Then she began to pull out bedding and extra clothes that were not burned beyond use and put them in a pile. Big Badger was looking through the mess for tools and cooking gear. They put what was usable at the far end of the camp and covered it with extra robes. There were not many lodgepoles left. Pronghorn would have to move the camp to a place with lots of trees.
Wild Plum found the old blue coat that Sacajawea cherished, but there was nothing else to be found except some small blue beads and a couple of hawk’s bells around the burned hole that had been her tepee.
By late afternoon, clouds had come rushing over the sky. Big Badger made a small fire with twigs and dry grass. They ate some pemmican they had found in a leather sack half-buried in mud beside the stream. They slept. When they woke, the fire was out and a fine mist was falling.
The hunting party came back through a driving rain. The night was black and wild around them, and that was good. There was no chance of being seen.
Their scouts had seen the taibo, white men, and they had been able to travel around them without being seen. They were tired. They had ridden hard and long and with heavy loads. Their hunt had been successful. But they were shocked at the desolation and destruction in their camp. They were disheartened at the news that all the extra horses and mules were gone. The women began to make temporary shelters from the scorched hides and robes that Sacajawea had piled up. No one complained that someone else was using her robe. They were too shocked and worn out. They worked together to make a dry place for the children to sleep, then builtthemselves temporary lean-tos. The smell of smoke and wet, burned leather was strong in their noses that night.
Spring and Hides Well asked Sacajawea to sleep in their shelter. It was small but warm, with the men on one side and the women on the other, making no space at all in the middle. They all slept fitfully, listening to the water run down the lean-to and drip off the ghost-white sycamores.
They woke late. The rain had stopped, and the hides were damp and steaming. They loaded the scorched remnants of the village onto the shivering horses and moved out, seeking a fresh spring camp.
The evening winds blew across the purpled plains. The pecans that lined the muddy stream whispered in their dark branches. Doves called softly to each other. Sacajawea cooed softly to her small son, Ticannaf. She had found peace again. She and Jerk Meat were together, and the village was whole again in a sheltered place where the food supply was good. No one spoke of the Time of Blackened Tepees.
Sometimes scouts came in with reports of white hunters in the base area of the mountains and along the wide river. Pronghorn did not understand how the presence of the white men could be so widespread.
Jerk Meat delighted in Sacajawea’s changing moods. Sometimes she was like a small child, and then she would be altogether a woman, as complete and as complex as a woman could be, passionate and eager, strong as he was, sometimes so violent that he fell back drained and aching with the hollow pain of his love for her. Sometimes she was almost like another man; they walked and hunted together, and it was not correct to say he loved to be with her in the forest. She was the forest. She was everything he saw and listened to and smelled. She was the same as the birds and the wild animals they found. She was the waters of the stream and she was Mother Earth.
He learned laboriously to speak her broken English and French, the love phrases first, and then in the depth and extent of her passion with him she forgot the alien expressions and reverted to her own Shoshoni tongue. He was studious and eager in his quest to find thatwhich she loved best when they were together, and it was not long before she forgot that she had ever known a man before him.
When he went on raids he came back and told her everything he had done during the time he was away. As she listened gravely, he found himself remembering unimportant little things he thought would amuse her and in some way bridge these short periods of separation. He pictured his world as being filled with people and events of only minor importance; he wanted her to know, as he knew, that his lodge and his life was with her.
And she was as full of gossip when he came to her as he was. He listened to all the things she told him with great soberness.
One night they entered their tepee, and, seeing Ticannaf asleep, she slipped out of her clothes and felt the quickness in Jerk Meat. She could never get over her feeling that there was something of the untamed animal in him. He pawed at the earth in pretense of tackling a black bear alone with only his hunting knife. His hand moved toward the unseen beast. Quickly he plunged the knife at the throat. He made the death roar of a bear deep in his throat. He pantomimed butchering the bear and offering a choice bit of meat to the east, west, north, and south. He pretended to shove the meat into his mouth. He wiped his hands on his bare thighs and chest.
