Scarlet Feather

by Joan Grant

  The sores on Rokeena’s leg were slow in healing, but by the early spring, clean skin had grown over the raw flesh. I had told Raki that when one of the boys who shared my tepee had torn the muscles of his arm, Dorrok had made him rub it with fish-oil. Squaws made the fish-oil, so Raki was able to get plenty for her: it seemed to help her foot to become more supple, and soon she was able to move the knee-joint.

  Until Raki looked after her she must have been half starved; but now it was always the best pieces which went into her food-bowl. As she grew stronger we decided that as soon as the sun had real warmth he would carry her every day into the open air; but when Nona found out what he intended to do she forbade him to take her out of the tepee.

  “I have never seen Nona so angry,” said Raki. “She shouted at me, ‘It will offend the spirits if they see that one who has angered them is given shelter in our tepee! We have hidden her from them: is that not enough? Must you bring down thunder on our heads, or make the trees fall when we walk under them? Why should we all suffer because of the lame one?’

  “I told her that she was a foolish old woman, which annoyed her exceedingly—especially as the other women had gathered to listen to our quarrel. They enjoyed seeing Nona defied, until she said that the spirits would revenge themselves on all the squaws, who would either return barren from the woods, or else have babies too weak to suck. There seemed no end to the evils which she promised: snakes hiding in the woodpile, fish stinking before they reached the cooking-pot, corn blighted so that we all starved! Most of the squaws began by being scornful, but she scattered fear among them until they began echoing, ‘Rokeena must stay hidden or the spirits will be angry with us. Why should we suffer for Rokeena?’

  “Then I got angry and shouted, ‘Rokeena will not stay in the tepee unless it is by the command of the Chief! I will ask him to decide between us,’ and I strode off towards the Great Tepee, leaving them staring after me in horror. They have got so used to me that most of them have forgotten that I am not a squaw, a squaw who would never dare to expect a hearing from the Chief!”

  “What did Na-ka-chek say to you?”

  “I forgot to give him the squaw’s sign in greeting, but he didn’t seem to mind. He said it was better that I should fight against superstition than against enemy Braves, for it was more dangerous to the tribe. I even told him how you stole the salve from Dorrok, and I think he was pleased, though of course he didn’t show it.”

  “Then he must realize that we still see each other.”

  “I think he knew it already…just as he knew we were in the Little Valley.”

  “And can Rokeena leave the tepee?”

  “Yes, and I could see he was angry with Nona. He said, ‘If the sun makes Rokeena strong, that in itself will be a great thing, but a greater will be if the other squaws see that the words of the Old Women cannot be trusted when they speak of the Unseen. When you and Piyanah rule together, women, if they have proved themselves worthy of a feather, shall belong to the Council; but while they are shackled by legends whose true meaning has been forgotten it is well that they should be confounded out of their own mouths.’

  “I thought it might be a good opportunity to tell him what a bad influence the Old Women have on the younger ones, but I suppose he thought he had agreed with me enough already, for he said coldly, ‘The Old Women know many things which the young should be glad to receive. They know how to ease a woman when she brings forth a child; how food should be prepared so that the skill of the hunters is used to the best advantage; they can make oils and weave, embroider and dress hides. You will find that there is much for Raki to learn from them.’”

  The Quarry

  I was always glad when Dorrak said we were to practise tracking, for it meant being alone all day, which was much better than being with anyone except Raki. The boys worked in pairs, a quarry and a hunter. The quarry was given a start and had to return to the encampment at sunset: if he had been caught before then the hunter was the winner. I preferred being the quarry, for Raki and I had always been good at hiding, and often, by leaving a false trail and then climbing a tree, I could have time to forget I was supposed to be a boy and think of the future when Raki and I would no longer be apart.

  But when for the first time I was told to act as Gorgi’s quarry I knew I should need every trick to keep ahead of him, for since the dive he had always tried desperately to win when we were matched against each other. It was a difficult day, for there had been heavy rain during the night and Dorrok said we were to keep in a south-westerly direction, which meant following tracks now sticky with mud where it was almost impossible not to leave footprints.

