Scarlet Plume, Second Edition (26 page)

All the Yanktons wept. The harsh cries of the braves were like the screams of eagles: “Eeee. Eeee!” The strident shrieks of the squaws were like the yowlings of wild wolves: “Owooh! Owooh!” Even the children screeched in sorrow: “Iiii! Iiii!” Yankton tears glistened in the green grass.

What happened next stunned Judith. Whitebone not only gave away all of Smoky Day’s belongings, he also gave away all of his own, everything, because she was of his family. While two drummers boomed out the slow Giveaway Dance and certain young braves bird-stepped around the drummers in a circle, the women of needy families came by, one by one, to take the gifts from his hand: tepee, lodgepoles, robes, armor, bedding, stores of food, clothes, moccasins, until at last Whitebone, except for the old shiny breechclout he wore, stood naked and alone in the grass. Receiver as well as giver wept unashamedly.

Finally even Judith wept. But she wept for another reason. She had just then come to appreciate fully the meaning of what was done at Blue Mounds when Whitebone went through his village to make sure that the lowliest and poorest of the Yanktons had sufficient to eat, heaping fresh meat and new buffalo skins upon them until they had even more than he did.

“Where does the red man come from,” she cried aloud, “that he gives instead of takes?”

No one answered her.

She thought, “The white man and the red man will never, never get together. One or the other has got to go under.” She shook her head sadly. “I see it coming. The givers shall all be destroyed. Even if there were to be deliberate intermarriage, a mingling of the bloods, the giver shall still be wiped out. It is apparent that the white man’s stronger God loveth the cheerful taker.”

The two drummers struck a new beat, quicker, happier. As if to show that even the needy and the unlucky also had their code of giving, a foursome of the very poorest squaws went about the village retrieving most of Whitebone’s possessions, not Smoky Day’s, and returned them to him. The brown faces of the four poor squaws glowed from within, their black eyes sparkling with happiness at what they were doing.

It bewildered Judith even more. “What fools you are,” she cried aloud again. “This is the very thing that will surely destroy you.”

Scarlet Plume moved in the grass beside her. “You do not consider this a good thing?”

“All I can say is, Jesus Christ himself must have been an Indian. Give, and it shall be given to you. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but give to him who hath need. No wonder Theodosia came to love the red man.”

Later a woman’s society known as the One Only Wives held a feast. Smoky Day was one of those who all her life had been with only one man and thus was an honored member.

6

The Yanktons obeyed Smoky Day’s request and removed to a place known as Where Part Of The River Turns Through A Red Cut In The Land. Judith called the place simply Dell Rapids. A fork of the River Of The Double Bend ran through a deep and beautiful red rock gorge. In one turn the red gorge widened out and formed a natural amphitheater. The amphitheater had a sandy floor and made a perfect spot in which to hide a village. The stream ran slow and clear, and formed many pink swimming holes. The looming columnar walls of the amphitheater were covered with grapevines and scarlet sumac. Plums grew in wild profusion both on top and along the bottom. Farther along, where the amphitheater shaped off into a narrow gorge again, the Yanktons sometimes used the west wall for yet another Buffalo Jump.

Judith was out gathering ripe plums when she became aware that “those” had at last come upon her. She let go a big relieving sigh. “Thank God I am not mother again.” By her reckoning she had been a good week overdue. She had had the whites quite bad the last few days and these she had heard always preceded conception. It had happened the time she’d had Angela.

“All that awful work done to me must have thrown them off. Well, they’re here and thank God for that at least.”

She put aside the parfleche of plums and gathered a lapful of cattails from a swampy spot upriver. She would catch the flow with their tender fluff.

When Judith returned to Whitebone’s lodge she said nothing about her “those.” According to strict Yankton taboo she was required to retire to a retreating lodge or menstruation hut. She made up her mind she was not going to conform to this. She would be obedient to the old chief in some things but not in this. She was from St. Paul, where women knew how to handle “the curse” and still be free like men. The Yankton taboo in this matter belonged back even before the time of the Old Testament. She would cover her “those” with the perfume of juices squeezed from wild flowers. At night she would so arrange it that Whitebone would not find out. Somehow for five nights she would avoid his nosy hands.

She spent the evening getting water, washing out the cooking pot, and mending moccasins. She made a point of presenting a face without guile. The corners of her lips would not give her away. She was the dutiful, seemingly pregnant wife interested in keeping her nest neat and orderly.

