skimmed the sky, and below them the buffalo moved lazily, one huge bull rolling in the dust, the others following the cows, roaring their deep and hollow sounds. Around them the silent Indian hunters began to move. They divided into two groups. One group rode into a ravine that divided the women from the herd. As they rode into it they urged their horses into a lope, bending low over their horses’ backs so that the gully sheltered them completely from the buffalo. Each rider had changed to his buffalo horse, leaving the horses they had ridden before in the care of the Tsistiks, the first and youngest society of the Ikunuhkahtsi. The hunters had stripped to breechcloth and moccasin, and some wore a robe around their waist. Each carried a bow in his left hand and five or six arrows in his right and had a heavy quirt or knotted bull hide fastened to his wrist. From the back of his pony he dragged a thong some fifteen yards.

Maria studied each of the riders that came into the ravine, but Nakoa was not among them; he had to be one of the riders waiting upon the hill. When the last of the hunters had disappeared into the hollow, Nakoa’s group divided, and worked to surround the herd. Lazily they rode toward the herd, slowly driving the buffalo toward the ravine. At first the old bulls watched them curiously as they approached, but when they were only about a mile away, the bulls turned uneasily and joined the rest of the buffalo. As the riders began to close the gap between them, the bulls broke into a gallop, their hoofs flying and their shaggy heads down. Alerted, the whole herd was running now, going crazily toward the ravine. They boiled toward it like a giant thundering river, and when the first group of hunters emerged from the hollow, they wheeled from the ravine in terror, and choked themselves in hopeless milling confusion. Around and around they careened, trampling, goring, crushing, and climbing over the falling and weakening. High clouds of dust rose to the sky. Wherever the buffalo sought refuge, new groups of screaming, shouting hunters would emerge, and the circle of their terror became tighter and tighter, smaller and smaller, as their thundering hoofs continued to shake the prairie.

Then came the twanging of bows, and shadowy forms on horseback darted among them and separated the bulls from the cows. An Indian rode upon a cow from her right side, and shot his arrow into the soft spot between her hip bone and last rib. At the twanging of the bow, the pony wheeled away as the cow charged and attempted to gore horse and rider. The arrows went into the cows with such force that they sank to the feather and sometimes passed through their entire body.

Maria saw the shadow of a hunter left horseless and running for his life. A bull charged him, and the hunter snatched the robe from around his waist and threw it over the horns of the bull, blinding him. In an instant he drove an arrow into the animal’s heart and worked his way clear of the herd. Another hunter, thrown violently from his horse, grasped the thong that trailed his pony, and checked the animal’s flight. He mounted again, but he was now so thickly surrounded by the buffalo that he could not work himself free. The beasts crowded him closer and closer, and the women moaned to see this unknown rider crushed to death. But he leaped from his pony, and with marvelous skill, jumped from one buffalo’s back to another, until he reached safety.

The clouds of dust now drifted to the women. They could see the buffalo still moving frantically, but slowing down, blood pouring from their mouths and nostrils. Their tongues lolled as their hearts and lungs labored, and some stopped and stood still, their sides feathered with arrows. They would gore feebly at passing riders, but soon the dust that they had kicked up settled to their shoulders, and the riders dismounted and began claiming their kill by the markings of their feathers. Drawn by the disaster, some of the cows and bulls that had escaped, returned, and stood stupidly gazing at the flaying and cutting of the carcasses before them, until they too were killed.

To Maria, Nakoa was the hunter who had defied death in the dust. There was no other hunter in the world that day, and when the women finally moved onto the bloody field, she looked for him eagerly.

As the dust finally settled, the shouting and calling of voices began. Women aided each other in finding their husband’s kill; the Tsistiks joined them in the butchering and excitedly argued who was the best hunter; the dogs began to yap and growl furiously over the discarded meat.

Maria saw Nakoa far away from them.

“Nakoa always kill most by-damn buffalo,” Atsitsi growled. “So you have most work.”

“You too,” Maria said grimly.

“Nakoa your man, not mine.”

“You’re still eating!”

“Atsitsi old and tired.”

“You’ll make me cry.”

Nakoa had butchered three buffalo and continued to work far ahead of them. “Why not bury silly cows, and catch up with him quick?” Atsitsi asked, knowing Maria’s eagerness to be with Nakoa.

