“I could feel my thoughts racing toward the People. In the spring when the land was green, I put some seeds in a pouch and hid jerky inside my tunic on a string around my waist. I went out to push the weeds down. I never stopped walking—I went through the saplings across the ditch that surrounded that village and, with one foot ahead of the other, headed in the direction of the People. It was not long before the seeds and jerky were gone, but I found roots and berries and skinned a rabbit with a sharp stone. I found the People. But they did not celebrate my coming home. They did not know who I was for a long time. I could not talk to tell them. I was sick and tired and only wanted to sleep for manysuns. I could not remember my name. Then I found that my family had been killed in a raid and I had no close relatives to look after me. No one to hunt meat or get hides for me. I took what was left over or what was thrown my way. I closed my heart and mind to the People. In my mind I lived with him. And I do not even remember his name. Now I am old, and I am going back near his village. I do not fight it; I do not look forward to it. They will not know that I was there among them once. So now it is time for me to wake up and use my knowledge to help my friends. This is my work.”
She looked at her friends with blazing eyes. Her hands reached out to them as a benediction.
“Oh, Moon Woman,” cried Fish Woman, jumping to her feet and reaching out toward her friend. “If we’d only known. But you never said a thing. I can’t remember any stories about you. Only that you were always so shy and quiet and never laughed with the others. You made your own tepee, and I never wondered much why, I was always so busy with my own man and my work.” Fish Woman babbled on and on quietly beside Moon Woman. Moon Woman smiled kindly at her.
Willow Bud edged over beside Grass Child. “I’m going to get back to the People.” She whispered so no one might hear. “Eat and become strong and you go with with me, maybe tonight.”
“Ai, but I cannot make it,” whispered Grass Child. Still, she began to nibble slowly at a heat-dried rib with stringy meat.
“That is a horse that would no longer walk,” said Willow Bud. “It will give you strength.”
“Aaagch,” replied Grass Child, but she continued to gnaw.
“We will wait until the skunks sleep. We will take two horses and ride back to our village.”
Grass Child felt calmer. This was a good decision. If Moon Woman could walk back, surely they could ride faster. And even nonrecognition among the People was better than the unknown agony that lay ahead.
Because there were no robes and the blue blanket had been taken away, they all lay close together for warmth. Grass Child was always made to lie beside Buzzard Beak. On the other side of her was Willow Bud, then another Minnetaree, then Water Woman with Drummer and Blue Feather, then a Minnetaree, and so on.
Buzzard Beak smelled of horse sweat and body filth, so Grass Child tried to pull away and lie closer to Willow Bud, but he only pulled her closer to him. She felt nauseated but held it down because it was warm inside the encircled arms of her mother’s murderer.
Sleepily she wondered where they had tethered the horses. A quarter moon rose over the meadow, giving very little light. That was in their favor, she thought, and snuggled further into the strong arms of Buzzard Beak, who breathed deeply through his mouth, making a swish-swash sound like trees scraping together in a strong wind.
Grass Child remembered hearing that “Men who snore on the warpath can never go far with other braves, nor a man who sneezes unexpectedly.” Such men were in the class of horses that stumble. Maybe Buzzard Beak was not so much respected among his people after all.
Grass Child awakened to a kick on her behind. It was not yet dawn, but the Minnetarees were up and preparing for the day’s march. She had slept too long. Willow Bud had not wakened her. While the Minnetarees were eating raw horse meat, Grass Child looked for Willow Bud. Had she gone alone? Had she actually escaped? No one seemed aware of anyone absent. Where was Willow Bud? An acute loneliness engulfed Grass Child.
