Ride the Wind

  They had been traveling for two days now, and were farther north than Pahayuca and the council usually chose to come. But there had been reports of large buffalo herds this way. And as though to verify them, a raven had circled over the old camp four times, dipping his head and cawing. Then he had flown off in this direction. So they were following the same trail that White Robe's band had taken when they left the winter encampment almost a month before. It was a major north/south route for the People, and easy to follow. The undulating plain was indented in a broad line that snaked across the hills to the horizon, a shallow trough dug by thousands of ponies and travois passing this way year after year.

  Once spring arrived in Texas, it wasted no time. It was only early April and already there was heat in the air and a riot of flowers dancing on the hills. The hundreds of miles of rolling green swells were too much temptation for Naduah and Star Name. They had casually steered their ponies off to one side of the procession and ducked down into a ravine. They worked their way forward until they were beyond hailing range. Then they staged a race to take them even farther ahead.

  Now they were where they weren't supposed to be, in front of the scouts who always rode in the vanguard. They were practicing their riding. Star Name had braided a loop into Paint's mane and hung with her foot hooked through it. She skimmed her fingers through the grass, snatching at pebbles as her pony ran.

  Naduah was crouched, gathering her feet and her courage under her. "Feel your pony with your knees, your legs, every part of you." She remembered Wanderer's voice as he had taught her for hours under the hot sun. She cleared her mind of everything but the feel of Wind's powerful muscles rippling under her feet. She swayed, letting the rhythm of her pony's stride course up through her body until she was moving in perfect time with it. Without thinking, she rose and stood.

  "Star Name! Na-bo-ne, look!" And she fell. Star Name rode back laughing as Naduah stood, testing her joints and rubbing her rear end.

  "Did you see me stand?"

  "Yes. A little more practice and you'll have it!"

  It was then that they noticed a camp far in the distance, and the vultures over it. The sky was black with them, like a roiling thundercloud that looked strangely out of place in the clear blue afternoon sky. Something was wrong. Naduah felt the uneasiness grow in the pit of her stomach. There were usually vultures around the People's camps, but never this many. Whose camp was it? Not Old Owl's. Please, not Old Owl's. Or Wanderer's.

  Wind snorted as the first faint whiffs of death, mingled with the scent of spring flowers, reached her sensitive nostrils. Smoke was already bounding around in her wide danger circle, her white tail flashing. Dog had caught up with them and sat, whining, under Wind's feet. Naduah and Star Name stared ahead, neither wanting to guess what the cloud meant. Quietly, they waited for Buffalo Piss and his scouts.

  Buffalo Piss glowered at them when he and his men rode up. Even with his smooth, plucked brows, his shaggy, tousled hair, and his big, dark eyes he looked ferocious. The girls moved silently behind the men. Buffalo Piss and Sunrise rode ahead as they approached the village that lay under the swirling black cloud.

  "It must be White Robe's band," Buffalo Piss muttered to Sunrise. Sunrise shaded his eyes to see better.

  "Yes." Sunrise knew the plains as all of the People did. He knew if a stone had been disturbed and he knew if it had happened accidentally, or with a purpose. He knew the patterns of the birds, and the calls of the animals, at different times of the day and in different seasons. He could find trails where a white man would say none existed. And he knew, without a doubt, that there was something terribly wrong in White Robe's camp.

  Pahayuca and Medicine Woman and more of the men caught up with them. Their faces were expressionless, but their muscles were tensed as they all advanced toward the lodges. The smell reached them when they were still over half a mile away. The men drew together in a quick council to decide what to do.

  "Stay here, little one." Medicine Woman searched through the saddle bags for her medicine pouch. Slinging it over her shoulder, she tied a piece of cloth around her mouth and nose.

  "I want to go with you. I can help."

  "No. It could be a trap. There must have been an attack, but maybe some of the wounded are still alive."