Later that evening Walking Voice went about the village handing out invitation sticks to a Virgin’s Feast. It would be held the next day. Everyone went to bed looking forward to a day of showy ceremony and much good eating.

Judith got ready for bed only after she was sure Whitebone was sound asleep. She decided she would go to bed with her dress on. This also was not the usual custom with the Yanktons. But Whitebone was snoring so hard she was sure he would not catch her at it. And she would make certain to get up before he did in the morning. Wearing a dress in bed would help hide her difficulty. She scented herself thoroughly with wild perfumes, then carefully slid under the sleeping robe beside him. She was careful not to let cold air touch him. She was also careful to stay well on her side of the fur bed.

She lay still. In between Whitebone’s slow snores she could hear the gentle regular breathing of Scarlet Plume and Two Two. Tinkling slept soundless. So did Born By The Way. The stick fire slowly turned to ashes. Stars moved across the smoke hole.

The sand under the fur bed for once gave in just the right places and Judith had just about sunk away into the first fluff of sleep, when Whitebone, snorting, awoke with a start.

Judith stiffened awake. Her heart instantly began to pound, shaking her breasts. “Dear Lord,” she breathed to herself, “dear Lord, please let him fall asleep again.”

Whitebone lay very still. Only his breathing appeared to be off. He seemed to be quietly sniffing the air.

“Dear God, please let him fall asleep again.”

Whitebone spoke suddenly. “What is this I smell?”

Judith lay frozen.

“Woman, what is this I smell?”

“Wh-what?”

“I smell the crushed juice of many flowers. Have the mice gotten into the parfleche where the perfumed bear grease is kept?”

“Perhaps.” Judith let herself relax a little.

“Where is the dog Long Claws?”

“She sleeps.”

“Wake her and let her chase the mice away.”

“Ah, she is good for nothing but chasing rabbits. A mouse and a mosquito are all one to her.”

“Hrmm.” Whitebone continued to sniff the air. “It is pleasing to smell all the perfumes, but is it a good thing to waste it all in one night? Perhaps someone should arise and chase away the mice.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Whitebone grumped. “What is this ‘my lord’ you speak of?”

“It is only a manner of speaking among the whites.”

“Wagh. Is this because the white husband believes he has the right to knock down his wife like she might be a warrior?”

Judith recalled the fighting Utterbacks. She could feel her lips smile at the corners. “Perhaps.”

“Hrmm.”

They lay very still, each in their place.

Scarlet Plume and Two Two continued to sleep soundly.

Stars moved across the smoke hole.

Of a sudden, with a grunt, Whitebone rolled over on his side. He reached across and placed a hand on Judith’s belly.

Judith stiffened again.

“Woman,” Whitebone inquired mildly, “are you chilled that you wear a dress in bed?”

Judith quickly seized on the suggestion. She feigned a shiver. “A down draft strikes me from the smoke hole where I lay.”

“Can you not adjust the ears of the lodge to prevent this?”

“It is not a pleasant thought to get up in the cold night.”

Whitebone sniffed the air. This time as he did so his hand slowly stiffened.

Judith held her breath.

Whitebone drew in a long, long breath, his big nose carefully going over every atom of it.

Judith waited.

All of a sudden Whitebone let out a terrified scream. He convulsed into a ball and bounded up. He went up like a dog that her accidentally lain down on hot coals. He tumbled to one side of their bed. He groaned a great groan. He flopped up and down four times, then stiffened out like a board.

Scarlet Plume and Two Two came alive like two startled panthers. Born By The Way let go with a loud bawl. Tinkling threw a handful of bear fat on the fire and immediately the pink embers in the hearth exploded into high dancing flames. The sudden light was dazzling.

Judith was struck dumb. She turned and stared at Whitebone.

Whitebone’s old eyes slowly turned up into his head. His coppery face turned ashen gray. His whole body seemed to be gradually turning to stone.

Scarlet Plume jumped over. He stuck his broad face into Judith’s face. “What have you done to offend our father?” Scarlet Plume’s cold squared lips were those of a hated male.

Never had she seen such outrage in a man’s face. Husband Vince’s rages were laughable by comparison. A hot smell radiated from Scarlet Plume. She recalled her father once saying that when a wild boar really got mad one could smell the mad in him a mile off.

