But Mary was not next. The Indians now were untying and stripping the young foreign woman at the next stake. Her face and figure were comely; she was hardly more than a girl. Mary had presumed she was the mother of the little girl, but, seeing her naked now, guessed she was no more than fifteen or sixteen, perhaps a sister, or maybe not even related. They scatter and mix families as a whirlwind does the leaves of fall, she thought.
The nude girl was dragged sobbing and whining to the head of the gauntlet. She was abject, beyond any semblance of dignity or courage. At once she fell prostrate before the chief, trying to wrap her arms around his legs. But his face darkened with scorn and he kicked her in the face. A pair of bucks grabbed her arms and set her upon her feet. Blood burbled from her nose as she snorted between sobs. She was aimed down the line and the distant drum sounded. Instead of running, she screamed and cringed back against one of the bucks. He shoved her, and she pitched forward to the ground. The squaws at the head of the line converged on her with their whistling switches, and went at her as if to flay all the skin off her buttocks. She shrieked and rolled on the ground and flailed with arms and legs to deflect the lashes. In the name of God, girl, get up and run! Mary was thinking, and then she heard her own voice above the hubbub and knew she had been shouting it.
The girl did not get up. She had gone limp. After several minutes of the sickening swish and smack, the squaws were called off. The girl was dragged by her feet back to the stake. The squaw did not come to her with medicine. Apparently medicine was only for the courageous.
Now me, Mary thought. I’m ready, dear Lord. At that thought, she felt a deep calm. She held her baby at her breast and waited for them to come for her.
The chieftain came toward her. He stood over her and began orating. The chiefs came closer and listened. He talked for several minutes, once more making the scooping motion to signify her delivery of the baby.
My, how that seems to’ve impressed him, she thought.
The chieftain went on and on in his great, deep voice, accompanying himself with sweeping and pointing hands, posturing like a lord. He was some fine talker; she could tell that, even though she could not understand a word. The crowd was enjoying his performance immensely; they seemed to lean and sway like puppets beyond the ends of his moving fingers, looking rapt at him until he would direct them to look at her.
And he looked at her. When he talked with his eyes on her, he talked as a man does who is proud of something that he has.
He believes I’m his, she thought. He wants the people to know this.
Well, ye heathen, I’m not. I’m Will’s, that’s whose I am.
And yet in a way, she realized, this chieftain was an important person to her. She knew that she and hers might have been dead by now if he had not taken this proprietary interest in her.
And now as he stood here binding all his people with his eloquence, she had to admit to herself yet again that for all his savagery he was a splendid man, a man who, had he been born white, doubtless would have become with age a general or governor or some sort of leader in the civilized world. Cleaned of his warpaint, wearing soft, tan hide leggings and beaded breechclout, his coppery upper arms encircled by soft-gleaming metal bands, his long raven hair perfectly parted and combed, he was as trim and graceful a figure of a man as anyone she had ever seen. Being beardless and hairless as a woman, but hard and straight, he seemed keenedged, like a new, sharp knife—a contrast, somehow to Will, burly Will whose outlines were softened by thick body hair, by unruly brindled hair and whiskers so close to the color of his skin that in certain lights his whole being looked fuzzy, out of focus. Will was wonderful to be against, all warm and tickly. It would be like lying with a sword, she thought, to lie with this Indian who now stood …
She flushed suddenly at what she had been thinking, realizing that the chieftain’s eyes had been on hers while she was thinking it. God above, she thought, sweep such abominations out of my poor bumfuzzled head! I’m starting to think like a conkybine.
The chiefs were listening to him with grave attention, nodding and grunting. It dawned on Mary at last: He was arguing that she should not have to run the gauntlet.
He was interrupted by a loud yowl from the old woman. She was kneeling over the girl, an incomprehensible stream of language pouring out of her. She had turned the girl onto her back.
The old woman paused for breath. She looked at Mary. “Det!” she cried. “She iss det!”
Dead?
