Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 8

  Sunrise sat on his low bed across from the doorway, stretching wet rawhide over the bent wooden stirrup frames. Sewn on damp, the leather shrank as it dried, molding to the wood like bark to a tree. In the dim light from the fire he hunched over to see his work, his black hair swinging forward to curtain his face. Takes Down kept up a flowing conversation with him, like a narrow mountain stream burbling over rocks. He punctuated her talk with an occasional grunt, and Cynthia wondered if he was even listening to her.

  The front of the lodge shuddered as though a heavy wind had blown against it, and Pahayuca forced his way through the small opening. The side pulled inward along his shoulders and rebounded with a snap, sending tremors up the hide in ripples. As he lumbered across the dirt floor he waved his arms and grumbled loudly. He obviously thought lodge doors should be bigger. His swaying gait made the muscles on his back and shoulders undulate like huge boulders rolling around in a leather sack. He patted Takes Down The Lodge on her plump arm as he went by and growled something that set her to giggling into her hand.

  As he lowered himself onto the bed next to Sunrise, the rawhide straps creaked loudly and the poles bowed slightly in the middle. Pahayuca shifted to the end, where there was more support, and leaned against the backrest at the foot of the bed. He raked his fingernails across his chest, and with his other hand reached up under his long leather shirt to jiggle himself into a more comfortable position in his breechclout. He gave a long, rolling belch and began pointing out the right way to sew stirrups.

  He created such a furor in the quiet tent that Cynthia almost didn’t notice the fifteen-year-old girl who followed him in. She entered as silently and as gracefully as a leaf blown through the doorway. Only the low, musical tinkling of bells caught Cynthia’s attention, and she stared open-mouthed. Tsa-wa-ke, Looking For Something Good, was too beautiful to have been produced by chance. Her features looked as though they had been carved in cedar by a master, then rubbed smooth and oiled until they glowed, and flowed in graceful curves from her rounded chin to her vaulting black eyebrows.

  Her two-piece dress was of muted yellow chamois. The skirt clung to her narrow hips, sliding across them as she walked. It hung down her long legs at the sides and scalloped up over her knees in front and back. The heavy fringe at the side seams swayed as she moved. At her slender waist a half-moon of red-gold skin showed through the fringe of her beaded poncho. The slit that formed the neckline was deep, angling down across small firm breasts. Cupped around them were lose heavy curls of hair. Something Good had a mane as ebony and as iridescent as a raven’s wing.

  “Hi, tai. Tsa-wa-ke,” the girl murmured, naming herself and turning to look full at Cynthia. Her nostrils were slightly flared, giving her the untamed look of a wild mare.

  “Hi, tai. Tsinitia.” Hello, friend? Was it possible to be friends with someone as beautiful as this? Something Good glided across the lodge floor, crossed her thoroughbred’s legs and sat in one flowing motion, like water running down a stick. Cynthia tried to sit the same way. She crossed her arms around her knees and pulled her rabbit robe tighter around her so her plain dress wouldn’t be as visible. She felt like an urchin next to Something Good. Was the girl Pahayuca’s daughter? She’d ask Star Name when she saw her. There was so much to ask Star Name, and she understood so little of the answers.

  Just then Star Name and Black Bird came through the doorway in a fog of steam that rose from the heavy kettle they carried between them. Star Name strained with both hands to hold up her end, grasping the leather wrapped around the hot metal handle until her knuckles were white. Upstream herded them in, trying to crowd around them in his efforts not to miss anything. He sat near Pahayuca and grinned and waved at Cynthia as though he had never teased her and she had never thrown rocks at him. When he smiled he looked just like Star Name. Maybe she wouldn’t tell the Rangers to kill him when they rescued her.

  Star Name only nodded to her after she set the kettle down by the fire, and Cynthia wondered if she had offended her somehow. It was hard to tell what was the right thing to do. Did they have any rules of courtesy like white people’s? At any rate, her friend hardly smiled and sat solemnly next to her mother. The people in the lodge shifted subtly so that the men now sat around the fire and the women and children ranged behind them along the edge of the tent. Cynthia found herself separated from them all, as though there were some invisible screen around her. But there was no way she could find out what would happen next except by waiting patiently and quietly until it did. Even Medicine Woman sat apart from her when she entered.