All day long Maria and Atsitsi carried meat back to the camp, leading the burdened horses and carrying what they could. The sun grew hotter above them and the flies more tenacious in clinging to the darkening meat. Lines of women and loaded horses passed and repassed each other, all stained with blood and sweat, and Maria became too tired to care whether they ever met Nakoa.

They had taken the meat from thirteen butchered cows back to the tipis, and the afternoon was going. The dogs had gorged themselves and fallen asleep in what shade they could find. The field still lay strewn with carcasses and swarms of buzzing flies. As they walked through it, Maria thought she could not take another step.

Nakoa had butchered his last cow and rode to them without Maria’s knowing it. She just looked up and he was there, studying her with his black eyes. Her hair straggled around her perspiring face and when she looked down at her new dress with its bright quills she saw that it was stained with dried blood. She hung her head, not wanting to look at him.

“Maria is tired,” Nakoa said to Atsitsi. “I will take her back to the village. You can bring back the rest of the meat.”

“You crazy, by damn?” Atsitsi screamed. “I old woman!”

“Who still must eat,” Nakoa reminded her gently.

“I no eat fourteen cows!”

“Try her,” Maria said.

“That sweet!” Atsitsi raged at Nakoa “You be with Maria and I prepare meat of half buffalo herd. Why I have to die so soon?”

“Sikapischis will be here tomorrow to help you,” Nakoa replied and lifted Maria to his horse. As they rode away, Atsitsi broke into a frenzy of cursing.

Nakoa held Maria close, yet he did not embrace her. At his touch her strength returned. She wanted to go to his lodge; she just wished she could go to him clean and dainty in her new dress. He left her at Atsitsi’s borrowed tipi, helping her from the horse and riding away without a word. Maria looked after him dumbly. Completely exhausted, she went to her couch, and without even taking off her dress fell into immediate sleep.

Atsitsi woke her up with a cry of rage. “What? What? Why you not in Nakoa’s lodge? Why you here?” She had picked up a piece of wood, and Maria got off her couch in alarm. Atsitsi heaved the wood into the ashes of the fire pit. “God damn!”

The next day, preparing the meat from the hunt, Maria worked harder than she had ever worked in her life. The meat had to be cured before it spoiled, and although this large kill made it unnecessary for the men to seek another herd, there would be at least five days of curing before the camp could break and return to the main village.

There was much to do. Maria started working on the
depouille,
the only animal fat the Blackfoot ate. This special delicacy was tender and sweet, an Indian bread to be eaten with lean and dried meat, and was always carried by war parties. Nakoa had taken from the cows the fat that ran along the backbone from the shoulder blade to the last rib and weighed from five to eleven pounds. Maria dipped it in hot grease for about a minute and hung it inside a lodge to smoke for twelve hours. Once smoked, the
depouille
would keep indefinitely.

Pemmican was another essential for war parties; one pound of it was equal to five pounds of meat. To prepare it, marrow fat was boiled out of the bones, tallow boiled with it, and both were stored away in buffalo bladders. Then the choice parts of the cow were boiled and set out to dry in the sun. When these pieces became hard and dry they were heated until they became oily, and then were pounded with a stone hammer. A paste already made of cherries or other berries, including seeds, would be added to the meat and mixed with the marrow and tallow. The combination was stirred in a trough of buffalo hide, and then stored in parfleche bags. Pemmican could later be eaten from the bags without cooking; it would keep for years. Pemmican and depouille were usually eaten together, and Maria remembered them as the only food she had eaten when Nakoa and the Mutsik brought her from Snake land.

Sikapischis and her family arrived that afternoon. Maria greeted them warmly and then left Sikapischis to work with Atsitsi while she went to the river for more water. She knew how heavy the water paunches would be on the return trail, and she walked along the path out of the village dispiritedly. She could see nothing ahead but dismal days of work, without Nakoa seeking her out even once.

“Maria,” a man said. Startled, Maria looked up at Siksikai. She flushed with embarrassment at seeing him for the first time since the Kissing Dance.

“It’s you,” she said.

“I thought you might know me,” he smiled.

She did not smile in return. “Siksikai,” she said, “I must speak to you with a straight tongue. I am sorry for what I did to you at the Kissing Dance. I am new to the ways of the Indian, and I was blind with rage at Nakoa. I did not mean to choose you as my lover.”

He frowned in anger. “You did not know the meaning of the dance?”

“Anatsa had told me. But I acted in anger at Nakoa. I was foolish, and I am sorry.”

“Why were you feeling anger at Nakoa?”

“Because he had been ignoring me.”