Thunder Rolling in the Mountains (10 page)

It was almost dusk when Swan Necklace spotted an antelope searching for grass in the snow. He aimed carefully. The shot echoed through the quiet air and the antelope fell dead.

We ran to where it lay, its blood making a scarlet pool on the snow. Swan Necklace knelt and began to skin the antelope. I pulled out my knife to help him.

Suddenly a hunting party rode over the hill. They galloped toward us. The snow muffled the sound of the horses' hoofs, but the jingle of their bridles sounded loud in my ears. I knew by their rawhide saddles that they were Assiniboins.

My heart beat like a woodpecker pounding on a lodge pole. The Assiniboins were a fierce tribe and made many wars. They had never been our friends. Were they helping the Blue Coats as the Cheyennes and the Crows and the Flatheads had done?

The horses stopped beside us. There were five riders and five extra horses. They had been on a long hunt, and two of the horses carried meat and hides.

Their leader raised his arm in greeting. He had hi
been on this earth as many snows as my father. Strips of ermine showed white in his braids. His beaded moccasins were made of soft elkskin. Beneath his saddle was a fine blanket of red wool and otter skins. It was a chiefs blanket. Across his saddle lay an old musket, the kind most of our warriors used before we picked up rifles on the battlefield.

The other four men had no guns. They carried bows made from the horns of mountain sheep. They must have traded with our people for them, because only the Ne-mee-poo made such bows.

The leader made signs to say that all the tribes were brothers. He touched his chest and said his name was Red Elk.

We signed back that we were friends and said our names. We signed that we were fleeing from the Blue Coats and on the way to join Sitting Bull.

Red Elk nodded. He spoke a few words of our language. With signs and words he told us that the hunting party was on its way to a nearby Assiniboin village. We were welcome to join them.

His words were good but I did not trust him. When Red Elk saw our fine rifles that had once belonged to white soldiers, his eyes gleamed. His eyes followed them as we put them across our saddles. His eyes stayed on them all the way to the Assiniboin village.

R
ED
E
LK RODE
into the village. Tipis clustered near a stream and fires burned bright beside them. A vast herd of ponies was tethered beyond the tipis. Women, children, and old men shouted greetings. They came to look at the load of meat and they came to look at us. They stared hard.

A child poked Swan Necklace's foot wrappings with a curious finger. A woman touched my elkskin skirt. The leather was white as snow and it had taken many suns to sew on the blue quills. She rubbed the skirt between her fingers, then frowned when she saw the ragged edges. I was glad that I had cut away the fringe to stay our hunger. It saved my skirt.

Red Elk motioned to Swan Necklace and me. We got off the horses and followed him to his tipi. Children pointed at us as we walked through the village. Dogs barked. I wondered what the Assiniboin would do with us.

At Red Elk's dpi, Alighting Dove, his wife, was cooking. She was a small woman and moved quickly, like a bird. She speared a chunk of antelope meat and placed it over the fire. In a large pot, kouse mush bubbled. The good smell made me feel weak.

Swan Necklace ate with Red Elk and Charging Hawk, his son. Alighting Dove and I brought them food.

Charging Hawk was a young warrior. He had more snows than Swan Necklace but he did not have a wife. He was short and thick through the chest. Pieces of shell from the Land of the Great Waters gleamed green and blue and silver in his braids. He wore fringed leggings and a buckskin shirt trimmed with elk's teeth. On each arm were many copper bracelets.

Red Elk told Swan Necklace that we were a long day's walk from the Old Lady's country. If we started before the first sun, we would be there in darkness. Swan Necklace nodded. He used signs to tell Red Elk about the surrender and Red Elk said he had seen our people begin a long march toward the rising sun.

After the men had eaten, Alighting Dove and I made our meal. My hunger was so great that I ate with unseemly haste. I saw her watching me and ducked my head with shame. Then I chewed slowly until my hunger was gone.

Alighting Dove looked at my worn moccasins and pulled a new pair from a pack. I thanked her with
signs and she patted me on the shoulder. She seemed kind.

Charging Hawk gave Swan Necklace a pair of moccasins and an old shirt and leggings. When Swan Necklace put them on, the sleeves barely covered his elbows and the leggings ended just below his knees. Red Elk and his son laughed at the sight.

I was beginning to forget my fear and slept well that night in the tent of Red Elk.

The morning sky was streaked with red. We started off before the sun. Alighting Dove gave us a packet of food and Red Elk gave us ten bullets for our rifles.

We had walked only a short way from the village when I heard a footstep behind us. That was all. There was one more step, then a knife flashed and Swan Necklace lay on the ground with a deep gash in his neck.

I turned quickly and saw Charging Hawk wiping the blood from his knife. My rifle was not loaded. Before I could pull the knife from my belt, I felt a noose slip around my neck. It drew tight and the world went black.

I opened my eyes. Above me was the wall of Red Elk's tipi. My ankles were tied together and so were my wrists. I looked around.

Alighting Dove sat next to the opening. She was sewing red and blue beads on a moccasin.

I shut my eyes and pretended I was not awake. I
thought hard. I remembered the look in Red Elk's eyes when he saw our rifles. I knew Swan Necklace was dead. I wondered why I still lived, but I did not care. It made no difference now if they killed me.

The shadows were long when Alighting Dove shook me. I looked at her with eyes of hate but said nothing.

She untied my ankles and wrists and led me down to the stream. I could not run away because she held fast to the rawhide around my arm.

When I was ready to leave, she touched me over my heart and touched her eyes and then her heart. She signed that she felt my grief. Her fingers were gentle and so were her eyes.

Tears spilled out of my eyes and ran down my cheeks. I could not speak.

Alighting Dove led me to the place where Swan Necklace lay dead. She signed that I might bury him. I wrapped my love in our wedding blanket. On his chest I placed his war whistle, which had protected him in battle but did not save him from death. I laid him in a shallow grave and chanted a song of mourning. The death of Swan Necklace had taken my heart away. In my breast where my heart once beat was a piece of cold stone.

F
OR SEVEN SUNS I
stayed in the tipi of Red Elk. I was not permitted to go outside unless Alighting Dove held the rawhide lead. At night I was tethered to a tipi pole like a horse.

The rifles that Red Elk had taken from us were always before my eyes. He wrapped the barrels in antelope hide and placed them against the wall of the tipi. All day I looked at them and all day I thought of the treachery that had led to the death of Swan Necklace.

At first I did not know why my life was spared. Red Elk paid no attention to me. He looked through me and never spoke. Alighting Dove was kind but never asked me to work. Yet a captive woman is not allowed to be idle.

I listened to their talk. After a few suns some of their words had meaning. I did not let them know how many Assiniboin words I had learned.

From their talk at night I discovered that Charging Hawk once had a wife. She had died three snows before. She was big with child and her baby died with her. For three snows Charging Hawk had grieved and looked at no other woman, even though Red Elk urged him to take a new wife.

Now Charging Hawk had plans for me. He found me more pleasing than any of the Assiniboin women.

Their words told me why Charging Hawk spent much time in the dpi, something warriors did not do in good weather. He sat on the side making arrows and watching me out of the corner of his eye. If I stared at him, he grinned foolishly.

Soon Charging Hawk had filled a quiver with arrows, each one as long as his arm to the tips of his fingers. I could tell they were not war arrows, because they had narrow blades so that they could be pulled out of the animal's flesh and used again. Arrows meant for battle had short, broad tips, with hooks on them so that they stuck tightly and tore the flesh when pulled.

On the seventh sun, Charging Hawk oiled his hair with bear grease and wrapped his braids in otter fur. From his ears hung ornaments of polished metal. He put on his finest clothes. His buckskin shirt was decorated with green porcupine quills. From the shoulder straps hung strands of hair from scalps he had taken.
On the back was painted a red hand, the sign that he had killed another warrior in hand-to-hand combat. At his throat was a necklace of enormous bear claws.

From my seat beside the fire I watched Charging Hawk place a fox skin on a pole some distance away. He walked to a clearing on the other side of the tipi. When he was certain I looked at him, he pulled a handful of arrows from the quiver at his belt. There were as many arrows as fingers on his two hands. Quickly he shot the arrows, his hands moving so fast that they blurred. Before the first had hit the fox skin, the last was moving through the air. All the arrows hit the skin in a spot no larger than my hand.

Without speaking, Charging Hawk plucked the arrows from the pole and marched off. He had shown me his skill as a marksman. I could be certain that those in his tipi would never want for meat.