  Owl entered next, leading her grandfather, Kavoyo, Name Giver, by the hand. Name Giver was square and solid and powerful like Owl, but his muscles were beginning to slacken under his skin, as though it were a size too big. He too was dressed in his best clothes, but they were worn and frayed and the leggings had been patched. He was ramrod straight and walked with the dignified air of faded gentility. As Owl guided him to a place of honor next to Pahayuca, he turned to look in Cynthia’s direction with cloudy, opalescent eyes.

  Everyone seemed to be waiting for something, and the talk was low. Then there was a rhythmic jingling of bells from outside, and Big Bow and Eagle and Wanderer stooped to enter the lodge. The thick clusters of metal cones sewn to the long fringes on their leggings kept time with their footsteps. Somehow the delicate noise was intensely strong and masculine and martial, and it stirred something inside Cynthia. The three men turned left as they came in the door and paced all the way around the circle to the right before they sat in a shower of bells, their legs crossed in front of them.

  Cynthia crouched down even further among the piles of bundles and furs and hides, trying to make herself as small as possible. Wanderer looked magnificent, even to a nine-year-old who disliked him. He was taller than all of them, even Pahayuca. His hunting shirt was a pale cream color and hung almost to his knees over his dark blue leggings. The front of the shirt was decorated with tassels of wavy black scalp hair and white ermine tails. His braids reached to the middle of his back and had otter fur wrapped around them. Two eagle feathers hung from a hole in the center of a beaten silver disk at his scalplock. His high moccasins were bright with intricate beadwork, and there were long fringes at the calves.

  He too turned to look at Cynthia, and she wanted to melt through the lodge wall like hot wax through cloth, to find herself outside, curled up with the dogs for the night. It wasn’t his clothes that awed her. They were beautiful, but no more splendid than Pahayuca’s or Eagle’s. It was his face that held her spellbound. With only three small stripes of red paint on his chin, he wasn’t the grim, masked warrior she had known on the raid trail. And he wasn’t the exuberant boy racing Night toward the far horizon. Nor was he the arrogant young man who had stared at her as she was coming home with Star Name earlier that same evening.

  She stared at his classic profile, outlined in fire, the flames burnishing his copper skin with golden highlights. He was only sixteen, but he had the calm face of a man totally at ease with himself and with leading other men. And although she didn’t realize it, that was what made Cynthia so uncomfortable around him. Anyone that sure of himself must often question the ability of others. And judge them. And find them wanting, as Grandpa Parker used to say.

  Wanderer had obviously come to spend the evening, and already he was making her miserable by just being there. She started inching back, pushing with her feet and sliding the hide she was sitting on toward the lodge wall. They were all so busy talking among themselves she doubted if they’d miss her if she sneaked out under the tent’s edge. She was so intent on making her escape she didn’t notice the sudden hush that fell over everyone.

  Name Giver had held up his hand. He waited until he was sure they were all watching. Then he drew his medicine pipe from the narrow, beaded bag Owl gave him. She used two green sticks to pull a live coal from the fire and carefully lit the pipe with it. It was a task that a young man always did, but no one questioned Owl’s righ
t. She was Name Giver’s eyes, and he was important to all of them. If it was his wish that his granddaughter be his pipe lighter, then so be it.

  Name Giver sucked in a deep breath and blew smoke toward the top of the lodge. He blew another puff toward the earth, and one in each of the four directions. Then he chanted a long invocation in a loud voice. When he finished, everyone turned to stare at Cynthia, who froze in horror. All of this apparently had something to do with her. Had their kindness been a sham, a ruse? Were they planning to torture her after all? Is that what they’d gathered here for?