  With her arm across her face to keep out as much of the foul air as possible, Naduah rode back to the waiting women and children. Many of the young ones stood on their ponies to see better, but the women threw their robes over their heads and keened, as much in horror as in sorrow. Dogs howled in answer. The hair at the base of Dog's tail stood up in a ridge, and she milled stiff-legged among Wind's legs.

  The steady, hollow thud of Gets To Be An Old Man's small hand drum and the unearthly wailing of the women joined in a dirge that followed Pahayuca, Buffalo Piss, and their warriors as they rode slowly, weapons ready, toward the camp. When they entered the outskirts, there was a roar as hundreds of turkey vultures rose, a living pall lifted by an unseen hand. Those that refused to leave their feeding hissed and grunted and flapped their enormous wings, snatching mouthfuls as they sidled away from the riders. Their red skulls looked like bloody death's-heads, and their curved yellow beaks gaped in threat. Crows wheeled and darted, cawing angrily. The men coughed and gagged as the dense stench burned its way into their noses and mouths, coating the backs of their throats.

  Decaying corpses lay sprawled among the silent lodges. There were war ponies, dead at their tethers outside their master's tents. And there were humans. Hundreds of them. Aside from a bundle of arrows that fanned out where they had fallen from a dropped quiver, there were no signs of war. There had been no looting, no burning, no fighting, and no scalping. Just death. Riding at the end of the procession that wound among the lodges, Medicine Woman felt the hairs on the back of her neck tingle, as though ants were crawling there.

  A tiny baby, covered with wriggling white worms, lay at his dead mother's breast. Tears streamed down Medicine Woman's cheeks, and she silently sang for them. She was unaware of the whimpering that came from her own throat. Warriors, old people, children, a young couple entwined as though making love, all dead. Their faces were unrecognizable, obliterated by time, scavengers, and the elements.

  Howling and snarling, a pack of dogs, crazed by fear, careened from behind the biggest lodge, that of White Robe. The leader, a huge yellow cur with his skin laddered over his ribs and saliva flying from his mouth, leaped at Pahayuca. The others attacked, trying to rip the men's legs or disembowel their horses. The men beat at them with their lances and bows and quirts, or fired into their open mouths.

  Choking, the dogs stumbled off, pawing at the shafts as they tried to pull them out. Some were pinned to the ground, the arrows driven all the way through them. When the leader went down crying, the others tucked tail and ran, scattering out onto the plain. They fled toward the falling sun as though trying to throw themselves off the edge of the dying world.

  At the head of the line, Pahayuca began to chant in his deep, resonant voice. It was picked up by those behind him and swelled over the cawing and flapping of the birds. A requiem for the dead. Desperately, Medicine Woman searched for an explanation. The spirits were never this vindictive. They might take vengeance on an individual or a family, but not on an entire band. The universe didn't work that way. Could they all have died from tainted meat? Not likely. Her mind was numbing with the horror of it when she heard something. It was the first human sound in that graveyard of the unburied dead.

  Shouting, she turned and headed toward it, threading her way among the bodies, the overturned drying racks, and the tumbled equipment. The men followed her. An old woman was raving, crawling among the corpses, poking them and rolling them over. Medicine Woman rode slowly toward her.

  "Mother, what has happened here?"

  The woman gave a small cry and turned toward Medicine Woman. Her sightless eyes crawled with maggots and she babbled on, wound tightly in a cocoon of madness. Her face was rotten, co
vered with sores oozing blood and pus. She began to laugh, cackling hysterically and clawing at the cankers, rupturing more of them.

  Medicine Woman screamed. And screamed again. She couldn't stop screaming. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. No nightmare. No ghost story. No battlefield of scalped and mutilated corpses had ever been this terrifying. Medicine Woman's terror spread to the men. They all pounded out of the silent village and scattered onto the plain like the dogs they had driven off. The rest of the band galloped after them, strewing possessions and abandoning horses in their blind flight. They ran for miles until exhaustion forced them to stop. And as they retreated they looked back again and again over their shoulders, as though expecting the spectre of death to be pursuing them.

  The People had a new enemy. One they had no weapons or medicine against. One they were totally powerless to combat. Smallpox had settled on the plains.

  At twilight of the next day, the band finally camped. And it was an almost silent camp. Even the dogs slept where they had fallen, their legs still quivering with the fatigue of trying to keep up with the horses. From the outskirts of the village, Gets To Be An Old Man's medicine songs went on for hours as he lay on his back, chanting to the darkening sky. Small groups of people gathered around their cooking fires, and whispered about the village of death. Even the mourning was subdued, as though people were afraid to grieve, afraid to call attention to themselves lest they bring down the same plague that had struck White Robe's band.

  Many lay in restless sleep, although it was still early. Some whimpered and cried out, haunted in dreams by what they had seen or been told. They had ridden hard all night and day after fleeing the dead village. Naduah had drooped and nodded as Wind paced steadily through the dark, picking her way over the rough ground by instinct and the light of the full moon. Something Good had ridden nearby. Her daughter, little Weasel, slept serenely in the cradle board dangling from the saddle horn. With the morning light the older boys and some of the men went to hunt stray ponies, but many of them were never found.

  Naduah sat with her arms around Star Name as she sobbed quietly, asking "Why? Why?" over and over. Naduah knew why. She had seen the graves that littered the trail to Texas. She had marched behind caskets and watched them lowered into graves. She knew it was a white man's disease. And she felt responsible for it. She knew its name and she knew what it did. But she didn't know how it spread or what its cure was.

  The People knew more about how it spread than she did. They believed that sickness was caused by the breath of an unknown enemy. And smallpox was transmitted by inhaling an airborne virus from its victims. By fleeing the contaminated village and camping in an isolated spot, they had reduced their chances of contracting the disease. They would have been spared if Deep Water had not picked up his cousin's beaded pouch.

  Deep Water would probably have passed his cousin's body if he hadn't recognized him by his painted leggings and the silver disks he always wore in his hair. The disks had belonged to his father before him, and Otter was rarely without them. Deep Water had leaned down and scooped up the pouch with the black horsehair tassel as it lay where it had fallen, a few inches from Otter's fingers. He knew that Otter always carried it with him to hold his awl and glue and extra sinews and rawhide for patching his weapons and clothing.

  Deep Water had raised his lance in brief salute. He sent a prayer after Otter, to help him along the sad, twisting path to eternity, the path of men who aren't killed in battle. He put the long strap of the pouch over his shoulder, then turned his pony and rode after the other men. At least he would have something to remember his cousin.

  Several days later smallpox entered the lodge of Deep Water, Name Giver, Owl, She Laughs, and She Blushes. Medicine Woman came back from their tent looking drawn.

  "They all have fires inside them. Their skin almost burns the hand. Gets To Be An Old Man is with them now."

  "Maybe it's the shaking sickness, Mother. The same one you had," said Sunrise.

  "Maybe. They have chills and their heads and backs hurt them, just as mine did. But I don't think it's the same one. I'm afraid of this sickness. I think it's one we've never seen before."

  "What's Gets To Be An Old Man going to do?" Takes Down spoke up from her sewing.

  "He'll try to quench the fires in them. He says they should take a steam bath arid then bathe immediately in cold water. They should go to the mountains where the springs are the coldest."

  "Then we should get ready to move with them," said Sunrise.

  "No!" They all turned to stare at Naduah. From the rapidly dwindling supply of English words in her memory she had found the one she needed. Quarantine.

  "No." All she could do was repeat it. There was no way she could explain it to them.

  "Why not, Granddaughter?"

  "We mustn't. We can't go with them. They have to go alone. We have to leave them. Right away." She stood, fists clenched, her wide, blue eyes pleading desperately. They could see she had power, although they didn't know it was the power of experience. Finally Medicine Woman spoke.

  "I will tell my brother, little one. We won't go with them." And she held Naduah all night as the child cried convulsively.

  The next day Naduah walked around in a daze, her head throbbing from hours of crying. They would have to abandon her friend, Owl. And Name Giver, and the others. As she packed to leave with the rest of the band, she remembered Owl's strong fingers digging into her ribs that morning when she had first played bear and sugar. And it had been Owl who had pulled her up when she jumped into the river and sank like a stone that day.

  Quiet, stolid, good-natured Owl, who spent much of her time leading her grandfather through the village and helping him with his arrow-making. Poor Owl. How many times had she wanted to come with Naduah and Star Name, but couldn't? Because she had no pony or because she had to help at home. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Naduah dug her nails into her palms. Why hadn't she loaned Owl her pony more often, or helped her with her chores so she could come play too? "Stupid!" Now it was too late. And she began to cry all over again.

  She went to Name Giver's lodge, already standing isolated as those around them took down their tents. She stood in the doorway, afraid to enter. Only Deep Water could sit, and he hunched over the tiny fire, feeding it twigs. His slender frame shook under the buffalo robe wrapped around him.

  "Deep Water, is Owl here?"

  "Yes. But I think she's asleep." He nodded toward the silent forms under the piles of buffalo robes on the beds. "They all are." He looked up at her with hollow, fever-bright eyes.

  "And Name Giver?"

  "The sickest one." There was a silence, and Deep Water panted, as though even the conversation were an effort for him.

  "We have to go. Deep Water. We have to leave you. It's the only way to save everyone. Please believe me." How could one of the People understand being abandoned by the others, when their custom was to help each other through adversity. She was responsible for paitai, forsaking someone. They were leaving Deep Water and Owl and Name Giver and She Laughs and old She Blushes because Naduah had told them to.

  "Pahayuca and Medicine Woman explained it to us. We understand."

  "Sunrise and Takes Down send pemmican and jerky and fruit and water."

  "Tell them they are kind. Leave it there." And Deep Water's head drooped to stare into the fire again. Perhaps he was thinking that he would have to follow Otter down that sad, dark road, as a warrior who didn't die in battle. A large pile of supplies, robes, and food that others had brought lay by the door. She left the food there, along with the paunch of water.

  "We will see you when you get better." She prayed it might be so, but she knew from experience that the chances were slight.

  "Yes." He didn't look up, and she backed from the doorway and ran.

  CHAPTER 25

  Summer passed and fall came, and there was no word of Name Giver or his family. The days were getting cool and everyone was preparing for the winter. Naduah
clung like an aphid to the gray, scaly bark of the persimmon tree. It wasn't a very big tree, but it looked like a long way down. Her legs were wrapped around the limb, and she lay along it as she shinnied out toward the foliage at the end of it, a stick clutched in her right hand and both arms holding tightly to the limb. Something Good was doing the same in another part of the tree. Star Name was standing on one limb, holding on to the one above her head. She began jumping up and down, causing the tree to vibrate wildly, and sending a shower of small, black naseeka, persimmons, onto Takes Down and Black Bird.

  "Star Name, stop it! Do you want to kill Something Good and me?"

  "Sorry. I forgot."

  "At least warn us so we can have a tight grip when you do that, bright eyes," called Something Good from somewhere among the yellow-tinged, club-shaped leaves. Among the whites, Something Good would have looked like a beautiful, angelic boy with her short, thick hair. She kept it cut just below her ears and would probably never let it grow again, in memory of Eagle. And she would always disappear quietly at twilight each night to mourn him.

  "There will be plenty for drying and for pemmican."

  "If only there were more pemmican to put it in." Black Bird spoke quietly so that the girls wouldn't hear her. But she expressed a worry that they all felt. The buffalo had been scarce this year, no matter what Pahayuca or Buffalo Piss or Old Man did. Even Naduah could tell the difference. She had asked Sunrise where the buffalo had gone.

  "Sometimes they just leave for a year," he had told her. "We don't know where they go, and they always come back. Some years there aren't as many of them. This year will be a lean one." He saw the fear in her eyes, and stroked her head. "Don't worry, little one. We will make it through. We always do."