  Gorgi was fast, so there was no time to make a detour through the woods, and thrusting under low branches when every leaf was weighted with water-drops always left a trail easy to follow. I put my moccasins in my belt, for it is easier to run barefoot on slippery ground. It was cold when I started, but when it began to rain I was glad not to be wearing a tunic, which would soon have been sodden and heavy. The rain grew thicker, and I hoped that it would obliterate any tracks I had left. Streams which at this season were usually only a trickle among the stones were in full spate, and I had to struggle across two of them with water up to my waist.

  In case Gorgi hadn’t yet lost me, I waded up the third stream and climbed a fall where the water arched out from an overhanging rock. Between me and the grey sky there was a curtain of water that hid the mouth of a small cave which Raki and I had found three years earlier. It was a wonderful place to hide in, though very wet, and until I began to shiver with cold I considered staying there for the rest of the day.

  When I was higher up the hillside the rain stopped abruptly, though the air was alive with the sound of water dripping from trees. The sun came out: I wanted to sing with the good warmth—and should have done so if I had forgotten Gorgi. I climbed a tree from which I could gain a clear view of the lower slopes. There was no sign of him, and I whistled to amuse myself…bird-calls, so that he wouldn’t realize it was me even if he heard them.

  I found a wide branch on which I could lie almost full length; the sun was so hot that the wet bark began to steam. I pulled off my forehead-thong and spread out my hair to dry. When it had frozen last winter the ice had chafed my shoulders till they bled, and I had almost envied Raki his woman’s plaits.

  The branch was so comfortable that I nearly went to sleep and only saved myself from falling by gripping with my knees: the ground suddenly looked a long way down, although it was only the height of fifteen men. I was glad that heights did not make me giddy, for several of the boys found it difficult to stand on the edge of a cliff, holding their ankles and looking down the sheer drop. Then I remembered that Piyanah used to hate climbing down cliffs…she had expected sympathy from Raki, and always got it. But the new Piyanah never felt sympathy when she saw weakness—she was delighted as a hungry man who realizes that those who share the cooking-pot are too weary to eat.

  I was separated from Raki until I was ready to share the headdress with him…and I was getting less worthy of it every day. This was a very unpleasant thought, and I couldn’t hide from it. I was learning endurance, learning to live as a boy and to beat them at the things they were taught. Even in the wrestling I had thrown Kekki, and twisted his arm so badly that he couldn’t use a bow for half a moon…it had given me a warm satisfaction, of which now I was suddenly ashamed. I looked on the boys as my enemies, and yet from them must come our new tribe. I was preparing myself to be a Chief, like my father and my grandfather…honoured for endurance and impassivity. But Raki and I had agreed that a Chief should be chosen because his people loved him.

  I had done everything I could to get myself envied…and disliked. Every jeer and slight I had carefully hoarded; to be returned with the arrow sharpened, and, I hoped, from a stronger bow. Already Raki had made Rokeena happier, freed her from pain and many of her fears; and there were five others with whom he could talk of the laws we would make in the f
uture. But I had made no friends, though I had gained a small measure of grudging respect.

  Tekeeni had tried to be kind, but I thought that to accept his help would be to acknowledge weakness…and now he seldom spoke to me. I had known Kekki was ashamed because he grew dizzy on high branches, but instead of being sympathetic—and if I had tried, how easy it would have been, for I well knew the horrible queasy feeling in the pit of the belly—I had dared him, in front of the others, to climb higher than I; and rejoiced when I saw the sweat bead on his forehead and knew that his hands were so slippery that he had to cling on while the rough bark scraped the skin off his wrists and fingers.

  I had lost in understanding…and what had I gained? I could run further without getting tired. The soles of my feet were hard enough to cross sharp gravel or rough ice without doing more than ooze blood. I could swim in the river when the pack-ice had only just cleared and keep my teeth from chattering. I could make the tribal marks on the calf of my leg with a glowing stick, and then rub salt into the blisters, without flinching: salt stolen from the place of the cooking-pots to show that I could dare the penalties of a thief.

  What had the year brought me? Thick skin on my feet; stronger jaw muscles; the scars of several burns…and the recognition that I had worked hard, to change man’s contempt to a bitter hatred. Instead of helping Raki to build a bridge over the Canyon, I had cut away my edge of the cliff and made it wider. My jeers at myself were louder than any that Piyanah had heard. Clever Piyanah! Brave, wise, impassive Piyanah! So Proud with Feathers!

  I listened: and wept.

  I had made everything much more difficult for myself, but perhaps I could go back to the beginning and start again. If I told Kekki that I often felt dizzy, it might help. I wished I had not thought about Kekki before I got down to the ground…swinging by my hands and then dropping to a lower branch was suddenly unpleasant; so unpleasant that I had to cling to the trunk until the tree felt steady.

  I decided to try to find Gorgi and then give him a chance of picking up my trail. Poor Gorgi, he might have been quite nice if only I had not been so determinedly horrid! I saw him, coming up the slope. He didn’t seem to be taking any trouble to conceal his movements, so I supposed he had lost all hope of finding me. I fell flat behind a boulder, more from habit than any real wish to hide. I thought a bird-call would be too obvious a way of helping him, so I dislodged a stone and made it roll down the hill. I knew he heard it, for he dodged behind a tree. It was no longer important to escape from Gorgi, only an interesting game. Perhaps if I stopped minding about everything, training with the boys might be quite enjoyable: but of course I should never stop minding about being separated from Raki.

  I crawled across an open space, and noticed that the gravel felt unusually sharp, before I reached a spinney of alders and white birch. The small trees grew so close that it was impossible to pass between them without breaking off twigs which I knew would betray me. I broke several, and did not even bother to avoid stepping on dead sticks. I reached a plot of turf surrounded by brambles and realized the reason I wanted to stay there: not because it was a clever hiding-place or I was getting tired…I wanted to talk to Gorgi. That Gorgi was the kind of person whom Raki and I would want to talk to had never occurred to me before.

  Perhaps a friendly tree spirit had spoken to him too, for when he saw me, instead of leaping to claim me for his quarry, he pretended to be surprised.

  “Oh, you’re here! If you don’t want to go back until later, I can tell Dorrok I didn’t come up with you until just before sunset.” He paused and then added abruptly, “Do you want me to go away?”

  Yesterday I should have said that it could not have the smallest effect on me whether he went or stayed. “Please don’t go, Gorgi…unless you want to, I mean.”

  Gorgi broke off a branch and began to slice the bark away: the silence was so solid that he might just as well have carved it instead of a stick to conceal our embarrassment. I felt as though I were hesitating before a dive, and then plunged into a spate of words:

  “Gorgi, I’ve been thinking—and it wasn’t at all a pleasant think. I’ve deliberately tried to be as horrid as I could. Until I left Raki I had never been mocked, and it made me angry and bitter and small. I wanted to prove that girls could be the equal of men if only they had the chance…and I have done everything to make you all hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” said Gorgi.

  I was so moved that I was glad I had done my crying for the year earlier in the day, otherwise I might have started in front of him. “I am very grateful, Gorgi; really I am. I have done so many things to make you hate me…and to Kekki and Barakeechi and Tekeeni too. I thought you were all jeering at me, so I never stopped looking for things to jeer at in you. …I even asked the tree spirits to help me. I was glad when Kekki was dizzy; glad when Barakeechi broke his leg; glad when your canoe overturned and you were nearly drowned…horribly, disgustingly glad! So it’s very kind of you to say you don’t hate me, for of course you must.”

  “But we don’t, Piyanah. We wanted to at first, because we were insulted at having to work with a girl. But when we saw that you were brave, and clever at our kind of things, we tried to be friendly…and you wouldn’t let us.”

  “I know I wouldn’t…that’s what I’m trying to explain.”

  “Now that you’ve understood you will find it’s much easier,” said Gorgi warmly. “When Tekeeni offered to lend you his moccasins, the day you cut your foot on the ice, he ought to have explained that he didn’t make the offer because you were a girl but because you were one of us.”

  “I’m not really one of you. …I mind things and you don’t.”

  “We have to pretend not to mind in front of Dorrok and some of the older boys, but among ourselves we can admit that we dislike being hurt. But you would never admit it, Piyanah, so whenever you were there we had to pretend to enjoy being uncomfortable!”

  “But you all try so desperately hard in everything.”

  “Of course we do…when you’re waiting to mock the loser! And you’re always so serious, Piyanah. If we play a joke on anyone, you look scornful and walk away.”

  “You’d be scornful of jokes too, Gorgi,” I said hotly, “if it was always your blanket that was full of nettles, or your food-bowl that had been rubbed with gall so that you couldn’t eat your meal, or your tunic that had been smeared with honey to attract fire-ants, or your bowstring that had been cut nearly in half so that it snapped with the first arrow, or your canoe that leaked!”

  “If only you had laughed, or even got angry or played the same tricks back on us…or even wept, we would have stopped. But when you sneered and pretended we were idiot children, of course we tried to think of something still more annoying.”

  “You never asked me to share in the interesting things: I even had to find an excuse not to go to the last tribal feast, because I was ashamed of sitting alone: I didn’t want Raki to know that no one would talk to me.”

  He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “I am sorry, Piyanah. It must have been terribly lonely for you…but can’t it be different now?”

  I gulped, and hoped that Gorgi thought I had swallowed a fly instead of a sob. “I should so like it to be different! It’s supposed to be a secret, but Raki and I are trying to learn how to teach men and women not to hate each other…and I’ve been such a fool that because of me men will hate the women they take into the woods…and then the women will hate them, and the Canyon of the Separation will get still wider.”

  “I shan’t hate my squaw because of you, Piyanah. I shall remember that she is better than me at diving, better at tracking…and that she got seven arrows in the target yesterday while I got only five. And I shall remember that a cut on her foot hurts her just as much as it would have hurt me, though she is too proud to admit to pain. When I have a squaw I shall never let her go back to the women if she wants to stay with me. She shall be my equal in all things, and I shall only be proud when she speak
s my name and I shall honour her with the Scarlet Feathers.”

  “Oh, Gorgi, dear Gorgi! then I haven’t entirely failed?”

  “You haven’t failed, Piyanah. Perhaps one day in the woods you will understand how much you have won.”

  He put his arm round me as Raki might have done. “This is not the wood in which I can tell you…it is nearly sunset, and I must take my quarry back to Dorrok.”

  Then we walked down the hillside: even the shadows were friendly and the evening star did not speak of loneliness.

  Three Hunters

  After I had killed my first deer, a stag in its fifth season, several of the boys apparently accepted me as one of themselves; but Gorgi and Tekeeni, with whom I now shared a tepee, were the only two who were pleased when Dorrok said I had done well, so I was glad when the three of us were chosen to hunt our first grizzly together.

  To kill a grizzly was considered the first important stage towards becoming a Brown Feather, and to wear its claw on a neck-thong meant that you could give orders to any boy who had not yet gained the same honour: I looked forward to giving orders, for I had not forgotten how difficult some of them had made my first months with them. Grizzlies are easier to kill in the early spring, when they are stupid after their long sleep, but as their fat is poor then, the ones needed by the tribe are hunted in autumn.

  We were told which spur of the mountains to search for the bear, but all decisions as how best to attack it were left to us. If we had not succeeded within fifteen days we must return to admit failure, and if we made a kill we must come back as quickly as possible so that Naked Foreheads could be sent to bring down the carcass.

  For days the three of us talked of little else. Arrow after arrow was discarded, either because the haft was not perfectly balanced, or else we thought the set of the feathers might be improved. Each of us took a deer-skin bag of pemmican and corn-meal, for on the high ground it might be difficult to find food; we also took a sling for bringing down small birds, a heavy club with a stone head, and a wooden bar bound with raw-hide which Gorgi believed might be thrust into the bear’s jaws if it tried to crush one of us. I hoped that we should never have to use it!