“What have you done to offend our father?” Scarlet Plume cried again.

Tinkling knew. She shrank back from Judith as far as she could on the women’s side.

“Tell us, what have you done to offend our father?” Scarlet Plume reached out as if to shake Judith.

“Do not touch her!” Tinkling cried to Scarlet Plume. Tinkling covered her mouth and her eyes. She shuddered.

Scarlet Plume drew back. “What is this?”

Tinkling whispered, “The white woman has done an evil thing.” Tinkling couldn’t resist throwing a spiteful look at Judith through her fingers.

Scarlet Plume stared at Tinkling. “What evil thing do you speak of? Our father dies and we wish to know what it is that we may save him.”

Tinkling spoke one word. She more hissed it than spoke it.

Scarlet Plume’s eyes opened in terror, and he jumped all the way back to the slanting wall of the tepee. Two Two also jumped back. Both stared at her as if she were some fearsome monster from the other side.

Judith felt horrid. It was her flaunting of a Yankton taboo that had thrown the old man into a seizure. In the eyes of the old chief what she had done was wickedly obscene. For a Yankton man to touch a menstruating woman was to invite some kind of ultimate barbaric curse. In all her life she had never seen grown men show such shock.

Humpneck Tinkling was the first to recover her wits. She ran over and knelt beside Whitebone. She touched his arms, his legs. “He turns cold. Quick, dig a hole under the hearth. The heated sand will restore warmth to his limbs.”

Scarlet Plume dropped to his knees, scooped up the fire with his bare hands and set it to one side, then dug out a shallow trench. Sand flew between his legs like he might be a dog digging for a gopher. Then together Tinkling and Scarlet Plume lifted the stiff chief into the trench. They crossed his arms over his chest and covered him with warm sand. Scarlet Plume quickly painted Whitebone’s face with vermilion to give him the color of seeming health.

Tinkling next snapped around at Judith. She grabbed a knife and cut a slit up the back of the tepee. She held the edges of the slit apart. “Step through this,” she said to Judith. “We cannot let you defile the front door with your going.”

Judith did meekly as she was told. She slipped out into the night.

Tinkling hissed at her. “Stand still until I can attend thee. When we have brought the old father back to life, and we have purified the tepee, then I will help thee put up the separation lodge.” She added more kindly, “Understand this. The Yanktons consider the woman spirit a powerful thing. If it is not kept in bonds it will destroy the man, perhaps even destroy the woman. When blood flows from that place where the child is born, it is a sign of the terrible power for harm in the woman. Therefore you must stay in the separation lodge until all danger is past.”

A picture of home in St. Paul flashed through Judith’s mind. She remembered how ardently she and Mavis had once argued in favor of equal rights for women: the right to vote, the right to own property in their own name, the right to appear in public without a hat, the right to nurse the wounded on a battlefield. In fact, both she and Mavis had taken the extreme feminist point of view in these matters.

A wild, hysterical laugh broke from her. “To think that I once got so excited about all that, and now I’m standing here.” Then she fainted and fell upon the pink sand.

Later, when she came to, she found herself in a little hut alone.

The tepees went to sleep. Only the center council fire burned on the pink sands. Guards dozed in the wolfberry brush on the far hills above the gorge.

The next morning from the darkness of her separation hut, looking out through a slit, Judith witnessed a wonderful thing. It was the unfolding of the Virgin’s Feast in the natural red rock amphitheater. It reminded her of the playhouse in St. Paul. There was the bright light shining down on exotically costumed players, and she was the audience sitting in the dark. Earlier it was explained to the Yanktons that Sunned Hair was temporarily lame and so could not appear for the ceremony.

Walking Voice made the rounds of the tepees after all had taken the day’s purification swim. “The woman known as Four Only wants all to know that her daughter Drowsy Eyes wishes to hold a Virgin’s Feast. Some gossips in the village have spoken bad words about her daughter. The mother wishes to show before all the Yanktons that her daughter is pure. All pure maidens, and all young braves who have killed an enemy but who have not yet lain in the grass with a woman, may eat at this feast. Yanktons, hear me. We worship the virgins. We pray to them. We cannot mistreat a sacred thing. The gods will punish us if we do. Thus it is that as long as our maidens remain virgins the spirit of the Buffalo Woman will send us much meat. This is true. I have spoken.”