All morning she rode, staring at the sweating brown back of Buzzard Beak as he led her horse. The spring sun seemed like midsummer to Grass Child. She began to think of the Ninambea, who were known to the Shoshonis as elfin people with an evil disposition. These miniature men lurked in the dark recesses of mountains and looked eagerly for a chance to shoot arrows of misfortune at the Shoshonis who displeased them. She recalled all the times she might have displeased the Ninambea. The only way to be safe from these little men at night was to be in tepees, which the little men could not enter. Maybe the Ninambea had shot all of them full of arrows of misfortune. This miserable bobbing up and down on a frothing, perspiring horse, heading for the village of a strange people, and Willow Bud gone, was surely misfortune. To add to her predicament, she was afraid to speak to any of the Agaidüka women about Willow Bud, even though she knew for certain that their captors would not understand. She longed for the self-confidence Willow Bud always managed. She longed to talk with her at the end of this long day’s ride.
At last the Minnetarees stopped for camp, and Grass Child waited for an opportunity to ask about Willow Bud. No one had mentioned her name. Scar Face suddenly stood before Grass Child. Rage ignited his face. Poising his quirt above Grass Child’s head, he brought it down so hard that she fell to the ground. Again and again he raised new welts across her thin, aching back.
The Agaidüka women and small boys huddled closer and closer together, no one daring to cry out or come to Grass Child’s rescue. At last Scar Face seized her by the arm and talked with signs. He wanted to know where the other girl-child and his spotted horse were, or she would get more beating. Would she like that? Grass Child cowed to the earth and shook her head no. He indicated that he wished her to make signs to tell what she knew. Her hands shook as she raised herself and explained that she did not know anything about his horse. Two riders came quickly into the camp, dismounting near Scar Face and waving their hands back and forth in front of them, indicating: all gone, disappeared. These two had been sent out to find the runaway. But the girl was nowhere—gone. Willow Bud had escaped, and there was no way to know if she would find the People and tell them where the Minnetarees were headed so rescuers would come, or if the wolves would find her first. With that thought, Grass Child gave in to her pain. She was little comforted by Pine Woman’s sudden, long, deep-throated death howl; it climbed to a shrill crescendo. Fish Woman joined her in the wailing song of Agaidüka women mourning for a loved friend.
A lump grew large in Grass Child’s throat, and she could not swallow, nor could she spit it up. The wailing of the mourning song pounded with deadening anguish inside her head.
“All right,” Water Woman said. “Shut your mouths. Dry your eyes. Our captors now believe we think the child is dead. Let us not speak her name again. Let us pray to the Great Spirit that she arrives in the village of the People in good health. There is something to be done here. We must put balsam pitch and bear’s oil on those welts of Grass Child’s.” Her voice, calm as ever, was heavy with sudden fatigue. Now they could all think of Willow Bud going home to the People, with no fear that the captors would send out more scouts to hunt for her. Grass Child felt an overwhelming gratitude toward Fish Woman and Pine Woman. From the quietness around her, something emerged through her fear, an impulse like love for these women.
Two days later, in a misty rain, they angled down a long slope aiming to the right, toward the river. There was a wide trail worn by wandering buffalo, and the avenue of elk and other hoofed creatures. Grass Child no longer cared where they were, or that Scar Face continued to torment her, even though Buzzard Beak had given her water and protected her at night, wrapping her in the blue blanket. She was dizzy from pain and loss of blood, and she seemed to be riding through cold mist. She was nauseous. Nothing seemed real.
“Grass Child, are you sick?” The voice sounded a great way off. It was Water Woman. Grass Child nodded. There was no use denying it.
“Hold tight to your ins
ides. Open your eyes and look way down there by the river. See! Held in a large cage of tall sticks are mounds, like large anthills.”
Grass Child opened her eyes and fought down the nausea. Surely, she thought, no anthills are that large. “What is it?”
“The village of the Minnetarees,” said Moon Woman.
Buzzard Beak rode up to them and grinned before he nudged his horse with his quirt and galloped faster and faster down the slope.
On a barren undulation the riders let their horses rest. They sat in their sweat, their breath blowing white, as they gazed through the cold mist to the flat, gray-green prairie sloping to the east ahead of them.
A rising breeze came from the northwest; the lowgray clouds of the early spring afternoon moved with it. Even in the wind’s raw breath there was some warmth, and the women began to feel an impending excitement.
The men sent a young warrior ahead to inform the village that they were coming in, and the captives watched in fascination as they prepared for their return home. The men smeared their faces and bodies with the black-and-yellow stripes of paint. They rubbed the horses with bunches of dried grasses and polished their lances and rusty flintlocks. Buzzard Beak circled the three long furrows Grass Child had clawed into his face with vermilion paint, as though he were proud of his wounds.
Then the Minnetarees cried out to each other and broke into long yells and whoops that rang over the prairie. They dug their heels into the flanks of their tired horses and hurried them toward the village.
The huge village consisted of hundreds of rounded earth huts standing close together in a circular pattern. In the dim light of the gray afternoon they looked dark and depressing. Smoke hung in pallid clouds over the flat rooftops, forming a low-hanging cloud over the entire village. Beyond the encampment, outside the closely placed skinned posts that formed a sort of fence around the village, horses grazed in large herds, speckling the gray prairie. Just inside the fence, near a small creek, lay a meadow and several thickets of willows. This meadow was not like any Grass Child had seen. Fresh green leaves were growing in it everywhere; some seemed a lighter shade of green than others, and these grew in patterns of straight lines, row after row. She paused to look, but Scar Face flew by, striking Grass Child’s mount across the hind legs, and the child was almost unhorsed as the beast lunged down the slope after the others.
As they rode closer, Grass Child saw brush arbors and fires and tied horses and many women and children among the earth huts. The smaller children, up to the size of Grass Child, wore nothing. Their skin was smooth and deep brown.
Some of the women began singing, a chant of the strangest nature Grass Child had ever heard. They were not singing the same song. Each seemed to be rejoicingin her own manner at the return of the men. They pulled open the huge picketed gate and let it swing wide as the horses rode through.
Grass Child thought the women hideous. They wore dark deerskins with fringes along the sides of their short skirts, and elk’s teeth and pink shells dangled from their ears and on their tunics. Some of the women were bare down to a short fringed skirt, with beads around their throat. Their coarse, straight black hair was chopped and uncombed. The insides of their ears were filled with vermilion paint. They looked as if they never used the river for bathing, and smelled like it, too. But the joy on their broad faces was unmistakable.
Grass Child was pushed from her horse, and she fell to the ground on hands and knees. Buzzard Beak had pushed her. She was taken to stand with the other captives. The Minnetaree women were shouting things she did not understand. One naked Minnetaree child picked up a handful of dust and flung it into the face of little Blue Feather. He coughed and clung to his mother.
“Stop that!” Grass Child told them. “He didn’t do anything to you. He’s only a papoose.”
They laughed, and one of the larger boys took the little boy into the crowd of kiyi-ing women.
“Stop him,” called Water Woman. “He’s my baby.” They only yelled and screamed back.
Too weak to resist, the captives were pushed into the center of the encampment. They were between lodges that were elbow-to-elbow, and the spaces between were not clean. Animal and vegetable refuse in every state of putrefaction was scattered about. Grass Child thought of her own clean village, kept all the cleaner by moving to a new camp each winter and summer. She held her nose to show her distaste of the smell and to keep out the slow black smoke that breathed out of the smoke holes and bit her lungs.
The Minnetaree squaws led the horses, grunting and jabbering and pointing. Water Woman carried Drummer and grabbed for the hand of Grass Child as she stumbled into one of the trenches that were dug around the outside of each lodge to guide off the rain. “Keep your head on,” she whispered. “I can see Blue Featherbeing carried by a young squaw. She is gentle with him.”
Grass Child noticed that the doors on the lodges were made of rough wooden planks tied together and painted blue, red, or yellow.
The smell of spoiled meat was everywhere. Ferocious-looking dogs came out from behind the huts to look at them. Their long red tongues dripped saliva upon the hard, damp ground. They barked and slunk away when the party came near them. It came to Grass Child that these animals lived only to devour the offal tossed behind the lodges. They were not pets.
More squaws and naked children ran to join them, yelling and laughing. Big boys scooped up fresh horse droppings and pelted Grass Child and the Agaidüka women. Girls ran toward them. Grass Child felt the wetness of their spittle on her bare face and arms. They crowded and quarreled to get a closer look or to touch her, then fell away laughing.
Grass Child felt their behavior unbearable, and she began to withdraw inside. This feeling she had experienced several times lately. She said to herself, “I am one of the People. I am an Agaidüka.” She walked proudly and pretended to ignore them and their uncouth actions.
Somehow she became separated from Water Woman, but she kept going with the crowd. There was no way to stop. A woman with a baby at her bare breast jabbed a finger into the side of Grass Child and shouted vituperations down at her face.
The procession was now in the heart of the encampment, where there was a huge flat area with a Council Lodge at one side facing the rising sun. Grass Child had never seen so many people at one time. The people nearest her shouted wordy abuse and shook their fists threateningly. She continued to ignore them, but she was filled with apprehension. What were they going to do? What more could happen to her?
She shivered as the northwest wind grew keener. It seemed to forget spring, and to speak only of imagined fall and the onrush of winter. The small boys of the village had put on fringed leggings; the women had drawn robes over their shoulders. The horses swungtheir tails in the wind, waiting patiently, subdued, with bowed heads.
Suddenly Scar Face lined himself between her and the last remnants of daylight that seeped in through the crowd. He stood there, maybe two man-lengths away, silent for a moment. Then he laughed deep in his throat and began to talk. Grass Child could see his even, white teeth. She could not understand what he was saying. He began to use his hands to make signs. A circle with his index finger and thumb, then the other index finger pointing at the circle, then moving inside it.
“Do not answer,” said Fish Woman, coming out of the crowd.
Grass Child thought he was indicating something about eating. She had been without much food too many days. She did not feel hunger, only pain and weakness and a desire to sleep.
The men were forming a circle around the fire. Several women brought sticks and laid them in the shallow pit where the fire glowed. Grass Child and the women were pushed roughly to one side. Their wrists and ankles were bound. Scar Face bound her hands so tightly her fingers went numb.
People ambled past to stare at them, then leave. Something Good nuzzled Moon Woman and sobbed quietly. Grass Child’s mouth began to water. There was a wonderful smell in the air. Over the fire hung an iron kettle, and choice pieces of meat
were being roasted, filling the air with a fragrance she had almost forgotten. She breathed deeply. The men seated in the circle passed the pipe, as in a council meeting. But they ate instead of talking, digging their fingers into the kettle and making many slurping sounds. Even so, Grass Child’s mouth watered.
When the men were done, the Minnetaree women ate, crowding around the kettle, pushing and shoving. Another kettle filled with food was brought, then another, and another, so that they all might be fed.
A short woman with fat legs came through the crowd, and the villagers moved aside to let her pass. She stopped in front of the prisoners with a broad wooden plate heaped high with chunks of steaming meat and fat yellow seeds. Grass Child fell to the business of eating asnoisily as her captors. She bent over the plate on the ground—the bindings on her hands did not stop her from using her mouth. She finally looked up. The four Agaidüka women were staring at her. Then Water Woman laughed, knelt down, and began to shove the plate down toward her boys with her chin. The boys sucked up the stringy hunks. Suddenly Blue Feather was lifted up. A young woman was holding him close and nuzzling his neck while making soothing sounds. The strange young woman then plunked the baby down in the lap of Water Woman and untied her wrist bindings. She whispered something Water Woman could not understand. Water Woman rubbed the warmth back into her hands. The stranger broke off hunks of meat for Drummer and the other two boys, indicating that Water Woman should nurse the baby, Blue Feather. She spoke again and slipped away.