Scarlet Plume, Second Edition (39 page)

The paired glowing eyes wavered, then flicked out. There was a sound of paw pads leaving the ground with a heavy push, followed by a thump. Then the glowing eyes came on again, a dozen feet back from the doorway. The puma had leaped in retreat on hearing Scarlet Plume’s strong voice.

“Come, great one. We wait.”

The puma roared. The sound of its deep wrawling was like a scraping in the bottom of a great barrel.

Scarlet Plume took Judith gently by the arms and lifted her back into her own bed. He threw the wolfskin over her and tucked her in. Then, naked, he padded over on hands and knees and stirred up the embers. He dropped a ball of antelope fat into the red ashes, and instantly a flame shot up, tall, like a small bolt of red lightning leaping out of the earth. The whole interior of the lodge lit up, so bright that for a moment there were no shadows. Scarlet Plume threw a handful of dry twigs onto the flame, then placed a dozen sticks on it, neatly, in the manner of a squaw setting up tepee poles. The single flame gradually spread into a corona of steady flames.

Again Scarlet Plume called out, firmly. “Come, i-nmu-tan-ka. It is warm here. We wait.”

More growling. The puma sounded as if he was sitting in the path to the pool, blocking it. His paired eyes burned bluish disks at them.

“Come, my brother, be not afraid. In this lodge there are only Yankton friends.”

The paired eyes burned orange, then violet.

Still buck naked, Scarlet Plume settled down before the hearth. He dug out his red gossip pipe and lit up. He had himself a leisurely smoke.

Goose pimples prickled out all over Judith’s skin.

They waited.

An hour later dawn broke over the high bluff. It came swiftly, very clear and very cool. Gold leaves drifted down the grassy slopes of the ravine.

Yellow leaves also fell on the big cat where it lay crouched directly in the path to the pool. The puma faced the door, its big forepaws placed together in front of its chest, its rear legs doubled under its belly and ready to spring. The fur over the body of the cat was the color of fall hay, a honey brown. Its long cylindrical tail curled and snapped and curled. A powdery white glowed over its throat and inside its round ears, and a patch of black quivered on either side of its muzzle. Its white whiskers were long. The puma was in the prime of its life.

Scarlet Plume spoke up from where he sat naked before his fire. His phallus had awakened a little. “Yeh-he-toe. I see that the great cat does not wish us to take the customary morning bath. Perhaps the terrible cat thinks he will break his fast by eating a bad smeller. Well, some big cats are known to fancy strong meat early in the morning.”

Judith couldn’t help but worship Scarlet Plume. He was once again the serene, handsome brave.

Scarlet Plume put aside his pipe and got to his feet. He cried, “Hoppo! Up!” and stretched to his full naked height. Then he stepped into his clout and thrust his knife in his belt.

Judith sat up. “My husband?”

“Shhh.” Scarlet Plume smiled down at her. “It is fated.” He went over and stood in the doorway.

Judith, wolfskin tight around her body, scrambled out of bed to watch.

The big cat stared at Scarlet Plume, switching and snapping its tail from side to side.

Scarlet Plume spoke as if consulting aloud with a friend. “Pumas have never been known to attack a grown man. Well, perhaps this puma has been given a special vision.”

The cat wrawled at him in a deep, low voice.

“Perhaps i-nmu-tan-ka fancies the meat of a wakan white woman. Houw! It will be a thing to see.”

The cat’s tail continued to snap back and forth.

Scarlet Plume picked up his bow and arrows. “Hoka-hey! It is time to fight!” He stepped outside and settled into a crouching position. “I see that my arrows already cry for the blood.” He nocked an arrow on the bowstring, lifted the bow diagonally across the front of his body, and with a single fluid motion of flexible wrists drew the bow deep and released the arrow, the bow turning over in his hand after the shot.

The arrow flicked the puma’s round right ear. The puma came off the ground in hairy outrage. Back humped, hair all bristled, the big cat advanced a few steps, then crouched down again.

Scarlet Plume also advanced a few steps, and once more settled into a crouching position. He reached for a second arrow. “Begone, cat. Run, cat. This arrow will kill thee. The first arrow was only sent in warning that this Yankton has also had a vision. If you will not be his guest, then this Yankton is prepared to defend his lodge. Houw!”

The cat charged. It snapped off the ground. It came at Scarlet Plume so dazzling quick that Scarlet Plume did not have time to nock the second arrow.

Judith screamed.

Scarlet Plume rose to meet the onslaught, powerful big toes heaving him up, bow and arrow dropping away.

Hands outstretched, he caught the cat’s forepaws in midair, high over his head. He almost buckled under the shock of the big cat’s hit. His knife fell out of his belt. Yet Scarlet Plume held up. With all his force, rippling, he held the cat away to keep it from pulling his head forward and biting him in the back of the neck. He heaved himself hard around in a quick tight swinging circle, taking the puma with him. Before the cat could recover, he whirled it around yet again, and then, with a folding motion, threw it on its back. He came down on the cat’s stomach with all his driving weight. His belt broke and his clout fell off. With great effort he pinned the cat’s forepaws down on the ground wide apart.

The big cat roared in outrage.

Scarlet Plume screamed defiance.

They wrawled at each other, wild, necks humped, ready to strike and bite. Tooth and claw, it became a battle of emmaddened backbones.

Judith screeched.

Scarlet Plume hunched himself as far back and as far down as he could on the cat’s belly. He pushed his buttocks hard against the cat’s clawing rear legs, forcing the rear legs back at the hip joints, keeping them from tearing up his back. At the same time Scarlet Plume also had to lean forward as far as he could to keep the cat’s front paws pinned to the ground. He pressed his chin hard into the puma’s ratching breastbone. Scarlet Plume’s eyes glittered like a serpent’s, black, implacable.

The muscles of the two bodies battling were like two alien families of snakes intertwined and struggling mad.

Scarlet Plume held hard.

The big cat strained to break free, spitting and snapping and roaring.

Once, in the middle of all the coiling and writhing, the puma managed to get in one good bite. Its mouth caught Scarlet Plume’s wrist like a vise. Scarlet Plume gave a tremendous jerk and managed to wrest it free. His wrist bled.

They writhed and wrestled and writhed. The puma was strong. Scarlet Plume was strong.

At last Scarlet Plume saw that the puma would win if he didn’t do something to end it immediately.

He whispered to his helper. He listened to hear what his helper had to say.

Then he moved. He let go the cat’s left forepaw and with his right hand caught the cat powerfully around the throat. He squeezed with all his might. His shoulder muscles came up in a hump. His thumb dug in, deep, deep, until, of a sudden,
pungg
, his thumbnail punched through the live hide under the fur.

The puma worked him over with its free paw. It clawed his shoulders. It cut deep gashes in his taut cheek.

Scarlet Plume shouted and shouted. “Hoka-hey! Hoka-hey!”

Slowly the puma’s hoarse wrawling fell away to a choked gagging sound.

Scarlet Plume gave the puma’s throat yet another powerful squeeze. “Today is your die day! Die!”

At last the puma went limp. Its head fell to one side, its big red mouth hung open, its popped eyes twisted up.

Scarlet Plume jumped up and back. He was free. His eyes, bloodshot, rolled wild. The knob of his aroused phallus gleamed with a silken purple sheen. He gave a whoop of joy at his marvelous escape. “Hoka-hey!”

Judith pitched forward from her kneeling position, her face landing in the sandy path.

Scarlet Plume saw that the puma still twitched. He grabbed a club from a pile of firewood near the door of their lodge and beat the puma over the head. He beat it and beat it until its brains poured out of its eyeholes like watery gruel. His phallus bounced with every swing of the club.

Judith rolled over on her back and looked up at him.

Scarlet Plume placed his foot on the chest of the puma and cried the death cry for the puma. It was wild, haunting. The cry hung quavering on the air. He cried large tears.

“Husband.”

Scarlet Plume picked up his knife and cut a slit in the chest of the puma and removed the heart. He held the puma’s heart up to the skies. “Like parts strengthen like parts!” He sliced up the heart and ate it raw, all of it. “Now the heart of the terrible cat lives within me.”

“Husband.”

Again Scarlet Plume knelt and quickly, deftly, skinned out the puma. He offered up the skin to the six great directions. He spread the golden-brown skin upon the grass to dry. When he finished he was sheathed in blood. He himself resembled a skinned puma. “I am all blood!” he cried. “Yet the great puma is dead. He-han! To that place that far!”

Judith closed her eyes.

There was a hoarse rutting cry and Scarlet Plume fell upon Judith. Blood touched her everywhere. His big phallus lay between them. He made a motion as if to break her neck with a big bite, as a puma might; instead restrained himself and bit her lightly. He tore the wolfskin from her.

“No!” she cried, gasping at all the blood. “No, no.”

He was full of biting. He play-bit her over the cheeks, on the nose, over the brows. He nipped her chocolate teats. He play-snarled in her ears. He pretended to eat her from head to foot. He was so wild his face was luminous.

“Don’t.”

His eyes closed over. Blood dripped from his neck over her white belly. He bit her lightly over her golden brush.

She jumped under his intimate biting, then bit him back in his torn neck. She bit him so hard she started fresh blood.

He cried aloud. He laughed crazily. He bit her in the belly.

Again she bit him in the neck, deep, drawing more blood.

He placed his hand on her tufted pubes and thrust in a finger, searching, deep. “He-han!”

“No, no,” she cried, yet pushing her brush against his strong hand, writhing and wriggling back and forth on the sandy path. “No, no.”

He bit her sharply in the neck under the ear.

“Don’t hurt me,” she cried.

He bit her under the other ear.

She was afraid. Yet she was wild with joy. “I am all blood with thee,” she cried. “We have overcome the terrible cat together.”

An urgent wrawling entered his crying. He took hold of her ankles with powerful copper hands, threw her legs apart. He knelt between her knees. He thrust in. Rutting grunts shook his hard belly. “He-han!”

“No, no,” she cried.

He clutched her about the hips. He bounced her on the ground.

There was no hurt. What he was impelled to give she was willing to receive. “Yes, yes!” she cried. In turn she bounced him in the air. They were all blood. She clasped his slippery body to her. “Yes, yes.”

His red belly strained against her white belly.

She loved him with her whole body and soul. A hunger as from protoplast times drew them together. They were joined again. There was no greater delight on earth than the delight of giving him an urgent quick go-up for his equally urgent strong go-down. There was no greater giving on earth than the lovely mutually urgent giving of fleshes, utterly. She had a hot ring of fire for his probing arrogant stalk of flesh. Her hot ring clasped catchingly as his phallus slid up and down into her, again, again, again.

“The Yankton man commands!” he cried.

“The Yankton woman entreats!” she cried.

Once more her womb became like an animal in her belly. Clutching joy returned to her. She rose, rose. Lightning darted through her brain. Then, once again, sudden knotlike spasms worked in her belly. There was no stopping them. They rode through her flesh. A blinding light rose out of her belly and lighted up her eyes on the inside.

The cry of fulfillment sounded from the two of them at the same time. “He-han!” “O Lord! My lord!”

He lay upon her, languid. She supported him, languid. Films of blood glistened on their bodies.

“When I am not in love I am nothing.”

They took the morning bath together, naked, in the running water below the pool. The stream ran pink.

She treated his wounds with herbs and scented venison lard.

He smiled in sleepy appreciation.

At last, finished, he picked her up by the neck and ankles and carried her into their lodge.

“We marry?” he said.

“We marry,” she said.

He laid her gently on the wolfskin. The morning sun shone through the door. He lay beside her. He nuzzled her. She kissed him.

Presently the knob of his phallus began to swell again and slowly it emerged from the folds of its foreskin. They made love once more, this time gentle. His flesh was firm and probing. Her flesh was delicate and yielding.

The sweet fit came upon them both at the same time.

“It wasn’t quite the same,” she whispered up into the sunlight. “But in a way it was even better.”

They slept the whole day through, skin to skin, red next to white.

She taught him to kiss.

Scarlet Plume thought it an outlandish custom. He preferred crying over one in the old way and stroking the hair. His heavy lips were almost an encumbrance to kissing. He saw how her clear blue eyes melted into milky love when she pressed her partially opened lips over his lips. Yet he felt no melting when he tried it.

“Come, brave husband,” she said, sliding her white leg over his red leg, dropping her sunned hair around his red-brown face in a rain of gold. “Try it the white-man way. This way. Kiss. See? Kiss, and in a moment you will see a falling star even in broad daylight.”

He laughed a wide laugh. “It makes the end of my nose hot.”

She laughed in turn. She gave his high nose a pull. She ran her fingertips along the edges of his exquisitely carven lips. “Yes, your nose is warm. Perhaps that is why your lips remain cold.” She took his hand and got him to touch her nose and then her lips. “Do you not see? My lips are warm and my nose is cold.”