“Woman, wash me!” he commanded.
She brought the buffalo paunch full of warm water and poured it over him. “I will get more.” But he grabbed her up in his arms and danced around with her on the muddied ground of the tepee.
“My Little Fox, my woman. Together we live.”
Neither cared about the muddy floor as they danced until they fell. They rolled until they were wedged against a tepee pole and a leather storage box.
Later, lying next to her, half-asleep, he asked if they could revisit the place where they had spent their first days and nights.
“You know it should never be,” she said.
“Why not? For us?”
“Ai, for us, but if we do all these things that webelieve are all right for us, and others do the things they think are all right for them—no one will obey the tribal laws and there will be no respect for anything.”
“You are getting older and wiser, Little Fox.”
“So—we can think of that time,” she added, “but we must not try to relive it or go there.”
He stroked her body. “I thought about you all the time I was in San Fernandez trading with the Mexicans.”
“Are there pretty women there?”
“No, I can see no pretty women but here, Pajarita.”
“You call me Little Bird?”
“Ai, you are beautiful and your voice is music. Remember the times you played the metal mouth box, the harmonica? What sounds! Would you like me to trade for another in Mexico so that you can sing our papoose to sleep?”
“But Little Bird? Why?”
“Oh, Pajarita! I am so much in love with you.”
Softly she said, “That was my girlhood name.”
“Oh,” he said, smiling. “It is a most suitable name. I should have thought of it before. I shall always call you Little Bird. You are my Bird Woman.” Then his eyes shone and he teased, “Still, you are foxy at times.” There was laughter in his voice. “Why did they not notice that also when you were a girl?” He kissed the soft part of her neck.
“It is good here,” she whispered into his ear, holding his hand very tightly over her heart. “There is nothing between us, nothing. Remember how you said we would be just one, you and I? That is how we are. You and I know it is the custom not to make love from the moment we are sure of making a new life until the child is weaned. Yet we have never heeded this custom.”
“Ai, customs—we have broken many, you and I.”
“What about others? I have thought about that.”
“Perhaps—no one talks.”
He lifted her chin and kissed her.
By late summer Sacajawea had a papoose strapped to her back. The child was named Surprise, because she was the first female grandchild for Pronghorn and Hides Well.
One afternoon as Sacajawea added wild parsnips to her cooking pot, she looked up and saw how things seemed stained a sickly yellow by a weird cloud light. “I hope there is no more rain in those dirty gray clouds,” she said.
“We ought to get some nice hide for moccasins tomorrow if this heavy buffalo sign means anything,” said Jerk Meat, unconcerned about the coloring over everything.
Wounded Buck wandered by, then stop
ped to talk and smoke with Jerk Meat. He swatted his arm. “That buffalo gnat—” He looked around for a stone, found one, knocked out the dottle from his pipe, blew through the stem to get the spittle clear, and started again. “The buffalo gnat is a no-see-him—no bigger than a speck of dust in the tail of a man’s eye. He will bite you on the hands and face and make you think someone is poking at you with a burning stick. Or maybe with porcupine needles. He will crawl under your shirt and leggings and in your moccasins and pinch you until he is full and fat with your blood. He will leave a bump as big as the mound on the front of a prairie dog’s hole”—he held up his thumb to show the actual size—“and as sore as a moccasin blister.”
“I’ve been eaten by some in my life—it was nothing,” said Jerk Meat.
“No, by themselves they are nothing, but in clouds or swarms thick enough to choke a mule, they are something.”
“Like what?” asked Jerk Meat, scratching himself.
“Like”—Wounded Buck stretched the statement long—“like causing the horses to stampede, run wild in all four directions.” He pointed four ways.
The cloud of gnats drifted in shortly after the Quohadas had eaten their evening meal. For several hours the people in robes, the horses at the pickets, and the loose herd, tail-slapped, bit, brayed, scratched, cursed, or groaned—each in his own way fighting off the waves of invisible insects.
After a little letup came a second, thicker horde out of the night sky. The suffering of the Quohadas and their animals became more intense. Ever the camp dogs yipped.
Jerk Meat’s face was a beefsteak of welts, his hands swollen and puffed until they could scarcely open and close, yet when he went out to the horses with some of the other men, he found he had just begun to suffer. There was a fearful whining hum of the tiny winged invaders, and the mules were braying and kicking, the horses whinnying, and the children crying. Ticannaf tried to stay under his robe, but it did no good. The baby, Surprise, kept up an incessant screaming, her tiny eyelids swollen shut. Sacajawea found it was all she could do to keep from screaming herself. She wished for rain, snow—anything to stop these invisible stingers. She tried keeping Surprise under a robe, but it was too warm and the baby cried. She scratched and thought she must be going insane as the hum became louder.
A third swarm hit the camp. The horses broke before it to go plunging and whinnying off into the night with the braying mules, the hammering drumfire of their panicky hooves rising briefly above the ear-ringing hum of the insects and the screaming, helpless curses of their human pursuers.
Then there was nothing but the continued whine of the whirling black host muffling the bitter profanity of the weary, nerve-worn Quohadas.
The morning following the gnat stampede was spent in riding into prairie draws and gullies, rounding up what was to be found of the horses. Several of them were so swollen and totally blinded that the men shot them. They had lost half the herd.
The people were hideous with puffed, inflamed faces, splitting lips, bleeding ears and noses. Some of them, too, were actually blind, their eyes swollen to sightless slits.
Surprise’s eyes and mouth were so badly swollen that she could not nurse. On the seventh day, her fever burned so hot that her small body could not be cooled. Her stomach cramped, and her screams turned to moans. Sacajawea made a salve with squashed yucca leaves and rubbed it on the infant’s face, arms, and shoulders. This was as good a remedy as any. It was simple and did not cost anything. Hides Well came in and questioned the salve. She thought perhaps it lacked authority, and she wanted to call the Medicine Man,
Kicking Horse. Sacajawea said she could not imagine what else Kicking Horse could do, and anyway, he was busy applying salves to others with swollen faces.
The news of the baby’s illness traveled quickly among the tepees, for sickness was second only to hunger as the enemy of the Quohadas. And some said softly, “It is a shame to lose so many babies. It brings any mother to her knees.” Some of the women nodded and went to Jerk Meat’s tepee. They crowded in and make little comments on the sadness of sickness affecting such a small one, and they said, “She is in the hands of the Great Spirit.” An old woman with swollen hands squatted down beside Sacajawea to try to give her aid if she could, and comfort if she could not.
Kicking Horse hurried in, scattering the women like prairie hens. He took the child and examined her and felt her head. “I will try,” he said, “I will try my best, but I have little hope.” He placed the down from a dried milkweed pod on the baby’s feet to give her power for running later in life. He shook his rattle and squatted by the unconscious child. Twice he spread his spittle on her closed eyelids and prayed deeply. She died before the sun reached its midpoint in the sky.
Again Sacajawea was engulfed by grief. She was afraid to be alone. She begged Jerk Meat to take her hunting, on raids, anywhere. She cried, “Do not leave me alone with my thoughts.” She pleaded with Jerk Meat to let her go to Mexico. “I will skin your animals and pack your meat. I will be no burden. Spring has already told me Ticannaf can stay with her.” She knew that with the concentration required by physical effort, time passed rapidly. It was the passage of time that would heal her broken heat.
“My Little Bird, you are a fox today,” said Jerk Meat, picking at anything to bring strength back to his fragile woman. She had always been obedient and respectful and cheerful and patient, but now she was none of these. She could stand fatigue and hunger better than most men, but now she would not eat and she was constantly tired. She could arch her back in childbirth with hardly a cry, but this grief made her weep until her eyes stayed red and swollen.
“I was wondering,” said Jerk Meat hopefully, “how
I would get all the meat packed and put on the one extra horse I am taking. Now I have the answer. I will take two extra horses and you.”
“Ai-eee!” she cried. “I am happy. Thank you.”
The next morning they started, passing old buffalo wallows, shallow ponds with a few puddles of muddy water. The water was fouled with green scum and dead flies. It smelled bad. Some of the Quohadas dismounted, broke off handfuls of grass, spread it on top of the water, sucked the muddy fluid through the grass. Sacajawea was not that thirsty. A few stemless yuccas dotted the sand, and some stunted piñons began to appear among the jointweed. A river flashed its crystal waters as it tumbled out of the tableland. Now Sacajawea became unbearably thirsty.
Pronghorn guided the party down a series of natural steps in the stone, hitting the bank of the river without trouble. For a long moment nothing could be heard but the sucking sound of water going down hot throats. To Sacajawea’s surprise, the river was shallow and the water tasted warm. They forded to the opposite bank, and along a similar series of rock terraces, which looked as if they had been carved centuries before, they climbed out onto grassy tableland. The air was cool and refreshing. There were Mexican traders under the mesquite trees. Their oxcarts stood on the gray-green galleta grass that stretched into the distance.
Three days they camped here and feasted with the Mexicans, playing games of chance, pocar robado, pocar garanom, and showing off their horsemanship, the Comanches riding so that only the toe of one moccasin could be seen over the top of the horse. They would swing under the horse and come up on the opposite side. All the while they shouted, “Hiii-eee!” There was much tequila drinking.
On the third day, Kicking Horse saw a small pistol lying near some silver trinkets and brightly colored rebozos. He picked it up and turned it over. He liked it. “How much? What do you want for this?” he asked the first Mexican trader he saw.
“Quién sabe?” answered the trader, swaying and staggering after one of the señoritas who were with his party.
Kicking Horse found another trader. “Con su permiso,” he began.
“Lobo, give that to me!” The trader grabbed for the pistol. Kicking Horse hung on, and as he did so, the pistol was fired, hitting the man in the foot. Instantly the camp was pandemonium—Quoh
adas fleeing, Mexicans running to their carts for protection, firing helter-skelter at anything that moved. In the confusion a young Mexican girl, near twelve or thirteen, and her baby brother, about two summers old, ran to the opposite side of the camp and found themselves surrounded by Quohadas. Kicking Horse tried to fire the pistol at pursuing Mexicans, but there was no other bullet. He waved the gun about. Other Quohadas were nocking their arrows into bowstrings, then fleeing for their horses. Sacajawea was mounted and into a grove of gnarled piñons before she stopped to look around for the others. She spied Jerk Meat, then Wounded Buck, Pronghorn, and Red Eagle. Then she saw Kicking Horse coming toward them at a fast gallop with the Mexican girl and her baby brother tied in front of him.
“Let’s get out of here!” ordered Pronghorn. They rode fast and hard for the rest of the afternoon. By evening they were camped under a heavy, orange-colored sky. Then they learned that Wolf, son of Kicking Horse and Gray Bone, had been left behind, dead, on Mexican ground.
The Mexican girl sobbed quietly, her brother asleep in her arms. Sacajawea offered her water from a skin paunch. The girl spat at her.
“Agua fría?” Sacajawea asked.
“No, never!” shouted the girl in Spanish.
Sacajawea knew of the custom of the Comanches, to take women and children from other villages to use as slaves. The small children were adopted and raised as Comanche children. They were loved and treated well. She also knew that the Quohadas seldom took slaves. Her heart went out to this dark-haired half-child, half-woman Mexican. The girl’s hands were bound tightly. Sacajawea spread the soothing juice from a crushed yucca on her arms and wrists, but she could not undo the binding. The girl submitted with teeth clamped shut and eyes tightly closed. Sacajawea bathed her face withcool water and gave the baby a drink and a strip of dried jerky to chew on.
“Try to rest. You will not be treated badly. I will promise you that,” she reassured the girl in broken Mexican and with hand signs.