Scarlet Plume, Second Edition

by Frederick Manfred

  “What! Whoa. That I cannot believe.”

  Judith burned her high-white flashing eyes into the general. “I can give you the names of the soldiers if you want them. Ha. What you hear from that scared-stiff nigger Godfrey and from those poor notional young girls is one thing, but what I hear at night from the older women and given to me in confidence is another.” Judith licked her lips. “White soldiers scalping the bodies of the dead. White dead.”

  General Sibley pulled himself together. “The power of life and death is an awful thing to exercise. Lodged as it is in my hands for the moment, it makes me shudder. Still, duty must be performed and judgment visited on the guilty.”

  “And I still say Scarlet Plume is not guilty. Not guilty, d’you hear? General Sibley, if you hang him, you hang an innocent man as well as a great man.” Judith shook her finger at General Sibley as a man might. “My fine sir, I’ll say it again. If he dies, you die. I will shoot you. Somehow.”

  General Sibley turned to Heard. “Isaac, tell her what you told me this morning.”

  Heard humped forward on his canvas chair. All through the interview his eyes as before had remained fastened on her doeskin tunic. It seemed to possess Heard that she had not wanted to change to white garb of some sort. “Yesterday one brave testified that he had seen a certain white killed by a white bullet. Since we knew for an absolute certainty that the white man had been killed by an arrow, we had him dead to rights. Your red lover shall hang.”

  Judith couldn’t believe her ears. “And that is evidence? And you are a lawyer?”

  “Nevertheless—”

  Judith broke in. She turned her full fury on General Sibley. “Sir, you have caught the wrong Indians. The real culprits, if there were any, have long ago skipped the country. They are already in British Canada.”

  General Sibley’s eyes first opened a second, then almost closed entirely. He had spotted something. She had made a slip. “Mrs. Raveling, you do not protest when Scarlet Plume is referred to as your red lover? Then it is a fact, is it not, that you are infatuated with him, eh? Possibly more?”

  Judith flushed scarlet.

  There was a long pause. In Heard’s eyes and in the expression on his lips it was patently obvious that he was envisioning her in lascivious embrace with Scarlet Plume.

  General Sibley spoke, almost sadly. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Raveling, but your dusky paramour must be tried along with the rest. We must do this to make absolutely certain that not one of the real culprits goes unpunished. We are bound to have a few culprits amongst all those we’ve caught. We owe this to the bones of all the slaughtered white settlers.”

  “General Sibley, let me ask you this. I have heard the story many times that a Sioux chief, in gratitude for a favor you did him, once offered you his virgin daughter for the night. In fact, I think you referred to it in an article you wrote for the magazine Spirit of the Times, under the pseudonym ‘Hal, a Dakotah.’ Did you actually refuse her charms?”

  General Sibley blushed.

  “Did your pet of a white wife approve of this when you told her?”

  Judith was not permitted to testify, on the grounds of prejudice.

  She caught General Sibley by the arm as the military commission broke up for the noon meal. Her face was blackened over by all the flying soot from the burned grass. Tear streaks down her face resembled Indian face markings.

  “General Sibley?”

  “They found him guilty.”

  Judith almost fell to earth.

  General Sibley caught her arm, supported her for a moment.

  “But, General, he is innocent!”

  “So say you.”

  “What did he say in his defense?”

  “He gave no defense. He freely admits to being at Skywater during the time of the massacre. He told us that he was proud to be able to say that there was no one between himself and the enemy at all times.”

  “Poor man. Poor man. He just will not try to save himself.”

  “When he was asked if he would try to help catch some of the other culprits, so that some amelioration of his sentence might be considered, he told us”—General Sibley could not help but smile grimly—“he told us we could skin our own skunk.”

  “He would say that. He would.”

  “I realize, Mrs. Raveling, that there is much to be said for the romantic noble savage—”

  “Romantic? The Sioux is not romantic at all. He is epic!”

  “Mrs. Raveling, I agree with you in one respect at least: that this is the greatest Indian tragedy of the age.”

  “Did that blue-gum nigger presume to testify against him?”

  “He did not. Godfrey the Negro is married into another branch of the Sioux.”

  “General Sibley.” Judith gave him a hard tug on the sleeve. “General Sibley, we stole this land from the Indian. It was their homeland, not ours. And whatever they may have done in retaliation to regain it, even the worst, can be excused on that ground. We would have done the same.”

  “Then you do not believe that a superior civilization has the duty and the right to make a place for itself?”

  “At the expense of the dumb? I do not believe there is such a thing as justifiable conquest.”

  “What about the civilizing the world has undergone at the hands of the Romans?”

  Judith thought again of the snub given her by Mrs. Sibley. “I’ve read some too, General. So let me ask you this. Do you then condone the repeated raids the civilized Spaniards made on the Indian Mayas, when the Indian Mayas had the greater civilization?”

  It was a telling comment, and it was immediately apparent that General Sibley’s respect for her went up a hundredfold. A mingled look of part sympathy and part apprehension appeared in his dark eyes. He looked at her soot-darkened flowing gold hair, looked at her Indian tunic, and shook his head. “Madam, you almost persuade me.”

  “Almost is not enough.”

  General Sibley took her by the arm. “I’m glad you caught me here though. Because I was about to go look for you myself. Uhh, come with me to my quarters a moment. I have someone there who wants to meet you.”

  Judith started. Some more survivors from Skywater?

  “Come.”

  When they arrived at General Sibley’s field tent, the General bowed her inside and then stepped back.

  His ushering her alone into the murky tent surprised her. But then her eyes adjusted and she understood.

  Rising out of Heard’s chair was her soldier husband, Vince.

  “What . . . are . . . you . . . doing . . . here?” Judith asked weakly.

  “My precious pet.”

  Vince’s ready use of the old endearment, always so revolting to her because it reminded her of his favorite Lucretius position, almost broke her mind. She sagged into a chair.

  He stood proudly before her. He was dressed in the snapping blue uniform of a lieutenant, with belt and saber, the quintessence of everything military and manly. He bowed to her, forager cap to his breast and thinning blond hair neatly slicked back.

  Judith closed her eyes. This was not the way she remembered him when he left for the wars, waving to her from the deck of the steamboat Blue Earth. He had been craven then, half-drunk, potbellied, sallow.

  “Well, pet?”

  She shivered.

  “Judith?”

  She dared to look up. How radiant he was with health now, slim at the hips, broad-shouldered. Bold-eyed, even. The war of rebellion had made a man of him. At last. Slowly her eyes went over him. She saw that he had been wounded, a deep bullet crease at the edge of his hairline. She could see blood pulsing in the soft white scarred hollow.

  “Pet?”

  “Too late,” she murmured, weak.

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  She shook her head. Vince was now the man she had once wanted him to be. But it was too late.

  His smile gave him the look of the eager young lover. “I see that you’ve been through a lot too.”

/>   “Too?” she thought.

  “This has been a terrible time for all of us.”

  “Angela is dead,” she whispered.

  His face quickly grayed over. For a second his face had the old sallow look. “Yes,” he finally said, low. “I know. General Sibley told me.” He licked his thin lips.

  “She was—”

  “Don’t mention it! I know. What is done is done.” He forced a smile to his lips. “I think we owe it to ourselves to concentrate on what lies ahead, not on what lies behind us.” He looked at her Indian tunic. “Native garb becomes you.”

  She covered her face with her hands. “Please.”

  He spoke gently. “Soon we’ll be in Mankato. We’ll buy you a whole new wardrobe there.”

  “Please.”

  A long silence followed.

  A sentry outside paced slowly back and forth. A bugle sounded. Faintly came the endless wailing of the Sioux death song. A sad Dakota war drum beat steady and slow nearby.

  Vince sat down opposite her. Elbows on his knees, he began to talk in a low voice. It was strange to hear the new manly accent in his talk. In the old days it was she who did most of the talking. The new vibrancy in him cut her up inside.

  After a bit she managed to fasten her mind on what he was saying. . . .

  All went well with Vince in the Minnesota Fifth under Colonel Hubbard. Until the battle of Farmington.

  It was in May and the hills were in bloom. Vince was made adjutant to Captain Bowman, a rough old file of a man. In the opening skirmish the captain lost his saber and he ordered Vince to go back and get it. Vince was a coward, and knew it, and demurred. He suggested the lost saber was hardly worth a human life. In a rage Captain Bowman ordered him to get it anyway. Vince was more afraid of the captain than he was of the Rebs. Luckily a lull occurred in the shooting just then and he ran back over the ridge and found the saber. When he turned it in, the captain ordered him back once more.

  “What for?”

  “Why, the gold cord, of course, that’s what for. Can’t let the Rebs have that.”

  The cord was worth about ten cents and this time Vince knew for a fact that going back was not worth a Union life. Vince spoke his mind on the matter.

  The captain chewed him out. And chewed him out with such maniacal fury that Vince began to wonder if the captain wasn’t a fit subject for the lunacy commission.

  Vince went again. He had proceeded about a dozen yards over the ridge, stepping over gutted bellies, when the Rebels let go with a barrage from the far crest. One of the musket balls carried away Vince’s right heel. Vince jumped straight up, screamed, and returned to the Union lines at 2:40 gait.

  Vince hugged the first tree he came to. “I hugged it so hard that had it been an old maid she would have wiggled in sheer delight.”

  The captain came up and kicked him in the arse. “What the devil you doing here?”

  Vince waved his arms up and down on both sides of the tree. “Why, captain, I’m only feeling for a furlough. One little nick from a musket ball on a fingertip and I can go home.”

  The captain was outraged. He kicked him with all he had a second time. “I never want to see your detestable carcass again in this regiment. You are not only a coward, you are an outright all-day-Sunday coward. They surely left out the sand when they made you.”

  “Well, captain, beggin’ your pardon, you may make a lot of noise, but you’re even worse off. They left out the gizzard itself when they made you.”

  The captain glared. “I can have you shot for that. But you know, I’m instead going to give you an even worse punishment. Until further notice you’re in charge of the burial detail.”

  Vince reported for his new duties the next day. It was a beautiful June morning out, yet already outside the surgeon’s tent bodies lay corded up like firewood ready for a steamboat. His detail dug burial trenches all day long.

  Toward evening he saw one of the corded bodies move its feet. He got help and took the body out. An hour later, the body came to and walked away, determined to join the battle again.

  For many nights Vince’s dreams were of rivers and big running springs, of never having enough to drink. He dreamed of swimming in tubs of blood where he was forced to fight off voracious bladders and slimy livers.

  Then came the battle of Corinth in October. They got orders to move in. Frying pans tied to their guns clinked merrily as they tramped along.

  Two days later, bivouacked in town near the depot, they were aroused at dawn by shellfire. The Rebs were on the march.

  All too soon the Union line on the right collapsed and suddenly dense crowds of men in butternut brown, bounding and yelling, were pouring into Corinth. They came in like flooding brown waters. Without waiting for orders, Colonel Hubbard changed his front, moving by the right flank by file right, and took up a position at right angles to his former position. The enemy flank was presented to his new line. Colonel Hubbard ordered his men to fire. The fire was devastating. At the same time he called for a man to deliver a message to General Stanley. Vince volunteered, glad to get out of the holocaust. He was given a horse that had once been attached to a battery unit. The horse had galloped only a dozen rods, when in all the sudden gunfire, it reversed and headed straight into the hellish inferno beside the depot. The horse was used to running toward a battle, not away from it. The firing from both sides became deadly. Vince ducked behind the horse’s head. The horse advanced as if bucking a hailstorm driven by a furious wind. Then he and the horse were suddenly in the lead. The Federals let go with a great roar when they saw Vince and his horse advancing alone. He had become the soul of their stand. They fixed bayonets and advanced on a run behind him. The butternut Confederates tried to hold. They too let go with a great roar, a massive rising cry that sounded like a cross between the Indian death song and the roar of a black bear. But shoot as they might, the Rebs could not drop either Vince or his horse. Vince saw the butternuts falter. To his surprise he was all of a sudden standing up in his saddle and roaring with the best of them, shouting with the fearless passion of sure triumph. He was enjoying it. It was nothing to be a brave man after all, a hero. You just suddenly were. It was easy. If you didn’t get hit you were alive. And if you did get hit you were dead. That was all there was to it. The butternuts faded. The boys in blue closed the gap.

  It was when he had finally turned his horse about that he got hit. A stray union bullet caught him at the hairline. He was out like a doused candle. And he didn’t know where he was or who he was until he woke up on board a boat headed for St. Paul.

  When he had fully recovered in a St. Paul hospital, he was told to join General Sibley on the Sioux Indian front. Sibley had sent a hurry-up call to Governor Ramsey for more troops and all available men were ordered upriver to Fort Ridgely. That was how he happened to be in General Sibley’s tent. . . .

  Vince placed his hand on Judith’s shoulder familiarly.

  She shrugged it off. “Don’t.”

  “What’s the matter, pet?”

  “It’s too late.” The tip of her tongue sought for the four black hairs on the edge of her upper lip. To her surprise the four hairs were gone. They had not reappeared since she had pulled them out beside the pond in Lost Timber.

  “Now, pet—”

  “Don’t.”

  They locked eyes, blue eyes and gray eyes.

  She was the first to break off, and look to one side.

  She held her belly in both her hands. She knew that in another eight months there would be a half-breed child with blood as pink as the prairie rose.

  “When I am not in love I am nothing.”

  3

  The blue army moved down the Old Fort Road on the New Ulm side of the river. It swung past lonely kames and brown granite outcroppings. Dry axles screeched. Wheels raised little plumes of black dust. Each wagonload of prisoners was flanked by a detail of bristling mounted men. The long succession of wagons resembled a monster caterpillar being harried along by a s
mall swarm of big black ants.

  Judith rode Buckskin Belly. She held Johnnie in front of her. Ted rode Old Paint. To either side of them trailed the other rescued whites, most of them on foot, some in wagons.

  Wavering V’s of ducks and geese were southing. Far-flung arrows of white swans cut across the highest heavens.

  Occasionally the remains of families were found sprawled in the burned grass. The skeletons lay as if just fallen after a hard run. Remaining morsels of flesh on the bones had the stink of ripe steak slightly burned.

  The column hit a cloud of late-autumn flies. The horses went crazy and the whole line broke up into sections and snapped upon itself for a time. The column next crossed on a corduroy road, the logs undulating underfoot in spongy black muck as if they were the backs of live hogs.

  A couple of times Judith managed to ride close behind the army wagon in which Scarlet Plume rode. He sat near the endgate, shackled to an Indian named His Face Resembles An Antheap. Antheap’s smallpox-pitted cheeks were as rough as a rasp. Each wagon contained a driver and five pairs of prisoners. All the prisoners wore red-and-black horse blankets.

  Scarlet Plume’s iron control of his face reminded Judith of a Christ riding impassively to his fate, enduring chains and humiliation because a higher god expected it of him. It made Judith grimace to think that she could compare her red friend to Christ. She had never taken too kindly to Christian reflections. But she had come to appreciate one thing: why it was that Theodosia could have felt such devotion to her Christ. Scarlet Plume’s road to Mankato was similar to Christ’s road to Calvary. And Scarlet Plume’s manly composure made Judith wonder too if Christ had been such a pallid mama’s boy after all.

  There was one big difference between Theodosia’s loving and her loving. Theodosia Woods loved her ideal across the distance of several thousand years at the same time that she cohabited on occasion with a man named Claude Codman, while she, Judith Woods, both loved her great man and cohabited with him, now—with this twist, that Scarlet Plume belonged many times removed to a past before the time of Christ.