The chieftain stepped astraddle the inert girl and bent down. He lifted her eyelids with his finger. Then he stood up and looked at the chief.
“Nepwa,” he said. He made a short, final horizontal sweep over her body with his hand.
The chief scowled at the naked corpse. Flies were walking on its wounds. Then he turned away and went to the head of the gauntlet. He made a short pronouncement. The two ranks of the gauntlet dispersed and came strolling up to crowd around and gape at the naked, bloody captives. Mary realized then that she was not going to have to run the gauntlet. Not now, anyway. Every fiber of her being suddenly seemed to melt. A tremendous shiver of relief passed from her scalp to her knees. Once again she had been delivered, and once again it was this proud and keen but murderous young chieftain who had caused her to be spared, for whatever his reasons.
She looked down at the dark hair of her baby girl, this child that was the only simple truth she could turn to: the daughter of Will Ingles. Mary placed her hand on the baby’s tiny arm, and its miniature hand closed around her thumb.
Mary looked up at the chieftain then. He was looking at the baby’s hand on Mary’s thumb.
Then he raised his eyes to Mary’s, and they stared at each other for several seconds, oblivious to the multitude of voices around them.
I wonder what his name is, she thought.
CHAPTER
8
The thin Frenchman, whose name was LaPlante, in the next two days explained certain things that Mary had already partially deduced.
LaPlante was the one who had been throttled by the big British soldier. His windpipe was bruised and he was low in vigor and spirits, and so he stayed in the vicinity of the prisoners, talking with them as much as his tender voicebox and limited mastery of their language would allow. He was a trader, he said, not a military man, and one who is a trader values information as much as he values goods. Thus he explained his penchant for talking and listening.
As he understood it, Mary Ingles had been spared the gauntlet for one or both of two reasons: the death of the girl had satisfied the chief; and Mary was highly esteemed by the warrior chieftain who had brought her here. His name, LaPlante told her, was Captain Wildcat. He was a very much favored chieftain of the Shawnee warrior sept, likely to be a great chief someday.
The captive woman and children had been moved temporarily into a roomy open-sided hut near the center of the village. The men had been taken somewhere else. By pointing at the torn rags of clothing and making sewing notions, Mary had suggested to Captain Wildcat that her sewing basket should be returned to her, and she had assumed the duty of repairing the women’s clothes while their wounds were being nursed. While she sewed, LaPlante came by frequently to linger and attempt conversation. He watched her sew when he was not ogling Bettie’s nudity.
The gauntlet, he told her, was a manner of trial, an initiation, for the prisoners, preliminary to their adoption by families of the tribe.
“You, Madame,” he said, “you are, ah, you are deja preuve … how does one say … worth-ee. M’sieu Wildcat say thees.”
Mary glanced into the hut. Bettie sat there, in profile. She had slept on her stomach or remained sitting ever since the running of the gauntlet. She could not bear to rest on her back, even though the squaw came in and refreshed the ointment on her back several times a day. The squaw had also taken over the care of Bettie’s arm, which was healing very slowly.
Bettie had not met Mary’s eyes since the day of the gauntlet, and had said
nothing to her.
“I sh’ld rather been whipped by these people, than accused by my own,” Mary murmured, talking more to herself than to the Frenchman.
“Eh bien,” LaPlante said, then leaned close with an earnest look on his face. He was watching as she put the finishing touches on Bettie’s dress. “Madame, I will say now, I propose to do commerce with you.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “I don’t get your drift a-tall, sir.”
“We will do, how you say, partners. Ecoutez, Madame: Goulart and I, we ’ave, ah, ah … bolts … oui, bolts … of good cloth, with a … a …” He squinted with his effort to find the word. “Un moment,” he said, raising a forefinger and getting to his feet. He disappeared. Mary shook her head and continued sewing. She stole a glance at Bettie, catching her glowering in her direction. What the devil d’ye suppose is in her mind now? she thought. Likely condemning me now for traffiking with enemies …
Far up the street, she heard Tommy yelp in delight. He and Georgie had been taken into the company of a group of little Indian boys of the village, six of them about their own age who belonged to three tribal families, and had been playing for hours with them. To the delight of the village bucks, Tommy and Georgie were holding their own in the running and throwing games they had learned on the trail. They could be distinguished at a distance by their whiteness. Like the Indian boys, they were naked. Their rags of clothing lay beside Mary, along with the dress of old Ghetel, waiting to be repaired.