  Sunrise stood and walked over to her. Taking her by the arm, he pulled her to her feet and led her to the center of the circle around the fire. She felt like a calf being led to slaughter as she stood in front of the old man. Name Giver groped for her, and she tensed as he grasped her around the waist. She stiffened when he lifted her off her feet, chanting as he did it. She was big for her age, but it seemed to cost him no effort to raise her three more times, each time a little higher than the last. It was his way of asking the Father in the sun to make her grow big and strong. As he held her up the fourth time he threw his head back and, with his eyes closed, began a droning chant. The word “nanica” gave Cynthia the first clue. Nanica. Asa Nanica, Star Name. She was being named. Surely they wouldn’t name someone they were planning to kill. Would they?

  “Naduah.” The old man said it four times. That must be her name. She wondered what it meant. One more thing to ask Star Name. The girl was a wonderful mimic, and she was teaching Cynthia, Tsinitia, Naduah sign language. Star Name would know what the name meant. Cynthia was weak with relief. They weren’t going to hurt her.

  Sunrise stood next. He was a listener. He drank people’s words with his eyes. Words fell into them like pebbles into deep pools and left no ripples on the smooth, calm surface of his face. In the six days Cynthia had lived in his lodge, she had rarely heard him speak. She was surprised now at his clear, strong voice. She couldn’t understand the words, but she almost knew what he was saying from his face, suddenly alive and eloquent, from his tone and his gestures.

  He was thanking Wanderer for bringing them a new daughter. Wanderer nodded slightly in response. He was asking the Father in the sun to make her strong and wise, and to help them teach her the ways of the People. He spoke for half an hour before he let her sit in the center of the ring of men. Each of them then took turns speaking while the others listened attentively. It was almost eleven o’clock before the meal was finally served, and they all ate as though it were the first food they’d had in weeks.

  There was going to be trouble again. Wanderer sighed as he watched Eagle watch Something Good watch Pahayuca, her husband. If he’d known that the girl had left her father’s band to marry Pahayuca, he would have had doubts about suggesting this trip to the Penateka territory. Even when Wanderer had seen her, leggy as a filly, four years ago, he could tell what she would become. Just as he could see that Naduah, Keeps Warm With Us, would someday be a woman worth many horses to have. Already there was the look about her, the sleek, rounded, barely contained look of a bud about to burst into flower. And she would be a rare flower among the People, unusual and exotic. Someday she would be worth all the trouble it had been to bring her here.

  In the meantime, there was Eagle to deal with. And Something Good. Something Good was Eagle’s type of woman—female. And beautiful. And married. A dangerous combination for his friend. Still, Wanderer had to smile, turning it inward where no one could see it, as he remembered the deceived husbands and forlorn wives littering Eagle’s trail. He was eighteen years old and should know better, but he never seemed to learn. At the rate he was going, he wouldn’t live long enough to steal the horses he needed to buy a wife of his own.

  Not that stealing a woman was a killing offense. It wasn’t like taking a man’s favorite pony. But someday he would push someone too far, someone who wasn’t willing to accept payment for the insult, slit his wife’s nose, and forget about it. Wanderer suspected that Eagle preferred to pilfer his women. It was a game with him, just as raiding for ponies was. He was always giving his ponies away or losing them in dice games so he could go after new ones.

  But this was different. Something Good belonged to Pahayuca, bought and paid for with fifty horses. An unheard of price. Her father, Tsocupe Mo-pe, Old Owl, was proud of her, and so was Pahayuca. That was evident. No one dishonored Pahayuca. Wanderer had been a herder on a raid four years ago when Pahayuca had ridden into a crowd of armed Osages. He had throttled two of them with his bare hands, shaking each like a dog with a rag before dropping them to the ground. In the face of that kind of medicine, the band had fled.

  He was a master at spooking the enemy into panicking. The Osage could face arrows and lances, but not a madman who cut off their route to paradise by strangling them. Their souls couldn’t escape through their mouths when they died. They would be imprisoned in the rotting, stinking corpses, mauled by wolves and vultures, then tethered to the bones as they bleached and dried in the sun’s kiln. Even in the hot tent full of laughter and chatter, Wanderer shivered at the thought. Who but Pahayuca would have thought to use his crazy courage and bear’s strength to stampede a herd of Osage? The coup would be told around campfires for years to come.