That night Alighting Dove told me that Charging Hawk wished to marry me. She said that I was lucky. Most captive women became slaves, but as the wife of Charging Hawk I would be an Assiniboin.

Charging Hawk was a great warrior and a skillful hunter, but I felt only hatred for him. Now I must become his wife.

After that day Alighting Dove gave me work to do, but she always worked beside me. She watched me closely and showed me the Assiniboin way to roast
roots and dry meat. She showed me how they stored their dried food for winter. She did many things in the Ne-mee-poo way, but some were different.

I learned how to cook meat as the Assiniboins did. Alighting Dove showed me how to dig a hole in the ground and line it with rawhide. She filled the hole with water and put a big chunk of buffalo in it. Into the water she dropped large, red hot stones from the fire. She kept changing the stones until the water boiled and the meat cooked. Now I knew why her people were called Assiniboins, "stone boilers."

Suns passed and winter came. The snow lay deep on the ground. Alighting Dove helped me make a dress of elkskin. Like my old dress, it was white and a fringe hung from the skirt. But my old dress had long-fringed sleeves and beautiful sky blue quills across the shoulders. The new dress had no sleeves. Instead there was a beaded skin cape that covered the tops of my arms. From beneath the cape hung many ermine tails. The soft fur would keep me warm in the coldest weather. I also had white leggings and moccasins.

As we worked, Alighting Dove told me about her son. He was so swift, she said, that he could run down a buffalo without a horse. He was so strong that he could lift a grizzly bear above his head. He was so brave that he did not hide behind rocks or trees in
battle, but rode up to the enemy and dared them to fire at him.

I bowed my head and kept silent. He was also a man without shame, I thought. He had eaten with Swan Necklace and slept in the same tipi. Yet he killed his guest to get a rifle.

When the dress was finished, Alighting Dove called me to the fire. She motioned for me to sit down. Then she took a bone needle and held it in the flame until it glowed. Swiftly, she grabbed my ear and thrust the needle through.

I screamed with pain and grabbed for my ear.

Alighting Dove caught my hand. She shook her head and motioned for me to be still.

Three bright drops of blood fell on my fingers.

Alighting Dove placed a greased stick in the hole to keep it open. Then she did the same to the other ear.

This time I sat quietly and did not make a sound, even when the hot needle went through my ear.

With words and signs, Alighting Dove told me that all Assiniboins had holes in their ears. When the holes were healed I could marry Charging Hawk.

My ears healed too fast. Several times I picked at the wounds to keep them raw. In spite of all I could do, the redness disappeared and the flesh was smooth.

The Assiniboins held a great feast to celebrate the wedding of their chief's son. Fires blazed in the camp.
Drums beat, whistles shrilled, and flutes made soft noises.

After the feasting and dancing and singing, Charging Hawk and I would go to a new tipi. The skins that covered it were painted with buffalo and butterflies, kingfishers and antelope. When I looked at it, I thought of Swan Necklace and my heart was sad.

My sorrow did not show. I put on my new clothes. From my ears hung bangles of silver and blue stones brought from lands far to the south. Alighting Dove said they had cost Charging Hawk three horses.

Because I had no parents to exchange gifts with them, Red Elk and Alighting Dove stood on either side of me and asked for the Great Spirit's blessing. At my feet Charging Hawk laid a beautiful ermine blanket, as white as snow and as soft as a cloud. No one in the tribe had such a beautiful blanket.

"This is our marriage blanket," said Charging Hawk.

"It is beautiful," I said, though my lips were so stiff it was hard to form the Assiniboin words.

Charging Hawk grasped my hands while Red Elk spoke of the wife's duty to her husband and the husband's duty to his wife. He asked the Great Spirit to send us many sons.

The men nodded and the women smiled.

Someone filled a stone pipe with tobacco and
passed it around. Each man took a deep breath and handed it to his neighbor.

Charging Hawk drew deeply on the pipe and blew out the smoke. Then he got to his feet and began to dance. He sang to the beat of the drum and danced about the circle of seated men. He grasped one of the warriors by the hand and pulled him to his feet. Together they danced and sang. One by one, the other men joined them. At last all the men were dancing and singing. The women clapped their hands.