Mary was not sure now that the old woman’s name was Ghetel. Each time she would address her as Ghetel, the old woman would raise her hand and say, “Nah, nah! Not Ghetel, Ghetel!” She would display her front teeth and press her tongue tip against her palate as she said it, and would point at her mouth with a gnarled forefinger.
“Ghetel,” Mary would say.
“Ghetel!”
“Ghetel.”
“Ach. Ghetel,” the old woman would shrug, and then Mary would shrug and return to her sewing.
Now a shadow fell over Mary and when she looked up LaPlante and the other Frenchman, Goulart, stood before her. They each held one end of a bolt of checked cloth. “Thees,” said LaPlante.
Behind the two traders stood a dozen or more Indians, men and women and girls who were admiring the material. The traders set the bolt on end and LaPlante turned down a corner of the fabric for Mary to rub between her fingers. It was a soft and strong flannel, very luxurious to the touch. The checks were bright blue and a clean, clear white.
“But what’s this t’do with me?” Mary asked.
“Would sew shirt, eh? Make shirt. We would sell shirt to them.” He inclined his head toward the gathering Indians, whose desire for the bright cloth was evident. “Very good, ah, price. For you, for us.” Mary continued to look from LaPlante to Goulart and back, saying nothing. She had been too long and too recently involved in the survival of herself and her family to think yet about business.
“They say you are fine squaw,” said Goulart, who was easier to understand than LaPlante. “A squaw is very useful. If useful, she is important. Alors, to have importance is to be treated well. It can be the, the difference.” It was as if he had read her mind about the matter of surviving and had connected it for her to the matter of business. The future of the captives was still an unknown.
“Very well, then,” she said in a low voice, that Bettie might not hear. “We are in business.”
When Mary worked with needle and thread and shears, her thoughts would flow through her like a song that changed but never ended. She thought much about Draper’s Meadows, because most of the sewing she had ever done she had done there. And she thought much about Will, because most of her sewing had been for Will. She wondered often what William would say about this business she was in, and what he would say about her partnership with the Frenchmen.
They are only traders, she thought. They’re not the kind of Frenchmen who bring Indians to kill us. Will’s a most practical man, she thought. He does what’s best for everybody and doesn’t waste his mind on thoughts of enemies. He’s not ever made an enemy as I know of. Even when he was constable at Roanoke.
Now Johnny, he’s a different sort. A hotspur, and will let a grudge color his judgment.
I’m more like Will, she thought. That’s a reason we’re married good.
Married, she thought.
The sun-flecked white and blue of the flannel she was working on filled her vision.
I wonder how Will Ingles would look in a blue and white checked shirt, she thought. Pretty fancy! She smiled down at the cloth.
She remembered him as he looked when he would raise his arms to pull on a gray homespun shirt. She remembered his powerful thick trunk, thin white skin over hard muscle, and the reddish-brown hair all down the front of him. She remembered how his belly button would look, winking out through that belly-hair for a moment before the shirt would come down and hide it.
She remembered how his hairy belly felt against the skin of her belly: like a thousand little caresses just before his whole weight would settle on her and the bigger caress would start inside her.
Her loins remembered William and suddenly she was desolate and empty and bittersweet inside, and the blue and white pattern of the cloth shimmered and blurred.
She had to stop sewing for a minute.