  He was good-natured, Pahayuca was. Anyone who weighed a third as much as a young buffalo could afford to be. But even the northern bands respected him. That was part of the reason for Wanderer’s trip south. Pahayuca was his great-uncle, the younger brother of his father’s mother. He hoped to use family influence to persuade Pahayuca to join them on the staked plains, or at least to stop trading with the whites. No good could ever come of it. It weakened the soul.

  The Penateka, the Honey Eaters, had once been great warriors. Now they were called Sugar Eaters by the young men of the Quohadi and Yamparika, the Tenawa and Kotsoteka bands of the north. The Penateka were selling their manhood for the sweet white sand, and the cloth and metal and old, misfiring guns the traders brought. Soon they’d be drinking stupid water, and he’d seen what that did to a man, making him as helpless and as foolish as a newborn child.

  As Something Good helped Takes Down The Lodge serve the coffee, Wanderer saw Eagle touch her hand. She looked up, startled, and he held her eyes captive for only a second. Too late. It had started. Wanderer glared at Eagle, but his friend wasn’t noticing him. Something Good dropped her eyes and passed on to Sunrise.

  Wanderer felt a hand rocking his knee. He looked down to find Star Name grinning up at him. She crawled into his lap as he sat crosslegged. Only Star Name would have dared such familiarity, and most warriors would have dumped her back onto the ground. But Wanderer encircled her, resting his forearms on her legs and propping his chin on the top of her shiny head.

  She snuggled down to listen to Pahayuca weave one of his funny stories. And then Name Giver was sure to tell one. Wanderer was even quieter than usual, worried about Something Good and Eagle. By now the looks were flickering back and forth between them like summer lightning. They could only be seen if one were looking in the right direction at the exact time they occurred. He’d be glad when the women left the lodge so the men could smoke in peace. Until then, it was going to be a long evening.

  Cynthia lay cupped against Star Name’s back, sharing her narrow bed. Black Bird’s lodge was smaller than her sister’s, and less cluttered. It had no tools or weapons that a man would use. When her husband’s body had been carried home after that disastrous raid five years ago, she had given away or burned everything that had belonged to him. Whenever the band passed near his grave she rode to the crevice where his bones lay and put fruit and flowers next to it. Now she was Sunrise’s second wife, and Star Name was Cynthia’s foster stepsister as well as her foster cousin.

  Cynthia and Takes Down had abandoned their own lodge when Sunrise had pulled out his plain pipe of green soapstone. The men’s voices rumbled from next door, their talk and laughter rising and falling into the cool dark hours of predaw
n. Cynthia lay listening for Wanderer’s laugh. She refused to admit to herself that the sound of it pleased her. It reminded her of the only pleasant time she had had on the long trail from the fort, when Cruelest One and Terrible Snows left with Rachel and the men sat smoking and talking around the fire.

  Just outside the tent a dog whimpered in his sleep, his nails scratching the hide as he chased a rabbit in and out of his dreams. Miles away, in the rolling emptiness of hills and bluffs and canyons, coyotes began interlacing their eerie, intricate fugue.

  Cynthia was exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep. There were too many frightening images and strange words and customs spinning in her head. Obviously the Comanche didn’t hold with the belief that early to bed and early to rise would make them better. The night before everyone had still been celebrating the return of Buffalo Piss with his raiding party. They had chanted and drummed and danced, screeching and whooping around the scalp poles all night long, while Cynthia huddled in the lodge, afraid they would come for her to torture her again. And afraid she would see her father’s scalp among those on the pole. Cruelest One had taken it. At least he was the one carrying the lance that it decorated. Had Wanderer killed anyone? Uncle Ben or her grandfather? Had he been the one to pull Henry White from the roof? Or smash Robert Frost’s skull? It had all been so confusing, she couldn’t remember. And now, suddenly, it was important to know.

  She had been working and playing since the sun rose, and it was almost dawn again, and still people were awake and talking. Nothing they did made any sense to her. She couldn’t find any routine in their lives. True, she had to gather wood and bring water every morning, but after that the day was hers. It had been fun, she had to admit, but she was an outsider. Alone. And at moments, when she realized the enormity of her situation, it frightened her so much she would begin to shake.