Shaman, p.23
Shaman, page 23
Earthmaker, do not let Raoul take revenge on Frank.
Pistol balls splashed water into the boat.
* * *
11
Redbird's Wickiup
White Bear rowed upstream on the Ioway River past stands of weeping willow whose yellowing fronds drooped into the dark green water. Even though the current was at its weakest now, his arms and shoulders felt as if they'd been beaten with clubs. If only Frank had been able to find a canoe for him instead of this heavy bateau that he'd had to push across the Great River and now up the Ioway.
His heart fluttered in his chest like a trapped bird as he sensed himself coming closer to the British Band's winter hunting camp. He had thought he would be happy at this homecoming, but he was terrified.
How would they receive him? After six years they must think he had forgotten all about them. Would they despise him? Maybe they would just make fun of him.
And in what state would he find the British Band? They'd had to get through the summer without the crops they always raised. Had any friends been shot by white snipers during the siege of Saukenuk? How many, weakened by hunger, might be ill or dead? Would his mother be alive?
And what of Redbird?
He had already met, just by chance, one member of the band, Three Horses, who had been fishing in the shallows on the Ioway shore of the Great River. And Three Horses had certainly been happy to see him. He'd jumped on his pony and had said he would ride back to the camp with the news that White Bear was back. He was so excited that he did not wait for White Bear to ask any questions about how his people had fared.
So they would all be waiting for him by the time he got there. The thought frightened him all the more.
Ahead, a row of bark and dugout canoes lay bottoms up on a dirt embankment.
He saw a flash of red in the trees near the canoes. For a moment he thought, with a joyous leap of his heart, that it might be Redbird. Then a man wearing a deep red blanket stepped out of the woods. He stood over the beached canoes with his arms folded.
Wolf Paw.
His eyes were like splinters of coal, and the black circles he had painted around them gave him a terrifying aspect. The crest of red-dyed deer hair that sprouted from his shaven skull seemed strange and savage to White Bear after six years away from the Sauk.
White Bear rowed in close to the riverbank, uncertain how to greet Wolf Paw. The brave said nothing, did nothing. A maple branch swayed in the wind. Red leaves fell, and sunlight flashed from a steel-headed tomahawk that Wolf Paw was holding.
White Bear's belly knotted.
He skidded the boat to a halt on the bank a short distance downriver from Wolf Paw. He climbed out the front end, pulled the boat up on the bank, unloaded it and turned it over.
Wolf Paw watched in silence as White Bear slung his pack and bags on his back, picked up his rifle and rested it on his shoulder. Looking at Wolf Paw's red crest and blanket and buckskin trousers, White Bear realized how strange he himself must seem to Wolf Paw in the green clawhammer jacket he had worn to his father's funeral.
Now they were face to face.
I will wait for him to move, if I have to stand here till sunset and all through the night. He chose this strange way of meeting me. Let him show me what is in his mind.
He heard the boughs creaking in the wind around him. River water rippled over the stones along the bank. He heard a redbird whistling in the distance.
Wolf Paw drew a deep breath, opened his mouth and let out a war whoop.
"Whoowhoowhoowhoo!"
White Bear's heart gave a great thump, and he fell back a step. He heard rage in the whoop, and the frustration. Wolf Paw was angry at him. Why? Maybe just for coming back.
Wolf Paw held the tomahawk high. Corded muscles and dark veins stood out in his rigid arm. Two feathers dyed red danced just under the steel head. He repeated his war whoop, and then his lips drew back from clenched white teeth.
He whirled and plunged into the woods, leaving White Bear shaken and open-mouthed. He stood still, listening to Wolf Paw crashing through the trees and shrubs, kicking piles of leaves, until the noise died away in the distance. No Sauk ran noisily through the woods like that, unless driven by some madness.
White Bear sighed. Oddly, he felt less frightened than he had before he met Wolf Paw. Before, he had not known what to expect. Now he felt ready for anything.
He strode into the woods following Three Horses' directions. As he walked he began to hear the sounds of people's voices and dogs barking. Gradually they drew nearer, until at last he broke through the trees into a clearing.
The sight made his eyes brim with tears.
A hundred or more women in brown, fringed skirts were facing him, and as he came forward they rushed to form a ring around him. His vision blurred as he recognized faces he had not seen in six years.
Beyond the women he could see the camp of the British Band. In his joy it seemed to him that the wickiups were bathed in a golden light. Rings of gray domes began near the trees where he stood and spread into the tall yellow prairie grass. Before the wickiups he could see what the women had been working at, tasks abandoned for the moment, clothing being mended, skins stretched, meat and fish cleaned and set on frames to dry.
"White Bear is here!" cried one woman, and he recognized Water Flows Fast, plump wife of Three Horses.
Three Horses, a short man with broad shoulders, stood beside his wife. His nose was flat and spread out. White Bear did not remember it that way. Something must have happened to Three Horses while he was gone.
Much has happened to them while I was gone.
"I told you White Bear had come back," Three Horses said over and over again.
White Bear breathed in the familiar smells of campfire smoke and roasting meat, of leather and freshly cut wood and tobacco smoke. His delighted eyes took in quillwork and beadwork and paint, blankets and ribbons, bodies clad in fringed buckskin, warm brown faces, dark, friendly eyes.
Murmuring greetings, he searched the crowd for specially loved faces.
"Where is Owl Carver?" he asked. After such a long time the Sauk language came awkwardly to his lips.
Three Horses said, "Owl Carver visits the camps of the Fox and the Kickapoo, to invite them to Black Hawk's council."
What is Black Hawk planning now?
White Bear did not like the sound of the news, but there would be time to think about it later.
"Where is Sun Woman, my mother?"
Water Flows Fast spoke up. "She has gone to gather medicine plants." She looked as cheerful as, he remembered, she always had, but her eyes penetrated him.
"Will no one find her and tell her that I am here?"
Water Flows Fast said, "Redbird should go and tell Sun Woman. Redbird lives with Sun Woman now."
Redbird!
He felt almost dizzy at the sound of her name, a name he had not heard spoken aloud in six years.
As soon as Water Flows Fast spoke, she started to giggle, putting her hands over her mouth. Many of the other women in the group giggled too. White Bear wanted to hide his burning face. He had forgotten how painful it could be to be made fun of by those who knew him so well.
But joy blazed up in his chest. Redbird living with Sun Woman? He wanted to whoop with happiness, even as Wolf Paw had whooped with rage. That could only mean that she had not taken a husband.
Then he took a deep breath and stiffened his body to hide his feelings. He looked at the laughing faces all around him, especially the bright, curious eyes of Water Flows Fast. If they saw how excited he was, they would laugh at him all the more.
Trying to keep his voice steady, he asked, "Where is my mother's wickiup?"
With a knowing smile—but what was it that she knew?—Water Flows Fast beckoned to the wickiup of Sun Woman—and Redbird. "Come. I will take you."
She turned, her fringed skirt swinging. The women parted to make way for her. Shouldering his rifle, White Bear followed. Three Horses walked beside him. White Bear heard the whisper of many moccasins and the murmur of many voices behind him.
Water Flows Fast marched up to a wickiup near the center of the camp. The dark, rounded shelter of sheets of elm bark and tree limbs was small, just big enough for two people, three at the most.
White Bear's heart was beating like a dance drum. The buffalo-hide flap was pulled down over the door, showing that if anyone was within they wanted privacy.
"The wickiup of Sun Woman," said Water Flows Fast. "And of Redbird." She looked at him expectantly.
"There is no one here," said White Bear.
This brought shouts of laughter from the women around him. He wished they would all go away.
"I saw Redbird go in there," said Water Flows Fast, "and I did not see her come out."
White Bear's discomfort increased as he watched her face redden and her cheeks puff out. It seemed that mirth would make her burst.
Every beat of his heart seemed to shake his whole body. He looked around slowly, trying to calm himself. Even if Redbird had waited for him, his sudden return must have shocked her. She needed time to prepare herself to meet him. And, like him, she did not want all these women watching their meeting and laughing. He would simply have to wait until Redbird was ready to greet him.
A rack of crisscrossed wooden sticks for drying skins stood by the closed doorway. Slowly, deliberately, he walked over to the rack, leaned his rifle against it, and laid down his pack and bags.
Then, turning his back on the wickiup, he sat down cross-legged on the ground.
Water Flows Fast looked at him, open-mouthed.
"Thank you for showing me the way," he said. Hiding his embarrassment, he made himself smile at the hundred or more women gathered to watch him.
"What are you going to do?" Water Flows Fast asked.
"I am going to rest and thank Earthmaker for seeing me here safely."
"White Bear is a man of sense," said Three Horses, smiling his approval.
"Is that all?" Water Flows Fast asked.
"I am going to wait for Sun Woman, my mother."
"Is that all?"
"That is all," said White Bear.
Three Horses, who was no taller than his wife, gripped her plump upper arm firmly. "Let White Bear alone."
"But—" Water Flows Fast started to protest, and her husband jerked her arm.
"We will leave this man in peace," he said.
Her lower lip jutting out, Water Flows Fast let Three Horses pull her away through the crowd.
White Bear sat with his eyes downcast to discourage people from talking to him. Gradually the rest of the crowd dispersed.
The back of his neck bristled. He knew Redbird was in the wickiup behind him. Sooner or later she must come out.
To have her so close after all this time, to know she was there and to hear nothing but that terrible silence, and yet to sit with his back to that buffalo-hide curtain, all this was a torment for him. The urge to jump up and tear the curtain away pressed against his resolve to hold himself still. He thought he might explode like a barrel of gunpowder.
He forced himself to breathe slowly and pretend that he was hidden in shrubbery with a bow and arrow, watching for a deer.
After a time—he could not tell how much time—a face was peering into his. Dark and square. The brown eyes brimmed with tears.
His eyes opened wider. Sun Woman was kneeling before him.
"My son." She reached out to him, and he scrambled to embrace her. When her strong arms held him he felt like a little boy again.
He sat back to look at her dear face, wet with tears. Resting beside her on the ground was the familiar basket with blue cloth cover that she used to gather herbs.
He looked around for the sun. It was low and red on the western horizon. It had been high when he sat down here. He must have gone on a spirit walk.
"I knew it would be like this," Sun Woman said. "It would come one day when I least expected it—my son would be back again."
He sighed deeply. "To see my mother makes my heart as big as the prairie."
They sat facing each other and she gripped his shoulders. "You are a man now, a very handsome man." She ran her hand along his cheek, and his whole face felt warm. He kept his gaze fixed on her eyes.
She said, "You have learned much. You have been hurt. Your face is scarred." She followed the line of the scar with her thumb, leaning forward to peer still more closely at him. "I see sadness in you. Your father is dead. That is why you have come back."
She sat back and closed her eyes for a silent moment. Then she began a song for the dead.
"Earthmaker, show him the way.
Lead him over the bridge of stars and sunbeams,
Along the westward Trail of Souls.
Take his soul into your heart."
After she had finished the song, Sun Woman wiped the tears from her face with her blunt fingers. She reached out and stroked his cheeks as well. He had not realized that he was crying.
But grieving for Pierre reminded him to reach into his medicine bag.
"I have a gift for you, Mother." He took out the flat silver case with its velvet neck cord, opened it and showed her the pair of spectacles Marchette had brought to him from Victoire. "Do you know these?"
"Your father wore circles of glass like these. To see the marks on the talking paper."
"Yes. These are the same ones." He closed the case and pressed it into her hand. "Now you have something that was close to Star Arrow."
She said, "He was with me for five summers only, but in spirit, ever since. Now I will feel even closer to him." She slipped the ribbon over her head and dropped the case down the front of her doeskin dress.
He saw the tracks of more tears on her smooth brown cheeks in the fading light. This time she did not wipe them away.
"Tell me all that has happened to you," she said.
As White Bear talked, he deliberately made his voice loud enough to carry, so that Redbird, in the wickiup, might hear.
When he was through telling his story, he felt weighed down by guilt.
"I fled, Mother, even though I promised my father I would care for the land. And smoked tobacco with him to seal the promise. Should I have stayed?"
She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "You kept your promise as far as you were able. That is all the calumet requires. Your father would not want you to die fighting for that land. It is better that you come back here and be a Sauk again."
White Bear looked down, unable to meet Sun Woman's eyes. Feeling an ache deep in the center of his body, remembering the great stone and log house, the blizzard of blossoms in the orchards, the fields of green corn and golden wheat, the herds that darkened the hillsides, he wanted to clutch his chest where it felt as if it had been torn open. He could not so easily forget Victoire.
When I was at Victoire I yearned to go back to my people. Now I am with my people and I miss Victoire. Will my heart never be at peace?
Nancy had wanted him so desperately before they parted; Redbird would not even let him see her.
White Bear saw that once again women had started to gather nearby, among them the round-faced Water Flows Fast. And now White Bear saw another familiar face he had not seen earlier, Redbird's mother, Wind Bends Grass. She glowered at him as she always had, her fists on her broad hips.
O Earthmaker! Why would Redbird not come out and speak to him?
A dozen cawing crows flew over the camp. Laughing at him.
He heard a movement behind him, a rustling of the buffalo-hide curtain. He dared not look around.
A voice at his back said, "Go away, White Bear!"
A cool, sweet flow poured from his heart like a mountain spring at the sound of Redbird's voice. He unfolded his legs, stiff from hours of sitting, and pushed himself to his feet. He turned.
Weakness washed over him; he thought he might fall to the ground. Redbird stood before him, her cheeks flushed, her slanting eyes sparkling with anger. Her face was thinner than he remembered, her lips fuller. She still wore a fringe of her hair over her forehead.
Standing silent and open-mouthed, he felt he must look utterly foolish.
"Go away," Redbird said again. "We do not want you here."
"To see you is a sunrise in my heart, Redbird."
"To see you is a foul day in my stomach!"