After a few days the Frenchmen began taking Mary each morning to their trading post, near the center of the village. The post was another open-sided shelter, facing the street. In corners of the building there were several barrels and kegs, some metal cooking pots and kettles, boxes of knives and steel tomahawks and axes, a few muskets, a stack of gray woolen blankets and assortments of buttons, colorful glass beads and mirrors. There was also a great musky pile of pliant, well-cured deerskins and buffalo hides.
The Frenchmen had built a long puncheon table and placed it across the open front of the hut, to conduct their trade over, and Mary could lay the cloth down on this table to cut it without getting it dusty. That was why they had begun bringing her to the trading post. She would come over with the baby on her back, and while she was not sewing shirts she would nurse the baby. LaPlante had an Indian squaw, a girl of perhaps eighteen years, plump and pretty and easily incited to fits of strange, tearful giggling. Her name was An-Otter-Swimming-On-Its-Back, but she was called simply the Otter Girl. She had had LaPlante’s baby a few weeks ago but the little half-breed had been feeble and had died. She was morose. She was a Chahlagawtha Shawnee whom LaPlante had married in a bigger Shawnee town many miles north where the Chahlagawtha sept lived. The Otter Girl at once fell in love with the baby white girl and wanted to know her name. Soon she was taking care of the little girl, fulfilling her own frustrated motherly instincts, cooing to her and fondling her while Mary worked, and calling her Bay-tee Ali-no.
Mary listened while she worked, and learned everything she could learn about where she was and what might happen in the future. The chieftain named Captain Wildcat, she learned, was from the Kispokothas, who were in charge of things pertaining to war in the Shawnee nation. This village in which they were now sojourning was called Lower Shawnee Town, and the river on whose bank it stood was called Scioto-cepe, the Scioto River. Because of its location near the O-y-o River and its importance as a trading center, Lower Shawnee Town was inhabited by Shawnees of all the five septs, but it was predominantly a Maykujay Shawnee town; the old white-haired chief was a Maykujay. The Maykujays, Mary learned, were healers and seers and makers of magic.
Mary learned that the Shawnees as a nation were newcomers to the valley of the O-y-o. Years before, she learned, they had been driven from their ancestral lands in Virginia and Carolina by the Cherokee and Choctaw nations. They had gone northward then into lands on the upper O-y-o. They had lived there a few years until Englishmen came in and settled and drove out the game and called that land Pennsylvania. And now the Shawnees were here. They had become allied with the Frenchmen against the Englishmen, they said, because th
ey were tired of being pushed back from one place to another and did not intend to give up these lands of the O-y-o valley.
Mary did her best to learn these strange names and facts, because she sensed that she and her family were not through being moved around and imperiled, and that anything she might learn about places and about the feelings of the Indians might be useful in keeping them alive. She sewed and listened to the Otter Girl chortling to the baby and repeated the names over and over in her mind.
She was surprised at the variety and complexity of the Indians’ civilization. The people seemed generally happy, always busy. In reality, Mary had to admit, their life seemed easier and more diverse than the hard, spare life in the white settlements.
Otter Girl was beginning to absorb little Bettie Elenor into her own existence the same way the bucks had absorbed Tommy and Georgie into theirs. While Mary was sewing, swimming in the river of her dreams and fears, she would become aware now and then of Otter Girl’s melodious voice softly murmuring endearments and lullabys to the baby, and she would look up from her needlework and see the baby’s ivory-white skin against the flushed-umber skin of Otter Girl’s torso, held close and lovingly against the squaw’s swollen, dark-nippled breasts. Mary was both comforted and disturbed by this bond she saw developing before her own eyes. That the infant was being showered with caresses and gentle voice-music that she herself could not give it during the work hours was a very good thing; she could tell that the baby would grow secure and quiet under such care. It was a far cry from the harsh and miserable circumstance of its birth in the woods. But sometimes Mary’s own breast would ache for the baby Otter Girl was holding.
And then late one somnolent afternoon, when sunlight through the trees was dappling that tender scene, making trembling blue shadows on their velvet skin, Mary looked up and saw one slight, natural motion that made her heart plummet to the pit of her stomach: